Herford vision
The Herford vision documented for the 11th century is considered to be the oldest known apparition of Mary north of the Alps. The legend has it that at a June 19 on the day of Saint Gervase and Protasius on, a shepherd Luttenberg the Virgin Mary have appeared.
Year of appearance
The year in which the vision is said to have occurred is not exactly known. Some sources speak of 940, while other records report that the news went through Europe like wildfire between 926 and 973. It is also possible that the apparition did not take place until 1011.
The legend
There are different versions of the legend. Either it was a shepherd or shepherd who tended his sheep on the Herford Luttenberg, or a beggar, more precisely a poor and physically weak man who was on the way to the Herford monastery, where he asked for a charitable gift wanted to ask.
Suddenly the Virgin Mary appeared to him in a shining sea of lights. She gave him a message to the abbess of the Herford women's monastery, which consisted of two parts: Instead of the splendor during the reconstruction of the monastery destroyed by the Hungarians, she should take care of the spiritual life and observe the rules of the order so that the community of nuns would regain strength. In addition, a place of remembrance should be created at the place of the apparition, the Herford Marienkirche , which was later built . To mark the place, the man should make a wooden cross from a branch. As a token of truthfulness, Mary promised to sit on the cross in the form of a white dove as soon as the nuns appeared.
Of course, the nuns did not believe the man and put him in chains. However, when he survived the fire and water test unscathed, they went to Luttenberg and found the man's statement confirmed. A white dove actually sat on the cross. The abbess ruefully vowed improvement and promised to start building the church immediately. The chains of the visionary boy are said to have been seen in St. Mary's Church for a long time.
In another version, Mary appeared to the man on a tree in the form of a dove. The stump of this tree is inside the altar of the Marienkirche. It was considered to work miraculously and should help against toothache. In a document from 1262, the offering box is mentioned next to the tree stump on which pilgrims made rich offerings. The crutches of the healed sick hung in front of the church gate. Until 1712 there was a pictorial representation of the vision on the south wall of the church.
By the year 1000, only 30 apparitions of the Virgin Mary had come down to us from all of Christianity, most of them from Byzantium and southern Europe. The twenty-seventh was the Herford vision.
History of the monastery and the church on the mountain
After the apparition founded Godesdiu that was from before 1002 to after 1040 Abbess of downtown, on the mountain for ladies of the gentry, the pin on the mountain , the daughter of the monastery Herford Abbey . It was located in the area of St. Mary's Church until secularization .
It is not clear when the first church was built on the site of the apparition of Mary. It was probably the year 1011. The first cross-shaped church is said to have been consecrated in 1017 or 1018 by the Paderborn bishop Meinwerk . At times, however, 1325 was also assumed to be the year of consecration. The current building of the Marienkirche was built between 1290 and 1350.
The area around the church is called Stiftberg today .
While the Reformation was introduced in the city of Herford in 1529/1530 (see Introduction of the Reformation in Herford ) and in Herford Abbey in 1533, the Reformation did not reach the Stiftberg with its abbey and church until 1548. From 1622 church registers were introduced and in 1790 the abbess lent the canons a cross of their own on the mountain.
Secularization threatened from 1802 . The monastery administration was transferred to a judicial commissioner. In 1803 the Prussian king still reserved the decision on the future of the monastery. On December 1, 1810, the abolition of the pen took place under the king of the Kingdom of Westphalia , Jérôme Bonaparte . After secularization, the community of Stiftberg was even more involved in the administration of the city.
Fair, vision play and pageant
To commemorate the apparition of Mary, a large fair took place every year in June until 2010 , which was also called the Herford Vision . It was one of the oldest German folk festivals that had its origins in a church event.
The fair developed from a fair , which was initially organized around the Marienkirche. Other locations in the 1870s to 1880s were the Pagenmarkt, the Schützenwiese between Gartenstrasse and Visionstrasse and then the Alte and Neue Markt. From 1910 to 1957 the vision was directed towards the Lübberbruch , until the city theater and the Ravensberger grammar school were built there. From 1958 to 2007 the Kiewiese opposite the Ludwig-Jahn-Stadion and the water park H2O was used. From 2008 to 2010 the fair was held in the Herford Münster , City Hall and Alter Markt area.
From 1999 to 2010, on the first Saturday of the fair on the Luttenberg, a vision play, in which the events of the apparition of Mary were re-enacted, and an ecumenical service took place. Then a pageant with the participation of Herford institutions and associations moved to the fairground on the Kiewiese or in the city center. In the anniversary year 2011 there was the ecumenical service, the vision play and then a festival at St. Mary's Church with the participation of the Archbishop of Paderborn.
Pilgrimages
Herford became a place of pilgrimage in the Middle Ages when the pilgrims , especially the Jacob pilgrims on the way to Santiago de Compostela , came to the Stiftberg in large numbers.
Deanery pilgrimages have been taking place regularly since 1981 . In addition, more than 20 groups of pilgrims from Westphalia and the surrounding area come to Herford every year.
On September 12, 1981, a pilgrimage chapel was inaugurated at the Maria Rast am Langenberg retirement home by Archbishop Degenhardt from Paderborn . On September 18, 2005, the Apostolic Nuncio Dr. Erwin Josef Ender a double Madonna in the chapel.
See also
literature
- Wolfgang Otto, Dirk Nothoff: The Marienkirche in Herford. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1969, p. 2 ( Große Baudenkmäler 232).
- Dietmar Sauermann (Hrsg.): Legendary places. A companion through the legendary world of Westphalia. Ardey, Münster 1993, ISBN 3-87023-040-1 , p. 86ff. ( Cultural Landscape Westphalia 2).
Coordinates: 52 ° 6 ′ 58.3 " N , 8 ° 41 ′ 12" E