Translation: Jon Alkorta Martiartu, PhD (UPV/EHU)
The Sedlec ossuary
This time we are travelling to Kutna Hora in the Czech Republic, close to Prague, to discover something truly creepy: the Sedlec ossuary. Everything there is made of bones: walls, lamps, shields, etc. A place where death is present and watches us. Let’s go see the dismal show of this ossuary.
Ossuaries
Ossuaries are places, often religious, in which a large number of human bones are gathered. They can be found throughout the five continents, but it was in Europe where, from the 6th century onwards, countless chapels or places where human skeletal remains were exhibited flourished.
But the particularity of the ossuaries is that, in many occasions, these bony remains were used to make artistic creations, arranging them on columns, niches, lamps, and other architectural elements. We could say that it is a purely funerary art.
The general perception of ossuaries today is that they constitute aberrant rites of a generally pagan nature, but this is undoubtedly an erroneous cliché. Until the 19th century, people went to ossuaries to ask for help from the deceased, seeking advice from those beyond the grave to solve everyday problems. In return, the living would say prayers, give reliquaries or make any kind of offering.
On the other hand, the creation of ossuaries also corresponded to an existing need. Christians wanted their bones to be buried in a cemetery when they died. The spaces dedicated to burials in the churches were not too large and, depending on the size of the community, in a few years they were saturated, especially when a plague carried off a good part of the population. This meant that the oldest bones had to be removed to make room for the new ones.
But what to do with the unearthed bones? They could not just get rid of them. They had to be preserved to guarantee their resurrection at the second coming of Jesus Christ. To this end, secondary enclosures called carnarium were created in the churches, where the bone remains were deposited. Generally the bones were kept in urns called ‘ossuaries’, a term that would later come to designate the architectural space made from them.
The Sedlec ossuary and its history
Although the popularity of this ossuary begins in the 19th century, its creation goes back much further in time. The original monastery was built in 1142, in a neighbourhood in what is now known as the Czech Republic, and gained notoriety when Henry, the abbot, was sent to the Holy Land by King Ottokar II of Bohemia in 1278. On his return he brought with him soil collected at Golgotha and scattered it in the abbey’s cemetery. This pious act generated a phenomenon of attraction of the faithful, and the cemetery of Sedlec became a coveted burial place throughout Central Europe, so that the number of people buried there was very high.
The monastery lived times of splendour, but lost its relevance in the 15th century, when it was ravaged by the Black Death and plundered by the Hussites (a reformist religious movement led by Jan Hus). After the terrible events, a monastic order returned to the abbey in 1454 under a rule of strict poverty. Around 1400 a Gothic church was built in the cemetery dedicated to all the saints, with a vault on top and a chapel in the basement, where the ossuary was located. We know that at the time the ossuary was an important place of worship and received numerous pilgrimages.
We have the testimony of a Jesuit, dated in the decade of 1650, that points out the singularity of the place. Legend has it that the ossuary was decorated by a blind monk, who piled the bones in six large pyramids (of which only four are preserved today). The intention seemed to be to convey the idea of a heavenly mountain crowned at the top, in the image of the Kingdom of God.
The 18th and 19th century adornments
It was at this time that the Schwarzenberg family acquired the monastery of Sedlec thanks to the fact that Emperor Joseph II, in an attempt to control the power of the Catholic Church, dissolved and auctioned off a large number of monasteries. The chapel of All Saints (which is the ossuary), would be remodelled in the following century. In 1860, the renovation of the space and the new decoration were undertaken. The work was ordered by Karl Joseph Adolph von Schwarzenberg, and there is a suspicion that it was motivated by the knowledge of another important ossuary: the one of Czermna, one of the most important of the time, in Poland. The work was commissioned to the artist Frantisek Rint, a wood carver. Rint decided to clean all the bones and used for it chlorinated lime, which provided this ossuary with a different aspect to the majority, as it is possible to appreciate the ochre coloration of the bones due to the passage of time.
It seems that, at a point, the chapel had bones of more than forty thousand people. Among the bony artistic compositions of this place we can emphasize the chandelier, the bone chalices, large monstrances with skulls in the middle, garlands and four spires with skulls topped by angels. In addition, as a relevant element inside the chapel, the coat of arms of the Schwarzenberg family stands out, made entirely with these human remains.
How to get there
Those of you who are visiting the city of Prague or its surroundings can take advantage of the trip to approach this interesting sample of funerary art. Sedlec is less than 80 km away from Prague and can be reached by traveling by train to Kolin, where you have to change trains to get to Kutna Hora. From the main railroad station in Kutna Hora you can walk to the neighbourhood of Sedlec, which will take you about ten minutes.
We will finish with the sentence that we can read in this impressive ossuary:
What we are, you will be. What you are, we once were.
OpenEdition le sugiere que cite este post de la siguiente manera:
Dr. Pedro Ortega (1 de marzo de 2023). El osario de Sedlec. El blog de Tartalo. Recuperado 19 de marzo de 2025 de https://doi.org/10.58079/unvk