Czech: Wonders of a church of bones

A church designed with skeletons? That was my instant reaction, the first time I learned about the Sedlec Ossuary. My eyes were glued to the screen from the beginning of the documentary to the end, flabbergasted. I had never heard anything like it. I don’t think I remember anything from the words of the narrator […]

A church designed with skeletons? That was my instant reaction, the first time I learned about the Sedlec Ossuary. My eyes were glued to the screen from the beginning of the documentary to the end, flabbergasted. I had never heard anything like it. I don’t think I remember anything from the words of the narrator of the documentary. The images I had seen were embedded in my memory for life; not for nightmares but in amazement of how anyone would decide to put them to such use. The clips of the chandelier and other decorative pieces which adorned the chapel provoked a curiosity to see them one on one.
The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Roman Catholic chapel, in Czech Republic located in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora area. The UNESCO World Heritage site is located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints. It is one of the twelve world heritage sites in Czech Republic. The interior of the ossuary is artistically embellished in various forms including chandeliers, coat of arms and a chalice, among others.
As soon as one enters the chapel, a subtle cadaver-like smell ushers the tourist further down the steps of the chapel onto the cross-like nave as one wades through several other tourists trying to take selfies or studying the bones whilst they read information about their origins. 
Against my initial thought that I would find the place scary, it was rather peaceful and calm. Even tourists were quiet and somewhat respectful in their conversation while inside the Church.
There are four giant sized bell-shaped mounds on the corners of the chapel, with a big chandelier constructed from skulls, femurs and bones from other parts of the body. It is often touted as the high point of the Church because it contains at least one of each bone in the human body.
 Beneath the dangling chandelier at the nave are garlands of skulls draping the vault above them. The piers and monstrance of the church located by the altar are also decorated with the bones.
Standing in a corner is a display case showing skulls with wounds inflicted by various mediaeval weapons, chalices that stand in alcoves on either side of the staircase and the signature of František Rint, the decorator, signed out in finger bones.
The catchy and engaging giant size coat of arms of the House of Schwarzenberg drew many tourists to it. They were quite fascinated by the raven picking the eye from an invading soldier.
An abbot at the Cistercian Monastery in Sedlec, Henry was sent to the Holy Land by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1278. While there, he took some sand from Golgotha.  He returned home with a pocketful of ‘Holy soil’ and sprinkled it on the cemetery surrounding the Chapel of All Saints. Word of this act spread very fast across the community and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site among the aristocracy of Central Europe.
Our tour guide explained that in the 14th Century, during the Black Death where an estimated 75 to 200 million people died, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th Century, thousands were buried in the abbey cemetery, which had to be extensively enlarged to accommodate the corpses.
The construction of a Gothic Church began around 1400, in the centre of the cemetery with a vaulted upper level and a lower chapel to serve as an ossuary for the mass graves exhumed during construction. It was either this or they would be marked for demolition to make room for new burials on the site.
During the 30-year-war in the 17th Century, the number of burials outgrew the space available in the cemetery. A half-blind monk is said to have been saddled with the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in order inside the chapel.
Another entrance was constructed between 1703 and 1710, to support the front wall, which was leaning outward. This was followed by the construction of the upper chapel in the Czech Baroque style, designed by Jan Santini Aichel.
The Schwarzenberg family, who were the landowners at the time, in 1870 employed Rint, a woodcarver, to put the bone heaps into order. It was a macabre turnout.
Tour materials inform that: “In 1970, at the centenary of Rint’s contributions, Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer, was commissioned to document the ossuary. The result was a 10-minute long frantic-cut film of skeletal images overdubbed with an actual tour-guide’s neutral voice narration.
“This version was initially banned by the Czech Communist authorities for alleged subversion, and the soundtrack was replaced by a brief spoken introduction and a jazz arrangement by Zdeněk Liška of the poem ‘Comment dessiner le portrait d’un oiseau’ (‘How to draw the portrait of a bird’) by Jacques Prévert. Since the Velvet Revolution, the original tour guide soundtrack has been made available.”
The materials also said: “In the documentary ‘Long Way Round,’ Ewan McGregor and Charley Boorman stop to see this church. Dan Cruickshank also views the church in his ‘Adventures in Architecture’.”
While other macabre sites like the Paris Catacombe are said to rival this, tourists who have visited both sites say the Sedlec Ossuary stands in a unique way above the others.
 At the end of my tour, typical of a Nigerian woman in surprise, I involuntarily clapped my hands as I said to myself, ‘wonders will never end’ still mentally absorbing all I had seen.