The Bone Church:
Real and Imagined
By Victoria Dougherty
http://victoriadougherty.wordpress.com/2014/04/15/the-bone-church-real-and-imagined/
The Ossuary at Sedlec – or Bone Church of Kutna
Hora as it’s more commonly known – is a relatively
plain church from the exterior. At least as far as Old
World European standards go. It sits about an hour
outside of Prague in the Czech Republic, and last time
I was there, some ten years ago, it was still a dingy
mustard color on the outside.
In fairness, most ossuaries are just church basements
filled with neatly piled up human bones, so there
typically isn’t anything out of the ordinary about the
actual structure it’s housed in. There’s no electrically
powered Grim Reaper standing with a scythe a
chuckling a deep MWAAHHAAHAAA, the way
there is at any self-respecting haunted house.
In fact, the only feature that advertised that there just
might be more than meets the eye to The Bone
Church of Kutna Hora was the skull and crossbones
spiked at the top of its spire – right where you’d
usually see a crucifix.
Otherwise, the place just sat there like Boris Karloff
without make-up.
When I visited on a gloomy October day in 2004,
dragging my 20 month-old son and a prehistoric
digital camera with me, I thought I would have to
muscle my way through a throng of tourists.
But we were alone there.
Suitably, the only sounds we could hear were my own
boot heels clicking on the stone tiles as we entered
the foyer, the wheels of my son’s dilapidated
MacLaren stroller and the whistle of a fall wind – the
kind that blows tufts of dead leaves in a swirl. Some
of those, mostly a fresh cluster of fiery orange oaks,
blew with us into the Bone Church. A young man,
very pale and black haired with a warm smile and
crooked teeth, greeted us.
It should have been eerie, but it was exquisite.
A short staircase – also stone – led us down into the
chamber, where an enormous chandelier lorded over
the place. It was fashioned entirely of human bone –
utilizing every bone in the human body, the young
man told us in his hushed, churchy voice. The skulls
would have held candles, I suppose, but the
chandelier was unlit. In fact, the only light in the Bone
Church came from the outside through a few kidneyshaped Gothic windows.
There were urns made primarily of femurs, a bone
Coat of Arms belonging to the Schwarzenberg family,
an endless garland (skull-vertebrae-vertebrae-knee
cap, skull-tibia-skull-tibia) strung loosely along the
trim like it was Christmas and several pyramids
constructed of bones – ones that sat in iron-barred
enclaves like slayed prisoners.
My son and I stood there absorbing the sheer
magnitude of death around us. People who’d died of
flu, arsenic poisoning, small pox, swords thrust into
their rib cage, a heart-attack, a mallet to the temple,
infection, childbirth, trampling, a broken heart.
The bones of some 30,000 Christians beautified this
stark, chapel-like holy chamber – prominent and
presumably pious Christians who had been promised
burial in the Church of All Saints cemetery. But due
to a string of plagues and wars, had found themselves
without a place to land after they blew their last
breath.
It occurred to me this strange permanent installation
of sacred art – the devil’s art, some called it – was
actually a clever solution to a very sensitive dilemma.
Church teachings, after all, forbade cremation. And
the poor souls who had counted on burial in the
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