Friday, May 27, 2016

Ossuary of Kutna Hora

Describe the Ossuary of Kutna Hora (bone church) and explain why it is creepy/ sublime.


 

While we were in Prague we went to the Kutna Hora. For viewers that don't know what that is, it is basically a church. But it is no ordinary church, it was made out of bones from people who died most likely from Black Death or those who died in the Hussite Wars because that was around the time that the church was built. There are roughly 40,000 thousand bones used in this church. This church wasn't weird to be in, it was rather more creepy and disturbing knowing that someone once was obsessed with finding desiccated bones to build a church. These aren't fake, they are real people that he dug up to essentially make a chandelier out of bones. On a very weird level, there could be a certain sublime to the church. The person who built the church could have had the idea that he was doing a service to those who died of a plague or in combat because they did not have a proper burial and now that they are buried in a church they are essentially in the presence of God and his protection and tourists are able to visit the church to pay respects to the diseased. The structure of the church is very Gothic itself because on the outside it has the typical point that the roof forms when it was being built and it is surrounded by a graveyard. On the inside it has human bones, obviously which makes anyone that goes inside or outside the church feel like they are surrounded by death and make them sad.

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