My Travel and History Blog, Focussing mostly on Roman and Mediaeval Times
19 May 2019
Decorative Bones - The Sedlec Ossuary (Czechia)
Sedlec is today a suburb of the Czech town Kutná Hora, about an hour's drive from Prague. The place has become popular with tourists due to a somewhat morbid and scary attraction: the Ossuary of Sedlec. The town of Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) is a UNESCO site and worth a visit as well. But in this post, let's get down to the bones. :-)
Bone decorations in the Sedlec Ossuary
Literally, in fact. The ossuary is located in the basement of the All Saints' Chapel in the cemetary of Sedlec. So, how did some 40,000 skeletons end up in this place, and part of those as decorations to boot?
View from the entrance down to the chapel
Well, for one, Sedlec was once more than a part Gothic, part Baroque chapel. From the 13th century to the Hussite Wars in the 15th century, Sedlec had been an important Cistercian monastery. A semi-legendary tale has it that King Ottokar II. Přemysl of Bohemia sent the abbot Jindřich (Henry) to Palestine on some mission in 1278. Upon return, Jindřich brought with hims a jar full of soil from the Calvary Mountain at Golgatha, the place where Jesus died. He spread the earth over the cemetary of the monastery.
Candelabra with pillars
The tale of the Holy Soil spread, and soon people not only from the surroundings, but from other countries as well, wanted to be buried in Sedlec, the closest they could get to Jerusalem without a long pilgrimage. Some 30,000 people were buried in Sedlec during the plague epidemic in 1318, often in mass graves. The cemetary was expanded to 3,5 hectares.
Closeup of the candelabra
The monastery was destroyed by the Hussites in 1421. The Hussite Wars (1419-1434) were are series of wars fought between the Hussites (a reformatory movement prior to Luther) and the Catholic Church. Most of the Czech population were Hussites; they faced contingents sent by the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and other European monarchs. Nevertheless, they were sufficiently successful on the field to finally be able to negotiate a peace that would allow them to practise their religion.
Entrance hall
A two storeyed chapel was erected on the grounds of the cemetary in the early 15th century. The churchyard was decreased, the remains of the buried exhumed and deposited in the basement of the chapel. According to tradition, a half blind Cistercian monk later piled the bones into six pyramids (1511).
The entrance and the upper floor of the chapel were altered in the Bohemian Baroque style (a mix of Gothic and Baroque elements) by Jan Santini Aichl in 1710. He also put some touches to the ossuary in the basement, adding carved crowns above the bone pyramids and some candelabras.
View to the ceiling
The Schwarzenberg family, members of the Bohemian and German high nobility, bought the chapel and comissioned the wood carver František Rint to do a house makeover in 1870. But instead of wood, he would use some of the bones to create decorative elements.
He dissembled two of the six pyramids (the bones of about 10,000 people). The bones were bleached with chlorinated lime prior to use; the rest buried in the park outside the chapel.
Arms of the Schwarzenberg family
One feature Rint created were the arms of the Schwarzenberg family. In the lower right quarter you can see a raven hacking at the eye of a skull. That motive was granted the family due to their service fighting the Turkish Ottomans in the 16th century.
Detail shot of the ceiling
The most outstanding part of the decoration is the grand candelabra with the four pillars you can see on several photos above. Rint used every bone of the human body in the construction. Garlands of skulls and long bones (mostly upper arms) also adorn the ceiling and the archs.
One of the two chalices
On both sides of the staircase leading down to the ossuary, Rint placed bone chalices in niches in the wall. They were probably never used, though.
Stack of bones
Four of the bone pyramids still remain in side rooms of the chapel. Some of the bones in those collections, esp. the skulls, show signs of violence, mostly suffered during the Hussite Wars.
Monstrance
Excavations are going on outside the ossuary; and the bone pyramids are carefully dismantled for research, the reassembled again. After all, bones can tell quite a few things about the living conditions of the people in the Middle Ages.
The All Saints' Church, exterior
Footnotes
Information obtained from the guidebook by Jan Kulich (translated into English by Madeleine Štulíková) which is avaliable on site.
¶ May 19, 2019 2 comments
Sedlec is today a suburb of the Czech town Kutná Hora, about an hour's drive from Prague. The place has become popular with tourists due to a somewhat morbid and scary attraction: the Ossuary of Sedlec. The town of Kutná Hora (Kuttenberg) is a UNESCO site and worth a visit as well. But in this post, let's get down to the bones. :-)
Literally, in fact. The ossuary is located in the basement of the All Saints' Chapel in the cemetary of Sedlec. So, how did some 40,000 skeletons end up in this place, and part of those as decorations to boot?
Well, for one, Sedlec was once more than a part Gothic, part Baroque chapel. From the 13th century to the Hussite Wars in the 15th century, Sedlec had been an important Cistercian monastery. A semi-legendary tale has it that King Ottokar II. Přemysl of Bohemia sent the abbot Jindřich (Henry) to Palestine on some mission in 1278. Upon return, Jindřich brought with hims a jar full of soil from the Calvary Mountain at Golgatha, the place where Jesus died. He spread the earth over the cemetary of the monastery.
The tale of the Holy Soil spread, and soon people not only from the surroundings, but from other countries as well, wanted to be buried in Sedlec, the closest they could get to Jerusalem without a long pilgrimage. Some 30,000 people were buried in Sedlec during the plague epidemic in 1318, often in mass graves. The cemetary was expanded to 3,5 hectares.
The monastery was destroyed by the Hussites in 1421. The Hussite Wars (1419-1434) were are series of wars fought between the Hussites (a reformatory movement prior to Luther) and the Catholic Church. Most of the Czech population were Hussites; they faced contingents sent by the pope, the Holy Roman Emperor Sigismund and other European monarchs. Nevertheless, they were sufficiently successful on the field to finally be able to negotiate a peace that would allow them to practise their religion.
A two storeyed chapel was erected on the grounds of the cemetary in the early 15th century. The churchyard was decreased, the remains of the buried exhumed and deposited in the basement of the chapel. According to tradition, a half blind Cistercian monk later piled the bones into six pyramids (1511).
The entrance and the upper floor of the chapel were altered in the Bohemian Baroque style (a mix of Gothic and Baroque elements) by Jan Santini Aichl in 1710. He also put some touches to the ossuary in the basement, adding carved crowns above the bone pyramids and some candelabras.
The Schwarzenberg family, members of the Bohemian and German high nobility, bought the chapel and comissioned the wood carver František Rint to do a house makeover in 1870. But instead of wood, he would use some of the bones to create decorative elements.
He dissembled two of the six pyramids (the bones of about 10,000 people). The bones were bleached with chlorinated lime prior to use; the rest buried in the park outside the chapel.
One feature Rint created were the arms of the Schwarzenberg family. In the lower right quarter you can see a raven hacking at the eye of a skull. That motive was granted the family due to their service fighting the Turkish Ottomans in the 16th century.
The most outstanding part of the decoration is the grand candelabra with the four pillars you can see on several photos above. Rint used every bone of the human body in the construction. Garlands of skulls and long bones (mostly upper arms) also adorn the ceiling and the archs.
On both sides of the staircase leading down to the ossuary, Rint placed bone chalices in niches in the wall. They were probably never used, though.
Four of the bone pyramids still remain in side rooms of the chapel. Some of the bones in those collections, esp. the skulls, show signs of violence, mostly suffered during the Hussite Wars.
Excavations are going on outside the ossuary; and the bone pyramids are carefully dismantled for research, the reassembled again. After all, bones can tell quite a few things about the living conditions of the people in the Middle Ages.
Footnotes
Information obtained from the guidebook by Jan Kulich (translated into English by Madeleine Štulíková) which is avaliable on site.
¶ May 19, 2019 2 comments
4 May 2019
From Political Movement to Bronze Figures - The Wrocław Dwarfs
Well, some of the Wrocław Dwarfs - impossible to find all of the 163 official dwarfs (krasnale) spread over the town, plus the 150+ additional inofficial ones. The tourist office offers a map to help you hunt down the wee chaps, but I thought that's pretty much like seeking Easter eggs with a GPS; therefore I just kept my eyes open in hope to notice some of the dwarfs. Let me show you the guys I found.
Welcome to Wrocław
Some are cheerful, others cheeky, and a few even look grim. But this wee chap is surely of the welcoming sort.
Happy dwarf with sunflower
But the bronze guys, which are about a foot (20-30 cm) tall, have nothing to do with garden gnomes. They are the reverberation of a legend and, more important, a political movement.
Tourist dwarf with map and camera - right in front of the Tourist Info office
The legend tells that dwarfs assisted the first settlers to build the town of Wrocław. The people were plagued by the Oder river goblin, a nasty, mischievious creature that kept damaging the houses until the dwarfs imprisoned him in a mountain (where he probably still lives). The inhabitants of Wrocław were so grateful that they offered the dwarfs to live in the town together with the humans.
I loved those two bearded guys with the old fashioned fire engine
In the 1980ies, an anti-communist and anti-sovjet movement called 'Orange Alternative' (Pomarańczowa Alternatywa) took up the legend and used the dwarfs as their signature. Led by the student of arts Waldemar Fydrych, called 'Major', and mathematician Wiesław Cupała, they organised peaceful, dadaistic meetings and demonstrations that mocked the communist regime in an ironic way.
A grim looking dwarf - the blacksmith
Wherever the militia covered up anticommunist slogans on walls, paintings of dwarfs would appear soon thereafter, forcing the officials to have scores of perfectly harmless dwarf graffiti removed. Another action were demonstations where the participants wore orange coloured dwarf hoods and made the police look ridiculous if they tried to arrest people for participating in an 'illegal meeting of dwarfs'.
That naked dwarf with umbrella takes up the motive of irony
One action had members of the movement distribute single sheets of toilet paper - which was a rarity at the time - to people, forcing the police to search bags and pockets to confiscate single sheets of toilet paper. Another time they met in front of the chimpanzee compound in the zoo, singing songs that praised Lenin. Well, it looks a bit silly if you arrest people singing pro-Communist songs just because they wear orange hoods.
This one is called Sisyphos - good luck moving that ball if the other guy is leaning against it
The Orange Alternative was loosely connected with the Solidarity movement. Their actions were not without danger, of course, and arrests did happen, but overall the ironic approach proved a strong weapon. The movement culminated in a demonstration of 10,000 people in dwarf hoods marching through the city, singing "Freedom for the dwarfs".
Prisoner
A few years after the fall of communism, the first dwarf, known as Papa Krasnal, was unveiled on the spot where most of the Orange Alternative protest meetings started, the corner of the Ulica Świdnicka and the Ulica Kazimierza Wielkego (Street of Casimir the Great), in 2001 to honour the movement and its victims. I missed that chap, though.
Dwarf on a motor bike
The council commissioned the local artist Tomasz Moczek to create some more dwarfs in 2005, and things went mad from there. The little guys proved so popular with the inhabitants and tourists alike that Moczek created more of them (about a hundred overall). Soon not only the town council ordered bronze dwarfs, but also local businesses commissioned them and brought other artists into the fray.
Handicapped dwarfs: deaf-mute, blind, and paraplegic
Some figures have a more serious background. The three handicapped dwarfs which were added in 2008 are part of the Wrocław Without Barriers campaign which aims to enhance the awareness for the requirements of handicapped people.
Dwarf eating chocolate in front of a chocolate shop
Not all the dwarfs are officially acknowledged. To get an 'approved' dwarf, businesses have to go through a long and expensive process. So they tend to shirk that and commission a dwarf anyway.
Dwarf with gift parcel in front of a gift and knick knack shop
The reason for the rise in illegal dwarfs is the fact that a dwarf in front of a shop increases the attraction to customers. But the wee chaps are so well liked by tourists that it pays off for the town as well, which is likely one reason the authorities tolerate them. Another reason, so my guess, is the political background.
Scholar
This is the story behind the bronze figures. Below are some more dwarfs which I found.
Dwarf with laptop
The modern variant of a scholar. Or maybe a travel blogger updating his Instragram account with the latest dwarf photos.
Glutton
That guy was digesting his latest meal in front of a Pizza Hut. (You can't escape those dang chains even in central and eastern Europe. I prefer to look out for local restaurants.)
Drunk dwarf
That one is surely having fun. I wonder what's in that jug, judging by his swaying around it might have been vodka.
Sleeping dwarf
Let's hope our drunk friend found his bed as well. This figure stands in front of a hotel (of course *grin*).
Pastry thieves
And last there are those two suspicious chaps stealing pastries from a bakery - after the one on the windowsill already filched an ice cream cone which he doesn't want to share with his accomplice below.
Pastry thieves
I hope you have as much fun looking at those wee dwarfs as I had hunting down and photographing the chaps.
¶ May 04, 2019 3 comments
Well, some of the Wrocław Dwarfs - impossible to find all of the 163 official dwarfs (krasnale) spread over the town, plus the 150+ additional inofficial ones. The tourist office offers a map to help you hunt down the wee chaps, but I thought that's pretty much like seeking Easter eggs with a GPS; therefore I just kept my eyes open in hope to notice some of the dwarfs. Let me show you the guys I found.
Some are cheerful, others cheeky, and a few even look grim. But this wee chap is surely of the welcoming sort.
But the bronze guys, which are about a foot (20-30 cm) tall, have nothing to do with garden gnomes. They are the reverberation of a legend and, more important, a political movement.
The legend tells that dwarfs assisted the first settlers to build the town of Wrocław. The people were plagued by the Oder river goblin, a nasty, mischievious creature that kept damaging the houses until the dwarfs imprisoned him in a mountain (where he probably still lives). The inhabitants of Wrocław were so grateful that they offered the dwarfs to live in the town together with the humans.
In the 1980ies, an anti-communist and anti-sovjet movement called 'Orange Alternative' (Pomarańczowa Alternatywa) took up the legend and used the dwarfs as their signature. Led by the student of arts Waldemar Fydrych, called 'Major', and mathematician Wiesław Cupała, they organised peaceful, dadaistic meetings and demonstrations that mocked the communist regime in an ironic way.
Wherever the militia covered up anticommunist slogans on walls, paintings of dwarfs would appear soon thereafter, forcing the officials to have scores of perfectly harmless dwarf graffiti removed. Another action were demonstations where the participants wore orange coloured dwarf hoods and made the police look ridiculous if they tried to arrest people for participating in an 'illegal meeting of dwarfs'.
One action had members of the movement distribute single sheets of toilet paper - which was a rarity at the time - to people, forcing the police to search bags and pockets to confiscate single sheets of toilet paper. Another time they met in front of the chimpanzee compound in the zoo, singing songs that praised Lenin. Well, it looks a bit silly if you arrest people singing pro-Communist songs just because they wear orange hoods.
The Orange Alternative was loosely connected with the Solidarity movement. Their actions were not without danger, of course, and arrests did happen, but overall the ironic approach proved a strong weapon. The movement culminated in a demonstration of 10,000 people in dwarf hoods marching through the city, singing "Freedom for the dwarfs".
A few years after the fall of communism, the first dwarf, known as Papa Krasnal, was unveiled on the spot where most of the Orange Alternative protest meetings started, the corner of the Ulica Świdnicka and the Ulica Kazimierza Wielkego (Street of Casimir the Great), in 2001 to honour the movement and its victims. I missed that chap, though.
The council commissioned the local artist Tomasz Moczek to create some more dwarfs in 2005, and things went mad from there. The little guys proved so popular with the inhabitants and tourists alike that Moczek created more of them (about a hundred overall). Soon not only the town council ordered bronze dwarfs, but also local businesses commissioned them and brought other artists into the fray.
Some figures have a more serious background. The three handicapped dwarfs which were added in 2008 are part of the Wrocław Without Barriers campaign which aims to enhance the awareness for the requirements of handicapped people.
Not all the dwarfs are officially acknowledged. To get an 'approved' dwarf, businesses have to go through a long and expensive process. So they tend to shirk that and commission a dwarf anyway.
The reason for the rise in illegal dwarfs is the fact that a dwarf in front of a shop increases the attraction to customers. But the wee chaps are so well liked by tourists that it pays off for the town as well, which is likely one reason the authorities tolerate them. Another reason, so my guess, is the political background.
This is the story behind the bronze figures. Below are some more dwarfs which I found.
The modern variant of a scholar. Or maybe a travel blogger updating his Instragram account with the latest dwarf photos.
That guy was digesting his latest meal in front of a Pizza Hut. (You can't escape those dang chains even in central and eastern Europe. I prefer to look out for local restaurants.)
That one is surely having fun. I wonder what's in that jug, judging by his swaying around it might have been vodka.
Let's hope our drunk friend found his bed as well. This figure stands in front of a hotel (of course *grin*).
And last there are those two suspicious chaps stealing pastries from a bakery - after the one on the windowsill already filched an ice cream cone which he doesn't want to share with his accomplice below.
I hope you have as much fun looking at those wee dwarfs as I had hunting down and photographing the chaps.
¶ May 04, 2019 3 comments
