Ossuary Sedlec

The Church of All Saints and Ossuary was built during the first half of the 14th century and formed part of the Cistercian monastery which doesn´t exist anymore. The history of The Church of All Saints and Ossuary is very closely related to the Cistercian order. Nobleman Miroslav donated extensive lands to this order in the vicinity of today's Central Bohemian town of Kutná Hora. The foundation charter of the oldest Cistercian monastery in present-day Czechia dates back to 1142. In the course of the first half of the 13th century, the entire monastery experienced a severe decline caused by lack of money. Nevertheless, this significantly changed in the second half of the 13th century, as one of the Sedlec monks discovered silver on monastery land. Thanks to finding the silver, the monastery became rich and thus Kutná Hora emerged.

During the 14th century, Kutná Hora was one of the largest cities in the world with almost 80,000 inhabitants. People were not only living in the city, but also dying there; be it due to famine, plague, mining or because of poor hygiene and war conflicts. The deceased were mostly buried on monastery land in Sedlec, as the only functioning Christian cemetery in the locality and at the end of the 14th century it was incredibly large measuring 3.5 hectares. Furthermore, the Sedlec cemetery was so popular because of the rumour about Abbot Heidenreich and his journey to Jerusalem. According to legend, this abbot brought a handful of Hakeldama clay to Sedlec thus establishing the first holy field in Central Europe.

Given the high mortality rate during the 14th and 15th centuries and later due to the fact that more free space was required, the vast Sedlec cemetery area needed to be reduced and the exhumed bones to be piously stored. According to Christian customs, skeletal remains have to be buried below ground. This is why a two-storey cemetery church was built with the Lower Chapel lying below ground. The Lower Chapel served to piously bury bodily remains whereas the Upper Chapel was used to celebrate commemorative services.

It is not known exactly when the Church of All Saints was built, but experts tend to say it was constructed during the first half of the 14th century. In the course of the Hussite Wars (1421), both the roof and the entire church structure were probably damaged. The Gothic Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption and St. John the Baptist located nearby which was erected between 1290 and 1320, was burned down and the local Cistercians were murdered. Following that, life gradually returned to the Sedlec monastery, presumably only as late as at the turn of the 16th century. The monks step-by-step started restoring the convent and the required farm outbuildings. The Church of All Saints was partially repaired during the 17th century.

The turn of the 18th century was another important historical milestone as Abbot Jindřich Snopek managed to raise enough funds to have the damaged Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption repaired. Snopek invited the greatest artists of this time to repair the building, including the brilliant architect Jan Santini-Aichel. Furthermore, Jan Santini-Aichel repaired the Church of All Saints and Ossuary. He is considered to have created the first Ossuary decoration in the Lower Chapel.

In 1783, Emperor Josef II. dissolved the Cistercian monastery. Individual objects from it were sold at public auction. The Cathedral of Our Lady of the Assumption started to be used as a warehouse, tobacco was processed in the convent, and the Schwarzenberg family took over the patronage of the Church of All Saints and its Ossuary. Following the monastery dissolution, the Sedlec cemetery was reduced and some bones from the exhumed graves were placed in the Ossuary and others in a mass grave. In the 19th century, the Schwarzenberg family funded a vast Ossuary reconstruction, restoring and replenishing the skeletal decorations. This work by František Rint, was completed in 1870.

The skeletal remains which are now stored in the Lower Chapel of the Ossuary come from exhumed graves from the large cemetery that was located on Sedlec monastery land. These are the skeletal remains of medieval inhabitants from Kutná Hora and its vicinity. In 1318, a famine struck Kutná Hora, with up to 20,000 town inhabitants dying. Thirty years later, a further 30,000 inhabitants died due to the plague. At the beginning of the 15th century another approximately ten thousand people died due to the Hussite wars around the vicinity of Kutná Hora. Together with other Kutná Hora inhabitants, all these people were buried in the Sedlec cemetery. However, when the cemetery area reached 3.5 hectares, there was no space left to expand. The old graves were exhumed and the remains loosely placed around the Lower Chapel wall perimeter, i.e. both inside and outside.

Architect Jan Santini-Aichel is considered to have had the idea and to be the author of today's basic bone decoration concept following the spirit of baroque piety as well as baroque aesthetics principles. The baroque Ossuary composition designed by Santini, brought death into the divine order, thus setting aside the burdensome Lower Chapel atmosphere, expressing the desire that we can hope for resurrection after death.

František Rint, who came to All Saints Church prior to 1870 upon an invitation of the new church patrons, the Schwarzenberg family, left a very significant footprint on Santini's original baroque principles of decoration. František Rint literally shattered the original strictly spiritual concept by creating decorations stylized according to the then-fashionable romanticism. He is credited with the authorship of the most famous elements of the decorations – the chandelier, the Schwarzenberg coat of arms and the hanging garlands. These decorations gave the location a new, poignantly macabre expression presenting the death theme as a dominant motif relying on a unique style. Instead of making the Lower Chapel a place for temporary repose of the deceased, waiting, full of hope, for their resurrection, František Rint transformed the Lower Chapel into a realm of triumphant death. While the Baroque skeletal decorations resorted to using skulls and limb bones only, Rint furthermore used various other types of bones when decorating this place.

The reason for using skeletal decoration is memento mori – “remember you must die”. It is a Christian call to remember a person's last things. Another way to express this call is the popular saying: What we are now is what you will be in future. Thinking about death when facing the dead one starts thinking about the moment of one’s own death, realizing that one’s life is finite and that one will have to justify one’s deeds before God. And as you do not have any opportunity to rectify anything after your death, this reasoning makes you change your life when it is still possible. Furthermore, seeing the remains of the dead makes you reflect upon another mystery of faith, i.e. the resurrection of the dead. According to the Bible, both body and soul of the deceased will be resurrected during the Last Judgement and be given eternal life. Consequently, what we see are the deceased waiting for this particular moment, which is why we may perceive hope in this gathering of the dead, i.e. hope with which they had themselves buried in Sedlec: hoping that one day, thanks to Christ's resurrection, they too would be resurrected together with him. This is why this is not a place of death cult, but a place of hope and expectation.