First off, I am working on a larger write up for Prague, it has been some work and I want it to be complete so that is coming, for those of you who like the info stuff, this one means a good deal to me as well, as the Czech land is host to half my blood.
The Sedlec Ossuary (Czech: kostnice Sedlec)
Wow.. Not really even sure where to begin with the things there are to say about this place. I have many photos that I will upload and I encourage you to find more on the internet other than the one picture I have included here.
The story of the Bone Church (‘Ossuary’ to be more correct or ‘Kostnice’ in Czech) in Kutná Hora is that, in the 13th century, Jindřich, the abbot of Sedlec monastery, returned from a visit to Palestine with a pocketful of soil and sprinkled it on the cemetery surrounding the Chapel of All Saints.
This direct association with the holy land led to the graveyard becoming a sought after burial site among the aristocracy of Central Europe. At the time of the thirty years’ war in the 17th century, the number of burials outgrew the space available, the older remains began to be exhumed and stored in the chapel, and it’s estimated that the chapel now contains the bones of up to 40,000 people.
The feeling even for me the agnostic is that of presence and power, it is hard to feel no spirituality in a place of this magnitude. The bones are laid out in a magical and artistic display giving what I see as a high level of respect to the dead.
Above the centre hangs the chandelier that is often touted as the highlight of the bone church because it contains at least one of each bone in the human body. It is AMAZING, the artist even signed the wall.. in bones.
Perhaps even as non religious person, some prayers were said today. We are all headed for death, this is not a morbid thought. Death is the perfection of life, a luminous unknown we all face and some fear. I know and recognize that I have but so much time to learn what I need to learn before making my very own leap into the unknown and the next level of existence, I want to be ready.
-Matthew
--
"Love will free us of all the weight and pain of life"
You are so poetic and beautiful! Thank you for the intelligent thoughts on death. My gramps is nearing the end of his time here and its hard to deal with sometimes, but it helps to think of it as a natural and beautiful consequence of life. Love you!
ReplyDelete