A Bone To Pick: Inside Europe’s Spooky Churches And Monuments To Death
Memento mori — a Latin phrase meaning “remember you must die” — is inescapable for most Christians. The cross, a symbol of execution, is mounted on the walls of sanctuaries, hanging from chains on necks and even tattooed on arms.
The Bible tells the story of death’s birth and death’s defeat; its hero is the one that death could not keep dead.
But some Christians throughout history have gone even further to look death in the eye by exposing themselves to death’s most basic symbol: the skeleton.
Sedlec Abbey’s ossuary
A jar of dirt made all the difference.
Built in the 12th century, Sedlec Abbey stood just outside of Kutná Hora, a town in Bohemia. There was nothing particularly distinct about the Cistercian Monastery’s graveyard, except for the dust that had been scattered upon its grounds.
Around the year 1300, Sedlec’s Abbot took a trip to the holy land. He brought back a jar of earth from the site of Golgotha.
As the only Christian cemetery in the area, the monastery buried the bulk of Kutná Hora’s dead. And, since it was the Middle Ages, the dead were anything but scarce. Child mortality was through the roof, hygiene was highly inadequate and working conditions were brutal. If this wasn’t enough, the Black Death, famine and the Hussite wars certainly sped things along.
But the cemetery wasn’t just utilized because it was convenient; it became downright desirable to be laid to rest in the abbey’s yard. For this, the jar of dirt is to blame. Many pious members of the community were motivated in part by the desire for a burial beneath dust from the site of Christ’s death.
Whether drawn to the burial grounds for the sacred soil or just because it was the practical choice, Sedlec ended up with an excess of bodies. So, in the 14th century, the Church of All Saints was built among the graves with an upper sanctuary for services and a basement chapel that served as an ossuary.
Many bodies were exhumed, and their skeletons were stacked in the basement. Over time, Sedlec Ossuary accumulated the skeletons of over 40,000 individuals. An architect named Jan Santini-Aichel repaired the building around 1700 and was likely the first to arrange the bones in any kind of decorative form, which he did in the Baroque style popular at the time.
Nearly 500 years after its construction, a woodcarver named František Rint was commissioned to work on the chapel. By this point, the monastery had been dissolved, and the church was managed by the Schwarzenberg family.
Whatever he was officially asked to do, the Schwarzenbergs could not have been prepared for Rint’s macabre imagination.
First, Rint bleached all the skeletons, making the ossuary’s many sculptures particularly white and striking.
In the center of the chapel, a chandelier hangs from chains made of jawbones. Its arms are made of spines, which dangle femurs and blossom into shingled shoulder blades, topped by skulls and candles.
One wall holds the Schwarzenberg Family crest — depicted in what appears to be nearly every type of bone in the human body, including teeth. And, the Schwarzenberg crest is anything but minimalist. Nevertheless, Rint managed to create skeletal versions of its torch, its crown, its tower, its wheat sheaves and even its head of a turk being picked at by a bird.
Four cranial pyramids man the corners of the chapel, and from the ceiling hang garlands of skulls biting limb bones.
Rome’s Capuchin crypt
Sedlec’s ossuary may be known as “Bone Church,” but it is hardly the only one of its kind. While many are less decadent, such structures exist all over Europe, with a few outliers on other continents.
In Rome, the crypts beneath Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini are lined with the disassembled bones of about 4,000 Capuchin friars.
From the street, the church is rather plain – especially for a Roman church. But its construction was directly commissioned by Pope Urban VIII in honor of his brother, Cardinal Antonio Barberini, a member of the Capuchin Order.
The church was built in the first half of the 17th century and began to add to its lower chambers the unearthed remains of friars who died as far back as 1528. After construction, the Capuchin brothers began to donate their own skeletons to be added to the crypts when they died. The Capuchin Crypt now holds the remains of friars from as recent as 1870.
The ossuary is split into six chambers, which mainly focus on different bone categories, including one dedicated to pelvises. One chamber is a more traditional chapel in which mass is held annually on All Souls’ Day. This chamber does not contain the skeletal decoration of the rest of the crypts, but it does hold the preserved heart of Maria Felice Peretti, a niece of Pope Sixtus V.
The most visually famous chamber is the Crypt of the Three Skeletons, which, in addition to a wall of skulls and swirling bone ceiling patterns, holds three skeletons standing in hooded brown robes, reminiscent of the Grim Reaper. The figures clutch crosses and have rosaries dangling from their belts.
On either side of these three, two other skeletal friars lay on beds of more skulls.
To further intensify the grim reaper imagery, a child’s skeleton is mounted to the ceiling and holds a scythe. It also holds a set of scales, and both tools are made from bone. Inscribed in the ossuary is the following: “What you are now, we once were; what we are now, you shall be.”
Unlike Sedlec’s, the bones in Rome are not bleached white; instead, they are a grittier mix of yellows and browns.
Paris catacombs
For many, discussions of bone-filled churches will bring to mind the Catacombs of Paris. However, despite the presence of several crosses, the millions of people laid to rest in these tunnels were not put there for particularly religious reasons.
In the 1700’s, Paris had two problems. First, parts of Paris were built over mines that yielded the very resource from which many of the city’s buildings were constructed. The caverns beneath the city caused occasional sinkholes — some of which swallowed entire houses. Second, Paris’s graveyards — particularly Holy Innocents’ Cemetery — were grossly overcrowded.
Eventually, Parisians found a way to solve both issues simultaneously. In 1785, they began filling the catacombs with the bones of their dead.
Today, nearly a mile of the tunnels beneath the City of Lights is full of these remains. It is estimated that over six million bodies contributed to the catacombs.
Matthew Peterson is Religion Unplugged’s podcast editor and audience development coordinator.