Ida (food)
Ida (* unknown; † on July 16 of an unknown year, possibly 971) was abbess of the Essen monastery in the 10th century . She probably came from the ruling family of the Liudolfinger . Their exact government dates are unknown. Ida is the first Essen abbess to be assigned an object from the Essen Cathedral Treasury , and she gave the name to the Ida column in Essen Minster.
Sources
As the Essen abbess, Ida is documented by the donor's inscription on the cross she donated and by several necrological entries. In the early modern Brussels abbess catalog, a list of abbesses named after the place where it was found, Ida is listed in the 12th century; the Essen canon Hiltrop, who set up an abbess calendar in the 16th century, put her on as the fifth abbess when she died in 971. The date of death is documented in the Merseburg necrology as "Ida abbatissa" on July 17th and in the Essen necrology as "Yda" on July 16. Further necrological entries can be found on July 16 in the necrology of the Borghorst monastery and in the memorial entries of an Essen sacramentary from the late 10th century. The information in Merseburg, which differs in the date, was probably a transmission or typographical error.
The most important source for the Ida Cross, her most famous work, is, in addition to the fragments that have been preserved, the document stating that the relics found in it were placed in the Gothic cross that replaced the Ida Cross. This cross, from the size of which conclusions can be drawn about the size of the Ida cross, is preserved in the cathedral treasury and today serves as a chapter cross for the Essen cathedral chapter.
Live and act
Ida's year of birth, place of birth, descent and exact term of office are not known. Her entry in the Merseburg Nekrolog, in which the historian Gerd Althoff recognized the family memoria of the Liudolfingers, allows conclusions to be drawn about Ida's origin . Ida belonged, as her name, one of the Liudolfingian guiding names , to the Liudolfing family, or was at least so closely connected that she was included in the family memorial of the Liudolfing family as a member of the family alliance and pact system. Ida's descent may have been the cause of her abbess office, regardless of whether she was elected by the convent, as the Institutio Sanctimonialium of 816 actually intended, or was appointed by the secular ruler. An abbess with close ties to the ruling house raised the community's standing, so that both the ruler and the monastery benefited. None of the existing sources contain an indication of the year, so Idas Abbatiat cannot be precisely dated. Since the earliest necrological entry comes from the pending hand of the sacramentary D 2 of the University and State Library Düsseldorf written in Essen , which is dated to the end of the 10th century, and the abbess Mathilde , who was in office until the 11th century, for the first time on 23 July 973 is documented as abbess, Ida must have been a predecessor of Mathilde. On the basis of which source Hiltrop assumed the year of death 971 is unknown; However, as a canon in Essen, Hiltrop had access to sources that might still exist in the 16th century. It is therefore assumed that Ida Mathildes was the direct predecessor. Since the Essen collegiate church burned down during the Abbatiat of Abbess Hathwig in 946, but the cross donated by Ida remained until the 15th century, Ida probably officiated after Hathwig. It is questionable whether Agana was still abbess between Hathwig and Ida ; Due to anomalies in the necrological tradition, Fremer pleaded for Agana to be viewed as Hathwig's predecessor. In any case, Ida can only have had a rather short abbatiat: In 966 Otto I gave the Oberhof Ehrenzell to the Essen monastery, although it is noticeable that no abbess is named in the document. This lack is partly interpreted to mean that the abbess chair was vacant at the time.
Details of Ida's administration that go beyond the foundation of the Ida Cross are not known. Her abbatiate falls into the heyday of the Essen monastery, which began under Abbess Hathwig and ended with Abbess Suanhild at the latest . After the abbey fire in 946, Hathwig had started to rebuild the abbey library and founded a scriptorium in which the canonesses diligently produced manuscripts. The Essen scriptorium was active until the term of office of Ida's successor Mathilde, in any case also during Ida's Abbatiat. In addition, the Essen monastery under Ida will have fulfilled the tasks of every Saxon women's monastery: to serve as a place of prayer remembrance for the donors and family members and to be a training center for the daughters of noble families. The Borghorst monastery , whose first canons including the abbess came from Essen monastery, was founded in 968, so possibly while Ida was abbess in Essen.
Ida's best-known work was the Ida cross, which was attached to the Ida column in the cathedral as a triumphal cross until the modern age of Essen. The inscription on the cross, which she mentions as the commissioner, served her memoria .
The Ida Cross
The Ida Cross was part of the furnishings of the Essen Minster , which was rebuilt by Abbess Hathwig after the fire disaster of 946, in which the Essen collegiate church burned down . It stood on the cross column, now known as the "Ida column", behind the cross altar of the church. The cross was removed from the column in the 15th century - it may have been damaged by the fire in the cathedral in 1275 and a collapse of the vault - and replaced by a more modern cross. Two fragments have survived from the Ida cross, the exact appearance of which is unknown: the inscription plate and the Annunciation fragment. A plaster cast of a third fragment, the magician fragment, which may have belonged to the cross, existed at the beginning of the 20th century and has since been lost. Until 2008, when investigations found that the material did not correspond to that of the other fragments, a fragment of an ascension scene preserved in the cathedral treasury (Essen cathedral treasury inv.no.10) was also regarded as a fragment of the cross.
The fact that Ida donated the Ida Cross was at times questionable; In 1993 Klaus Gereon Beuckers saw the Cologne abbess Ida of the St. Maria Abbey in the Capitol as the donor of the cross. Ida was connected to the Essen monastery through her sister, the abbess Theophanu . Due to more recent findings on the inscription plate and the relics that were originally in the Ida cross, this thesis is no longer supported.
The inscription plate
The inscription plate of the Ida Cross (Essen Cathedral Treasury Inv.No. 9) consists of two parts that are together 15 cm high and 53.5 cm wide. The material is gold-plated copper sheet. The embossed inscription "ISTAM CRUCEM (I) DA ABBATISSA FIERI IUSSIT" (German: Abbess Ida had this cross made ) is executed in capital , in which, however, the E comes from the uncial , whereby the letter spacing is not even. There is a cut lily ornament on the right edge. The plate shows breakouts, among other things the first letter of the donor's name is missing. Already George Humann has on the assumption that the plate once also had a decorative lily on the left edge and the inscription was placed in the center, adds the donor names to Ida. The epigraphist Sonja Hermann dates the inscription plate to the 10th century due to individual features such as the proportions of the letters and details in the execution of the letters M and R.
The Annunciation Fragment
A relief fragment showing the Annunciation to Mary is considered to be another fragment of the Ida cross. The fragment (Essen Cathedral Treasury Inv.-No. 11) is embossed in copper and gilded, so it corresponds to the inscription tablet. It measures 14.8 cm in height and is still 9.5 cm wide. The sheet metal was probably originally rectangular and two or three times wider. In addition to the similar height and the identical material, the similarity of the foot of the writing desk to the lily ornament of the inscription plate is regarded as an indication of the origin of the same object. Because of the desk with the open book, the fragment was long regarded as a depiction of the Evangelist; However, since the seated figure wears a veil on its head, the interpretation as Maria has prevailed. The relief is in the tradition of Carolingian book illumination from Reims and the court school of Charlemagne .
The lost magician fragment
Another fragment of the Ida cross was possibly a plaque showing the three wise men from the East who joyfully greet the star of Bethlehem ( Mt 2.10 EU ). The elliptical rays of the star are seen as an argument in favor of belonging to the Ida cross. Uniform elements can be found on the stand of the lectern on the Annunciation fragment. The width of the fragment also corresponded roughly to the height of the other two fragments, so that it would be possible that the fragment was attached to the vertical cross bar of the Ida cross.
The fragment itself was already lost in Georg Humann's time , so that no statement can be made about the material. The cast shown has now also been lost, presumably due to a bomb hit in the Minster Treasury during World War II. The assignment to the Ida cross is not certain, as there is another fragment of a drifting work in the Essen cathedral treasury which, due to the material (gold-plated brass sheet), cannot have belonged to the Ida cross. This fragment (Essen Cathedral Treasury Inv. No. 10) also shows a scene from the life of Christ, so that it was also regarded as a fragment of the Ida cross until 2008, when the material deviation was recognized. Hermann Schnitzler and already Georg Humann saw in details a greater proximity of the magician fragment to this fragment.
Attempted reconstruction
In 1993, Klaus Gereon Beuckers attempted a reconstruction of the cross based on the assumption that all four fragments belonged to the Ida cross. Beuckers also assumed that the Gothic chapter cross, which replaced the Ida cross on the cross column, was at least the same size as the Ida cross. The chapter cross measures 125 cm in height and 107 cm in width, the body itself is 65 cm high. Beuckers assumed that the inscription plaque on the back of the cross was centered on the horizontal cross beam. According to Beuckers, there were drifting work with the four evangelists at the ends of the cross beams at the back, including the fragment of the Annunciation, which Beuckers saw as an evangelist fragment. The reconstructed width of the inscription plate plus twice the width of the "Evangelist fragment" was approximately 104 cm, which corresponds roughly to the width of the horizontal cross bar of the Succession Cross. After the reconstruction, the front of the cross had a christological program. It dominated the body, which was probably a driving work, and which had a reliquary deposit. After this reconstruction, the magician's fragment was located under the corpus, and the ascension fragment above the corpus. The height of the two fragments plus the height of the body of the successor cross results in the height of the Gothic cross stem, so that overall the Ida cross corresponded in size to its successor.
In the case of the cross, which was depicted on the epitaph of the Essen abbess Katharina von Tecklenburg (1517–1560), created around 1560 , Beuckers recognized a noticeable break in style in the drawing of the upper body: the drawing of the upper body with the head lowered over a fleshy chest with a bulging belly show similarities to the style- defining Gero cross in the late 10th and 11th centuries . Due to the style break, Beuckers assumed that the artist of the epitaph wanted to depict a cross that actually existed in Essen, which would then have to have been the Ida cross that had already been reworked in the lower body. According to this thesis, the corpus of the Gothic chapter cross would be identical to the corpus of the Ida cross, which had been reshaped through numerous revisions and repairs.
This reconstruction of the Ida cross is outdated in some points due to the progress of research, so Beuckers still used the Ascension fragment, which has now been recognized as deviating in the material, and interpreted the Annunciation fragment with the older literature as a depiction of the Evangelists. The affixing of the inscription plate on the back of the horizontal cross beam is safe, as it would have covered the document on the front of the corpus, the existence of which is documented. The depiction of the Annunciation allows the conclusion that the obverse actually had a Christological program, possibly including the Annunciation, the appearance of Christ as the guiding star of the magicians (if the magician fragment belonged to the cross) and the suffering of Christ depicted by the corpus. This program would have usefully concluded with a representation of the Ascension.
Deposited relics
Like many large medieval sculptures, the Ida cross contained relics deposited . Based on a document from 1413, when the cross was removed from the column and opened, it is known which relics were then in the cross. These were Christ relics, namely earth from the hill of Golgotha , splinters from the Holy Cross and the remains of Christ's robes. After the cross was repaired or replaced and the vault of the Essen collegiate church was repaired, further relics were added 37 years later, namely splinters from the crown of thorns and the scourge column, parts of the stones that anchored the Holy Cross and stones from the Holy Sepulcher . The inscription on the cross altar itself was written in dactylic hexameters .
The relics were moved from the Ida cross to the newer Gothic cross, but have now been removed and are in the cathedral treasury. An examination of the fabric coverings (Essen Cathedral Treasury Inv.-No. 69a 1.1 and 2.1) showed that the relics were already covered in extremely valuable and rare silk fabrics in the Middle Ages. These were sections of Persian and Sogdrian silk that had reached Europe via Byzantium in the 8th and 9th centuries . The two largest pieces measure 19 cm × 27 cm and 19 cm × 43 cm, respectively. The one piece, which according to the weaving technique comes from the 11th century and originally belonged to a garment, shows tone-on-tone gripping in four-passages between dense tendrils. The second piece of silk consists of a very thin silk veil, the edges of which are adorned with strips of real gold and silver. There are no comparative pieces for this material, which was already very valuable back then.
The Ida column
The Ida column served as a base for the Ida cross. It consists of a 46.5 cm high plinth with an Attic base made of sandstone , a 91 cm high fluted sandstone drum, the 319 cm high, tapered column made of brownish-yellow marble and the 65 cm high Corinthian capital made of two limestone slabs. The drum and the column itself are ancient spoils , the capital was made in the 10th century. The lower plate of the capital shows two wreaths of leaves and cauli shafts that end with a ledge. The expansive upper plate is decorated with calyxes that grow up over the shafts of the cheekbones. Behind these are volute stalks with a hole decoration, behind which the Kalathos rounding appears with a row of holes . The cover plate is strongly drawn in and decorated with an egg stick . Stylistically related are the capitals of the Michaelskapelle in Fulda, as well as the later capitals in the crypt of the Essen Minster and on the gallery of the west building, as well as capitals in the Ludgerid crypt of the Werden Abbey and in the Werden Lucius Church .
Archaeological excavations in the war-torn cathedral uncovered the foundations of the former cross altar in the nave. These were about 1.40 m wide, but 2.80 m deep, so that they also served as the foundation for the cross column. It is not known when the cross altar was erected after the fire of 946; it is therefore possible that the column was already set up under Hathwig and that Ida only donated the cross. The column is the oldest furnishing element of the Essen Minster. Connections of a cross altar with a cross column are not uncommon in Ottonian art, the best known example is the Hildesheim Bernwards column . The Ida column stood in its original location until 1755, when the abbess Franziska Christine von Pfalz-Sulzbach had the interior of the minster baroque and demolished the cross altar and column. After that it lay broken until 1852 partly in the cloister , partly in the basement of the treasury. In 1852 the pastor of the Münster parish had it reassembled and placed next to the entrance to the crypt. In the course of the regotisation of the minster, she was moved to the west choir in 1878. The column was damaged in this place during World War II. After the rebuilding of the minster, the column was placed in the east choir of the minster behind the altar and crowned with a modern cross created by the sculptor and Benedictine nun Lioba Munz .
Memoria
Ida's year of death, like that of many other medieval people, is not recorded because, in the context of commemorating the dead, only the annually recurring anniversary of death was important. Ida's death day, July 16, is recorded in several necrologists from monasteries and monasteries. In Essen, according to the Essen necrology from around 1300, Ida was commemorated annually with four masses and illumination of her grave, which was probably in the central nave of the collegiate church in front of the altar. The extent of the commemoration corresponds to that of her successor Mathilde and suggests that Ida was still regarded as one of the more important early abbesses in the Essen monastery on the threshold of the 14th century. Ida was also commemorated on November 17th, when the scholastic of the monastery had to give a denarius and a candle to the St. Quintin's Chapel , where the candle was to burn for a whole night in memory of the abbesses Ida, Agana and all the deceased .
literature
- Walter Zimmermann: The minster to eat. , Düsseldorf 1956, p.
- Hermann Schnitzler : Supplements to the late Carolingian and early Hottonian goldsmith's art , in: Festschrift for Peter Metz , Berlin 1965, p.
- Alfred Pothmann: The abbesses of the Essen monastery. In: Münster am Hellweg, bulletin of the Association for the Preservation of the Essen Minster. Essen 1987, pp. 5-11.
- Klaus Gereon Beuckers : The Ottonian cross from the age of the cross of the former Essen women's collegiate church , In: Das Münster am Hellweg , 1994, p. 24ff.
- Birgitta Falk (Ed.): Gold before Black - The Essen Cathedral Treasure on Zollverein, catalog for the exhibition, Klartext Verlag Essen 2008. ISBN 978-3-8375-0050-9 , pp. 56–57.
- Tobias Nüssel: Reflections on the Essen abbesses between Wicburg and Mathilde In: Das Münster am Hellweg , yearbook of the association for the preservation of the Essen Münsters-Münsterbauverein eV, Essen 2010, pp. 7–31
Individual evidence
- ^ Ribbeck: Ein Essener Necrologium , Essener Contributions, 1900, p. 96, note 4.
- ↑ Althoff, Noble and Royal Families , p. 293.
- ↑ Ludger Körntgen : Between rulers and saints , in: Herrschaft, Liturgie und Raum , Essen 2002, pp. 16-17.
- ↑ Fremer, Abbess Theophanu , p. 39.
- ^ Sonja Hermann: Inscription plate from Ida-Kreuz , in: Catalog Gold vor Schwarz, Essen 2008, pp. 56–57.
- ↑ Birgitta Falk: Relief fragment with the Annunciation to Maria , in: Catalog Gold vor Schwarz , Essen 2008, p. 58
- ↑ Schnitzler, Supplements to the Late Carolingian and Early Hottonian Goldsmith's Art , p. 107
- ↑ Humann, The artworks of the Münsterkirche in Essen , p. 293
- ↑ Beuckers, The Ottonian Cross , MaH 1994, 24ff.
- ↑ Annemarie Stauffer: Reliquary covers from the chapter cross , in: Catalog Gold vor Schwarz , Essen 2008, p. 230.
- ↑ Zimmermann: Das Münster zu Essen, pp. 194–195.
- ^ Zimmermann: Das Münster zu Essen , p. 86.
| personal data | |
|---|---|
| SURNAME | Ida |
| ALTERNATIVE NAMES | Yda |
| BRIEF DESCRIPTION | Abbess of the Essen monastery |
| DATE OF BIRTH | 9th century or 10th century |
| DATE OF DEATH | 10th century |