When I die, I want to go to heaven or whatever fun option there is after death, but I am not taking my bones with me and would love for them to be shown in someone’s home somewhere. When the black death and medieval wars were taking lives, many individuals also wanted to leave their bones behind in a lovely place, but many did not know that they would not be locked away in the ground forever (“The Church of Bones”). This place is called the Sedlec Ossuary.
In 1278, the King of Bohemia told the Sedlec abbot to go to Jerusalem, and he came back with a jar of dirt (“The Church of Bones”). This soil was especially special because it came from Golgotha (the place where Jesus was crucified). Consequently, many individuals wished for their remains to remain in Sedlec for all of eternity, so the cemetery was extended (“The Church of Bones”). However, this necessitated the exhumation of many remains to make room for everyone else, so the church’s basement became an ossuary, and after hundreds of years, Frantisek Rint, who was a woodcarver, was tasked with arranging the bones of around 40,000 individuals (“The Church of Bones”). Instead of simply stacking the remains, Rint utilized his artistic skills to immortalize the mortals in awe-inspiring works of art that span from the chapel’s arched chandelier, that uses every bone in the human body, to the Schwarzenberg family’s coat of arms, which includes the image of a raven poking at the eyes of the family’s enemy (Strauss and Van Es). Like a true artist, Rint signed his name in his own medium, leaving us with little more than his name and occupation.
Speaking of remains, did you know that the gelatin for Jello is extracted from bones? Not human ones (probably). Here is a recipe for fancy, layered, multi-colored Jello (I have not tried it, but it looks pretty): https://houseofnasheats.com/layered-rainbow-jello/ For those of you reading manually, fingertips to paper, simply search “House of Nash Eats,” and use their search bar to look up “Layered Rainbow Jello.”
Works Cited
Strauss, Jessica, and Henk Van Es. “Kostnice Sedlec (Sedlec Ossuary).” Spaces Archives, 28 Oct. 2019, spacesarchives.org/explore/search-the-online-collection/frantiek-rint-kostnice-sedlec-sedlec-ossuary.
“The Church of Bones.” Sedlec Ossuary, 2024, sedlecossuary.com.
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