Parish Church of Stams

The parish church of St. John the Baptist in Stams

Interior view, view of the choir

The Roman Catholic parish church of Stams is located in the municipality of Stams in the Imst district in the state of Tyrol . The parish church of St. John the Baptist - incorporated into Stams Monastery - belongs to the Silz deanery in the Innsbruck diocese . The church is a listed building ( list entry ).

history

The first wooden church stood here around 700 AD. Ten post holes have been preserved from this post construction . The technology and the floor plan of this church building point to Bavarian models. Probably this building was a private church by local landowners.

The second church, which was built in place of the old wooden church, was made of stone. At that time it was about eight meters long and about six meters wide. Due to the unevenly large, irregular and mortar-offset sides, it went well with other church buildings from the Carolingian era .

In the 11th century a new stone church was built around the old one. Perhaps this expansion was due to the rise of pilgrimages to St. John the Baptist during this period. This church was also found by the Cistercian monks from the Kaisheim monastery when they arrived here on March 12, 1273 to found the Stams monastery. The two founders, Meinhard II of Tyrol and his wife Elisabeth of Bavaria , the widow of King Conrad IV , wanted a burial place in the monastery. Since Elisabeth died in the same year in which the monks came to Stams, she was first buried in the Johanneskirche. It was only transferred to the collegiate church in 1284, after the princely crypt had been completed.

The third stone building, which can still be seen today, goes back to a foundation of King Henry of Bohemia and his wife Anna Přemyslovna . Heinrich was the youngest son of Meinhard II and Elisabeth. The building was realized from 1313 to 1316 and is considered the first example of mature Gothic in Tyrol. The church and the mighty tower are still completely preserved with their masonry from this period. After a fire in 1593, the church had to be renovated, some things were renewed, e.g. B. the Gothic floor was removed.

In the middle of the 18th century the parish church was redesigned like many others in this region. The frescoes were painted in 1755 by Franz Anton Zeiller , who also frescoed the dome and the vault of the nave of the Matrei parish church . The altars come from Johann Reindl from the years 1756 to 1759. Whether he worked with the sculptor of the same name from Constance, who u. a. was active in the Rheinau monastery , is identical, has not yet been proven.

Bells

Bell 1 (largest bell) (tone h ⁰ ) of the parish church in Stams with a clapper

The parish church in Stams has seven bells with the tone sequence h ⁰ d ¹ e ¹ f sharp ¹ a ¹ h ¹ d ² . They were cast in the Grassmayr bell foundry in 1956 . The system was restored in 1996 by the Absamer bell systems . Except for the smallest bell, all of them have a clapper .