Sainte-Croix Abbey (Bouzonville)
The Sainte-Croix (Holy Cross) Abbey in Bouzonville in Lorraine is a former Benedictine abbey that was founded in the 11th century. The most important immediate neighboring abbeys were Weiler-Bettnach , St. Avold , Glandern , Fraulautern , Mettlach , Tholey , St. Arnual and Hornbach . The neighboring intellectual centers were Trier and Metz . The abbey existed until the French Revolution. The complex has been a listed monument since 1980 .
history
In the years 1029/30, Adalbert II, Count of Metz , and his wife Judith decided to found a monastery in Bouzonville. While Adalbert set out on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land , construction began on the abbey church. When he returned in 1033, the sacred building was completed and Adalbert brought a splinter of Christ's cross as a relic. On January 31, 1034 the church was consecrated by Bishop Dietrich II of Metz. In 1037/1038 Benedictine monks from the empire abbey of Stablo-Malmedy settled in the new monastery . On October 10, 1049 Pope Leo IX visited. the monastery on the way from Metz to Trier . Gérard, son of Adalbert II and Judith, was meanwhile the new Count of Metz and a grand cousin of the Pope.
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In 1340 the Romanesque church was destroyed by fire during fighting between Duke Rudolf of Lorraine and the Duke of Bar . The reconstruction began immediately after the end of the war: At Rudolf's request, Clemens VI granted a letter of indulgence with which the necessary funds for the reconstruction of the monastery should be collected. The choir was completed in 1345 under Abbot Gutzon de Wiskirch. An inscription on the keystone in the choir vault reminds of this: + CONSTR: PER: GUTZONEM: ABB DE: WISKIRCH: M: CCC - XLV. Christ on the cross is depicted on the keystone, next to it a monk and the abbot. The nave was also restored before the end of the 14th century under Gérard d'Esch (tenure 1385–1413), the first yoke in the south aisle bears his coat of arms . In the 15th century the church was enlarged by the abbot Arnould Wisse de Gerbéviller and further vaulted yokes were rebuilt in the central nave. The second yoke in the nave bears the abbot's coat of arms in the keystone.
A fire destroyed the monastery and church in 1684. The roofs burned down and the bell towers also fell victim to the fire. The church was rebuilt by 1691 and the first two bays of the north aisle were renovated. In the first keystone there is the year, in the second an inverted coat of arms with the year and the word PAX. The monastery was greatly expanded and made more than twice as large again. In the south a few outbuildings were built in 1698, one of which is directly connected to the gable end of the church and has a large gate passage with a vaulted arch. The sacristy of the church is still located in the building .
The reconstruction work lasted well into the 18th century and had to be stopped again and again due to financial bottlenecks. In a report dated June 15, 1715, the geographer Bergeron and the architect Ménager regretted the worrying state of the church: the church portal had to be propped up and threatened to collapse, the steps of the stairs had broken. The small towers on the choir and the outer facade on the north side would have to be repaired in several places. Inside, too, the church is in a troubling state. The arches would need to be renewed, as well as some pillars and the floor. The vaulted ceilings also had to be repaired as cracks could be seen. The work lasted until the middle of the century. In 1777 the church got a tower over the portal with a baroque dome.
On March 21, 1791, a devastating storm destroyed the roofs of the monastery. The monastery was abandoned on October 1st of the same year. At that time there were eleven monks living in the monastery. As a result, the monastery was briefly a school, then a community center and meeting place for the Jacobins , then the military took up quarters. In the course of secularization in the period after the French Revolution, the monastery became a temple of reason in 1793 and a hayloft in 1794. A report from 1798 describes the neglected condition of the buildings. The relic of the monastery, a splinter of the cross of Christ , had been destroyed, the furniture destroyed, the windows broken and the roof ramshackle. In the following years the windows and roofs of the monastery were provisionally repaired by the municipality. In 1803 the destroyed cross on the bell tower was renewed. During this time the church was used by a provisional parish office for church services. The city used the buildings for its own purposes until the Conseil d'État on December 27, 1804, prohibited the use of church property by the state. As early as 1802, as part of the reorganization of the churches in France, an archpriest settled in Bouzonville. Bouzonville received an independent parish.
A report from 1855 describes the monastery church as a "hideous cesspool", where pigs had their stables under the arcades. The later Bishop of Metz, Franz Ludwig Fleck , who was pastor in Bouzonville between 1863 and 1867, tried during his tenure to renovate the church and bring it back to its former glory. The monastery buildings were also repaired. In 1893 three nuns moved in from the Cooperative of the Daughters of Christian Love of St. Vincent de Paul . On April 20, 1898, they opened a retirement hospice.
The Second World War also left its mark on the church. In June 1940 the church came under fire. The spire was hit by a shell and the roof destroyed. The nearby bridge over the Nied was blown up and the church windows were destroyed in the explosion. The renovation work began soon after the end of the war. On March 25, 1980, the church was declared a monument historique . The dilapidated apse was renovated with donations between 2006 and 2009.
The monastery buildings are now an old people's home, the church serves the Catholic parish of Bouzonville as a parish church.
architecture
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The former monastery is on the edge of the old town of Bouzonville and the Niedaue. The baroque monastery buildings surround the almost rectangular inner courtyard, at the eastern end of which the monastery church is set back. You enter the courtyard through a round arched gate with a wedge-shaped keystone in which the year 1698 is written. The monastery buildings are two- and three-story and kept simple. Only the presbytery in the west has been designed more elaborately. The gable, three-storey sandstone building was erected on a rectangular floor plan over a base. The five axes of the façade are designed with flat segment arcs. Pilaster strips and cornices subdivide the building. The central axis is highlighted by a risalit . On the ground floor there is a round arched portal with rustication . In the gable area there is a neo-baroque niche with a figure of a saint. Above it sits a cross on the gable. The actual entrance to the monastery area is on the north side of the church and leads to the cloister via a glass door. This is separated from the outside area by high round arches. Ribbon rustics adorn the building on the ground floor. Pilasters optically separate the round arches. The upper floor is separated from the arches by a cantilevered cornice and is plastered.
The monastery buildings partially cover the gable portal of the church. The mighty bell tower with a square floor plan, which sits as a gable on the east facade, is striking. You enter the compact, defiant-looking building through an open, arched vestibule in the portal. The portal is spanned by a round arch supported by pilasters. Bouzonville's coat of arms is emblazoned in the wedge-shaped keystone of the portal. Above that sits a pointed arched stained glass window over a protruding cornice. The tower is covered with a neo-baroque dome with an open lantern. On the north and south sides of the choir sit two rectangular towers with a hipped roof, which are part of a staircase that leads to the attic.
The pseudo-basilica made of light sandstone is a typical example of Lorraine pointed arch architecture. The central nave is 17 m high, the side nave is 10 m high. The side and central aisles each have four bays with ribbed vaults, which rest on mighty unadorned round pillars and are provided with elaborately decorated keystones. Pointed arches separate the central and side aisles. Only the pillars of the triumphal arch have more elaborately designed leaf capitals with figurative representations.
A retracted choir with a five-sided closure is attached to the three-axis nave . The windows of the side aisles, which are large in relation to the space, are decorated with two-lane tracery, the pointed arched, unstructured windows of the choir have richly profiled walls. A risalit with a triangular gable protrudes on the south side . It is flanked by buttresses. In it sits a neo-baroque arched portal with pilasters and high entablature. This is finished off by a protruding cornice. An arched window sits above it.
Each side aisle has a chapel, which lies next to the choir and forms an open octagon . The side chapel in the south is dedicated to St. Peter . The church windows show depictions of St. Helena, who discovered the cross in Jerusalem , the founding of the monastery by Judith and Bishop Dietrich II of Metz. The north side chapel is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, the Mother of God, and the stained glass windows depict the Annunciation and Her Assumption, as well as the proclamation of the dogma of the physical assumption of Mary by Pope Pius XII. The wall surfaces are decorated with tracery. During the Christmas season, the wood-carved nativity scene is displayed in this chapel.
Gravesites
According to written tradition, the founders were buried in the previous church of the current church in the 11th century. Count Adalbert II († 1033) was buried in the choir of the abbey church, while his wife Judith was buried in the monastery. Their two son Count Gerhard IV († 1044/1045) was buried next to his father Adalbert. Gerhard's wife Gisela rests in the southern side chapel, which was consecrated to St. Peter. The sons of Gerhard and Gisela, Adalbert and Gerhard , founded the ducal dynasty of Lorraine, the House of Châtenois (today's Habsburg-Lothringen dynasty ). The former abbey church is therefore the oldest burial place in the Lorraine ducal house. The graves are no longer recognizable. During construction work in the church, numerous other graves were discovered that cannot be assigned.
Furnishing
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On the outer back of the choir there is a small open vault in which a statue of the Virgin Mary stands on a neo-Gothic sandstone pedestal. A wooden statue of St. Benedict from the 17th century in the choir, a Pietà and a crucifixion group. The wooden altar shows carvings with gold painting on the sides and was made by the sculptor Claude Michel . It depicts scenes from the Bible: the burning bush , the brazen serpent , the handing over of the tablets of the Law with the Ten Commandments and the paschal lamb . The wooden ambo was also decorated with biblical scenes in the same style. In one of the aisles hangs a wooden relief depicting Justice. The choir stalls with figural carvings date from the Baroque (late 18th century). A cross in the church was brought to Bouzonville by pilgrims from Jerusalem in 1898 and was consecrated on Easter Monday 1899 by the Metz bishop Fleck.
window
The current windows of the church date from 1952 and were made by Atelier Thomas in Valence . The previous windows had been destroyed during the fighting of the Second World War. In the south side chapel there are scenes from the history of the monastery: the finding of the cross by St. Helena, the foundation of the monastery and the consecration of the monastery church. The Annunciation and the Assumption are depicted in the northern chapel. The church windows in the apse show the agony of Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane, the crucifixion and the descent from the cross.
organ
The original organ was replaced by a new one in 1715 by Christophe Moucherel. The organ survived the French Revolution and was not replaced by a new, neo-Gothic organ until 1890. This was overhauled in 1923 and repaired after the Second World War. Today's organ in a Baroque style housing on the south side of the choir was built by Marc Garnier from Mortreau based on the example of northern European organs from the 17th and 18th centuries. It was manufactured in 1979 and renovated in 1995. The disposition of the two-manual organ is as follows:
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literature
- Georges Boulangé: Les sépultures Lorraines à Bouzonville . In: L'Austrasie , Metz 1855, pp. 331–354. On-line
- Stefan Flesch: The monastic written culture of the Saar region in the Middle Ages (publications of the Commission for Saarland State History and Folk Research 20), Saarbrücken 1991. online
- Walter Hotz: Handbook of the art monuments in Alsace and Lorraine . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1976, p. 28
- Nicolas Dicop: Bouzonville et son Abbaye . Éditions Le Lorrain, Metz 1978.
- Eugène Voltz: L'église Sainte-Croix de Bouzonville . In: Les Cahiers lorrains 2/3, 1984, pp. 167-188.
- Alain Bastien: L'ancienne abbatiale Sainte-Croix, église paroissiale de Bouzonville, Moselle . Nancy University, 1993.
Web links
- Les Eglises de la Communauté de Paroisses St Benoit de Bouzonville - L'Abbatiale St Croix de Bouzonville . Guide de Visite / Sightseeing information in French and German, based on texts by Jean-Pierre Prouveur, translated by Mrs. P. Kiren and Dr. A. Ludwig, 2002, 2009
Individual evidence
- ↑ Database entry , Ministry of Culture of the Republic of France
- ↑ Boulangé 1855, p. 332
- ↑ http://orgue.free.fr/ , accessed on May 17, 2018.
Coordinates: 49 ° 17 ′ 35.3 " N , 6 ° 31 ′ 56.7" E