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The Church made of 40,000 Human Bones
About 70 kilometers east the capital of the Czech Republic, Prague, lies a small town called Sedlec. It might have been an ordinary enough town, if not for its extraordinary church: the inside of it church is decorated with artworks made of real human bones. The story begins in 1218, when a certain Abbot Henry made a pilgrimage to the holy land and brought back a jar full of soil from cemetery, which he spread over the Church. As a result the church came to be regarded as more sacred and turned into a popular burial spot . By 1318, more than 30,000 bodies were buried there and by 1511, it had become necessary to remove the older bones to make place for the new ones. These later became the material for the macabre creations. In 1870 a local woodcarver was hired by the Duke of Shwartzenberg to decorate the inside of the church with the human remains --approximately 40,000 sets of human bones. The macabre result 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 vault. Other works include piers and monstrances flanking the altar, a large Schwarzenberg coat-of-arms, and the signature of Rint, also executed in bone, on the wall near the entrance. |
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