Kostnice Sedlec is an ossuary chapel in the Czech Republic. June, 2019 скачать в хорошем качестве

Kostnice Sedlec is an ossuary chapel in the Czech Republic. June, 2019

The Sedlec Ossuary is a small Roman Catholic chapel, located beneath the Cemetery Church of All Saints in Sedlec, a suburb of Kutná Hora in the Czech Republic. The ossuary is estimated to contain the skeletons of between 40,000 and 70,000 people, many of whom have had their bones artistically arranged to form decorations and furnishings for the chapel. Henry, the abbot of the Cistercian monastery in Sedlec, was sent to the Palestine (Holy Land) by King Otakar II of Bohemia in 1278 on a diplomatic mission. 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 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 those simply slated for demolition 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. The charnel-house was remodeled in Czech Baroque style between 1703 – 1710 by a famous Czech architect of Italian origin, Jan Blažej Santim-Aichl. In 1870, František Rint, a woodcarver, was employed by the Schwarzenberg family to put the bone heaps into order. The result of his effort speaks for itself…