St. Katharinental Monastery

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View from the north

The St. Katharinental Monastery was a Dominican monastery near Diessenhofen on the territory of the municipality of Willisdorf in the canton of Thurgau am Rhein, which was independent until 2000, and belonged to the Diocese of Constance . Today a clinic for the canton of Thurgau for rehabilitation and long-term care is housed in the monastery buildings.

History of the monastery

View from the former cemetery

The beginnings of the St. Katharinental Monastery can be inferred above all from the - albeit legendarily exaggerated - founding history, which has been handed down in several versions in the text corpus of the St. Katharinental Sisters' Book; it is a model that reflects the development of many women's convents in the 13th century.

The origin was a small community of beguines living in poverty who had come together to lead a life together in the course of the religious poverty movement of that time in Winterthur . Around 1230 they moved to Diessenhofen, where the priest and hospital nurse Hug planned to build a women's convent. In 1242 they moved to the so-called St. Katharinental on the Rhine outside the city to build the monastery there. The land was donated by Count Hartmann IV of Kyburg , who also helped found the Oetenbach and Töss monasteries . The first prioress was the noble widow Williburg von Hünikon. In 1245 the monastery was incorporated into the Dominican order by Pope Innocent IV ; the cura monialium (nuns' pastoral care) was incumbent on the Dominican convent of Constance .

Supported by nobles and wealthy middle-class families in the region (up to Schaffhausen , Konstanz and Villingen ), the monastery experienced a rapid upswing in terms of personnel, economy and spirit. This became externally visible in the construction of a convent house and the construction of a church with several altars, which was consecrated in 1269 by Albertus Magnus . Church patrons were Saint Catherine of Alexandria , a patroness of the Dominican Order, and Nikolaus von Myra , who was particularly venerated in the Lake Constance area . By 1280 the monastery already had 150 nuns. Her intense spiritual life is attested in the monastery sisters' book (see below), which also documents Master Eckhart's pastoral work in St. Katharinental (after 1313); It is very likely that Heinrich Seuse also worked in this monastery afterwards . At the same time the monastery was furnished with a number of excellent works of art; Particularly famous is a group of Christ and John by the master Heinrich von Konstanz now in Antwerp . Numerous manuscripts were created in the monastery’s own scriptorium . a. also attest to a rich musical culture (see below: Graduals of St. Katharinental).

St. Katharinental also became important in the course of the monastic reform efforts of the 15th century. At the instigation of Konrad von Prussen († 1426), five Katharinental nuns moved to Schönensteinbach as early as 1399 to bring the local monastery to strict observance; from there, other monasteries were reformed. There was also a lively exchange of manuscripts for the establishment or expansion of the respective monastery libraries. In the second phase of the monastic reform movement, Johannes Meyer (1422–1482) also used the Katharinental Sisters' Book in line with the reformist tendency.

After the monastery survived the turmoil of the Reformation that threatened its existence , it experienced a new heyday in the 18th century under the prioress Josepha Dominica von Rottenberg (1676–1738), who was not only active as a writer and reformer in the spirit of Tridentine , but also in the monastery lent its current structural form (see below: monastery church). In these and the following decades, St. Katharinental also experienced a musical heyday. The extensive sheet music that has been preserved gives a picture of the music-making practice at that time.

At the end of the century, secularization efforts made themselves felt. After the Helvetic government had confiscated the monastery property in 1798, the monastery was finally abolished in 1869 and converted into a retirement and nursing home by the canton of Thurgau. The last 13 sisters first moved to Schänis , in 1906 they were admitted to the Dominican convent in Weesen .

St. Catherine's Book of Sisters

Due to its unbroken tradition well into the 18th century, with constant expansion of the basic inventory, the St. Katharinental Sister Book is a specialty among the comparable works of the southern German and Swiss Dominican convents.

It was probably written before the mid-14th century by one or more unknown authors who had various types of source material. A collection of short vitae of gifted sisters was supposed to keep alive the memory of a founding period that was felt to be heroic and at the same time to serve the reputation of the monastery. Individual vitae, which were probably conceived in the manner of a grace vita , were also incorporated. Questions about everyday life in the monastery, religious conduct and theological issues, which were obviously discussed with Meister Eckhart, among others, are discussed. What is fundamental is a religiosity which the term " mysticism " denotes only imprecisely or misleadingly; It is above all about the personal experience of the closeness of a gracious, loving and merciful God who turns to people.

The re-editing of the sister book by Johannes Meyer in 1454 shows that the visionary imagery of the Viten could be misunderstood even then; Meyer now put the emphasis on the emphasis on a rule-compliant striving for virtue. The copies of the 17th and 18th centuries then testify above all to church historical interest.

Overall, the Katharinentaler Sisterbuch is an important document not only of the spiritual literature of the 14th century, but also of the transmission and reception of such literature in general.

Monastery church

inner space

In the years 1715 to 1718 the prioress Josepha Dominica von Rottenberg (see above) had the present baroque monastery built by the well-known Vorarlberg master builder Franz Beer (1660–1726) instead of the old monastery . From 1732 to 1735 his son Johann Michael Beer (1700–1767) built the new monastery church of St. Katharinental according to his plans . It is considered an important example of the southern German baroque.

The organ on the west gallery was built between 1735 and 1741 and was designed by the master organ builder Johann Jakob Bommer from Weingarten TG . The instrument, which became unplayable after the abolition of the monastery, was restored by Orgelbau Kuhn from 1965 to 1969.

The paintings in the church, hermit chapel and sacristy come from the Constance court painter Jacob Carl Stauder (1694–1756), who decorated the church with numerous paintings between 1733 and 1738. The church was restored in 2005-2007.

The church belongs to the Diessenhofen parish, but is rarely used for church services. The church interior can be viewed as part of a weekly guided tour or daily through a grid below the gallery.

Graduals of St. Catherine

The gradual of St. Katharinental is one of the most important Gothic works of art in Switzerland and of great value for the art and cultural history of the early late Middle Ages. Made around 1312, it comprises 628 pages (314 sheets) with Latin chants in Gothic script in the Gregorian four-line system and has a format of 48 × 35 cm. A handwritten entry on the inside of the front cover shows that the manuscript comes from St. Katharinental. The work is decorated with 71 painted miniatures richly decorated with gold leaf and 13 ornamental initials as well as numerous ornate capital letters.

The gradual remained in use in St. Katharinental until the 19th century. Around 1820 it came into the possession of a Konstanz antiquarian who made the book the focus of a museum. The manuscript appeared in England at the end of the 19th century, where it came into the possession of the collector Sir Charles Dyson Perrins (1864–1958), who had amassed one of the most important collections of medieval scripts in the world. When his estate was auctioned off at Sotheby in London in 1958 , the work was acquired for CHF 368,000 with financial support from the Federal Council, the Gottfried Keller Foundation and the Canton of Thurgau. It is located (inv. No. LM-26117) in the National Museum Zurich .

A facsimile of the graduate was made. The edition of 930 copies is out of print. A copy of the facsimile is shown in the monastery museum.

Monastery museum

East facade

The St. Katharinental Monastery Museum contains numerous references to the earlier furnishings on the first floor and documents the first monastic heyday of St. Katharinental in the 14th century.

The building history from the baroque heyday of the new monastery and its church is illustrated on the second floor. One room recalls the time from 1869 to 1973, when St. Katharinental was a sick and elderly asylum or a cantonal retirement and nursing home (1973–1996).

gallery

  • Main entrance (part of the west wing)

  • Guest house

  • Former granary

  • View over the gardens (from the east)

literature

Historical writings
  • Heinrich Murer: Chronicle of the monasteries St. Katharinental, Töss and Beerenberg. Cantonal Library of Thurgau Y 105. Digitized
  • Katharinenthal monastery: founding and life of the sisters. St. Gallen Abbey Library , Cod. 603. Digitized
  • Medieval partial tradition of the Katharinentaler Sisterbuch. In: Johannes-Evangelista-Libellus, University Library Basel , Cod. A VI 38.
  • St. Catherine's Book of Sisters. Karlsruhe, St. Peter pap. 21. Digitization
  • Überlingen, Leopold-Sophien-Bibliothek, Ms. 22, around 1500 from the Dominican convent of St. Katharina, Zofingen / Zoffingen in Constance. Digitized
Contemporary treatises
  • Christian Folini: Katharinental and Töss: Two mystical centers from a socio-historical perspective. Chronos, Zurich 2007, ISBN 978-3-03-400841-9 (also dissertation at the University of Freiburg 2004).
  • Albert Knoepfli : The art monuments of the canton of Thurgau. Vol. IV. The St. Katharinenthal Monastery. GSK , Bern 1989, ISBN 3-909158-37-4 . (= The art monuments of Switzerland , Volume 83.) Digitized
  • Ruth Meyer: The St. Katharinentaler sister book. Investigation, edition, comment. Niemeyer, Tübingen 1995, ISBN 3-484-89104-1 . (= Munich texts on German literature in the Middle Ages , volume 104, also a dissertation at the University of Munich, 1994).

Web links

Commons : Kloster Sankt Katharinental  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Sister Books  - Sources and Full Texts

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Text in Ruth Meyer (see above: literature), pp. 141–150. The following remarks are based on this text and the research results of Ruth Meyer, especially p. 21f. and 177-194.
  2. ↑ See also the monastery prospectus in Meyer (see above: literature), p. 186f.
  3. ↑ See Meyer (see above: literature), p. 37; 265f.
  4. ↑ see: Anton Weis:  Konrad de Grossis . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 16, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1882, p. 640 f.
  5. ↑ See Meyer (see above: literature), p. 22; 45.
  6. ↑ See e.g. B. Katharinenkloster Nuremberg ; Pillenreuth Monastery . See also: Siegfried Ringler: Life and revelation literature in women's monasteries in the Middle Ages. Sources and Studies. Artemis, Munich 1980. (= Munich texts and studies on German literature in the Middle Ages , 72), pp. 54, 59.
  7. ↑ See Ruth Meyer (see above: literature), pp. 66–72 u. ö.
  8. ^ Günter Eßer: Josepha Dominica von Rottenberg (1676–1738). Your life and your spiritual work. Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1992, ISBN 978-3-05002159-1 (formerly: 3-05002159-4) (= sources and research on the history of the Dominican Order NF, vol. 2)
  9. ↑ SH-Orgel.ch
  10. ^ Edition by Ruth Meyer (see above: Literature), pp. 97–181. The following statements are essentially based on the research results of Ruth Meyer, esp. Pp. 23–83.
  11. ↑ See Vita of Anne von Ramschwag, ibid. P. 131f.
  12. ↑ See e.g. B. ibid. P. 119, lines 43–51: Got is a source of everything that is good and is a groundless ú erbermd ...
  13. ↑ organ portrait on the website of Kuhn Organ Builders Ltd, accessed on April 30 of 2019.
  14. ↑ SH-Orgel.ch
  15. ↑ Report of the preservation authorities on the building history and restoration (PDF; 15.8 MB)
  16. ↑ Information brochure of the St. Katharinental Clinic, Diessenhofen, 2015
  17. ↑ Graduale von St. Katharinenthal on the website of the Facsimile Verlag , accessed on February 22, 2019.
  18. ↑ Myswitzerland.com

Coordinates: 47 ° 41 ′ 29.2 "  N , 8 ° 44 ′ 13.4"  E ; CH1903:  six hundred ninety-seven thousand four hundred seventy-seven  /  283121