Gallus Church (Brenz an der Brenz)

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View from the northeast
capital
capital
Tympanum of the south portal

The Protestant Gallus Church in Brenz an der Brenz , a district of Sontheim an der Brenz in the Heidenheim district in Baden-Württemberg , is a late Romanesque columned basilica from the turn of the 12th to the 13th century. A special feature of the Brenz Gallus Church are the round arch friezes with their head consoles and relief stones that surround almost the entire exterior .

history

At the site of today's church, a wooden church with clay-coated wattle walls was built as early as 650 , the remains of which were found during excavations in 1964/65. This first church from Merovingian times , where 20 grave sites were uncovered, fell victim to a fire. It had three aisles , 14 meters long and 9 meters wide. When the church was rebuilt, presumably around 720/730, a decision was made in favor of a stone structure that promised more durability and was better able to withstand the risk of fire from lightning strikes. The building materials came from the Roman ruins. Most of the foundations, which were sunk up to one and a half meters into the ground, were of Roman origin. The builders of the time also adopted various techniques from the Romans, such as the herringbone-like wall bond of the opus spicatum . The new church was partly built on the existing foundation walls or cellars of former Roman buildings, which could be proven during the excavations.

With the year 746 and the disempowerment of the Alemannic nobility in the blood court of Cannstatt , the transition of the church from the former own church of an Alemannic donor family to the Carolingian royal estate as Capella ad Prenza is associated. In 875 King Ludwig the German transferred the Furentouua monastery together with the church in Brenz to his court deacon Liutbrand . In a document from 895, the East Franconian King Arnulf confirmed the donation of the church to the Benedictine Abbey of St. Gallen , in which Liutbrand was accepted. With this further change of ownership, the church received the patronage of St. Gallus and the chapel was converted into a double choir , probably also after a fire .

Today's column basilica was built at the turn of the 12th and 13th centuries. It was the immediate successor of an incomplete pillar basilica, of which two octagonal pillars in the western nave are evidence. For this pillar method of 1180/90 included the Romanesque west tower completely in later Westwerk has risen. Contrary to earlier assumptions, the three-tower westwork was built between 1631 and 1634 and can be assigned to the early baroque era.

The church was renovated in the 1960s. The church has been an outstanding sight on the Staufer road since 1997 .

architecture

The building is made of irregular ashlar stones and partially plastered. The church is designed as a three-aisled basilica . The nave extends over five bays and is covered with a flat wooden ceiling. The side aisles, like the groin vaulted choir , open into semicircular apses . Five arched arcades separate the main nave from the narrower side aisles on both sides. With the exception of the two octagonal pillars, they rest on columns with artistically carved capitals , which are decorated with leaves and tendrils or animal motifs.

In the southern side apse, a Roman statue base stone is built into the approach of the left apse arch. Its upside down dedicatory inscription is dedicated to the Gallo-Roman god Apollo Grannus , who is commemorated in a temple in nearby Faimingen .

South portal

The tympanum is attributed to the construction phase of the pillar basilica and is dated to around 1180/90. In the middle the blessing Christ is shown, to the right of him Mary and to his left John the Baptist . It is more roughly worked than the column capitals of the portal, which were created around 1230/40.

Arched frieze with relief panels

Blind arch frieze

An arched frieze almost 150 meters long runs under the eaves of all the roofs . On 172 blocks of stone made of white Jura and tufa , each 0.60 meters long and 0.43 meters wide, there are relief depictions with heads, people and animals. 137 of these stone paintings are original, the others were replaced by sandstone replicas in 1893/96.

Wall and ceiling painting

On the half-dome of the southern apse, the faded remains of a depiction of Christ as judge of the world can be seen in a mandorla from around 1240.

Gothic paintings from the 15th century have been preserved on the groin vault of the choir . On the top of the vault, the veil of Veronica is depicted with the face of Jesus, surrounded by figures of angels.

Romanesque font

Furnishing

  • Tomb of the knight Diebold Güss von Güssenberg, around 1480, on the north wall of the choir
  • Tomb of Agnes Güss von Güssenberg, around 1590, on the north wall of the choir
  • Romanesque font

literature

  • Bodo Cichy: The Church of Brenz . Ed. by the parish of Brenz, 3rd revised edition, Brenz 1991.

Web links

Commons : Galluskirche (Brenz an der Brenz)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Straße der Staufer on stauferstelen.de. Retrieved July 10, 2016.

Coordinates: 48 ° 33 ′ 42.6 ″  N , 10 ° 17 ′ 40.9 ″  E