Bridal portal

This article covers the bridal door of churches. For information on bridal gates at farmhouses, see Bridal Door .

Bridal door of St. Sebald in Nuremberg

Bridal portal at St. Petri Cathedral Bremen

Bridal portal , also bridal door or bridal gate, is the name of a roofed portal usually located on the north side of Gothic churches . In front of this portal or in its vestibule, the wedding has been taking place since the 11th century, since until then it was considered an act from the area of ​​secular law. Then the priest led the bride and groom into the church and celebrated the bridal mass . The church portal (even if smaller churches did not have their own "bride portal") as the place of the church marriage was retained throughout the Middle Ages, only in the course of the 15th and 16th centuries was the ceremony moved inside the church. This tradition was ended in the Catholic Church by the Council of Trent with the regulations for now sacramental marriage . The Protestants continued it longer. The pictorial decoration in the arches and on the garments of bridal portals often refers to the function as the place of the wedding ceremony: (Christ as bridegroom of the church ( Coronation of Mary ); Adam and Eve; the wise and foolish virgins awaiting the bridegroom ).

Notable bridal portals

• Bamberg, Upper Parish Church
• Bayreuth,
• Bernau, Mark Brandenburg,
• Braunschweig St. Martini ,
• Bremen Cathedral (19th century),
• Friedberg i. Upper Hesse,
• Kaufbeuren, St. Martin ,
• Mainz, St. Quintin ,
• Munich, Frauenkirche ,
• Nuremberg, St. Lorenz ,
• Nuremberg, St. Sebald ,
• Osnabrück, cathedral
• Rothenburg od T., St. Jakob ,
• Ulm Minster ,
• St. Marien (Zwickau)

literature

• Günther Binding : Bridal door . In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages (LexMA). Volume 2, Artemis & Winkler, Munich / Zurich 1983, ISBN 3-7608-8902-6 , Sp. 592.
• Real Lexicon for German Art History, Art. Bridal door

Web links

• Ulrich Rhode : Lecture “The Church Marriage Law”. Status: July 2014, (PDF; 450 kB).
• Bridal door. In: The large art dictionary by PW Hartmann.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Andreas Eichholz: The bride portal of St. Petrus Cathedral in Osnabrück. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller eK , 2013, ISBN 978-3-8364-7027-8 .

See also

• Bridal house
• Church portal as legal place
• Paradise (architecture) , to the vestibule architecture