Preaching house of St. Heinrich
The preaching house of St. Heinrich ( Finnish Pyhän Henrikin saarnahuone ) is an old wooden building in the southwestern Finnish town of Kokemäki . It is located about one kilometer east of central Kokemäki along River Kokemäenjoki at the site of the medieval marketplace Telja.
According to tradition, the preaching house is said to be a storage building in which Saint Henry of Uppsala , the first bishop and national saint of Finland, preached in 1156 and spent his last night before he was killed by the farmer Lalli in neighboring Köyliö . After Heinrich's death, his veneration as a saint began and the preaching house became a place of pilgrimage. The first written mention of the building comes from the 17th century.
The historicity of the tradition and the actual age of the preaching house of St. Henry are unclear. Dendrochronological investigations in 1990 showed that the oldest of the wooden beams in the building that was examined was made from a tree felled in 1472/73; the other beams examined were from the 16th and 17th centuries. However, it cannot be ruled out that the preaching house actually dates back to the 12th century, since the components were apparently replaced several times during repair work. In any case, St. Henry's Preaching House is the oldest known wooden building in Finland.
In 1857, on the occasion of the 700th anniversary of the Finnish church to protect the preaching house , a neo-Gothic octagonal brick chapel was built around the old wooden building according to plans by Pehr Johan Gylich .
Web links
- Website of the city of Kokemäki for the preaching house of St. Henry (Finnish)
- Museovirasto (Finnish Museum Authority): Museovirasto restauroi (Finnish)
- Museovirasto (Finnish Museum Authority): Hoidettuja muinaisjäännöskohteita Satakunnassa: (Finnish)
Coordinates: 61 ° 15 ′ 27 ″ N , 22 ° 22 ′ 18 ″ E