BONES!!!

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On the bus early to Kutná Hora, a silvermining town about 100km outside of Prague, firstly i want to note that on this drive, and our drive up to Berlin, the terrain reminded me very much of home, its no surprise there were so many Germans that settled in the midwest when coming to the US. first stop was at the Kostinice Ossuary,(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sedlec_Ossuary) it was designed as a knock off of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, this was built during the crusade times, some dirt of jerusalem is spread on the grounds of the chapel, making it a part of the holy land, this then led to many many people wanting to be buried there, hence the abundance of bones. in addition to the Holy dirt, various relics from jesus were deposited here, splinters of the true cross, thorns from the crown, maybe a few of the nails with which he was crucified, stuff like that. These bones are older than the decorations themselves. The chapel was decorated in the baroque era with those piles of skulls, and then the rest of the wall decorations were put up in the 19th century.

The geographic area, has lots of silver mines, and thus this was a major money making for the king serving as the royal mint, he gave special support to the monasteries in the area, until the 14th century, when the city took over these lending purposes from the monasteries. The Templars (who had a monastery here) were eventually hated by the kings of Europe cause they owed too much money to the Templar order, eventually the Templars were declared heretics, and subsequently killed. The Cistercian monks werent big on lending money, or ostentatiousness as can be seen below, survived a but longer, up till the Hussite Wars ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hussite_wars ). we then wandered our way into a Gothic Cathedral.

( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Church_of_the_Assumption_of_Our_Lady_and_Saint_John_the_Baptist ) Cathedral built in 13th century, the eastern most cathedral type church in Europe, Cistercian, they were missionaries of the Gothic style however they could not over decorate, hence the planness of this cathedral. However the greatest Czech baroque artist was forced to paint for the church, they locked him in to keep him sober and paint, cause he owed the church money but he managed to find drink, and did drink, and subsequently some of the paintings of his tend to lack appropriate scaling and perspective. Ultimately he died, drunk on the stoop of some pub in the town.

also pictured is a reliquary of some saint. his skull has a wax face put onto it so you can stare upon his long dead visage. The Czech museum of silver, small castle, 15th century, seat of the rich families, over 100 silver mines have existed in the area, however today, only one of them is currently accessible. we wandered around 500 year old silver mines. there were points were it was as low as 70cm tall, and only 40cm across, some claustrophobic cats had difficulty, other than my needing to pee real bad, it was pretty cool. the walls looked slick, covered in wax almost, but it was actually just mineral deposits. it was pretty bad ass. We the went to another church which our guide claimed was a cathedral, but wiki says otherwise, ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Barbara%27s_Church,_Kutn%C3%A1_Hora ) began in 14th century, finished in 16th, the Hussite wars delayed the construction, as such, the style changed, making it in late gothic style. here there was a fresco of coin making dating back to 1460, as this was a silver mining town...

these churches were nice and big and awe inspiring so, i liked them, i have a soft spot for Gothic architecture. the busride back was uneventful, came home read, ate some food, will likely go out to sample more of the Czech Republics number one national product and go to sleep.