Benedictine convent of St. Johann

Monastery church, built from 775, and residential tower from 960 ("Plantaturm")

The Benedictine monastery of St. Johann ( Rhaeto-Roman. Claustra Son Jon ) in Müstair in the Münstertal (Val Müstair) in the Swiss canton of Graubünden is a very well-preserved medieval monastery from the Carolingian era . The monastery was founded by the UNESCO in the list of the 1983 World Heritage added. It is a member of the Swiss Benedictine Federation .

Consecration

The monastery church is dedicated to John the Baptist ; the Holy Cross Chapel (possibly the abbot's private chapel ), on the other hand, is used for the veneration of the Holy Cross . Another chapel bears the dual patronage of St. Ulrich and St. Nikolaus .

description

Holy Cross Chapel

At the entrance to the cemetery is the two-story Chapel of the Holy Cross , which stands out with its round arch-shaped blind niches . The cloverleaf shape of the choir area was created in the 8th century; this is evidenced by the dendrochronological annual dating of the still load-bearing floor beams on the upper floor. This is the oldest wooden beam ceiling in Europe. The basement served as an ossuary from the 16th century , the upper floor probably as a mortuary chapel .

Interior of the monastery church with the three apses

The center of the complex is the monastery church , which originally dates from the Carolingian era . It was built from 775 onwards as a simple hall church with three apses and a flat wooden ceiling. The walls were decorated with magnificent fresco cycles. The presbytery was raised by three steps and separated from the congregation by a barrier, which was probably made of Lasa marble . The entire room was lit only through the three apse windows, three windows in the west and two high windows in the nave. The main nave was followed by a lower aisle on the north and south side, each with its own apse and separated from the rest of the church. This gave the entire church a square floor plan and became a five-apse church . A construction seam can be seen on the east facade of the church , which marks the original height of the Carolingian roof truss, over which the current Gothic one was later built. At some point the Carolingian frescoes were whitewashed inside and were forgotten. Therefore, in 1492, the Gothic reticulated vault was built about one meter lower than the original wooden ceiling, so that today some of the frescoes are hidden under the masonry of the vaults. The installation of the vaults also involved the installation of the columns, which transformed the hall church into a three-aisled hall church . The frescoes were rediscovered in 1947 and exposed until 1951. The structure and frescoes are among the most important surviving examples of the Carolingian Renaissance .

The farm yard to the west is closed off by two gate towers . These date from around 1500 and are arched on the outside and ogive on the inside. The south tower shows a mural with a donkey on a red background blowing a junker's bagpipes . The three figures represent Immaculata , St. Benedict and St. Scholastica . The Rococo work comes from Christian Greiner.

The double chapel St. Ulrich and St. Nikolaus stands out due to its early baroque decoration of a sgraffito border and black painted window decorations . In the lower chapel, a stucco decoration can be seen from the original dome vault of the choir , four angel figures in antique robes. To the west of the double chapel is a three-story residential tower , surrounded by two-story hall buildings; it was built as a residential and defense tower around 960 and under the abbess Angelina von Planta from 1499 it was rebuilt, increased and provided with dovetail battlements; it is therefore called the "Planta Tower".

Stucco figure of Charlemagne in the monastery church (between 800 and 1165)

history

The convent is considered Foundation Charlemagne , whose life-size piece of sculpture from the Middle Ages between middle and South vestibule is the convent church. It was founded at the time of the Carolingian conquests of the territories of the Lombards (774) and the Bavarians (778); the oldest timber in the church was dendrochronologically dated to around 775, one year after the conquest of Lombardy . However, the establishment of the monastery may have been implemented by the bishop of Chur as a confidante of the emperor. He secured access to until 1816 for the Diocese of Chur belonging Vinschgau . The monastery served the emperor as a base, the control of crossing traffic routes, the travelers as a hospice , the bishop as an administrative center and last but not least as a place of worship. John the Baptist was given patronage over the foundation, which was simply called Monasterium , from which the (today's) Rhaeto-Romanic name Müstair is derived. Originally a male monastery, it has been a Benedictine convent since the 12th century . The first abbess known by name was Adelheid, documented between 1211 and 1231, about whose origin there are no contemporary sources.

Carolingian frescoes

Christ between the apostles Peter and Paul (left side apse, around 800)

Herod's feast with dancing Salome (around 1200)

The Carolingian frescoes , with which the monastery church was furnished around 800, are a cultural-historical monument of early medieval sacred images that is unique in type and extent ; It was because of them that the church gained national fame. 135 individual scenes are mostly well preserved. Completely painted over around 1200 and whitewashed in the late 15th century, they were rediscovered at the end of the 19th century. A sequence of scenes from the life of David , which covered the entire church as a strip of images, was brought to the Swiss National Museum in Zurich in 1908/09 ; the others were uncovered between 1947 and 1951.

The Carolingian picture cycles stretch across the north and south walls of the interior in five horizontal stripes. One of the most famous motifs is on the north wall, depicting the flight into Egypt ; three other representations in the apses show Christ as the founder of the church, ruler and teacher of the world and as a triumphant. Another (Romanesque, around 1200) in the central apse reproduces Herod's feast below , in which the dancing Salome has the beheading of the Baptist, the patron saint of the church and the monastery. The unknown painter of the Carolingian frescoes is sometimes referred to in art history as the Master of Müstair .

Monastery life

Eleven nuns live in the Benedictine monastery (as of July 2019). On October 11, 2012, the community elected Sr. Domenica Dethomas as its new Prioress . After a break of 120 years, she is again a native who holds this position and speaks Romansh. On January 28, 2013 she took over the office from Sr. Pia Willi, who had led the monastery for the past 26 years.

Bells

In the bell chamber there is the historical ringing with 4 bells. This disposition occurs very rarely and the bells 2 and 3 have a rather serious pitch. The plenum is rung regularly from big to small and this is noticeable in the Swiss bell culture.

The historical bells of the monastery church in Müstair
Bell no.	Foundry and casting location	Casting year	Nominal
1	Kaspar Sermund, Bormio	1558	d ¹
2	Jörg Schellener, Bolzano	1665	e ¹
3	unknown	1505	d ²
4th	unknown	1504	f sharp ²

literature

Lothar Deplazes: Müstair (monastery). In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .
Jürg Goll, Matthias Exner , Susanne Hirsch: Müstair. The medieval murals. Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-03823-324-4 .
Iso Müller: History of the Müstair Monastery. From the beginning to the present. Desertina-Verlag, Disentis 1978.
Hans Rutishauser, Hans Rudolf Sennhauser , Marèse Sennhauser-Girard: The Benedictine convent of St. Johann in Müstair. (Swiss Art Guide, Volume 733/734, Series 74). Edited by the Society for Swiss Art History GSK. Bern 2003, ISBN 3-85782-733-5 .
Hans Rudolf Sennhauser a. a. (Ed.): Müstair, Kloster St. Johann, 1. Pre-monastic findings. On the monastery complex (PDF; 7.5 MB), publications by the Institute for Monument Preservation at ETH Zurich 16/1, vdf Hochschulverlag AG at ETH Zurich 1996.
Alfred Wyss, Hans Rutishauser, Marc Antoni Nay: The medieval wall paintings in the Müstair monastery: Basics for conservation and care , Zurich 2002, ISBN 978-3-72812-803-4 , limited preview in the Google book search