Oberstieg monastery

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The former monastery Oberstieg is located in the hamlet of Oberstieg , a current district of Wangenbourg-Engenthal in Alsace .

The monastery chapel

history

The monastery was founded in the 12th century by the Counts of Dagsburg as a small hospice to take care of pilgrims on their way over the Zaberner Steige , the pass over the Vosges . The first prior was Lambert, who began building the present chapel in 1221. The brothers called themselves Steigerbrüder ( Fratres Hospitalis de Steiga or simply fratres risenses ). The small monastery was founded in 1221 by Pope Honorius III. placed under his special protection, and Pope Innocent IV gave the brothers the right to freely choose an abbot . The convent flourished and in the 13th century built a monastery church in Zabern , where it had received land for a larger settlement, which is now the parish church “Notre-Dame-de-la-Nativité”. In 1303 most of the monks moved to Zabern and the convent, Steiga inferior (Unterstieg), was relocated there. Oberstieg lost its status as a monastery and became the Steiga superior priory . From the now motherhouse in Zabern, brothers were sent to the hospice in Oberstieg to take care of it.

The monastery in Zabern became the main house of the small and little-known order of the " Steigerherren " ("Ordo Steigensium"), a branch of the Augustinian canons . Besides Zabern and Oberstieg there were only four other and mostly small houses: in Lahr (since 1259), in Landau in der Pfalz (since 1276), on the Dürrenberg near Walscheid in Lorraine (since the late 13th century), and on the Beerenberg near Wülflingen / Winterthur (since 1365).

After the small order suffered a moral and economic decline in the 15th century, its houses were dissolved by Pope Sixtus IV on June 17, 1482 and their property was given to the monasteries of regulated Augustinian canons. Oberstieg was dissolved.

The Dominicans of the observance movement, who had to leave the Klingental monastery in Kleinbasel in 1482 after only a short stay and had initially found refuge in Rentingen near Sarrebourg , went to Oberstieg in 1487. There they were too remote in the inhospitable area, and in 1507 they left the place again. The Strasbourg bishop Wilhelm von Hohnstein then sent some Augustinian canons from Ittenwiller there, but they too left again in 1512. The bishop then incorporated the monastery into his diocese, and in 1541 he gave it to the Augustinian Canons Monastery of Notre Dame in Zabern, with the stipulation that 12 florins be given to the pastors in the area so that they can read mass there.

Today Oberstieg is a branch of the parish of Wangenbourg.

Monastery chapel

Interior of the chapel

The monastery chapel "Sainte-Marie-de-l'Assomption", which still exists today, was probably built immediately after the establishment of the branch under Prior Lambert and was restored in the 19th century. The chapel has been classified as a Monument Historique ( architectural monument ) since 1862 . It consists of a simple ship made of sandstone with three bays , to which a pentagonal broken apse adjoins. The ribbed vault is broken into an ogival arch. The side walls with the small windows are still purely Romanesque , while the cap capitals and the pointed arches inside show the influence of the Gothic . The Romanesque step portal corresponds in its design and its sculptural decoration to the southern transept wing of the Strasbourg cathedral . Since many stonemason's marks are also common, one assumes a common building hut .

Of the other monastery buildings, the refectory and the former house of the prior are still preserved.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Dagobert Fischer: The former Rentingen Monastery. Strasbourg, 1868.

Web links

Coordinates: 48 ° 38 ′ 32 "  N , 7 ° 18 ′ 22"  E