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Showcase of death: thousands of medieval skeletons make Czech `bone church' a macabre experience - Destinations - All Saints Church, Kutna Hora
National Catholic Reporter, April 12, 2002 by Margot Patterson
A ghoulish curiosity, an absorbing lesson in human anatomy, a macabre meditation on death, a singular work of beauty.
All Saints Chapel outside the Czech town of Kutna Hora can be any and all of these to the visitors who come to gape at the human remains on display.
The skeletons of about 40,000 people lie in the small chapel, heaped up in four bell-shaped pyramids and displayed as decorative motifs on the walls. At the entrance to the chapel -- sometimes familiarly referred to as "the bone church" -- bones form the inscription IHS, Latin for Iesus Hominum Salvator or Jesus, the Savior of Humanity. Close by, crosses and two large chalices several feet high are formed of the bones of the dead.
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The skull and crossbones appear everywhere. Rows of skulls interspersed with crossbones line the walls, decorate the arched entrances, or swing from the ceiling. In the interior of this ossuary, or receptacle for bones, four candelabra are crowned with skulls. Glass cases nearby hold the broken skulls of warriors killed by a flail or mace.
Chandelier guessing game
Among religious objects of note is a large monstrance with bones radiating from a skull at the center. But the piece de resistance of the skeletal decor is a giant chandelier composed of every bone in the human body. A favorite guessing game with visitors is trying to figure out which parts of the chandelier correspond to which parts of the body. That small horizontal tube-like shape: Is it a finger bone, a toe bone or something else?
"It's a great learning tool," Californian Steve Bagues said as he studied the chandelier.
The creepy decor is the work of Frantisek Rint, a Czech woodcarver who in 1870 arranged the chapel as it is today. But the bodies in the ossuary, like the ossuary itself, date back many centuries earlier.
In 1142 a Cistercian monastery was established in Sedlec in Central Bohemia. The discovery of silver ore some years after on nearby abbey property led to the establishment of Kutna Hora, at one time the most important city in Bohemia after Prague. The central Royal Mint was established in Kutna Hora in 1308, and in 1400 King Wenceslas IV made the town the royal residence.
Today Sedlec is little more than a suburb of Kutna Hora, which lies two kilometers away. But in the Middle Ages, the monastery at Sedlec was a thriving and influential community. It had enough wealth to construct the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Cathedral between the years 1280 to 1320 as well as a small Gothic chapel about a century later at the site of a local cemetery.
The brilliant Baroque architect Jan Santini remodeled both the cathedral and the chapel, which had been destroyed in a fire. The origins of the chapel go back to 1278 when King Otakar II of Bohemia sent the abbot of Sedlec On a diplomatic mission to the Holy Land. On leaving Jerusalem, Abbot Jindrich took a handful of earth from Golgotha, which he sprinkled over the cemetery at Sedlec monastery. Subsequently regarded as part of the Holy Land, the cemetery grew famous throughout Central Europe and became a popular place of burial for the wealthy.
The plague in the 14th century vastly swelled the number of dead buried in the cemetery. According to administrators of All Saints Chapel, in 1318 about 30,000 people were buried in the cemetery. The Hussite wars in the early 15th century also increased the number of graves. The bones from abolished graves were stored around the chapel and eventually inside it. In 1511 a half-blind monk first took on the task of arranging the bones in pyramids.
Skulls just too much
In 1784 the Austrian Emperor Josef II abolished the monasteries in the empire. The property in Sedlec was purchased by the Schwarzenberg family, whose coat Of arms hangs in the chapel and is crafted from bones of different sizes and lengths and surmounted by a crown featuring two skulls offset by hip bones.
Today the ossuary draws curiosity-seekers from around the world and evokes a variety of responses. Some find it indecent, others simply arresting.
"It's like Halloween decoration gone horribly wrong," said Kelly Powick, a Canadian teacher in Prague who was visiting on a weekend trip to Kutna Hora. Clearly disturbed by the morbid sights around her, Powick said she particularly objected to the festoons of skulls that hang in the chapel. "It's overwhelmingly in your face," Powick complained. "If you went to a room and there were some candelabra of bones, I could deal with it, but the streamers of skulls is just too much."
Aesthetic as well as ingenious
Dimitri Limberopulos, a university student from Mexico, was thoroughly enthusiastic. Unlike Powick, Limberopulos found the decor aesthetic as well as ingenious. "It's amazing how you can do really nice things with what is usually rejected by people. The chandelier is beautiful," he said, marveling at the way the jawbones act as the chains of the chandelier, the skulls as the candies, and what he thought were tibia or tibia as the crystals.
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