What is Charnel House?

Charnel House is a device where bones and body are stored, either in a short or long term. The term "Charnel House" is also used to refer in general to a place of full death, destruction and suffering; For example, a plague house can be called a "charnal house". Working houses in some parts of the world are not unusual and many historical examples can be found near churches and monasteries. Charnel houses may not be grim; For example, the famous bone church in Sedlec in the Czech Republic, according to some visitors, is actually quite nice.

The original Charnel House feature was probably purely pragmatic. In some cases, bodies must be stored above the ground before the burial, because the Earth was too heavy to kick in certain seasons, or because the graves were not easily available. The bodies were also stored until they reached the state of rot to ensure that they were dead, in some cultures.

At the other end of the spectrum, Charnel houses were used to store bones that were dug. Even the most organized cemetery can experience bone migration and historically the bones they met while digging graves were stored in the Charnel house. In this way, the residues could be stored with respect, although the original owner could not be identified. In some cultures, the remains are actually intentionally upset for religious reasons, in which case they can be stored in individual boxes or niches in Charnel House.

In other cases, people use Charnel House to store older remains because they have a limited space in which they would bury people. In these cases, the bodies are buried until their spaces are needed, and then they are relocated and moved to the Charnel House. One of the most famous houses in the world is Monast Saint Catherineery, a monastery that is surrounded by a rocky, dry soil that is difficult to dig. VisitThe monastery can visit Charnel House, which is full of bones from monks who served and died there.

Charnel House is not exactly the same as the tomb or mausoleum unless it concerns group tombs. Charnel houses are usually established in a way that promotes direct contemplation of bones, while many tombs and mausoleum are firmly sealed to cover their passengers. Charnel House can also include a mixture of bones from a wide range of people, rather than bones from related individuals, as is usually the case with a group tomb. Some other examples of Charnel houses include several houses filled bones in Rwanda, which the government kept as commemorative places to remind people of the genocide that occurred in 1994.