Erasmus Chapel (Warburg)

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Outside view of the castle cemetery from
Modern information sign on the chapel

The Burg- or Erasmuskapelle is a chapel in Warburg on the Burgberg . The chapel consists of two church rooms one above the other, the crypt and the upper chapel.

crypt

The crypt is the "oldest preserved monument of church architecture" in Warburg. Originally it belonged to St. Andrew's Church, a “three-aisled Romanesque basilica with a transept that was 47.50 m long and 27 m wide”, which was built “probably in the first half of the 12th century”. The church was the parish church for the castle's occupation and probably collapsed at the end of the 16th century, whereupon the parish was merged with the Warburg old town parish . Only the crypt remained, but was no longer used.

An Erasmus altar in this crypt was donated in 1415. The old town pastor Ludwig Hagemann assumed in 1893 that he had his name because “because there are relics of St. Bishop and Martyr Erasmus were in it. Probably a Warburg castle man had the shrine of St. Erasmus and relics of this saint brought back from a pilgrimage and handed over to St. Andrew's Church. ”In this sense he also quotes the Carthusian Werner Rolevinck :“ In Warburg the shrine of St. Erasmus with 3 hl. Virgins, St. Adelheid, Ermgard and Gertrud ”.

In 1676 the miraculous healing of a boy in the dilapidated crypt is said to take place at the intercession of St. Erasmus have taken place. This news spread quickly and in the following year 52 miraculous healings are said to have taken place there. The local Jesuits , with the support of Prince Bishop Ferdinand von Fürstenberg , then sponsored the establishment of an annual procession and a subsequent pilgrimage to the chapel on Trinity Sunday , which is usually very close to the day of the saint's remembrance on June 2nd.

In 1680–1681 the prince-bishop had the existing crypt, which had "no roof", restored and another baroque chapel built on it.

The whereabouts of the Erasmus shrine mentioned is unknown, but it can be assumed that the altar was preserved, “especially since it is repeatedly assured in written records that the altar, with the exception of the altar structure, was not damaged or injured during the decay of the chapel “And thus there are still relics of the chapel patron in it. An altar made of flourstone, alabaster and marble, made in 1700 in the workshop of Heinrich Papens from Giershagen , was then placed on top of this “medieval bricked block altar” . A Gothic keystone depicting the angel Gabriel was embedded in the front of the original altar block. Above the altar there is now a "blue and white retable [...] designed as a portal facade. Two winding columns, which are slightly offset one behind the other, flank the arch, the relief of which represents the [...] martyrdom of St. Erasmus. According to a more recent medieval legend, during one of the last Roman persecutions of Christians around 310 AD, the bowels were twisted out of his body with a winch ”.

This altar still exists today, but it is no longer in the Erasmus Chapel. Ludwig Hagemann already noted: “But the altar, which dates from 1700, is made in the Renaissance style and therefore does not fit into the chapel at all. Only then will the splendid forms of this purely Romanesque chapel fully emerge again when the current altar has been replaced by a pretty, low, Romanesque altar and the now covered rear window has come into its own ". Even today, a historian judged that the altar "as long as it stood in the crypt [may have looked strangely strange]: its dimensions impaired the spatial effect and covered the rear, round window". In 1953 the altar was indeed transferred from the crypt to the old town church of St. Mary's Visitation , where it has been located "since the last church renovation in 1998/99" at its current location, the west wall of the south aisle.

As a replacement for this altar, a “simple altar table”, a free-standing block altar, which is intended to “remind of the original situation”, “was erected in the years 1963–1968 and at the beginning of June 1968 by Auxiliary Bishop Dr. Degenhardt consecrated ”, namely“ in honorem S. Andreae Martyris et Apostoli ”, ie the patron of the original church in the castle.

Upper chapel

The upper chapel is built in the baroque style and has an altar and an organ. Unlike the chapel itself, this altar was erected “not as a sovereign foundation, but with funds from the citizens -“ Ex piis fidelium oblatis ”it says in the inscription cartouche on the entablature -”. It is modeled on the baroque high altar of the nearby Dominican and today's Protestant parish church of St. Maria in vinea , which was donated in 1666. “The altar consists of a main floor with a columned pedicure, the attic above the entablature is braced with a blown gable above the main floor and is closed off at the top by another explosive gable with a central figure. To the left and right of the main floor there are two pillars. ”As with the former altar of the crypt, these are twisted and thus“ completely different from the pillars on the altar of the former Dominican church ”. The model for its design was the bronze canopy designed by Bernini for the papal altar in St. Peter's Basilica from 1633. Like these, the columns are “covered with vine tendrils with leaves and fruits”. This form was conveyed to Warburg via the high altar of Paderborn Cathedral , where this motif, "Christ as a life-giving vine", was taken up as early as 1655.

There is also a tabernacle on the altar . Its doors "curve [...] clearly forwards, with the convex center being balanced by a slight concave oscillation on each side". As a result, according to Walter Freund, there is a “tension typical of the late Baroque” between the tabernacle and the reredos wall. The latter swings back slightly. Francesco Borromini first used this shape on the facade of San Carlo alle Quattro Fontane in Rome (1662–67); it was repeated in a simplified form from 1746–49 by the Paderborn court architect Franz Christoph Nagel at the Gaukirche in Paderborn .

The crucifixion can be seen as an altarpiece today. However, this is not the original design, since the altarpiece and altar figures are lost; the original content is also no longer known. "What you see today is a replacement from more recent times".

In the attic there is a representation of the Holy Spirit, on the tabernacle there is a "small plastic group of the pelican feeding its young" and in the "blown gable of the attic" a Madonna figure. On a photograph of the high altar from 1931, which was made by the Westphalian Office for the Preservation of Monuments in Münster, the depictions of the Holy Spirit and the Madonna are already present, but there is a crucifix instead of the pelican group on the tabernacle and an altarpiece with representations is completely absent, instead the statue of a bishop with a book in hand is in front of the picture, which consists only of ornamental patterns.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Freund, Walter: Sacred art in Warburg. in: Mürmann, Franz (ed.): The City of Warburg - Contributions to the History of a City, Vol. 2, Warburg 1986, 93–130, 93.
  2. ^ A b Dubbi, Franz-Josef: The Warburg Castle Hill. Grafensitz - Landesburg - Castle - Place of pilgrimage - Cemetery, Marsberg 2006, 25.
  3. ↑ See Hagemann, Ludwig: Der Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life, Warburg 1893, 29.
  4. ^ Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 29.
  5. ↑ Cf. Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 48.
  6. ↑ Cf. Freund, Walter: Sacrale Kunst in Warburg, 93.
  7. ^ Hagemann, Ludwig: Der Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life, 38.
  8. ↑ Rolevinck, Werner: Vom Lobe des alten Sachsen, now called Westphalia, approx. 1478, quoted from: Hagemann, Ludwig: Der Warburger Burgberg, a planting place of Christian life, 38.
  9. ↑ a b cf. Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 41.
  10. ↑ Cf. Hagemann, Ludwig: Der Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life, 45-46.
  11. ^ Hagemann, Ludwig: Der Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life, 47.
  12. ↑ cf. Dubbi, Franz-Josef: The Warburg Castle Hill, 48.
  13. ↑ Cf. Freund, Walter: Sacrale Kunst in Warburg, 94.
  14. ↑ Cf. Hagemann, Ludwig: Der Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life, 39.
  15. ^ Hagemann, Ludwig: The Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life, 39.
  16. ↑ a b c Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 49.
  17. ↑ Cf. Bialas, Rudolf / Kuchenbuch, Karl: The parish church "Mariä Heimsuchung" in Warburg-Altstadt (= Westfälische Kunststätten, issue 99), Münster 2005, 22.
  18. ^ Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 42.
  19. ↑ Cf. Bialas, Rudolf / Kuchenbuch, Karl: The parish church "Mariä Heimsuchung" in Warburg-Altstadt, 24.
  20. ↑ Bialas, Rudolf / Kuchenbuch, Karl: The parish church "Mariä Heimsuchung" in Warburg-Altstadt, 24.
  21. ^ Hagemann, Ludwig: The Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life, 32.
  22. ↑ Cf. Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 49.
  23. ↑ Bialas, Rudolf / Kuchenbuch, Karl: The parish church "Mariä Heimsuchung" in Warburg-Altstadt, 22.
  24. ^ Church gazette for the Archdiocese of Paderborn, Item 2/1969, 21.
  25. ^ Freund, Walter: Sacred Art in Warburg, 123.
  26. ↑ Cf. Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 53.
  27. ↑ Cf. Freund, Walter: Sacrale Kunst in Warburg, 119.
  28. ↑ a b c d Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 53.
  29. ↑ Cf. Freund, Walter: Sacrale Kunst in Warburg, 123–124.
  30. ^ A b c Freund, Walter: Sacred Art in Warburg, 124.
  31. ↑ a b Cf. Freund, Walter: Sacrale Kunst in Warburg, 124.
  32. ↑ The photograph is printed in Dubbi, Franz-Josef: Der Warburger Burgberg, 51.

literature

  • Franz-Josef Dubbi: The Warburg Castle Hill. Count seat - state castle - castle - pilgrimage site - cemetery . Marsberg 2006.
  • Walter Freund: Sacred art in Warburg . In: Franz Mürmann (Ed.): The City of Warburg - Contributions to the History of a City, Vol. 2 . Warburg 1986, p. 93-130 .
  • Ludwig Hagemann: The Warburger Burgberg, a planting place for Christian life . Warburg 1893. ( PDF file; 18.5 MB ).
  • Gustav Rabe von Pappenheim: The Warburg castle chapel and the former castle church on the Wartberg, together with documentary information about several altars and priests of the same . In: Westphalian magazine . tape 49 , 1891, p. 149-161 . ( PDF file ).

Web links

Commons : Erasmuskapelle (Warburg)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 51 ° 29 ′ 12.4 "  N , 9 ° 8 ′ 43.4"  E