The Bone Church

Yesterday in Kutna Hora, our last destination was the infamous “Bone Church.”
I’m not sure why I decided to put quotations around that, because its official name really is the Bone Church! 

But I wanted to catch you up on today’s activities first.  (A good writer will capture your attention, and then make you wait until the end of their piece for the most interesting part.) Lucky for you, this WHOLE thing is interesting :)

This morning, a couple friends and I ventured into a new part of the city for an International Baptist Church Service.  It was my first Baptist church service, and coincidently my first international service.  I don’t think the cheesy grin left my face for longer than a minute at a time.  It was a full hour of worship music (some I was familiar with, some not). And then probably another 30 minutes of prayer scattered throughout the service.  Fittingly, the sermon was a message about how wherever you are in this very moment, it’s because God wants you there.  I left feeling reassured that Prague is where I’m supposed to be right now. 

I decided to take the rest of the day to myself to relax and get acclimated to my city a little better (I still struggle with finding the right train, metro and bus to get around). 
I slept, and found myself at a pub within walking distance from my dorm.  I drank a looottt of coffee (and a little beer) and studied maps of the city, and prepared myself for classes in the morning.  At the moment, I’m eating my homemade supper, which consists of bought spaghetti sauce (I thought the noodles were included :/) that I’m dipping bread into.  My Singapore friends helped me toast the bread in the oven here (Lie, she did it for me). Spoiler alert: My cooking skills have not improved. 

Ok ok. Onto the Bone Church!  There are over 40,000 skeletons that were used to decorate the smallish church in Kutna Hora.  While it horrified me that human remains were on display in such a holy place, my guide reassured me that the people in the Czech Republic don’t view it like I did.  The bones are a reminder of our humanity.  No one lives forever……..especially those who are now on display in the Bone Church! 

This is the Bone Church.....and the graveyard is sacred because of the handful of dirt from the Holy Land that was sprinkled over it in the 13th century. 

 As usual, I asked our guide lots of questions, and this is what I found:

 Sometime in the 13^th century, a monk went to the holy lands in Palestine and returned with a handful of dirt. He sprinkled it over the burial ground in the courtyard.  So it was considered an honor to be buried in the courtyard of this church, and many people from all over the Republic and even Europe sought after burial there.  So many people were, that after several hundred years, there simply wasn’t any more room to bury people.  So the older bones of people who no longer had family caring for the plots were exhumed, and stacked into 6 geometric pyramids inside the church to make room for more bodies in the holy burial ground.  Four of the pyramids are still on display inside the church.  The guide said this is somewhat common across Europe, because graveyards have been around for as long as people have.  But what makes this church unique is that some weirdo (or person with insight, whatever you choose) in the family that owned the land hired a woodcarver in 1870 to decorate the first floor of the church with thousands of bones as a reminder to our humanity.  It’s crazy gorgeous as you can see, and a bit humbling.  Doctors have proclaimed that every bone in the human body can be found on display in the church.

This is the very first view as you walk into the church. Show stoppin' 

The carver's signature and date of completion.

This is one of 4 pyramids still standing. 

This is a chandelier that hangs from the center of the church. Bones from every part of the human
body can be found in the structure. 

 

That's me! Standing by the Coat of Arms made out of bones.  (Of the family that hired the bone architect.) 

A view of the ceiling. 

In all the pyramids, there are tunnels
running right through the middle,
proving that the sculptor was
very precise with his work,
as they have been standing for
hundreds of years!

Czech out the unlucky guys in the bottom of the pyramid!