Memorial stone of Bishop Bernward
The memorial stone of Bishop Bernward in the Michaeliskirche in Hildesheim is a memorial plaque for Bernward of Hildesheim made of reddish sandstone with a Latin inscription. It is dated to the 2nd decade of the 11th century.
Attachment
The original location of the tablet is unknown. For the 18th century it is documented that it was on the outside of the west choir, Bernwards tomb; it had this place until the destruction of the church in World War II. During the reconstruction after 1945, the plaque was placed inside the church on the south wall of the east transept.
description
The rectangular stone slab is 1.07 m high and 89 cm wide. A raised frame surrounds the title block. The text in Latin capital letters is divided into seven lines of nine letters each, regardless of the word units and without any separation between them. There is a cross in front . The indentations of the letter lines are rectangular in cross section, not pointed. Perhaps they were originally filled in with color.
The inscription, damaged in places by the effects of war, but reliably documented, reads:
|
† VENITE CONCI |
"Come, our |
interpretation
For the interpretation, the question arises who is speaking here. Traditionally, Bernward himself is accepted as the subject of the invitation. He addresses the local residents as "our fellow citizens" and calls them to come to his own church of the Holy Sepulcher, to worship God there and to remember his, their deceased bishop. Recently it has been suggested that in the context of the Angel Church and the Angel Choir, the angels should be understood as inviting, whose “fellow citizens” are the people in the church. There is broad consensus that Bernward himself wrote the text and had it attached to or in the church. The memento he asks for is not a respectful reminder, but an intercessory prayer for the heavenly perfection of the deceased ( memoria ). Perhaps the numbers seven ( number of completion ) and nine ( nine choirs of angels ) in the text design have a symbolic meaning.
Dating
The content, language, written form and sculpture technique make it probable that the panel was created in the last decade of Bernwards († 1022) life, which was also the time of the most intensive construction work on St. Michael.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ if the ligatures are counted as one character
- ↑ Abbreviation for "vestrique"
- ↑ Pluralis Majestatis or Pluralis Modestiae
- ^ Bernhard Gallistl: Narrated World Heritage: Twelve Centuries Hildesheim . Hildesheim 2015, p. 116