Chandelier made of bones and skulls

The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: kostnice Sedlec) is a small Christian chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints (Czech: Hřbitovní kostel Všech Svatých) in Sedlec , a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary contains approximately 40,000 human skeletons which have been artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel.

Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec was sent to the Holy Land by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1278. When he returned, he brought with him a small amount of earth he had removed from Golgotha and sprinkled it over the abbey cemetery. The word of this pious act soon spread and the cemetery in Sedlec became a desirable burial site throughout Central Europe. During the Black Death in the mid 14th century, and after the Hussite Wars in the early 15th century many thousands of people were buried there and the cemetery had to be greatly enlarged.

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.

Between 1703 and 1710 a new entrance was constructed to support the front wall, which was leaning outward, and the upper chapel was rebuilt. This work, in the Czech Baroque style, designed by Jan Santini Aichel.

In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the boneheaps into order. The results of his efforts speak for themselves. Four enormous bell-shaped mounds occupy the corners of the chapel. An enormous chandelier of bones 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.

In 1970, the centenary of Rint's contributions, Czech filmmaker Jan Švankmajer was commissioned to document the ossuary. The result was a 10 minute long frantic-cut nightmare of skeletal images overdubbed with an actual tour-guide's dry narration. Švankmajer later re-edited the film, replacing the narration with a brief spoken introduction and a jazz arrangement by Zdeněk Liška of the poem Comment dessiner le portrait d'un oiseau by Jacques Prévert.

A similar ossuary chapel is Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini in Rome.

External links

• Official website
• information on Švankmajer's film
• Sedlec ossuary - website with pictures
• Pictures from the ossuary in Sedlec, Kutná Hora, Czech Republic
• Slackertravel Sedlec Ossuary Pictures - 60+ pictures of the chapel
• Chmouel Travel's pictures of Czech Republic