Priest gate

Closed round arched priest gate at the village church (Berlin-) Lankwitz. It sits in the south wall of the retreated choir; the edge of the nave can be seen on the left edge of the picture.

The priest gate is an entrance for the clergy from the outside to the sanctuary of the church. This gate is only intended for the clergy and is therefore narrower than the usual entry portals for the community.

Up to modern times, the choir screen or rood screen (Orthodox iconostasis ) separated the area of ​​the parish from the presbytery reserved for the clergy , and the priesthood only stepped through the ranks of the faithful during processions, so it needed a separate entrance.

The priest gate occurs mainly in village churches , namely at a time when the village churches usually did not yet have sacristies , i.e. until around 1350 (end of the High Gothic period ). From then on there were sacristies as a structural novelty, because a storage room was needed for the now richer furnishings of the church (sacrament implements, liturgical vestments, etc.). These sacristies as an additional room (side extension to the sanctuary) covered the priestly doors. From now on, the clergy first entered the sacristy and only from there the chancel. Since the priest's doors were no longer visible from the outside, they were made simpler from now on.

North wall of the nave of the village church in Frankenfelde (Wriezen) with a pointed arched priest gate (left) and a round arched parish portal (right, added).

The retracted choir ( choir square church ) served as the sanctuary in the village churches until 1350 , so that the priest's gate was located in the longitudinal wall of the retracted choir . A detailed examination of the village churches on the Barnim showed that at least two thirds of the choirs that had been drafted had priestly gates (the rest was unclear due to structural changes). The number of priestly gates on the south side of the retracted choir was twice as high as that on the north side. A few churches had priestly doors on both the south and north sides. The clear majority of the gates had round arches , which indicates the antiquity of these approaches for clergy.

At the village church of Frankenfelde auf dem Barnim one encounters the rare case that a priest's gate also appears in a simple hall (i.e. without a retracted choir), namely at its eastern end. It is located on the north wall of the nave , where the entrance portal for the community is also in the western half of the hall.

literature

• Ulrich Waack: Church building and economy. On the relationship between structural features of medieval village churches on the Barnim and its economic and settlement history. (= Churches in Rural Areas, Volume 4). Lukas-Verlag, Berlin 2009, ISBN 978-3-936872-73-6 .