Holy Cross Chapel (Laumersheim)

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Holy Cross Chapel

The Palmberg with chapel, from the east; on the right the houses of Laumersheim
Basic data
place Laumersheim, Germany
Building history
Client Franz Caspar von Langen
construction time 1721-1722
Building description
inauguration May 3, 1722
Architectural style Baroque
Construction type octagonal tent roof construction
Coordinates 49 ° 32 '29.4 "  N , 8 ° 14' 25.5"  E Coordinates: 49 ° 32 '29.4 "  N , 8 ° 14' 25.5"  E
Template: Infobox church building / maintenance / function and title missing Template: Infobox church building / maintenance / denomination missing Template: Infobox church building / maintenance / dedication or patronage missing

The Heilig-Kreuz-Kapelle is a baroque chapel on the Palmberg , south of Laumersheim , which stands at the place of the medieval church of the submerged village Berghaselbach . It is one of the official pilgrimage sites of the Speyer diocese .

history

Cyriac church and pilgrimage

St. Cyriakus with palm fronds, from the Speyer Evangelistar of the Worms Cyriakus pen , 1197

The Palmberg is a hill at its highest point, 137 m high and extending in an east-west direction , in the northern part of the Palatinate . The eastern part belongs to the Gerolsheim community , the western part to Laumersheim. The middle part was largely removed in the open pit due to quartz sand deposits.

The western part of the mountain is like a plateau. The Chapel of the Holy Cross stands at its highest point today. The village of Berghaselbach (also Haselbach , Haselach or Haseloch ) was once located there . According to uncertain tradition, Ludwig the Pious , son of Emperor Charlemagne , is said to have founded a nunnery here in the 9th century . Later we hear nothing more from the monastery, but the village parish church consecrated to St. Cyriacus - possibly the former convent church - was of great importance as the mother church of the surrounding villages. This fact also supports the tradition of an early monastery foundation. The whole mountain should have got its name from the martyr Cyriakus, whose attribute is a palm frond , as is the case in the nearby Weisenheim am Sand , where the palm frond in the local coat of arms reminds of the long-abandoned church patron St. Cyriakus. Bishop Samuel von Worms brought the relics of the saint with him from Rome around 845 and the main part was venerated in the Cyriakus monastery in Neuhausen .

Already in 1196 the patronage right of the church lay with the Cistercian monastery "Maria Münster" in Worms , which had important property there and also in Laumersheim. It is also said to have been founded in 838 by Emperor Ludwig the Pious, after he experienced an earthquake in Worms with great destruction and many victims. The Worms Bishop Leopold II. Von Schönfeld , before his election pastor at St. Cyriakus in Berghaselbach, according to a document dated January 9, 1196, also donated all income from the church to the patronage monastery, whereby he writes that the pastorate there was because of his choice has just become vacant as bishop.

According to the Worms Synod of 1496, the church and settlement still existed at that time. In the Palatinate Peasants' War in 1525, the landed gentry Erasmus (Asmus) von der Hauben from nearby Dirmstein stormed the settlement with a peasant crowd. Apart from the church and the associated monastery courtyard, the village of Berghaselbach was largely in ruins even then. After the Reformation was introduced by the Electors of the Palatinate , the Catholic cult was banned in the 16th century.

When the Spaniards occupied the area in 1624, during the Thirty Years' War , the locally responsible Bishop of Worms immediately requested the resumption of the earlier pilgrimage tradition on the Palmberg . This is the first documentary evidence of the local pilgrimage. Since it was supposed to revive, it must have been common beforehand. It was apparently aimed at the vintner patron St. Cyriakus, one of the fourteen emergency helpers who were highly revered at the time . As the war continued to completely gave Mountain Haselbach as a residence on after the last inhabitants of starvation and plague had died, there was a deserted village .

After the Peace of Westphalia , Elector Karl Ludwig reintroduced the Reformed Confession in 1648 and the pilgrimage was again suppressed. During the French War of Reunions , the area was temporarily occupied by the French and King Louis XIV ordered the Simultaneum in December 1684 . After that, the Jesuit priest Johann Hense was able to hold a Holy Mass again on the Palmberg for the first time and the Catholics were also allowed to use the cemetery around the church. At that time there were only ruins of the old church and houses. According to tradition in the Laumersheim parish register, the Catholic clergyman preached from an oven in the old monastery courtyard.

Kreuzkapelle

The Holy Cross Chapel on Palmberg

Baron Franz Caspar von Langen , now the Catholic local lord of Laumersheim, finally had a small pilgrimage chapel built on the foundation walls of the choir of the old parish church in 1721/22 ; the auxiliary bishop of Worms, Johann Baptist Gegg , consecrated it and the altar in it on May 3, 1722 to the patronage of the Holy Cross . The new patronage was evidently related to a cross relic donated by the nobleman and to the "fear of Christ brotherhood" initiated by him , which organized and supervised the pilgrimages to the Palmberg. Accordingly, the main pilgrimage time was the fasting, passion and suffering times , as well as the feasts of the cross. Baron von Langen also had the Palmberg designed as a so-called Calvary and erected stone stations of the Cross coming from Laumersheim , the last of which was "Jesus is laid in the grave" in the chapel itself. Your altar is designed to this day in such a way that there is a large cavity under the cafeteria , in the stipes , which served as a holy grave niche to place a corresponding wooden figure of the body of Jesus (from the 18th century), which was still used in 1939 was present. The stations of the cross were destroyed in 1790, a preserved wooden figure " Christ resting " is currently in the Catholic Church of St. Bartholomew in Laumersheim .

After the French Revolution had spread to the German areas on the left bank of the Rhine in the 1790s, church life was often subjected to severe restrictions by the French government. That is why the Laumersheim pastor Joseph Heß asked the clerical vicariate in Worms in 1807 whether he should continue the procession to Palmberg, which had "always" taken place in his parish on Sunday Laetare . In the 19th century it was still a tradition in Laumersheim to make a pilgrimage to the Palmberg on the night of Good Friday and Holy Saturday to keep watch at the Holy Sepulcher.

The Holy Cross Chapel on Palmberg is still one of the official pilgrimage sites of the now responsible diocese of Speyer, the main pilgrimage day with festive service is every year on Whit Monday. On June 3, 1946, the future Cardinal Joseph Wendel , at that time still Bishop of Speyer, rededicated the renovated chapel altar.

Building stock

Chapel, altar with holy grave niche

It is an octagonal, vaulted chapel with a tent roof. In the north side there is a large, arched gate with a transverse oval window above it, the only one in the whole building. The door is barred, you can see into the chapel, but not enter it. Outside, the walls are structured by arched niches that are reminiscent of church windows. Inside the chapel has rectangular wall niches and a cornice under the vault. Originally the building was open on three sides and the roof rested on the southern wall (altar area) and on six columns. Footfalls should be made on each of these pillars in honor of the Passion of Christ as part of the devotional exercise of the " Seven Footfalls ". In the 19th century the passages were walled up.

The chapel altar stands on the south wall, slightly embedded in a basket arch recess. As already mentioned, the sandstone stipes were constructed in such a way that they form a holy grave niche, which is, however, empty. Above it hangs a large cross with a colored wooden body from the first half of the 18th century. On the left and right are Maria and Johannes as assistant figures; Replicas of the Gothic originals, which are now in the Historical Museum of the Palatinate in Speyer . It is said to be figures from the former Berghaselbach parish church. Two Gothic angels, left and right of the Holy Grave, which are still described in 1939, are no longer present. According to Clemens Jöckle , they are also in the Speyer Museum together with the wooden figure of Christ's corpse. The chapel is laid out with sandstone slabs, the altar stands on a raised surface with a profiled sandstone step.

literature

  • Cultural monuments in Rhineland-Palatinate, Dürkheim district (Volume 2) , Volume 13 of: Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , Wernersche Verlagsgesellschaft, 2006, ISBN 3884622153 , p. 388 and 400; (Detail scans)
  • State Office for the Preservation of Monuments: The Art Monuments of Bavaria , Administrative Region Palatinate, VIII. City and District Frankenthal, Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1939, pp. 373, 377 u. 381-382; (Detail scan)
  • Clemens Jöckle : Places of pilgrimage in the diocese of Speyer , Verlag Schnell and Steiner, Munich, p. 18 u. 19, ISBN 3-7954-0499-1

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Hermann Holzbauer: Medieval adoration of saints: Heilige Walpurgis , Volume 5 of: Eichstätter Studies, New Series , Verlag Verlag Butzon & Bercker, 1972, p. 106, ISBN 3766684825 ; (Detail scan)
  2. ↑ Description of the coat of arms of Weisenheim am Sand at the bottom of the page
  3. ^ Georg Friedrich Kolb: Statistical-topographical description of Rhine Bavaria . tape 2 , p. 200 .
  4. ^ Philipp A. Pauli: History of the City of Worms , Worms 1825, page 120; (Digital scan)
  5. ^ Franz Xaver Glasschröder : Documents on the Palatinate Church History in the Middle Ages . Munich 1903, p. 192 (document proposal no. 453).
  6. ↑ Michael Frey: Attempt of a geographical-historical-statistical description of the royal. bayer. Rhine circle . tape 2 . F. C. Neidhard, 1836, p. 365 .
  7. ^ Willi Alter: The uprising of the farmers and citizens in the year 1525 in the Palatinate , Volume 93 of: Publications of the Palatinate Society for the Promotion of Science , Speyer, 1998, p. 357, ISBN 3932155157 ; (Detail scan)
  8. ^ Clemens Jöckle : Pilgrimage sites in the diocese of Speyer , Schnell und Steiner publishing house, Munich, p. 18, ISBN 3-7954-0499-1
  9. ↑ ibid
  10. ↑ ibid
  11. ↑ Archive for Middle Rhine Church History (Ed.): Excerpts from the protocol Laumersheim Kr. Frankenthal . tape II , 1722, pp. 318 .
  12. ^ Ludwig Stamer : Church history of the Palatinate , 3rd part, 2nd volume, p. 101, Pilger Verlag Speyer, 1959; (Detail scan)
  13. ^ State Office for the Preservation of Monuments: Die Kunstdenkmäler von Bayern , Administrative Region Palatinate, VIII. City and District Frankenthal, Oldenbourg Verlag, Munich 1939, p. 377
  14. ^ Werner Bornheim: Die Kunstdenkmäler von Rheinland-Pfalz , Volume 8, Deutscher Kunstverlag, 1982; (Detail scan)
  15. ↑ Georg May : The right to worship in the Diocese of Mainz at the time of Bishop Joseph Colmar (1802-1818) . Verlag Grüner, Amsterdam 1987, ISBN 90-6032-290-8 , pp. 291 .
  16. ^ Clemens Jöckle: Pilgrimage sites in the diocese of Speyer , Schnell und Steiner publishing house, Munich, p. 19, ISBN 3-7954-0499-1
  17. ↑ Consecration of the altar on the Palmberg . In: The Christian Pilgrim . No. 15 , 1946.
  18. ^ Clemens Jöckle: Pilgrimage sites in the diocese of Speyer , Schnell und Steiner publishing house, Munich, p. 18 u. 19, ISBN 3-7954-0499-1