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The Ossuary - IV

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Description

Location: Kutna Hora, Czech Republic

The Sedlec Ossuary  is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. It is one of twelve World Heritage Sites in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, whose bones have in many cases been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones, which contains at least one of every bone in the human body, hangs from the center of the nave with garlands of skulls draping the vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a coat of arms of House of Schwarzenberg, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance.

In 1278, Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Holy Land by King Otakar II of Bohemia. He returned with  a small amount of earth he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe.

In the mid 14th century, during the Black Death, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century, many thousands were buried in the abbey cemetery, so it had to be greatly enlarged.

Around 1400, a Gothic church was built in the center of the cemetery with a vaulted upper level and a lower chapel to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves unearthed during construction, or simply slated for demolition to make room for new burials.

After 1511, the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel was given to a half-blind monk of the order.

Between 1703 and 1710, a new entrance was constructed to support the front wall, which was leaning outward, and the upper chapel was rebuilt. This work, in the Czech Baroque style, was designed by Jan Santini Aichel.

In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order, yielding a macabre result

Image size
800x600px 248.92 KB
Make
SONY
Model
ILCA-77M2
Shutter Speed
1/80 second
Aperture
F/4.0
Focal Length
50 mm
ISO Speed
4000
Date Taken
Jul 23, 2015, 5:01:29 PM
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Comments3
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D-A-Skelly's avatar
This made me think of the Capuchine crypt in Rome. The monks past and present are in the ossuary, past Capuchin monks were brought back from the holy land and all their bones decorate the ossuary. I have a collection of cards in book form somewhere. I have never been in a place so quiet, as tourists walk through the crypt there is a stunned silence as they focus on the reality of the place. Feel sure if you google Capuchin crypt, Rome you will see what I am talking about.