Visby churches
In the Middle Ages Visby on Gotland had more churches than any town in Sweden , although Gotland only belonged to it from 1288 to 1361 before 1645. There were at least twelve churches inside the city walls and two churches outside. Of these fourteen places of worship only the cathedral is still intact today , the rest are partly ruins and partly have completely disappeared.
In contrast , many of the Gotland country churches are still well preserved.
The Gutasaga
The Gutasaga reports that Botair, a man from Akebäck , built the first church around ten kilometers southeast of Visby at a place called Kulstäde. When this was burned down after a short time, he built a new one in "Vi", today's Visby, which nobody dared to destroy. It was named All Saints Church and, according to legend, was located in front of the steep coast (in Swedish klint ) at the point "which is now called Peter's Church". These events can be found in the 11th or 12th century. The wooden church had already disappeared when the Gutasaga was written. At that time Visby must have been a port for a long time, with a different social structure than rural Gotland and subject to external influences.
Origin of the Churches
Only a few of the city churches of Visby were parish churches. Most of them had special functions. St. Katharina (St. Karin), St. Nikolaus and the Gertrudenkapelle belonged to different monasteries. St. George (Göran) belonged to a monastery . An indeterminate number were, in some cases quite small, trading churches that belonged to foreign merchants' cooperatives. Due to changed circumstances, the factories in particular were later given a different status. At the Marienkirche, the church of German merchants , the transition to Visby Cathedral is documented.
Decline of the churches
The medieval churches were destroyed in the second quarter of the 16th century when the powerful Hanseatic city of Lübeck supported Frederik in the Danish throne dispute between Christian II and Frederik I , while Søren Norby fought for Christian II as the Danish governor on Gotland, even after his official Abdication in 1523.
When the Lübeckers conquered Visby in 1525 and set fire to four places, several but not all of the churches went up in flames. St. Nikolai, St. Gertrud and the previously abandoned St. Jakobskirche were looted. With the Reformation, St. Hans became a town church and all other churches were given up. On mid-fast 1528, the citizens held themselves harmless for the plundering of the city by the Lübeckers at the ruling church of the Holy Trinity. In 1533/34 the new Danish governor Henrik Nielsen Rosenkrantz had parts of the churches of St. Hans and St. Peter built next to one another torn down so that his seat in Visborg Slott could not be bombarded from there . So only St. Mary's Cathedral remained and became the new town church. In the 17th and 19th centuries, the two churches were further demolished in order to obtain building material.
Although the churches were destroyed more than 480 years ago, there is still more of some of the walls than some of the churches in Germany or Poland that have been restored today at the end of the Second World War .
List of the town churches of Visby
Intact
| Sankta Maria Domkyrka | 13th Century |
|
| All Saints Chapel | Cemetery chapel, 1967 | |
| Visborg Church | 1969 |
|
ruins
| Holy Spirit Church | Octagon |
|
| Holy Trinity Church ( Drotten - "Dominion Church ") |
|
|
| St. Clement | 13th Century |
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|
| St. George (Göran) |
|
|
| St. Gertrude | Cistercian monastery Solberga |
|
| St. Johannes and St. Peter (St. Hans and St. Per) |
two churches next to each other |
|
| St. Kathrina ( St. Karin ) |
Franciscan Sisters |
|
| St. Laurentius (St. Lars.) |
Byzantine central building |
|
| St. Nicholas | Dominican and German community |
|
| St. Olaf |
|
Disappeared
- the Russian Church
- St. Jacob
- St. Michael
- Visborg Castle Church
See also
literature
- Marita Jonsson, Sven-Olof Lindquist: Gotland cultural guide. Almqvist & Wiksell, Uppsala 1993, ISBN 91-88036-09-X .
- Erland Lagerlöf, Gunnar Svahnström: The churches of Gotland. Stein, Kiel 1991, ISBN 3-89392-049-8 .