As we had ordered, we woke to a blue sky this morning. This wasn’t to last all day but at least the weather was fine. Unfortunately a large part of the snow from yesterday had washed down, so we didn’t get the photo opportunity that we were hoping for, but there are still large patches left behind.
Our first stop this morning was a return visit to Halstatt, and our main reason for returning was to go to the Charnel House or Bone House. This is a small chapel that is attached to one of the churches there. Inside this small room there are 1200 skulls stacked up on a table/bench that runs around three walls, with other bones stacked in neat piles under the bench. Most of these skulls have been painted with decorations, and have the owners name and date of death painted on. Much like the firewood piles that I mentioned earlier, these skulls are arranged very orderly and systematically. They are organised according to the family names. This is the only such location of this happening in the world.
The story goes that with land being such a premium here (being wedged between the lake and the mountain) after 20 years of being buried, the bodies were exhumed and the skulls and bones were placed in the bone house and the graves reused. The decorations on the skulls reflect the flowers that would normally sit on the grave, and are a symbol of the love of the family. This practice started in the 12th Century, and the last to arrive in 1995. Today, this will only happen if it is specifically requested in a persons will, but this doesn’t often happen.
What they did say, but not fully explain, was that even today the graves are reused. After twenty years of a body being buried, the grave is re-dug and a new body buried. They didn’t say what happened to the previous occupant, whether their remains were put somewhere else, or whether the new body was put on top, or added to the existing one. So many questions. This language barrier can be a real curse sometimes.
After having another wander around the town, we pressed on for Melk. The trip there was pretty ordinary and we arrived at about 3:00pm. We had left the mountains behind and were now in the land of the rolling hills once again. We are almost back to where we started in this country, not far from Vienna.
The main feature of Melk is the Golden Abbey, and this can be seen long before you get there. The abbey has been the home to Benedictine monks since the 11th Century. Perched on the hill it really does look golden, but from the colour of the paintwork, not via gilt. The gilt is kept for the inside and the church would be one of the most gilt ridden that we have seen. Amazing to see.
But before you get to the church, you pass through the museum. According to what we read here, the rule of St Benedictine can be summarized ‘Ora et labora et lege’ which means ‘pray and work and read’. I hadn’t realized that this was the basis of education and cultivation in Europe. But when we got to the library a little further on, this was apparent. This is the sort of library that book lovers dream of: 12 rooms, 1,888 manuscripts, 750 incunabula (printed works from before 1500 ad), 16th 17th and 18th Century works. Together with newer works this library totals about 100,000 volumes, organized in topics, starting with the bible of course. In the one room that we were in, there were 16,000 volumes. There is no Dewy numbering system here, it makes you wonder how they find what they are looking for.
But getting back to the museum, the highlight of this abbey is that there is a cross here that holds a fingernail sized splinter from the cross of Christ, that was given to the abbey in 1040. This splinter has been stolen twice, once in 1169 by a priest, and then again in 1362. Both times the guilty parties were proven guilty by … unusual means. Means, that bring back memories of the witch hunts and how they were expected to prove their innocence. Whatever the means, the guilty parties were hanged, and burnt at the stake, as you do when someone steals a relic from Christ.
Another cool item there was the recyclable coffin from 1784, which took us back to Halstatt earlier in the day. The deal was that they believed that the wooden coffin hindered the decomposition of the body. So they lowered the person into the grave. Then when every one had left, they pulled a pulley, the body dropped out of the bottom, they hoisted the coffin back up again to be used again, and they filled in the grave. How’s that for recycling? Just several centuries before their time.
Once again today, we found churches to be filled with the macabre, weird and the morbid. We started the day with a chapel filled with skulls, and we ended the day in a museum with items containing body parts such as pieces of shin bone, fingernails, and pieces of hair. We were once again surrounded with varying concepts of death and mortality. It really is an interesting world we live in, where we can almost expect to see the unexpected, every day.
Tonight is our last night in Austria, tomorrow we are Czech-ing out. So we finished our stay here with a local dish, Weiner schnitzel and an Edelweiss beer.
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