Thursday, August 9, 2007

The Osuarry of Sedlec (Kutna Hora)








"The ossuary contains approximately 40,000 human skeletons which have been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. 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 abolition to
make room for new burials. After 1511 the task of exhuming skeletons and stacking their bones in the chapel was, according to legend, given to a half-blind monk of the order.

In 1870, FrantiĊĦek Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the one heaps into order. The macabre results of his effort speaks for itself. 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 vaults. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a large Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, and the signature of Master Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance." Wikipedia

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