World's Most Bizarre Chapel

[Ash Wednesday]

People must think Catholics are so weird. :mischief:

[url="http://www.ludd.luth.se/users/silver_p/kutna-1.html"]This page has more information[/url]

[img]http://www.ludd.luth.se/~silver_p/Sedlec/kutna-03.jpg[/img]


*Beavis voice*

Hehehe.... yeah... cool... a church made of bones
.... look at those skulls! Yeah! Cool... hehehe

[cathgirl]

That's crazy!!! (I'm related to some people who live in the Czech Republic, I got to meet them a few years ago)

[aByzantineCatholic]

This Church comes close to being crazy:

Sewage Facility? Public Pool?

[img]http://www.st-thomas-aquinas.com/church1.jpg[/img]

[Ash Wednesday]

I was wrong. Santa Maria della Concezione in Italy is just as bizarre.

[img]http://www.stuardtclarkesrome.com/CAPUC2.JPG[/img]
[url="http://www.stuardtclarkesrome.com/capuchin.html"]More info here[/url]

*SKULLS! YEAH! YEAH! COOL!* :mischief:

Biz Catholic... you must have read the "Ugly as Sin" book, too. I find the skull churches more appealing.

[aByzantineCatholic]

[quote]Biz Catholic... you must have read the "Ugly as Sin" book, too. I find the skull churches more appealing. [/quote]

No, not yet I am still reading "Good Bye Good Men." I can't believe an EWTN priest was in that book.

[immaculata]

whoa. that is pretty weird.

[immaculata]

[quote]The Ossuary in Sedlec - Kutna Hora
Kutna Hora is a town in the Czech Republic about 70 km (44 miles) east
of the capital Prague. The town flourished during the 1300 due to the
immense silver findings in the vicinity. The town provided most of
the silver for the coins circulating in Europe at the time. As the town
grew new churches were built and old ones repaired and expanded.
One of the most famous medieval cathedrals, the Church of Santa Barbara
(Kostel sv. Barbora), was built at that time with money raised from the
miners from the area in honour of their industry's patron saint and
without involvment of any governmental funding.

Another less known church (but of major interest to us!) was sittuated
in Sedlec - a kind of a suburb to Kutna Hora some 2 kilometres away from
the Kutna Hora town centre itself and got heavily expanded with a new
Chapel added to the old buildings.

The Sedlec Cistercians weren't just joining the Kutna Hora construction
boom when they started expanding. They did it because of practical
reasons. That chapel with its belonging graveyard had become a well-known
and attractive place to get ones relatives buried in a long
time ago. Why you may ask?..

The answer is to be found in the actions of a certain abbot Henry. In the
year of thy lord 1278 the Cistercian abbot Henry embarked on a pilgrim
voyage to the Holy Land (Palestine). This was more or less common practice
for people of the church at the time. What he couldn't have imagined is the
effect a little symbolic deed that he performed would have on the future of
the little Sedlec church.

While in Palestine abbot Henry visited the Golgotha and from there he
brought back to Sedlec a jar full of earth. He referred to this as 'Holy Soil'.
When he got back he spread the earth over the Sedlec cemetery and thus the
cemetery begun to be considered as a piece of sacred land. The burial ground
rapidly became one of the most popular in central Europe and people from all
over the country and Europe came to Sedlec to get buried when they felt the
strength of life diminishing. Many brought their dead relatives or friends
to be buried in the holy soil of the Sedlec cemetery believing that the holyness
of the ground was a sure way to guarantee the buried a place in heaven.
Many corpses and bones were accumulated this way and especially during the
times of the plague (the black death) many who were about to die from the
disease came themselves to be buried in Sedlec. By 1318 over 30 000 bodies
were buried there and this gave rise to the creation of the ossuary.

The ossuary is located in the All Saints' Chapel built around 1400.
The chapel is still surrounded by a functioning graveyard and if you
take a careful look at the top of its towers you will see that
that a "jolly roger", or a skull and crossbones, replace the usual Christian
cross. The ossuary itself dates from 1511 when a half-blind monk
was given the task to gather the bones from the abolished graves and
putting them in the crypt to make place for new "customers". The task
may seem somewhat macabre and unenviable but it served a practical
purpose. Anyhow - now the material was in store and waiting for an
idea and someone to realize that idea.

A more questionable task than the one of the half-blind monk was the
one of the local woodcarver who as late as 1870 was hired to decorate
the inside of the Chapel with the human material (an approximate of
40 000 sets of human bones) at his disposal. The name of the artist
was Frantisek Rindt and the employer was the Duke (Prince?) of
Shwartzenberg. The coats of arms of the family Shwartzenberg was
one of the creations evolved from the artists mind. Another one is
the chandelier which contains every human bone in the body, several
times over, of course.

However questionable the Ossuary - it is real. The bones are real.
The feeling of death is real. But also the feeling of peace.
Most of the dead in the Ossuary died a "natural" i.e. non-violent
death and the bones were removed from the ground to give more
Christians the possibility to be buried on holy ground.
I'd like to stress the fact that the church is not made of bones
as so many seem to think! The interior is decorated with human
bones but it's a "normal" church made of stone and bricks. I'd also
like to point out that it's a normal Christian church with a Christ
on the cross figure and all the rest. It's not some weird cult or
Satanist church or anything like that.[/quote]

[Colleen]

[quote name='Ash Wednesday' date='Mar 16 2004, 06:26 PM'] I was wrong. Santa Maria della Concezione in Italy is just as bizarre.

[img]http://www.stuardtclarkesrome.com/CAPUC2.JPG[/img]
[url="http://www.stuardtclarkesrome.com/capuchin.html"]More info here[/url]

*SKULLS! YEAH! YEAH! COOL!* :mischief:

Biz Catholic... you must have read the "Ugly as Sin" book, too. I find the skull churches more appealing. [/quote]
I've been there!


And yes, it's creepier than the pictures. There's a skeleton of a young child-princess on the ceiling.

[Brother Adam]

This is scary. reminds me of death and satan.

[cmotherofpirl]

To me its simply a reminder of our final end - that we should aways be ready to meet our Maker.

[Cesar624]

That is sooo weird. It's stuff like that that non-Catholics use against us to say how SICK we are. I'm not gonna pretend though, I don't know what's the deal with that Church. That's REALLY REALLY weird.

[Iacobus]

I don't know that I would like to attend Mass in one of those Chapels but they are still kind cool.

[Colleen]

[quote name='cmotherofpirl' date='Mar 16 2004, 07:01 PM'] To me its simply a reminder of our final end - that we should aways be ready to meet our Maker. [/quote]
Actually, that's the whole point of it. On the inside, there's an inscription:

"What you are, we used to be. What we are, you will be"

It's not meant to be something creepy. To the religious order who created it, it was a good thing. It's a different culture.

[Ash Wednesday]

Good point colleen.

I think people then reasoned with death much differently. We don't think about death or experience it as much in the modern West like they did back then. As you said it's a different culture.

Certainly puts "Glorify God with your body" and "your body is a temple (of the Holy Spirit)" in a whole new perspective.

[MrsFrozen]

It's strange to us, but it may be tradition to them. Skulls creep us out, but they might be just a natural thing to them, like the Mexicans celebrating the day of the dead.

God bless.