Monastery church (Münsterschwarzach, Romanesque predecessor building)
The Romanesque monastery church (also Walther Egbert church ) in Münsterschwarzach was the predecessor of the so-called Balthasar Neumann church of the Benedictine monastery . The church existed, rebuilt several times, from 1023 to 1718. Before that, a Carolingian church had already stood on almost the same place.
Building history
prehistory
A women's monastery already existed in the area of today's Münsterschwarzach in the late 8th century. In 783 the nuns of the monastery built the first Carolingian monastery church, which was subordinated to Saints Dionysius, Martin of Tours and the founder of the order Benedict. A few decades after the consecration, however, the nuns left the premises and settled in Neumünster in Zurich .
In the year 877 monks from the nearby Steigerwald reached the Main and repopulated the empty buildings. Around 880 they began building a new church, as the liturgical requirements had changed in the meantime. Previously, a free-standing campanile next to the church was used as a bell tower, it has now been replaced by a crossing tower. It was not until the 11th century that the new masters of the abbey, the bishops of Würzburg, caused the monks to build a new church in the Romanesque style .
The Walther Egbert Basilica
Under Abbot Walther I , the third abbot after the time of the commendatabbts , the new building began. In 1023 the Würzburg bishop Meginhard I consecrated the new church, which is now called Walther Basilica to distinguish it. As early as 1062, when St. Egbert was abbot, extensive renovations were carried out on the building. With the consecration of the crypt on September 9, 1066 by Bishop Adalbero, this first extension was completed and the so-called Walther Egbert Church was created.
Further changes were made in 1152. On November 19th of this year Gebhard von Henneberg placed a paradise vestibule in the west of the church under the protection of God, before a splendid sarcophagus had been set up inside for the monastery founders. In 1230 two bell towers were built, which were also attached to the existing church in the west. The church previously lacked towers.
At the end of the 14th century, the choir yoke with the main apse collapsed and had to be rebuilt by 1380. Abbot Kraft von Buchheim may have had the new parts of the building rebuilt in the Gothic style. The 16th century saw the addition of a shortened transept arm that accommodated a choir organ. In 1557 the monks' choir was vaulted, and in 1576 the remaining parts of the church were also vaulted.
The erection of a large, octagonal ridge turret in 1571, which served as the third bell tower, is controversial. Whether the construction work fell into the time of Abbot Johannes Burckhardt is questioned because of the frequency of the name Johannes among the prelates. It is possible that the building was not built until the baroque style at the beginning of the 17th century. With the Thirty Years War , renewals came to a standstill.
The extensive interior renovation in the Baroque style took place under Abbot Augustin Voit . In 1694 a new main choir altar was built, in 1696 and 1700 the remaining altars inside the church were renewed in two phases. At the beginning of the 18th century, planning began to build a new, baroque church. Today the remains in the ground are classified by the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation as a ground monument under the number D-6-6127-0062.
description
After the new building, the Walther Church presented itself as a three-aisled pillar basilica . She closed straight and was on the east by a steep gable roof crowned. The north side had three arched windows in the upper cladding , while only two were installed on the south side. The west facade was structured by a portal system, two arched windows and an oculus. The structure of the east side is unclear.
The expansion under Abbot Egbert began with the construction of a crypt below the monks' choir. The church had no transepts and was built as a three-aisled basilica. The east side was divided by three apses. This structure was common in the 11th and 12th centuries. The bell towers of the 13th century were divided by three surrounding cornices and had irregularly attached arched windows.
Abbot Sigehard was responsible for building a paradise porch in the west. The transversely rectangular structure had two storeys and ended with a low pitched roof. Two passages led into the interior of the church. After the main apse collapsed, the eastern part was rebuilt with vaulted ceilings and tracery windows . Later, possibly in 1619, an octagonal roof turret was attached to the eastern part , on which a Welsche hood was attached.
The pillars dominated the interior. They initially separated the central nave from the side aisles as couples in the Walther Basilica. A podium-like structure in the east separated the nave from the area of the choir. The expansion of the year 1066 was connected with an increase from two to five pairs of columns. Under Abbot Gozwin , the choir area was extended and a chapel-like room was created in the substructure.
Furnishing
The furnishings of the Walther-Egbert-Church are only fragmentarily handed down in the sources. The originally purely Romanesque facility was "Gothicized" in the course of the many changes in the Middle Ages. From the 17th century, the redesign in the Baroque style began.
Crucifixion relief
The so-called crucifixion relief was created in the monastery’s own workshop in the second half of the 11th century. It represents one of the oldest Franconian stone sculptures at all. In the course of the reconstruction of the monastery church in the 18th century, the relief was moved to the church of St. Maria de Rosario in the monastery village of Dimbach . Here the sculpture was initially kept outside before being brought inside the church.
The relief is 76 cm high and 83 cm wide. Above the actual relief is a rectangular plate with three half-length portraits presented in medallions. A stylized palmette frieze surrounds the crucifixion relief. A crucifixion group is shown . The cross has wide bars. Above is a sign , below a suppedaneum . The assistant figures of Mary and John can be found below the crossbar. Above you can see medallions of Sol and Luna.
Sarcophagus and rood screen
Another, old furnishing element was the stone sarcophagus in the middle of the nave. It was created in 1151 and was commissioned by Abbot Sigehard. The sarcophagus was built for the remains of the monastery founders Megingaud and Imma, who were transferred here from the Steigerwald. The bones of Abbots Egbert and Burkard I , as well as the Würzburg Bishop Erlung were also kept here. The sarcophagus was mainly used as a memorial.
For a long time the church was structured internally by a rood screen that separated the area of the monks' choir from the nave. A surrounding choir stalls , handed down from 1558, offered the monks seats. The specially decorated stables in the middle were reserved for the monastery superiors and the abbot. In 1694, in the course of the Baroque transformation, Abbot Augustin Voit had the rood screen torn down and thus considerably lengthened the nave.
Bells
Most of the bells in the church were renewed under Abbot Johannes IV. Burckhardt in the 16th century. It is unclear which bells were previously hanging in the two west towers. When this component was already completed, four small bells are said to have been attached in the roof turret. These were the Metten, Vespers, Nongbells and a newly poured one with the inscription "God alone, honor!"
In 1583, three more bells were purchased and hung in the two towers. The largest bore the inscription “Vivit post funera virtus” and was decorated with images of saints and the abbot's coat of arms. The middle, so-called St. Benedict's bell received the saying “Virtue lives on after death”; the smallest of the three had this saying too. The two larger bells were destroyed in the Thirty Years War, while the smallest can be found today in the Kreuzkirche in Stadtschwarzach.
organ
The first news about an organ in the monastery church of Münsterschwarzach comes from the year 1546. The instrument was badly damaged in the Schmalkaldic War and had to be repaired. A new organ was built in 1581 and was built by Matthias Eckstein from Heidingsfeld . At first it was hung freely in the nave as a so-called swallow's nest organ before it was placed on the west gallery in 1620.
At the same time as the transfer, a comprehensive renovation was carried out by the Kitzingen organ builder Martin Schonat. A few years later, in 1685, the instrument received a new work, which Matthias Tretzscher from Bohemia installed. At the same time, the church received another organ, which was set up as a choir organ in the east.
Altars
The altars of the Walther Egbert Church were subject to the greatest change in all of the furnishings. In 1066 it can be assumed that a total of seven altars were erected in the church. Four of them were in the nave, while three adorned the choir area. In the first half of the 16th century, these altars fell victim to the changed taste and were replaced by new, Gothic ones. The consecration of these altars took place in 1540.
More detailed descriptions are then available from the next generation of altars, which this time were erected in Baroque style at the end of the 17th century. First of all, the new main choir altar was built in 1694 , which had four columns and was decorated with rich foliage and fruit hangings. Two fully plastic figures of St. Benedict and Scholastica framed the sheet. While the structure can be traced back to Johann Paul Codomann from Kitzingen, the sheet was worked, it showed the "Martyrdom of Felizitas" by Oswald Onghers . The altar was moved to the Maria im Weingarten church in Volkach in the 18th century , but was laid in the 19th century.
Two years later, in 1696, Abbot Augustin Voit commissioned three more altars. These should decorate the nave. Johann Michael Ries from Mainstockheim could be won as master . The altars were decorated with the leaves "Mary", "The Three Wise Men" and the "Transfiguration of Christ". Plastic figures framed the altar leaves. Two of the three altars have been in the Dimbach church since 1744. While the southern altar of Mary remained almost unchanged, the sheet of the northern altar was changed so that it is no longer identifiable today.
The last renewal took place in 1700. The two side apses of the choir each received a new altar. Again Johann Michael Ries was responsible for the execution. The two-pillar structures showed the "Assumption of Mary into Heaven and Her Coronation" by Oswald Onghers, and "The Martyrdom of Kilian" in their leaves. In 1745 the two altars were moved to the Sebastian Church in Reupelsdorf . Today a copy by Georg Anton Urlaub adorns the sheet of the Kilian altar.
literature
- Franziskus Büll: Traces of the building activity of Abbot Johannes IV. Burckhardt inside and outside the Münsterschwarzach Abbey . In: Elmar Hochholzer (ed.): Benedictine monasticism in Franconia . Münsterschwarzach 2000.
- Franziskus Büll: On the reconstruction of the Romanesque Egbert basilica of the Münsterschwarzach monastery (1062 / 1066-1718) . In: Pirmin Hugger (Ed.): Magna Gratia. Festschrift for the 50th anniversary of the consecration of the Münsterschwarzach abbey church 1938–1988 . Münsterschwarzach 1992.
- Clemens Hamburger: The Klais organ in the Münsterschwarzach abbey church . Münsterschwarzach no year
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ See: Büll, Franziskus: Die Kirchen Münsterschwarzachs .
- ↑ While u. a. Melber (p. 46) mentions this thesis, Büll (reconstruction, p. 173) assumes the year 1571.
- ↑ Geodata: Monument number D-6-6127-0062 , accessed on June 3, 2013.
- ^ Büll, Franziskus: Attempt to reconstruct the Romanesque Egbert basilica of the Münsterschwarzach monastery . P. 170 f.
- ↑ Wesenberg, Rudolf: The Dimbach crucifixion relief . P. 313.
- ^ Büll, Franziskus: Attempt to reconstruct the Romanesque Egbert basilica of the Münsterschwarzach monastery . P. 182 f.
- ^ Büll, Franziskus: Traces of the building activity of Abbot Johannes IV. Burckhardt . P. 119 ff.
- ↑ Hamburger, Clemens: The Klais organ in the Münsterschwarzach abbey church . P. 1.
- ↑ Melber, Patrick: The abbey church at Münsterschwarzach . Pp. 57-61.
Coordinates: 49 ° 48 '19.4 " N , 10 ° 13' 52.1" E