Selnau Monastery

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The Selnau monastery on the altarpiece by Hans Leu , around 1500

The Cistercian - Kloster Selnau in the Swiss city of Zurich was founded in 1256 and as the Monastery of St. Martin in the wake of the Reformation dissolved 1525th

The name is first attested in 1256 in the form Seldenouwe and is composed of Middle High German selde 'apartment, hostel' and ouwe 'area by the water'.

location

The former Selnouw monastery on Jos Murer's canton map , 1566 (bottom left)

The buildings of the convent were built outside the medieval city walls within the boundaries of the city of Zurich between Sihl and the highway to Baden. Today the area is located in the Selnau district of the City quarter near the Selnau train station .

history

In 1256, a community of sisters from Neuenkirch in Zurich founded a new monastery with the help of the Bishop of Konstanz, the priest of the Church of St. Peter , citizens of Zurich and the nobles Adelheid and Rudolf von Küssnacht, ministers of the Counts of Kyburg . Adelheid von Küssnacht donated an estate in Selnau and St. Peter donated a field to build a church and a cemetery. The convent should have its own chaplain and be allowed to receive sacrifices. A group of sisters from St. Peter also joined the monastery.

From 1259/60, the religious community was that of the Benedictine rule following Cistercians incorporated and from around 1266 the abbot of the monastery Wettingen assumed. Since the Augustinian rule was mentioned when it was founded, the order seems to have been planned as a mendicant settlement . The core of the monastic possessions lay in Wiedikon and Leimbach as well as in the region of the city of Zurich.

The monastery convent comprised between 20 and 25 nuns from the lower nobility and respected middle-class families from Zurich and the wider region. In the battle of St. Jakob an der Sihl in 1443, the monastery was badly affected, the church was not consecrated until 1483 and the restoration was completed in 1490. In the 15th century, the convent, like the monastery on the Zürichberg, increasingly came under the supervision of the Zurich council. In 1525 the abbey was abolished, in which 21 nuns still lived. The monastery property went to the hospital, which continued to exist until 1767.

building

Detailed view of the monastery church on the altarpiece by Hans Leu
Ulmberg, in the foreground the asylum for the poor and sick, which burned down in 1767 . Watercolor around 1650, Zurich Central Library, Steinfels Collection.

On the Hans Leu d. Ä. Created altarpiece from the Chapel of the Twelve Messengers of the Grossmünster , the monastery buildings on the northern slope of the Uetliberg can be seen. This is the only contemporary representation of the monastery complex, in the form of a small group of buildings on a hill. The central church (Marienpatrozinium mentioned in 1273) is shown with a polygonal choir head and high ridge turret, the nave has seven high windows, with a space between the fourth and fifth window. This is interpreted as a subdivision of the church space, with the nuns' choir in the east and the conversational choir in the rear, western part of the single-nave hall church . To the west, a low building seems to be attached to it and another two-story building, separated from the church by a wall. On the city view by Gerold Edlibach from 1485, different but not detailed features can be seen. The church with the churchyard and monastery gate, the chapter house , the cloister , a dormitory , the chaplain's house, an inn and various farm buildings, as well as the nuns' room with stove heating, as well as an infirmary and a bath house are documented.

In 1528 the council of Zurich decided to demolish the monastery buildings of the convent that was abolished during the Reformation and to use "whatever roof, stones and other things are useful and well invented" to erect the paper mill and other buildings in the city. One building was used as a hostel and hospital or asylum for the poor and the sick until after a fire in 1767. In the new edition of the book Das Alte Zürich from 1878, Arnold Nüscheler mentions that "the monastery was located on the site of the complex in front of the district court (today official guardianship)". The orientation of the church to the east is mentioned, in the south and north the cells of the nuns and on the west side the farm buildings are connected. Archaeological research was based on this description and was essentially able to confirm the information.

Archaeological evidence

Wall remains from the excavation of 1873

In 1976 two parallel walls and two graves were found during work on the works control ditch. The remains of the monastery and an adjoining cemetery were archaeologically recorded in 1998 and 2004 in the area of ​​Gerechtigkeits-, Friedens- and Flössergasse during road works.

The buildings of the monastery were demolished so thoroughly after the Reformation that only a few remains of the building remain in the ground. The orientation and dimensions of the monastery church could be determined after the western wall, the south-west corner of the church and a larger piece of the former floor of the church at Selnaustrasse 18/20 had been exposed. At the same time, skeletons of the neighboring former asylum for the poor and the sick were discovered, which were probably buried in a great hurry. The dead could have been victims of the plague epidemic of 1611.

See also

literature

  • Dölf Wild, Jürg Hanser, Elisabeth Langenegger: Monastery walls in pipe trenches - The forgotten monastery in Selnau is gaining shape . In: Report on Archeology and Monument Preservation 2003-2006. gta-Verlag, Zurich, 2006, ISBN 3-85676-195-0 , pp. 32–34.
  • Dölf Wild, Jürg Hanser: New findings on the Cistercian monastery in Selnau . In: Report on Archeology and Monument Preservation 1999–2002. gta-Verlag, Zurich 2002, ISBN 3-85676-129-2 , pp. 59–71.

Web links

Commons : Kloster Selnau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Selnau (Zurich ZH) on ortsnames.ch, accessed on June 12, 2018.
  2. ↑ Schweizerisches Idiotikon , Volume VII Column 849, in the comment on the word article Nacht-Seld . See also: The street names of the city of Zurich. Explained by Paul Guyer and Guntram Saladin , 3rd edition reviewed and updated by Fritz Lendenmann, p. 230 (Selnaustrasse) .
  3. ↑ a b c d Dölf Wild, Jürg Hanser, Elisabeth Langenegger: New findings on the Cistercian monastery in Selnau. (PDF, 2 MB), accessed April 5, 2013.
  4. ↑ a b New findings on the Cistercian monastery in Selnau ( memento of the original from March 13, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , accessed April 5, 2013. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.stadt-zuerich.ch

Coordinates: 47 ° 22 '12.1 "  N , 8 ° 31' 57.5"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred eighty-two thousand six hundred thirty  /  247153