Sedlec Ossuary Tourism and mystery

The tourism traditional offers you usually walks with beautiful mountains, blue lakes and lovely beaches. Today I approached a different, which is mounted, based on the vestiges of an era uprising in  Europe, a mysterious chapel.

Ossuary of Sedlec, what do you mean?

The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech Kostnice Sedlec ) is basically a chapel of the Catholic religion was artistically decorated with human bones. Inside, we find from crosses and family crests, to movables as lighting chandeliers. From there, hence its name.

This enclosure of religious practices, is built under the Church of All Saints Cemetery (in Czech Hrbitovní Všech kostel svatych ) in a suburb of the Czech Republic, Kutna Hora, more precisely in Sedlec.

Doing a bit of history

Thanks to a special gesture taken by Abbot Henry, the monastery of the Cistercian Order of Sedlec, the cemetery of the abbey who presided, was converted from the thirteenth century, a favorite spot throughout Europe Central to bury their dead.

The abbot, returning from a trip to the Holy Land, where he was sent by King Ottokar II of Bohemia in 1278, brought a small piece of land of Golgotha. With her, sprayed her graveyard.

The news of this pious act, was quickly spread, attracting to itself, all eyes and generating a large influx of burials to their plots.

In the mid- fourteenth century the Black Death, brought large numbers of deaths, which added to those produced by the Hussite Wars ( early fifteenth century ) filled the capacity of the cemetery, causing its expansion considerably.

In the year   1400, was built in the central area of this hallowed ground, a Gothic church. It was equipped with a dome on top and a chapel in the basement as an ossuary (bone conserve space).

In this way, they went there moved the mortuary remains of the great mass excavated along the building.

In subsequent years ( 1703 to 1710 ), the chapel was rebuilt with a new entry to be incorporated into the old building (at the mercy of the need to support the front wall that was leaning). The work of remodeling was done in style Baroque Czech by Jan Santini Aichel.

The art of bone turnover

In 1870, the family Schwarzenberg, wants to end the great mass of bones settled for so many years in Sedlec. To do this, hire woodcarver, František Rint, that through their artistic abilities the site tidy.

As I related to the beginning, the artist, took the bones and rearranged so as ornamental and functional within the small chapel.

We can find in their creations, crosses, the arms of the Schwarzenberg family itself (management of labor), big walls and even profuse decorations flanking the altar.

An extraordinary chandelier illuminates the center of the nave of the chapel and garlands of skulls link it to the sides. This magnificent piece, it is said, contains at least one of each bone that forms the human body.

In closing his work, the artist leaves his mark for all with his signature also made of bone, which could have been yours.