Václav Tomášek, Kaplica Czaszek / Skull chapel

the interior of the chapel seen towards the altar

picture from Wikimedia Commons 

Among the various ossuaries that Europe knows, there are some with such an arrangement of skulls and bones that one can speak of an art environment. This weblog already has a post about the ossuary in Sedlec, Czech Republic, a site that could rank as the most decorative in its genre

The following post is dedicated to the ossuary in Czermna, which was originally on Czech territory, but -due to border corrections- is now in Poland.

exterior of the chapel

this picture (by Merlin) also from Wikimedia Commons

Eighteen years of creative labor by a priest and a grave digger

When in the mid 1770s Bohemian local parish priest Václav Tomášek (? - 1804) made a walk in the fields around Czermna on some spot he stumbled upon the bones of a buried person and he found out that this spot contained a mass grave. 

And this was not the only one in the area. Wars had raged there, such as the Thirty Years War (1618–1648) and three Silesian Wars (1740–1763). The fallen soldiers were buried collectively in mass graves, as well as victims among the local population of cholera epidemics and massive food shortages. 

Priest Tomášek came up with the idea that the remains should be cleared and housed in an ossuary in a small chapel to be built between the existing St Bartholomew's village church and the tower standing apart from it.

With the financial support of the local benefactor Leopold von Leslie, the chapel could be built. In 1776 the building was ready and Tomášek, together with grave digger J. Langer. started the design of the ossuary. a project that would last until 1794.

this picture and the next one by the 

Polish department of foreign affairs

The decorative aspects of this ossuary are much less pronounced when compared with those of the site in Sedlec, but it can be recognized that Tomášek has tried to make specific decorative arrangements when adding the around 3000 skulls to the ossuary.

As can be seen in the first picture of this post, the standing wall behind the altar is largely filled with skulls in a coherent uniform whole. This picture also shows that the top of the display of skeleton parts almost exclusively consists of an arrangement of crossing bones. The picture below shows the crossing bones in more detail.

A skull with two long bones crossed below it manifests a typical symbol of death (and can have a strong warning character, as in a pirate flag). Unlike the ossuary in Sedlec, the photos of the ossuary in Czaszek.hardly show this arrangement.

Along the walls the skulls predominantly have been placed in horizontal rows amidst larger rows consisting of smaller parts of the skeletons.

In all arrangements the repetitive aspect is clearly present, and for the rest the total presentation is mainly characterized by simplicity, which can also be an aversion to excess.

This simplicity also applies to the other elements in the interior. There is a simple altar, with some skulls on it, including the one of Václav Tomášek. There are also two wooden sculptures of angels, one with the Latin inscription Arise from the dead, the other with the inscription Go to the judgment.

In addition to the 3000 skulls and associated bones that have been incorporated into the interior, a room beneath the chapel accommodates 21000 other remains.

Once a year, at midnight from 14 to 15 August, a mass is served in the chapel for those whose remains have found their last rest in this chapel.

Documentation

* A lot of websites approach the chapel from a touristic point of view and mostly repeat the same texts, so here are just some informative sources:
* Article on Wikipedia
* Article on the website Agaunews

Video

* Video by Radio Wroclaw (4'28". June 2019, You Tube)

Václav Tomášek 
Chapel of Skulls 
Czermna, Kłodzko County, region Lower Silesia, Poland
can be visited

František Rint, Kostnice Sedlec / Sedlec Ossuary

Brno ossuary (picture Wikimedia commons/Kirk)

In Europe there are several ossuaries, with the catacombs in Paris, France as the largest and the one in Brno, Czech Republic, rediscovered in 2001, in second place in terms of size.

Most ossuaries have no artistic appearance, except those with arrangements made by for example placing a large number of skulls in a single setting.

Sedlec Ossuary

But then the ossuary in Sedlec, Czech Republic. This one distinguishes itself by the creative presentation of the bones as provided in the 19th century by František Rint.

Rint was a woodcarver and carpenter who was commissioned by the aristocratic Schwarzenberg family to orderly arrange the huge amount of bones in and around the small Christian chapel in Sedlec. Rint has realized this project from 1867 to 1870 and he did not hesitate to give expression to his creative fantasy.

the chandelier

this picture and the next three courtesy of Jessica Straus

The showpiece of the site is an enormous chandelier (pictured above), that hangs from the center of the ceiling.

Another great piece of work is a copy of the Schwarzenberg family's coat of arms, whose original has stripes in silver and blue and features important happenings in the family's history such as the conquest in 1598 of a Turkish held fortress in Hungary named Raven (in the bottom right quarter one sees a raven picking the head of an opponent)  

Rint also created four life-sized candelabras equipped with skulls, placed just below the large chandelier.

The walls and the ceilings have been adorned with geometrically arranged compositions of bones and skulls, as in the picture below.

The internet has dozens of descriptions of the Sedlec Ossuary, usually with a touristic background or written from a curious places point of view, but there are no data available about the one who created the site, other than that he was a carpenter/woodcarver and was born in České Skalice.

Fortunately Rint left this information in a composition on a wall, made from bones of course. 

The ossuary is located underground, beneath a chapel which was part of a centuries old monastery that became property of the Schwarzenberg family. The cemetery of the monastery became a popular place to be buried when soil from the Holy Land was added to it, but most funerals were related to the thousands of deaths due to the pest epidemic in 1318 and the later Hussite war.

At the end of the 15th century the graveyard was closed and some 40.000 or more excavated bones were stored in and outside the chapel. 

Video by Jan Svankmajer (b. 1934)

On the occasion of the centenary of the ossuary in 1970 filmmaker Jan Svankmajer made a 10' movie (in B/W). It became a hectic assembled, almost surrealistic composition with images of bones and skulls dubbed with the routinely voice of a tourist guide and jazzy music.

After the Prague Spring in 1968, the country was invaded by Warsaw pact troops and in the fall of 1969 a post-invasion communist regime was installed. The new authorities assumed subversion and forced the filmmaker to add another soundtrack, so piano music with a female singer was added (more about this here).

Makeover in 2019

In February 2019 the website Atlas Obscura reported that the four large candelabras will be restored. A team of professionals will disassemble the compositions to give the bones a thorough cleansing.

Documentation

* Informative website of the ossuary

* Series of pictures on Flickr
* Article (april 2015) by Jessica Straus in her weblog Quirk

Video
* YouTube has a lot of videos of the site. Here is a recent one (September 2014, 6'10"), shot by Glenn Campbell

František Rint
Kostnice Sedlec
Zámecká 127
Sedlec, Kutna Hora, Central Bohemian region, Czech Republic
open to the public, trips by bus from Prague available