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.
Ein sehr interessanter Bericht, aber auch etwas makaber. Wenn man so die Bilder betrachtet läuft einem schon ein leichter Schauer über den Rücken.
ReplyDeleteLG von der Silberdistel
Liebe Silberdistel, die Kirche ist schon speziell. Man fragt sich, wieso der Fürst von Schwarzenberg die Idee für diese Art von Dekoration hatte. Das hätte eher in die Barockzeit gepasst als ins 19te Jahrhundert. Nun, jedenfalls hat Kutná Hora eine Touristenattraktion mehr durch die Kapelle. :-)
ReplyDelete