Bentlager reliquary gardens

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The older reliquary garden (skull shrine) from 1499

The Bentlager reliquary gardens , or also Bentlager reliquary shrines , are two late medieval reliquaries laid out in the style of the Paradiesgärtlein , which house more than 200 preciously decorated relics and are unique in the German-speaking area in terms of their state of preservation and equipment. They are in the permanent exhibition of the Bentlage Monastery Museum in the Münsterland city ​​of Rheine .

history

The shrines were made for the Bentlage Monastery of the Order of the Holy Cross , which was founded in 1437. The boxes of the shrines were probably made by Münster carpenters. They were delivered to the Cistercian abbey of Bersenbrück for further equipment , where they were decorated by the local nuns for the Bentlage monastery. The older skull shrine was completed around 1499 and the younger paradise garden around 1520. The sources that have survived give no information about the exact location of the two shrines in the Bentlager monastery church. It is unclear whether they were placed on the main altar , on one of the side altars or, invisible to the community, behind the rood screen. How the shrines survived the pillage of the monastery in the Thirty Years' War on September 21, 1647 is also not known. With the dissolution of the monastery in the course of secularization , the shrines passed into the personal possession of the Dukes of Looz-Corswarem in 1803 , who had them installed in their newly established private castle chapel in 1827. In order to match them to the castle chapel, the shrines were painted completely white inside and out.

In 1978, the city of Rheine acquired the Bentlage estate, including the shrines, which had now been badly damaged. In 1982 they were presented to the public for the first time in the exhibition Monastic Westphalia in the Westphalian State Museum for Art and Cultural History in Münster . After their return to Rheine in December, they were displayed in the Falkenhof Museum . This is where the first investigations and conservation measures were initiated, which in 1991 led to extensive restorations in the central restoration workshop of the Westphalia-Lippe Regional Association in Haus Lüttinghof . The investigations showed that the approximate restoration of the late medieval version of the shrines was possible and sensible from a conservation point of view. For this purpose, the overpainting in Berlin blue that was applied in 1754 and the three coats of white oil and lime paint that were applied over them in the 19th and 20th centuries were removed and the late medieval red color was brought out again. The textile components such as reliquary packaging and the silk flower decorations were cleaned and carefully restored. Metal parts were preserved, but they were no longer restored to their original appearance. A new gilding or an exchange of the corroded gold-plated tin foil in the back wall of the shrine was dispensed with, as this would have meant too much interference with the original substance. In 1996 the shrines returned to Rheine, where they have since been shown as highlights of the permanent exhibition at the Bentlage Monastery Museum.

description

Silk flowers between the cedulae reliquary parcels of the skull shrine from 1499

Both shrines consist of a wooden substructure, the predella , and a box-shaped structure that contains the artfully decorated relics. The relics taken by the Bersenbrück nuns consist of bone fragments , skull parts , wood fragments , stones, textiles and other objects that were associated with saints and the places of Jesus' life or the places where saints worked and that represent their miraculous properties. The relics were wrapped in precious textiles such as fine silk and linen fabrics , decorated with silk flowers , braids and semi-precious stones. The finished structures were decoratively mounted in the boxes with the help of wire and metal constructions, in the style of a garden of paradise. The silk flowers used in large numbers for further decoration probably came from the workshops of monasteries or beguinages in Mechelen , where such flower decorations were almost factory-made.

Together, both shrines house more than 200 relics attributed to important saints , including the apostles Peter , Paul , Matthew and Andrew , Mary Magdalene , St. Helena , various martyrs like St. Agnes or St. Laurentius . They also contain numerous touch relics and objects from the places of activity of Jesus or the saints: a piece of bread from the miraculous multiplication of bread , stones from the Calvary , a stone on which St. Stephen stood at his stoning.

180 alone are identified by name with “cedulae” , small inscribed signs made of paper or parchment , others are unmarked or no longer identifiable due to lost cedulae.

Skull shrine from 1499

The altarpiece has a width of 186 cm, a height of 132 cm and a depth of 20.5 cm. The predella measures 191 cm in width, 47.5 cm in height and 31.5 cm in depth. The front of the predella is decorated with nine pointed arched windows with Gothic tracery. The tracery in the pointed arches of the windows are individually decorated. They show nuns' heads , fish bladders , three snouts , three , four and multi-pass motifs , all of which differ from one another. The bases of the windows are also decorated differently, seven have relatively uniform four-pass motifs, only two window bases have different decorations.

To accommodate the reliquary, the shrine has a large, centrally arranged compartment in the reredos, which is surrounded on the right and left by five smaller compartments and at the top by a compartment that extends over the entire width. The background of the central compartment is covered with gold-plated tin foil, the surface of which is wrinkled, severely dull and oxidized through aging and has lost its original shine. The floor, ceiling and side walls of the central compartment have a green frame made of verdigris , chalk and white lead . The smaller compartments and the side walls and floors are provided with a red orange color temperature , red lead and cinnabar deleted, wherein the covert of the relics sites were not taken colored chalk and the base is visible. The central compartment contains the relics with silk flower decorations arranged in a paradise garden, which are mounted on several vertically attached iron rods. The side compartments and the upper compartment contain 16 skull reliquaries and other small reliquary packages.

In the center of the middle compartment is a crucifix , which is densely surrounded by the decorated reliquary parcels. The shrine contains 48 relics named by name, including the hair of St. Virgin Mary, from the statue of Christ, the apostles Paul, Peter and James, more than 16 relics of the eleven thousand virgins (including the Cordula), Maria Magdalena, Saint Agnes, Andreas, Augustine, Felicitas, Helena, Hubertus, Laurentius, Martin, Mauritius and Odulphus, the martyrs Adrianus, Cyriakus and Erasmus, the bishops Erpho von Münster , Martin, Valerius von Trier , a tooth of the uncle of St. Ursula and relics of St. Thebans and from the community of St. Pammachius . The relics of the second and third class are oil of St. Catherine and St. Nicholas, clothes of St. Ludger and a piece of bread from feeding the five thousand .

Reliquary garden from 1520

The younger reliquary garden from 1520
Crucifix of the reliquary garden from 1520

The width of the reredos is 188 cm, its height 136.5 cm and the depth 22 cm. The predella has a width of 186.5 cm, a height of 44.5 cm and a depth of 29.7 cm. The predella of the reliquary garden has a closed front, which is divided into three approximately equal fields by four carved pinnacles . Like the skull shrine, these fields are painted with orange-red paint and decorated with floral patterns made of gold leaf. The pinnacles and borders of the fields are painted blue azurite . The fields of the predella are not painted flat, they have two, and the middle field three areas that were left blank, which were intended for the taking of further pictures that are no longer available today. The outside of the box has a red frame with floral decorations made of gold leaf. Originally the inside was lined with a gold-lacquered tin foil , which, as a result of corrosion, overpainting and subsequent exposure, has taken on a matt brown-black color and has lost its historical effect. The left side of the shrine was originally left blank, which is why it can be assumed that the shrine was set up in such a way, for example against a wall, that this side was not visible to the viewer.

The central motif of the shrine is a crucifixion group , which is framed by 132 named and other anonymous relics. On the floor of the shrine, two galleries were built in later, on which the mourning Mary stand on the left and John the Baptist on the right of the crucified. Between them lie two skull reliquaries on silk pillows and next to the figures of Mary and John are small figures of two lambs and a bird made of wire, wood and silk . The reliquary treasure of this shrine includes relics of St. Agnes, Bishop Ambrose, Barbara, Christophorus, Cyriakus, Bishop Dionysius, Gereon, dux Liborius , Ludwig, Margareta, Sebastian, Stephanus, Ursula of Cologne , Valerius, Bishop Willibrord, and an unknown saint named Tirses. Several unspecified apostles, including Matthew and several martyrs, including Hermes, are listed. The numerically largest group consists of more than 30 relics of the eleven thousand virgins and more than 20 unspecified saints. Among the relics of the second and third degree there are stones from the washing of the feet of Christ, from the places where the cross of Christ stood on Calvary and where it was later made by St. Helena has been found from the places where the Lord at the raising of Lazarus was and where he wept for the unfit, a stone from Mount Sinai , the stone on which the Passover when the Lord's Supper was fried on which the Protomartyr Stephen at his stoning and a piece of stone moistened by Mary's breast milk . Next is a piece of the staff of Moses , taken from the Lord's table, another piece of a tooth from St. Ursula and oil from St. Nicholas represented. Textile relics are taken from the tomb of the Lord, from the robes of St. Bernhardin, the bishops Ludger and Simeon and from the teardrop of St. Elisabeth expelled. Finally, relics from the communities of Numidians St. Mauritius and St. Gereon listed.

meaning

Three small reliquary boxes in the retable of the Trinity Altar of St. Nicolai in Kalkar

From a religious and spiritual point of view, the Bentlager Paradise Gardens were of particular importance for late medieval believers because of their extraordinarily rich treasure trove of relics. But they are also extremely valuable from an art and cultural-historical point of view. Reliquary gardens or paradise gardens such as the Bentlager reliquary gardens are now very rare in German-speaking countries. It can be assumed that such objects appeared much more frequently in the late Middle Ages and pre-Reformation times . Internationally, there is the Bentlager relics boxes in equipment and scope of a few well-comparable items, such as five "Besloten hofje" in Onze-Lieve-Vrouwehospitaal in the Belgian Mechelen and the crucifixion of Christ displayed box in the abbey of Saint-Vaast in northern France Arras city . A more simply furnished example from three smaller gardens of paradise houses the retable of the Trinity altar of the Church of St. Nikolai in Kalkar or a shrine box with the depiction of the unbelieving Thomas in front of the risen from the former Benedictine monastery of Walsrode .

literature

  • Rudolf Breuing: The Cross in the Garden of Paradise - The Bentlager Skull Shrine from 1499 . Ed .: Förderverein Kloster / Schloss Bentlage eV (=  Rheine. Yesterday, today, tomorrow . Volume 37 ). Rheine 1996.
  • The Bentlager reliquary gardens; Research results on the late medieval reliquary gardens in the Bentlage monastery "Your bones will sprout like plants" . In: Westphalia . No. 77 . Aschendorff, 1999, ISSN  0043-4337 (special print from 2002).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Mechthild Beilmann-Schöner: The late medieval Bentlager reliquary gardens - Foreword . In: Westphalia . No. 77 . Aschendorff, 1999, ISSN  0043-4337 , p. 2-5 .
  2. ^ Rudolf Breuing: The cross in the garden of paradise - The Bentlager skull shrine from 1499 . Ed .: Förderverein Kloster / Schloss Bentlage eV (=  Rheine. Yesterday, today, tomorrow . Volume 37 ). Rheine 1996.
  3. ↑ a b c Bernd Breuning: A belde unde example of all vullenkomenheit. On the function and meaning of the Bentlager reliquary boxes as meters of salvation and allegorical images . In: Westphalia . No. 77 . Aschendorff, 1999, ISSN  0043-4337 , p. 87-113 .
  4. ↑ a b Stephan Brunnert, Gudrun Hildebrandt, Richard Moroz, Annik Pietsch, Frauke Wenzel: The restoration of the reliquary gardens from Bentlage Monastery . In: Westphalia . No. 77 . Aschendorff, 1999, ISSN  0043-4337 , p. 137-173 .
  5. ↑ Hartmut Krohm: Reliquary Presentation and Flower Garden - Art-historical remarks on the shrines in the Bentlage monastery . In: Westphalia . No. 77 . Aschendorff, 1999, ISSN  0043-4337 , p. 23-52 .

Coordinates: 52 ° 18 ′ 7 ″  N , 7 ° 25 ′ 45 ″  E