Old Parish and Collegiate Church of St. Aegidii (Münster)
The old parish and collegiate church of St. Aegidii was a church building in Münster , which existed in various forms from the first documentary mention in 1184 to the secularization and demolition in 1821. It was with the convent buildings, which extended west to the Aa , opposite the south-west entrance to the Domburg ( Pferdegasse ) at the confluence of the Aegidii- in the Johannisstraße, today Aegidiimarkt . St. Aegidii has been a parish and Cistercian church since it was founded . The abbey joined the Benedictine Bursfeld Congregation in 1465 . Its function as a parish church, together with the patronage of St. Aegidius, was transferred to the nearby former Capuchin Church after 1821 .
history
founding
In the second half of the 12th century, Münster experienced an expansion of its urban area, especially in the southern and eastern areas. The parish of St. Aegidii in the south-west, St. Ludgeri in the south, St. Servatii in the south-east and St. Martini in the north-east, probably through the planning hand of the bishops . All newly created parishes were purely city parishes.
The church with the patronage of St. Aegidius was established before 1184 as a pious foundation to improve pastoral care in the growing city and initially belonged to the parish of St. Lamberti . A donation of land in 1184 created the prerequisites for the foundation of the monastery, which, however, was probably not made until 1205. It was the first Cistercian convent in Westphalia . The establishment of the parish, which had been planned from the beginning, became reality even later; only from 1229 is the name of the provost of the abbey as plebanus ("people priest", pastor) attested.
development
The Cistercian ideal of seclusion could only be realized to a limited extent in the city monastery of St. Aegidii from the beginning. The economy and way of life resembled that of a noble women's pen. Around 1350 economic changes and a plague epidemic caused a crisis. The reform impulses that took effect in the male Cistercian monastery Marienfeld , which was historically linked to St. Aegidii , did not prevail here. In 1465, at the instigation of Liesborner Reformabts Heinrich von Kleve , St. Aegidii was converted into a Benedictine abbey of the Bursfeld Observanz, which brought about drastic changes in the life of the monastery, especially a strict enclosure . The planned construction of a separate church instead of the one shared with the parish, however, did not take place.
From 1530 the Lutheran Reformation gained a foothold in Münster. After initial resistance, Prince-Bishop Franz von Waldeck left the city's six parish churches, including St. Aegidii, to the city council in order to introduce the new doctrine and church order in February 1533. The monasteries and monasteries should remain Catholic. When Dutch Anabaptists arrived in Münster in the summer of the same year and found followers, there was a scandal in St. Aegidii on the afternoon of August 10th. A Lutheran councilor interrupted a Dutch Anabaptist, who was preaching there to a large number of mainly female listeners. A commotion broke out, whereupon the opponents ran away. In the first days of 1534 Heinrich Roll gave several sermons in St. Aegidii; after one of them the city council had the church evacuated and closed. Seven of the Benedictine nuns went over to the Anabaptists and received the baptism of believers , which brought them serious conflicts with their families of origin. At the end of February all the churches in the city were stormed, the church treasures stolen or destroyed, the buildings badly damaged. The opposing nuns fled, others stayed and got married. After the Prince-Bishop captured the city on June 25, 1535, Bernd Krechting was arrested in the Aegidiikloster.
To cover the costs of the siege, the religious institutions in town and country were also subject to a special tax. The taxation of the Aegidi monastery was disproportionately high at 350 gold guilders - perhaps because of the great response that the Anabaptist sermon had found in the convent.
1571 visitierte Bishop Johann von Hoya Parish and Abbey and tested orthodoxy and discipline. The finding, judged to be satisfactory, gives interesting insights into the status and desiderata of the Catholic reform . In 1588 the following incident took place at the church of St. Aegidii: The canons (!) Bernhard von Oer and Johann von Westerholt murdered the knight of the Teutonic Order Melchior Droste zu Senden there . On the basis of a court settlement (signed by Prince-Bishop Bernhard von Raesfeld in 1558), the city of Münster was entitled to imprison clergy who had committed criminal offenses until they were handed over to the bishop's jurisdiction, but only in "mild detention". The councilor Bernhard II von Droste zu Hülshoff penetrates the chapter house and, through his energetic demeanor, causes the two murderers to be extradited.
In 1656 St. Aegidii was badly damaged during the siege of Münster by Prince-Bishop Christoph Bernhard von Galen . Most of the conventual women temporarily fled to another monastery. Further structural damage was caused by a lightning strike in 1666. One of the provosts in 1689 was Johann Benedikt von Droste zu Hülshoff . The Seven Years' War resulted in new sieges, billeting and a deadly typhus epidemic. Reports from the end of the 18th century paint a desolate picture of the life of the convent. The rejection of a monastery without social benefit on the part of the princes of all denominations prepared the secularizations of the 19th century. After the end of the prince-bishopric, the Prussian War and Domain Council Wolfframsdorff initially prohibited the St. Aegidii Abbey from accepting new novices; the abolition of the monastery took place under Napoleonic administration in 1811. By 1813 the properties and the liturgical and secular inventory were sold in favor of the state treasury.
building
The church, including the 10 × 10 m tower, was around 30 m long and 16 m wide. Originally a Romanesque basilica , it was rebuilt as a late Gothic hall church after severe destruction in the final phase of the Anabaptist Empire from 1544 until the new consecration in 1577 . The parish and the monastery shared the costs. In the following centuries, among other things by a lightning strike in 1666, progressive structural damage occurred, which the parish and abbey could only partially repair. In 1821 the state-owned church was closed by the Prussian administration; shortly afterwards the tower collapsed and it was demolished. When Aegidiistraße was widened, most of the foundations of the church came to lie under it. A barracks was built on the rest of the property . After its destruction in the Second World War and the use of the site as a parking lot, today's multi-purpose development called Aegidiimarkt was built in the 1970s .
To the south of the church bordered the cemetery, which was shared by the parish and the convent. Only the abbesses were buried in the church choir , the provosts mostly in the cloister.
An extensive complex of residential and farm buildings belonged to the monastery, but these cannot be reconstructed in detail.
Equipment received
Almost nothing has survived from the altars and sculptures in the St. Aegidii Church, including the high altar by Gerhard Gröninger from 1633. Much was destroyed in the various iconoclasts and sieges and in the tower collapse in 1821. Albert Reininck's baptismal font (1557) has been in today's Aegidiikirche since 1821. The clock bell in the roof turret of the new Aegidii parish church also comes from the previous building. She is the St. Joseph and was cast in 1690. In the Westphalian State Museum there is an 88 cm high wooden Virgin Mary from the end of the 15th century.
Web links
literature
- Wilhelm Kohl : The dioceses of the church province Cologne. The diocese of Münster 10. The Cistercian, later Benedictine convent of St. Aegidii in Münster . Germania Sacra , Third Part 1, Berlin / New York 2009 ( digitized version )
Individual evidence
- ↑ The Abbey from the beginning had the characteristics of a collegiate , and worsened in the course of its history; Kohl p. 42, p. 47f.
- ↑ Kohl p. 33
- ↑ Kohl, p. 44
- ↑ Kohl, p. 42
- ↑ Kohl, p. 45
- ↑ Kohl, p. 47
- ↑ a b Kohl, p. 49
- ↑ Kohl, p. 50
- ↑ Kohl, p. 51
- ↑ Kohl, p. 52
- ↑ a b Kohl, p. 53
- ↑ Kohl, p. 54
- ↑ Kohl, p. 55
- ↑ Kohl, p. 56
- ↑ Kohl, p. 59
- ↑ Kohl, p. 67
- ↑ Kohl, p. 68
- ↑ Kohl p. 13
- ↑ Kohl p. 14
- ↑ Kohl p. 16
- ↑ a b Kohl p. 18
- ↑ Kohl, p. 21
- ^ Church leader St. Aegidii Münster, Schnell u. Steiner 1991; P. 10 and 12
- ↑ Kohl, p. 23
Coordinates: 51 ° 57 ′ 37.9 " N , 7 ° 37 ′ 25.4" E