Meransen
Meransen ( Italian Maranza ) is a village in South Tyrol ( Italy ) and today a fraction of the municipality of Mühlbach . It is located on a south-facing terrace at the transition from the Puster Valley to the Eisack Valley above the market town of Mühlbach and the Mühlbacher Klause at 1,414 m above sea level. Accordingly, in regional descriptions , Meransen is sometimes assigned to one valley, sometimes to the other. Meransen has around 850 inhabitants. The Gitschberg ski area is located on the nearby Gitsch and can be reached by cable cars. Meransen is connected to Mühlbach via the Meransner Bahn .
history
Traces of the first settlement of the mountain at the "Burgstall" behind the Gasslerhof lead back to the first millennium BC. Other witnesses of old times are the so-called "old Kuchl" on the old footpath to Meransen, a rock niche in which fragments from pre-Christian times were found; The granite slab path from Mühlbach to the village itself, known from time immemorial as the “cat's ladder”, which indicates a fortified place (“castelliere”) on the mountain, is one of these monuments. About halfway there is - due to the road construction no longer in its original location - the "Jungfrauenrast", a memorial for the place where, according to legend, the "Holy Three Virgins" Aubet, Cubet and Quere are said to have taken an exhausted rest.
According to Karl Gruber, Meransen is located on the branch of an ancient long-distance path that is said to have led from Inner Austria and Carinthia through the Puster Valley to Swabia and France , which is also proven by the patronage of the Church of St. James; there are old high-altitude trails to Vals and Pfunders , early traces of Christians can be found in the Altfass valley .
Ecclesiastical
Meransen belonged to the original parish for centuries, then to the Deanery Rodeneck in the diocese of Bozen-Brixen ; from 1854 to 1884 it was merged with Spinges and Vals to form one municipality. The village has had its own pastor since 1542; in 1419 it was referred to as a “parish”, in 1577 as a curate , and in 1891 as a parish .
There is no (archaeological) evidence of church history before the year 1000 in Meransen. Today's church, which was baroque around 1770, stands partly on the foundation walls of an earlier Gothic church, consecrated in 1472 , which in turn took the place of a Romanesque chapel, the remains of which are at one archaeological excavations were uncovered as part of the church restoration in 1993. It turned out that the square must have served as a place of worship since ancient times, as all three churches enclose a “holy rock” and a “reliquary”. Gruber therefore concludes that the three virgins of Meransen embodied a Celtic trinity of mothers, venerated in the Rhineland, and he also considers echoes of the Norns Urd , Werdandi and Skuld (past, present, future) to be possible.
A first chapel in Meransen, which was unusually large for the Romanesque period, is mentioned in 1252; A Gothic church was built in the same place, partly on the Romanesque foundation walls, and consecrated in 1472. A new winged altar was donated in 1520, from which the late Gothic figures of the three women still standing on the southern side altar - the place of worship of the "Holy Three Virgins" - come, while the statue of the Madonna on the main altar comes from another shrine altar from around 1500.
On March 28, 1775, the merchant builder Urban Oberhofer undertook to "bring under the roof and whiten" a new church for 3000 guilders, the judge and nurse von Rodeneck, Ignaz Jakob von Preu, gave an opinion on April 9, 1775, according to which he wants to support the construction with 2000 guilders. Prince-Bishop Joseph von Spaur consecrated the new late baroque church on June 2, 1780, based on a design by Joseph Abenthung from Götzens. The church, painted by Johann Mitterwurzer from Mühlbach, is a splendid example of the Tyrolean Rococo , mainly because of its high altar . Meransen experienced a high point of the pilgrimage to the “Three Holy Virgins” in the 16th and 17th centuries. There were also reports of miracles worked, as evidenced by a small cupboard with votive offerings next to the “Virgin Altar”. The relics of the three “saints”, which probably date from the early Middle Ages, were confirmed in two ecclesiastical inspections, in 1775 and 1980.
literature
- Karl Gruber : Aubet Cubet Quere. The pilgrimage to the Three Virgin Marys of Meransen.
- Karl Gruber: The parish church of Meransen. With a study by Rudolf Marini , Lana 1997.
- Josef Niedermair: Mühlbach, Meransen, Vals, Spinges, Rodeneck . Athesia, Bozen 1982, ISBN 88-7014-267-1 .
- Andreas Oberhofer: The documents of the church archive of Meransen , Dipl. Mach. Innsbruck 2002.
- Hans Wielander [ed.], Meransen. A picture booklet , Arunda . Current Südtiroler Kulturzeitschrift, 6, Schlanders 1978.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b Karl Gruber: The parish church of Meransen. P. 9.
- ^ A b Karl Gruber: Aubet Cubet Quere. The pilgrimage to the Three Virgin Marys of Meransen.
- ^ Karl Gruber: The parish church of Meransen. P. 11.
Coordinates: 46 ° 49 ' N , 11 ° 40' E