Showcase of death: thousands of medieval skeletons make Czech `bone church' a macabre experience - Destinations - All Saints Church, Kutna Hora

National Catholic Reporter, April 12, 2002 by Margot Patterson

Death rather than God is what the chapel showcases -- so much so that it's easy to overlook the chapel's graceful architecture. A less distracting and truly outstanding example of Jan Santini's work is the Assumption of the Virgin Mary Cathedral just down the street. The cathedral is a monument to Cistercian simplicity and a beautiful example of the Baroque-Gothic style Santini pioneered. The delicacy of the intricate vaulted ceiling is a marvel.

But it's the bone church that draws people, a rarity in its own time and certainly in ours. According to Augustinian Fr. William Faix, a medieval historian and the pastor of St. Thomas Church in Prague, while death motifs are also present in medieval art and literature, the ossuary in Kutna Hora is really a phenomenon of the Baroque period, when death assumed an aesthetic of its own. The prototype of such bone chapels is the Capuchin Church in Rome on the Via Veneto, Faix said. The church, St. Mary of the Conception, has five underground cemetery chapels dating to the 17th century and decorated with the bones of some 4,000 Capuchin friars.

Though familiar with the chapel in Kutna Hora, Faix had not visited it despite many years of living in the Czech Republic and clearly had no intention of doing so. "I find such things abhorrent," he said.

If horror is one common response to the chapel, so is humor.

"I've been thinking of doing something similar in my home," a deadpan North American voice comments to a companion while touring the chapel.

Doug Heller, an American from New York City, observed that during daylight profane comments are probably often made in the chapel, "It could be a rather frightening thought to spend the night alone here," he said. "You'd start thinking about death and what it would be like to be part of the chandelier," Heller said.

Heller's wife, Katya, a native Czech, said the chapel prompted her to consider the different ways people have thought about death over the centuries. Nobody would assemble such a spectacle today; too many questions would be asked about using people's bones in this way, Katya Heller said. At Kutna Hora, though, "they chose to do something that in some way paid homage to what happened," she said.

Graffiti and theft

Respect for the dead has not always been shown by visitors to the chapel. Graffiti is scribbled on one of the skulls on display. Tomas Marhoun, a native of Kutna Hora who formerly worked for a security company, said the ossuary has had problems with theft in the past, which prompted the installation of a motion detector alarm when the chapel is closed.

Marhoun said the ossuary is typical of an era when people wanted to be buried close to a church and a saint's reliquaries. "It's a good meditation on death, about how fragile are people's lives," he said.

About 450 people a day visit All Saints Chapel, said Miloslava Cabelkova, who takes tickets at the entrance to the chapel. Cabelkova said her previous job at the post office was much more stressful and she finds the chapel not sad or depressing but peaceful. "It's perfect here," she said. "No problems."