Maria Schnee (Rettenbach Market)
The pilgrimage church Maria Schnee , one of the most important pilgrimage churches in Central Swabia, is located west of the town of Markt Rettenbach on the old road to Ottobeuren .
Patronage of Maria Schnee
The feast of Mary Snow on August 5th goes back to a dream of a Roman childless couple who had promised the Virgin Mary to bequeath their fortune to the Church. In the dream, Our Lady asked the couple to build a church where there would be snow the next day. The next day, the Esquiline , one of the seven hills of Rome, was covered by a light blanket of snow. The church of Santa Maria Maggiore was built on this site .
Building description
The Maria Schnee chapel is a plastered building whose choir is designed as an independent central building with a floor plan in the shape of a three-quarter circle. The nave is of a gabled roof completed. The exterior is probably a free replica of the church of Klosterlechfeld south of Augsburg. A three-storey house as the northern cultivation served formerly a hermit as a hermitage , on the ground floor the sacristy is housed.
Building and pilgrimage history
After the Thirty Years' War, Johannes Herz, a citizen of Markt Rettenbach , came up with the plan to build a chapel as thanks for the redemption of war and plague. Construction began in 1646 and was completed in 1654. It was a wooden construction with a choir, nave and tower and stood on the site of today's chapel.
An ever-growing pilgrimage began to the church named after the altarpiece Maria Schnee . Soon it was too small and on April 29, 1706 the foundation stone was laid for a new spacious chapel. Completion and consecration took place on May 12, 1710. The building is interesting in terms of art history because the Wessobrunn painter and plasterer Johann Baptist Zimmermann created his first works there.
tour
You enter the chapel through the southern portal. The stucco in the vault from the early Baroque period consists of garlands, shells and putti, bouquets of flowers and window crowns. In the middle of the nave, the glory bears a Christ monogram ( IHS ). Four large stucco angels hold the strong frames of the ceiling paintings. The high altar under the dome is separated from the main room by a wrought iron grille. Above the altar, surrounded by the light of the east window, is the three-hundred-year-old copy of the miraculous image of Maria Maggiore in Rome in a gilded picture frame held by two angels. The spandrels of the choir dome contain the four Marian allegories from the Lauretan litany. A Lourdes grotto from 1886 is embedded in the north wall. The mosaic pavement of the church in Terrazzo dates from the same year. On the south side of the church a marble plaque is walled in in memory of the last hermit, Frater Theophilus Müller, who died at the age of sixty-four in 1763 in the name of piety.
gallery
Johannes Nepomuk
Two angels hold the image of grace
Dome with the four Marian allegories
View from the gallery
Saint Barbara
_Maria_Schnee_Rettenbach.jpg)
Web links
literature
- Tilmann Breuer: City and District of Memmingen . Ed .: Heinrich Kreisel and Adam Horn. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1959, p. 154-156 .
Coordinates: 47 ° 56 ′ 51.7 ″ N , 10 ° 22 ′ 53.5 ″ E