UPDATE!
Officials in the Czech Republic are trying to figure out why the Sedlec Ostuary is leaning and sinking. Call me crazy, but I think it might have something to do with it having 40-70 thousand people in it.
Global Edmonton’s News Hour had a quick mention of it on Thursday:
Courtesy: Global TV Edmonton (Jan 27, 2011)
(Originally posted: July 15, 2010)
Beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in the town of Sedlec, Czech Republic, a little Roman Catholic chapel acts as a mass burial tomb for the skeletons of an estimated 40,000-70,000 people, many of which have had their bones decoratively arranged to form furnishings.
Actors Ewan McGregor & Charlie Boorman introduced us to this location in their documented bike trip around the world, Long Way Round (BTW, if you haven’t seen it, it’s a must watch for anyone doing any kind of trip across Europe and Asia), so when we later discovered that we’d be trekking across the Czech Republic on our own adventure, this naturally became a must see destination.
WARNING: The following may contain a few facts and a possible history lesson
(ARRRG! BRAIN CRAMP!)… But it’s OK! We’ve got a bunch of pictures! (Pretty!)
Back in 1278, King Otakar II of Bohemia commissioned Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian Monastery in Sedlec to go to the Holy Land (Palestine), where he collected some dirt from Golgotha (biblical name for the site of Jesus’ crucifixion). When he returned home, he sprinkled the over the cemetery, instantly making it the Hollywood of burial sites in central Europe (only with less blondes wearing fake tans).
Sedlec Ossuary Exterior
When the Black Plague struck in the mid-1300s and after the Hussite Wars of the early 1400s, thousands of bodies came to the cemetery, requiring the site to be enlarged. A gothic church with a vaulted upper level was built in the center of the cemetery. The lower level contained a chapel to be used as an ossuary for the mass graves unearthed during construction. After 1511, according to legend, the job of exhuming skeletons and stacking bones in the chapel was given to a half-blind monk of the order.
Lower level chapel/ossuary
In 1870, FrantiĊĦek Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order, and it’s fair to say that his effort speaks for itself – Four massive bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel, an enormous chandelier containing at least one of every bone in the human body hangs in the center with garlands of skulls draping the vault, bone piers and monstrances flank the altar, a large Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance.
Bone chandelier in the center of the chapel
Click to see enlarged pictures:
Sedlec Ossuary official website
Sedlec Ossuary Wikipedia page
