Martinsstift (Worms)
The Martinsstift Worms was a collegiate monastery in the city of Worms and was dissolved in 1802. The associated collegiate church of St. Martin still exists today and, according to tradition, it should be located at the place where the dungeon stood in which St. Martin of Tours was imprisoned.
origin
Sulpicius Severus , († around 425), a companion of St. Martin, wrote the authoritative vita about the saint. In it he also reports that he was locked in prison in Worms - the then Civitas Vangionum - by the military leader and later Emperor Julian Apostata , because he refused to continue serving as a soldier.
The patronage of the Worms Martinskirche points to the Franconian times and a predecessor of today's church already existed before 900. The constant local tradition localized the Roman dungeon in which St. Martin was imprisoned at the place of the later Martinskirche; this is also proven more often in written sources. Until the destruction of Worms in 1689, the lower-lying Martinskerker existed in the area of the church, which was especially venerated as a place of worship.
Foundation and history of the monastery
Today's Martinskirche , a 3-aisled basilica of early Romanesque origin, is related to the founding of the Martinsstift. The monastery was a spiritual community of 12 secular canons , with a monastery dean as head.
This monastery was founded in Worms towards the end of the first millennium. A forged document from King Otto III. († 1002) of September 13, 991 announces that the monarch overwrites the - already existing - Martinsstift possessions in Boppard . The imperial donation of the Boppard possessions to the Martinsstift is beyond doubt and is shown in a real document by Emperor Heinrich VI. , of June 10, 1196 expressly confirmed. The events in the forged document could not have taken place before 996 due to various time circumstances, which is why this year is now (arbitrarily) assumed as the year of the foundation of the Martinsstift and therefore a corresponding commemorative publication was published in 1996 for the 1000th anniversary of the monastery.
The first reliable documentary mention of the Worms Martinsstift dates from June 29, 1016 and comes from Bishop Burchard I (1000-1025). The pen is only mentioned incidentally as existing. However, the "Vita Burchardi", a life story of the Bishop of Worms, who was venerated as a saint around 1030, says that he had set up a monastery in the city in honor of St. Martin, which he could not finish structurally, which is why it was when the Vita was only "half-finished".
A certificate from Worms Bishop Eberhard I. Raugraf von Baumburg (1257–1277) documents the consecration of the church and the altar of the Martinsstift in 1265. During this time, the parish of St. Lambertus and the nearby church were incorporated into the monastery . One of the canons was now always the pastor of St. Lambertus. The Martinskirche served primarily as a collegiate and pilgrimage church, while the Lambertuskirche was used as a pastoral care church for the parish. Both houses of worship were structurally connected to each other. The monastery buildings and the cloister were to the north of the Martinskirche, and the Lambertuskirche to the south. The structural condition before the great destruction in 1689 is recorded in a drawing by Peter Hammann.
In 1391 the Curia Cardinal Angelo Acciaioli acquired a canonical and a preamble to the Worms Martinsstift, he was also provost of the Paulus Stift in Worms.
In 1485 Pope Innocent VIII granted a special indulgence to the pilgrims who came to St. Martin and visited the Martinskerker.
During the War of the Palatinate Succession , the city of Worms was burned down by the French on May 31, 1689, and both churches and the other buildings of the Martinsstift were largely destroyed. The dean of the monastery at that time, Petrus Dorn , recorded the terrible events in the form of a report and provided many interesting details about the monastery. The writing is under the title "Protocollum quotidianum" in the Worms city archive.
After the destruction, the Martinsstift (church and monastery building) was rebuilt, whereby stylistic elements of the baroque were incorporated, u. a. also for the tower helmet. The St. Lambertus Church was not rebuilt and its remains were demolished in 1776. The Martinsk dungeon also disappeared; its former entrance is now associated with a low arch in the outer masonry on the north side of St. Martin's Church.
The Martinsstift as a spiritual body was also reorganized, but could no longer achieve its former importance. It continued as a collegiate foundation until it was dissolved under the last dean Bernhard Betz (1746–1815) from Dirmstein , after Worms and the German areas on the left bank of the Rhine had politically fallen to the French Republic. The monastery was looted by French revolutionaries as early as 1794, whereby Betz had previously succeeded in acquiring the most valuable possessions - u. a. the so-called “Martins stole ” in a medieval ivory box - to be saved to Aschaffenburg . The official dissolution of the Martinsstift took place with a final protocol of the canon Konrad von Winkelmann on August 25, 1802. The last dean Bernhard Betz stayed in the newly established French grand diocese of Mainz , under Bishop Joseph Ludwig Colmar , as vicar general for the former Worms diocese areas in the city dwell. He died in 1815 and until then had been concerned about the preservation of his former collegiate church of St. Martin, which now served as a parish church.
Monastic property
The economic basis of the monastery formed its properties and the resulting income. In the city of Worms, the property included - in addition to the monastery itself - numerous houses and courtyards. In Mannheim and in Bubenheim (Palatinate) the monastery owned the parishes with real estate. In addition, there was the gradient from the donation in Boppard and the surrounding communities, as well as agricultural free float in many localities in Wormsgau .
Bubenheim was the most important monastery property outside of Worms and, in addition to the ancient parish church of St. Peter, it also included the village itself. Dean Petrus Dorn fled there after the destruction of the monastery in 1689 and had several truckloads of church inventory evacuated from Worms to the village beforehand. As a former temporal property of the Martinsstift, the community still has St. Martin in its coat of arms and politically belonged as an exclave to the diocese of Worms , surrounded by Palatinate territory.
Aftertaste
In the Martinsgasse, on the old monastery grounds next to the Martinskirche, the Niederbronn sisters opened a ward in 1869, from which a hospital with the historical name "Martinsstift" was created from 1894, which existed until 1978, was then converted into a hotel and now as an ordinary one Serves residential building.
After renewed, extensive destruction in the Second World War , the historic St. Martin's Church was rebuilt, whereby the baroque elements in the outer area disappeared; it now serves as a parish church again. To the north of the church, in a green (accessible) inner courtyard, there are remains of the former cloister .
A street in Worms is named after the deserving monastery dean Petrus Dorn († 1699), who played a key role in the resurrection of the monastery, which was destroyed in the town fire in 1689. His tombstone is in the Martinskirche, where he is not buried. The elaborate epitaph of the penultimate dean Peter Friedrich Wallreuther (1712–1786) has also been preserved there.
literature
- Fritz Reuter: "St. Martin in Worms 996/1996 - Festschrift for the 1000th anniversary “ , Verlag Stadtarchiv Worms, 1996, ISSN 0342-426X .
- Joachim Specht: "The Protocollum quotidianum of Petrus Dorn: report on the destruction of Worms written in Bubenheim" , in Donnersberg-Jahrbuch, Volume 26 (2003), pp. 93-98; Finding the source
Web links
- Website of the Institute for Historical Regional Studies at the University of Mainz, on the history of the Martinsstift (accessed August 9, 2011)
- Website about the Wormser Martinsstift and the Martinskirche ( Memento from February 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Excerpt from Martinsvita of Sulpicius Severus, with the report on the events in Worms
Individual evidence
- ↑ On the imprisonment of St. Martin in Worms ( Memento from February 18, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Petrus Dorn, Protocollum quotidianum , 1689, Stadtarchiv Worms
- ^ Regest page on the certificate of Emperor Heinrich VI., Regarding the Martin monastery in Worms
- ↑ On Peter Hamann's engravings from Worms .
- ↑ St. Paulus Worms 1002–2002, Mainz 2002, Archive for Middle Rhine Church History, ISBN 3-929135-18-3 .
- ↑ To Peter Dorn
- ^ To the Protocollum quotidianum of the Stiftsdekans Petrus Dorn - Rheinland-Pfälzische Bibliographie
- ↑ On the Martin's stole from Worms
- ↑ Website with a photo of the so-called Martin's stole
- ^ Website on the temporal property of the Martinsstift
- ↑ Petrus Dorn: Protocollum quotidianum . Worms city archive.
- ^ On the territorial affiliation of Bubenheim before 1801, from Michael Frey: Description of the Bavarian Rhine District , Volume 1, Page 78
- ↑ Torben Schröder: Hospital in the country with a brilliant reputation . In: Wormser Wochenblatt of October 27, 2018, p. 6.
- ↑ To the parish of St. Martin, Worms