Ossuary

Ossuary (pronounced osh-oo-er-ee or os-oo-er-ee)

(1) A structure dedicated to the storage of the bones of the dead.

(2) Any container for the burial of human bones, such as an urn.

(3) By extension, a place for discarded or broken items or (figuratively), of abandoned concepts or ideas. 

1650-1660: From the Late Latin ossuārium (charnel house; receptacle for bones of the dead), a neuter of ossuārius (of or for bones) and variant of ossārium, the construct being oss- (stem of os) (bone (plural ossua)) + -ārius (the adjectival suffix giving the sense “of or related to”).  The Latin os was from the primitive Indo-European ost (bone).  The model for the word was mortuarium, and the alternative form remains ossuarium.  Ossuary and ossuarium are nouns and ossuarius is an adjective; the noun plural is ossuaries.

The Sedlec Ossuary at Starosedlecká, Kutná Hora, in the Bohemian region of the Czech Republic lies about 42 miles (70 km) east of the capital, Prague.  A medieval town, much of the baroque architecture was build between the thirteenth and sixteenth centuries from the wealth generated by the adjacent silver mine.  On architectural grounds alone Kutná Hora is worthy of its status as a UNESCO World Heritage site but, in the suburb of Sedlec is the Church of All Saints which probably deserves a separate listing.

Sedlec’s Church of All Saints is better known as the Sedlec Ossuary, the church of bones, said to contain the bones of between some forty and sixty-thousand dead.  Its origins were a mission by the abbot of the Sedlec Cistercian Monastery, sent by the King of Bohemia to Jerusalem.  The abbot returned with an urn of soil from the Golgotha, the place where Jesus Christ was said to be crucified and this earth he spread around the grounds of the church’s cemetery.  As word of the "Holy Soil" became known, from all over Bohemia, people began to ask to be buried at Sedlec’s Church of All Saints.

Such was the demand that by the fifteenth century, skeletal remains had to be exhumed from the cemetery, the town needing to expand and more space needed for the more recently dead.  In what may sound a little shocking (but must have been judged theologically sound), the bones lay stacked in the basement of the church until 1870 when František Rint (1835-circa 1895), a woodcarver and carpenter from the small town of Česká Skalice in northern Bohemia, was employed by the House of Schwarzenberg (the ruling family of the town) to organize and arrange them.  The results of his efforts were spectacular, the carpenter creating intricate sculptures, including several chandeliers and a copy of the Schwarzenberg coat of arms.  The most spectacular of the chandeliers is also technically interesting for anatomists, said to include at least one of every bone in the human body

The elaborate constructions may seem macabre but each is accompanied by religious displays arranged from bone, conveying to visitors the message that the chapel remains a respectful place of worship and indeed, regular masses continue to be held in both the upper and lower chapel.  Musical performances however are staged only within the church proper so what might prove the interesting acoustic properties of all those bones remains unexplored.  The site, opened to tourists early in the century proved popular, almost a quarter-million visiting in the last year before the pandemic and it quickly became the biggest attraction in central Bohemia.  The financial blessing has proved also a curse however, local residents complaining the volume of visitors often overwhelms the operations of what remains a functioning Roman Catholic church and cemetery.  It’s said there are tourists who treat the place as just another theme-park.

Still, such is the importance of the ossuary to the local economy, that the ancient site is often renovated, including some attention to the condition of the bones which sounds strange but it seems human bone is subject to discoloration over time and restoring them to a more brilliant white is thought greatly to enhance the tourists' visual experience.  Even if one’s taste doesn’t extend to the macabre, Kutná Hora remains one of the medieval treasures of Bohemia and within the same Cistercian complex as the ossuary is the Sedlec Cathedral, the Church of the Assumption of Our Lady and Saint John the Baptist.  Built between 1290-1320, the cathedral is one of the oldest remaining in the Baroque Gothic style and also enjoys a place on the UNESCO World Heritage list and a short distance from there is a truly secular attraction, the Kutná Hora's Chocolate Museum, a tiny homage to chocolate with exhibits dating from the early nineteenth century.  There are chocolate tasting sessions and private candlelit dinners can be booked.

The ossuary vibe: Lindsay Lohan wearing Alexander McQueen skull scarf, 2012.

So entrenched in fashion has the skull been for hundreds of years that not even its use (as the “Death’s Head”) by the Nazi SS (the Schutzstaffel (security squad), 1925-1945, also stylized as ᛋᛋ with Armanen runes) tainted it sufficiently to discourage its appearance on clothes, accessories and jewelry.  Seasonally, the popularity ebbs and flows but skulls are seemingly always at least a niche and the appeal is also cross-cultural, the skull variously a good luck charm and a symbol employed to ward of disease and evil spirits.  In the English-speaking world, the widespread use of the skull symbol seems to have begun in the Elizabethan period (1558-1603) although most acknowledge the practice began in Bohemia and came to England via sea-farers and traders, the original items being skull rings, either carved from a human jawbone or rendered from metal.  An especially popular form was the skull ring with the jawbone disappearing to create the illusion of a finger piercing the wearer's mouth, still a widely used pattern today.  One curious aspect of the appeal is that Satanists and Christians alike have both embraced the iconography, skulls a likely to be seen among Devil worshipers as they are to be in the mix with images of saints and crucifixes.  Of late though, while they haven’t disowned the medieval art, Christianity seems now less keen on skulls.  The Satanists remain committed.