Donareiche
The Donareiche was according to tradition, one of the Germanic god Donar or Thor sacred tree at Geismar , now part of Fritzlar in northern Hesse .
Precipitation by Boniface
The oak is known from an incident during the missionary work of Boniface . According to the written 760 Vita Sancti Bonifatii of Willibald of Mainz Boniface was on a mission trip in the northeast of the Frankish Empire in what is now Hesse . He probably used the Büraburg , which was built and occupied by the Franks Christianized since Clovis , as a base, which was in sight on the south bank of the Eder opposite today's city of Fritzlar. In order not to a large extent to Christianity converted chat to persuade, he sought the impotence of the old Germanic gods to prove and left in the year 723, many under the protection of Frankish soldiers and in the presence of chat, cut down the oak, which is a main Germanic sanctuaries was .
From the wood of the oak, Boniface had a house of prayer (oratory) consecrated to St. Peter built at an unspecified place . Around 732, Willibald's Bonifatius Vita reports that Bonifatius had a church consecrated to St. Peter and a monastery built in Fritzlar.
Hypotheses about the location of the Danube oaks
Archaeological evidence of the location of the oak is not known. The tradition is based on the Bonifatius-Vita of Willibald, which names the place name at Gaesmere (Geismar) as the location of the oak . The former Chatti settlement "Altgeismar" was a few hundred meters southwest of the present center of Geismar and was excavated in the 1970s. It is not mentioned where the first house of prayer was built from oak wood. Willibald Friedeslar (Fritzlar) names the location of the St. Peters Church, built around 732, and the location of today's Fritzlar Cathedral . Due to the patronage , it is generally assumed that the first house of prayer, consecrated to St. Peter, was located in the same place.
The different location information can be explained by the fact that the place Frideslar was only founded with the construction of the first church and the foundation of the monastery, and that today's higher cathedral hill was chosen as the location for the first house of prayer, because it was - as later also happened - had it expanded well for fortification and was better suited as a building site.
A different hypothesis, that the first house of prayer of Boniface was built directly on the site of the Danube empire and today's Fritzlar Cathedral is located at this point, is based in particular on the fact that Germanic sanctuaries were located more on heights than in lowlands and the Fritzlar Cathedral Hill belonged to the corridor of Geismar at the time of Boniface. This hypothesis apparently contradicts the written tradition of the Bonifatius Vita, which expressly mentions two different place names, but was only written almost 50 years later, when a new settlement called Friedeslar (= place of peace) had long been around the Bonifatius Church and the monastery there. had formed.
The Johanneskirchenkopf, a few kilometers north-west between Geismar , Züschen and Wellen, was also assumed to be the location of the Donareiche . Further hypotheses, according to which the Donareiche stood on the Hülfensberg near Geismar an der Frieda or near Hofgeismar in northern Hesse, are considered unlikely, since these places are far away and Bonifatius would hardly have transported the wood of the oak to build his chapel as far as Fritzlar to let.
literature
- Erhard Gorys : Lexicon of the saints . dtv, Munich 1997, ISBN 3-423-32507-0
- Lutz E. von Padberg : Bonifatius. Missionary and reformer . Beck, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-48019-5
Individual evidence
- ↑ Reinhold Rau (Berb.): Letters of Bonifatius. Willibald's Life of Boniface. Darmstadt 1968, p. 494: "... in loco qui dicitur Gaesmere" ".
- ↑ Same quote from Wilhelm Levison (Ed.): Scriptores Rerum Germanicorum in usum scolarum ex monumentis germaniae historicis, vol. 57, Hannover / Leipzig 1905, p. 31 digitalisat online, accessed on December 16, 2015.
- ↑ Levison, p. 35: “… videlicet ecclesias Domino fabricavit; undam quippe in Friedeslare, quam in honore sancti Petri dedicavit… “ Digitized online, accessed on December 16, 2015.
