Fiendishly Fun Friday - Sedlec Ossuary
The Cemetary Church of All Saints is a snall Roman Catholic Church in Sedlec, in the Czech Replublic. It's several centuries old, and beneath it lies the Sedlec Ossuary. An ossuary is a place where human remains are stored, sans coffins, to save space when they've been buried for a long time. So, why am I telling you about this one in particular? Sure, any place where they store humain bones MIGHT be worthy of a Fiendishly Fun Friday post, at a stretch. But, this one is special.
In the 13th century, an abbott returned from the Holy Land and sprinkled a small amount of earth that he'd taken from Golgotha over the abbey cemetary. This made the graveyard a highly desirable final resting place, and people from all over Europe would request to be buried there. The cemetary has been expanded, but with centuries of bones, the older ones ended up having to be stored in am ossuary. Again, it's all mildly interesting, but not really worthy of a Fiendish Friday post, right?
Well, here's where it gets fabulous. In 1870, FrantiĊĦek Rint was hired to put the heaps of bones in some kind of order. Did he just straighten them up and tidy them away? Oh my goodness, no! He decorated the entire place with pieces made from human bones. That chandelier above? It was made from at least one of every single bone in the human body. The hanging mitre sculpture above that? Yup, same again, it's all human bones. Every beautiful piece in this post was created from human bones!
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