Rouffach Monastery
The Rouffach Monastery ( French Couvent des Récollets de Rouffach ) is a former Franciscan monastery in the Alsatian municipality of Rouffach . The church and the monastery building are listed as a monument historique .
history
The monastery was a Franciscan monastery in 1250 by brothers of the 1210 founded the Franciscan order founded. The monastery was able to grow rapidly thanks to foundations. The small hospitium with chapel became a convent with a church in the 13th century . He belonged to the Strasbourg order province ( Provincia Argentina , also "Upper German Province"). In 1435 the convention joined the reform movement of the Observants . Provincial Minister Jodokus praised the brothers of the convent in Rouffach, they lived in regulari observantia "in regular observance".
The monastery was especially famous for its school, from which several learned humanists emerged around 1500, including a rector of Heidelberg University, the historian Matern Berler, the Strasbourg auxiliary bishop Johannes Siegrist and the cosmographer Sebastian Münster . From 1487 the German Order settled in Rouffach in the immediate vicinity of the monastery. The monks allowed the knights to hold services in the south aisle.
In 1564 the monastery was abandoned, as only two monks lived in the monastery at last. There were first attempts to revitalize the monastery as early as 1565, but when some monastery buildings were badly damaged in a fire, the monastery was completely abandoned. At that time the monastery was looked after by two priests and a lay brother. It was not repopulated until 1591 on the initiative of Count Eberhard von Manderscheid-Blankenheim , who was Bailli von Rouffach. During the French Revolution, the monastery was ravaged and secularized in 1791. In 1792 it was used as a barracks, in 1794 as a military hospital and in 1795 as a prison. The buildings stood empty for a short time, then in the 1830s and 1840s private apartments and a boarding school for girls were housed here. In the 1850s, the monastery buildings housed a weaving mill and a dye works, and then a printing works until 1875. before the cantonal court (later the Tribunal d'Iinstance ) resided in the convent until it was dissolved in 1970.
The church was auctioned off to two Rouffacher citizens in 1793. In 1797 the parish of Rouffach leased the church as an "auxiliary chapel" and held services here again. In the years 1819 to 1826, the four owners of the church building bequeathed their property of one quarter each to the town of Rouffach, which thus became the sole property of the church. The only condition for the donations was that the church would receive it for the service. In 1840 the Katharinenkirche was extensively restored. In the 1860s, it served as a parish church for almost a decade during the renovation of the town church.
Katharinenkirche
The profaned church was built in the 13th century as a three-aisled, flat-roofed basilica in the style of a mendicant order church; instead of a tower or westwork , it has a roof turret . The church was given its present form between 1490 and 1505. The central and side aisles are separated by six wide arcades on slender columns. An elongated choir closed on three sides is attached to the nave, which was given a simple wooden rood screen in 1604 (later removed). The upper arcades are broken through by oculi . The window openings in the side aisles were changed in the 15th century and received the Gothic pointed arches typical of the time. The tracery has been removed. The church was used in the 16th and 17th centuries as a burial place for the Commander of the nearby Teutonic Order . Numerous splendid epitaphs have been preserved .
There are buttresses to the north of the church, but the buttresses are hidden under the roof. On one of these pillars there is an outside pulpit with tracery parapet accessible from the inside . From here the priests gave speeches to the citizens of the city gathered in the cemetery. It is the only specimen of its kind in Alsace.
The tomb of Count von Manderscheid, who died in 1607, is located in the chapel of St. Maria Magdalena (later the sacristy). A sundial was painted on the outer wall of the south aisle , with a mural depicting a rare cosmology . A roof turret with a bell and curved hood sits in the center of the gable roof. The buildings erected north of the church are more recent. Originally there was a cemetery here.
The portal for the laity was on the north side of the church, the brothers came through the portal on the north-west side with basket arches and pear-staff robes .
The church's furnishings included a wooden relief of the Lamentation of Christ from the 15th century, which is now kept in the Unterlinden Museum in Colmar . The baroque high altar dates from 1710 and was created by Johann Benedikt Reissmüller . The painted altar panel shows the martyrdom of St. Catherine of Alexandria . The choir stalls date from the 14th century. A fresco showing the sufferings of John Nepomuk has also been preserved. The baroque side altars are dedicated to the founder of the order, Francis of Assisi and St. Dedicated to Anna. The altar panel of an Anna the third of herself with donors and angels making music probably comes from a pupil of Martin Schongauer and was made around 1490. It is also in the museum in Colmar.
Convent building
The central 15th-century convent building underwent major changes in the 19th century when it became the courthouse. The facade was upgraded and received a classicist central projection with rich relief decoration. A sandstone balustrade with a coat of arms and a floral pattern completes the projections to the roof. The interior has also undergone major changes several times in the past centuries due to the very different uses. Today the buildings serve as the city archive (east wing) and exhibition space (south wing). Remains of the former cloister behind the building are still preserved, including the western wall with pointed arches.
literature
- Theobald Walter: The Minorite Monastery of St. Katharina in Rufach . In: Journal of the Society for the Promotion of History, Antiquity and Folklore of Freiburg, the Breisgau and the adjacent landscapes , (= Volume 7 of the New Version, Alemannia ), 1906/07, pp. 14-65 ( digitized by the Albert- Ludwig University of Freiburg)
- Walter Hotz : Handbook of the art monuments in Alsace and Lorraine . Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich / Berlin 1973, p. 221
- Dominique Toursel-Harster, Jean-Pierre Beck, Guy Bronner: Alsace. Dictionnaire des monuments historiques . La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 1995, pp. 365-367.
See also
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry no. PA00085768 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ↑ Entry no. PA00085637 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ↑ Volker Honemann : The reform movements of the 15th and early 16th centuries in Saxonia. In: Volker Honemann (Ed.): From the beginnings to the Reformation. (= History of the Saxon Franciscan Province from its founding to the beginning of the 21st century , vol. 1) Ferdinand Schöningh, Paderborn 2015, ISBN 978-3-506-76989-3 , pp. 45–163, here p. 67.
Coordinates: 47 ° 57 '25.9 " N , 7 ° 17' 40.6" E