Reinhild von Riesenbeck

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Reinhild, epitaph, after an illustration from 1858

Reinhild von Riesenbeck , also Reinhild von Westerkappeln , is a saint and martyr of the Roman Catholic Church . According to legend, she lived in Westerkappeln in the Tecklenburger Land ( Steinfurt district ) in the 12th century and was murdered by her parents. Since then she has been venerated as a martyr in the Diocese of Osnabrück . Her feast day is May 30th . Reinhild is firmly anchored in the culture of the localities of Riesenbeck and Westerkappeln. It is also used in Riesenbeck Sünte Rendel and in Westerkappeln, about 20 km to the eastCalled Reinhildis .

legend

The life of the Reinhildis is conveyed in a legend that is very well known in the Tecklenburger Land. The first known record is a transcript from 1629 by Sweder von Schele.

In June 1629 this Sweder von Schele was a guest of his relatives at the Surenburg in Riesenbeck . During this time he visited his aunt's grave in the parish church of St. Kalixtus Riesenbeck. While walking through the church, the epitaph of St. Reinhildis up. The particularly artistically designed grave slab led him to assume that this was the tomb of the founder of the church. Thereupon he inquired about the Reinhildis named in the legend on the tombstone.

He was told that Reinhildis was a farmer's daughter from Westerkappeln . The young girl often left the cattle alone while herding the cattle and instead went to church to pray. Her stepfather was very angry about this behavior and advised Reinhildis' mother to get rid of her disobedient daughter.

One day the stepfather made his way to Osnabrück . During this time, the mother killed her daughter. On the way home from Osnabrück, the stepfather fell drunk from his horse and broke his neck.

The body of the Reinhildis was placed on a wagon in front of which animals that she had looked after during her lifetime were harnessed. The animals then brought their corpses to Riesenbeck, where construction of a new church had just begun.

Many sacrifices were made at the tomb of the Reinhildis, especially by people whose cattle were sick. The Counts of Tecklenburg are also said to have made sacrifices at their graves.

The legend is described in literature by Friedrich Arnold Steinmann in 1825 and by Johann Georg Theodor Grasse in 1868, among others .

According to this legend, she was born in the "Knüppenhaus", a farmhouse in Westerkappeln-Düte. There she had hard work to do under her hard-hearted mother and stepfather.

She was very pious from early childhood and whenever she heard the church bells she rushed to worship. Angels are said to have done the work that was left behind for them. Despite their absence, the horses - led by an angel's hand - are said to have drawn more furrows in the field than a person can. Because the parents saw that God was turning to their daughter, their hearts are said to have hardened even more, and they forbade her to go to church . One day her mother is said to have pushed her into a well, but the next morning she was sitting at the edge of the well again. Out of anger, the mother strangled Reinhild and buried her in the stable under the animals. At the same time, her stepfather is said to have fallen from his horse on the way back from Osnabrück and broken his neck.

The stable is said to have been shrouded in a light so that the crime was quickly discovered by the neighbors. Reinhild was buried in a grave with her stepfather, but according to legend, the corpse was outside the grave every morning. Her body was then placed on an ox cart . The ox then ran free on their way. Once in Ibbenbüren , the church bells are said to have started ringing without human intervention.

In Riesenbeck, where she was buried, the ox is said to have uncovered a spring near the grave. This Reinhildis spring is said to have had a healing effect. In the grave itself, Reinhildis is said to have not yet decayed.

The owners of the Knüppenhof are said to have committed themselves over the centuries to lighting the grave in Riesenbeck in order to atone for the murder.

Memorial culture in Riesenbeck

Ossenlock in Riesenbeck

The parish church of St. Kalixtus was supposedly built over Reinhild's burial site in Riesenbeck. The epitaph preserved in the church, which was rebuilt at the beginning of the 19th century , is one of the very few grave monuments of Romanesque art and shows a picture of the deceased. Bishop Gerhard von Osnabrück ( 1261–1271 ) probably had the plate built. It is shown how the soul of the praying Reinhild is received by an angel coming from heaven. A legend tells of the death of the girl who, as the heir of her deceased father, was killed by her mother because of her second husband and who moved into heaven because she became Christ's pious co-heir:

REINHELDIS OBI - FUNDANT QUIQ (UE) PRECES P (RO) VIRGINE Q (UAE) FUIT HERES PATRIS DEFUNCTI GENITRIX QUAM SPONTE SECUNDI CONIUGIS OCCIDIT MOX PERCIPIENDO SUBIVIT SIDEREAS SEDES CHRISTI PIA FACTA COHAERES -
Reinheldis` death. May the believers make their intercessions heard to the virgin, who was the sole heir of her deceased father; and who was killed by her mother at the instigation of her second husband; immediately she ascended to heaven, assuming her real inheritance: as Christ's co-heir of salvation because of her good works. Gerhard.

The Reinhildisquelle in Riesenbeck dried up with the construction of the Dortmund-Ems Canal around 1900; In 1929 a memorial was erected above their square, the “Ossenlock”.

Scene on the Reinhildis fountain .

The Reinhildis fountain , erected in front of St. Kalixtus Church in 1912, depicts the Reinhildis legend.

The parish of St. Reinhildis Hörstel, which was newly established on December 2nd, 2007, bears her name and the Süntel-Rendel-Schule is named after her.

Memorial culture in Westerkappeln

In Westerkappeln , a representation of the Reinhildis is an essential part of the town's coat of arms; originally probably Saint Catherine of Alexandria , the view has become common that it is Reinhildis. The current form of the coat of arms was determined on October 21, 1958.

Historical classification

According to the judgment of the German Germanist Franz Jostes, Westphalia is legendary compared to other countries; he counts the Reinhildis saga among the oldest and most interesting. The story of Reinhildis has often been described and questioned. One of the early authors was von August Bahlmann 1858. The church registers of the diocese contain neither information about the person nor about a canonization. There are also no remains of the body.

The epitaph made of Baumberger sand-lime stone , according to another interpretation, a sarcophagus lid, represents, although Reinhildis is said to have been a peasant girl according to legend, a person in Byzantine costume. The life story of Reineldis , written in the 12th century, contains some similar elements; their remains are to be found as a relic in a shrine at Saintes .

According to a different approach, Reinhildis was a daughter of Jutta von Ravensberg and Count Heinrich II. Von Tecklenburg.

The historical background of the person of the Reinheldis, at a time when Pope Alexander III. the right to canonization remains questionable.

According to Siegfried Schoppe's interpretation, Reinheldis is not a peasant girl from Westerkappeln who was killed by her parents, but the eldest daughter of Count Wichmann I von Hamaland (Wichmann Billung the Younger, Wichmann II.) , Komtessa Liudgarda Wichmann, founding abbess Reinheldis of the Elten Canon Church in Emmerich am Rhein , who married her younger sister Komtessa Adela von Hamaland in the course of an inheritance dispute. Countess Immed IV. Von Geldern, was promoted from the living to the dead in 973 AD in Riesenbeck. Liudgard von Hamaland, Abbess Reinheldis, who before her murder had set fire to the residence of her sister Adele von Hamaland in Elten, was neither a saint by her way of life, nor was she ever raised to the honor of the altars by the bishop or the pope; Nor was she the sole heir, but instead endeavored to transfer the share of the inheritance to which her sister was entitled under Saxon law, with the help of her father, to the Elten Abbey.

The "Leonine hexameters" of the epitaphs come from the medieval school of poets of Roswitha in the canon monastery of Gandersheim ( Hrotsvith von Gandersheim , 935–973). They are a clear reference to a count's daughter and abbess Reinheldis in the 10th century in Elten am Niederrhein instead of a farmer's daughter Reinhildis in the 12th century in a county of Tecklenburg or Ravensberg, which did not exist before the turn of the millennium.

The coarse marking IV later chiseled on the body of the Reinheldis (omitted from the above drawing of the epitaph, which dates from 1190) could not yet be interpreted. According to Schoppe, it is the marking of the New Testament Part IV of a typical "salvation mirror" from the 14th century.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Heike Harbecke: Reinhildis von Riesenbeck: In the protection of the angels. Diocese of Osnabrück, July 14, 2006 ( online )
  2. ↑ Internet portal 'Westphalian History'. March 25, 2014, accessed August 26, 2018 .
  3. ↑ Historisch Centrum Overijssel, Dep. Huisarchief Almelo, Inv. N. 3680, p. 40f
  4. ↑ In 1338 the Count of Tecklenburg owned a house with a garden on the church square in Riesenbeck. Certificate no. 10 in the parish archive St. Kalixtus Riesenbeck - location diocese archive Münster
  5. ^ Friedrich Arnold Steinmann : Münster stories, sagas and legends. Coppenrath, 1825, page 70
  6. ^ Johann Georg Theodor Grasse : Book of legends of the Prussian State 1–2. Volume 1, Glogau 1868/71, pp. 672-674. ( online )
  7. ↑ Illustration of the epitaph ( online )
  8. ↑ Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints ( online ) with reference to:
    Vera Schauber, Hanns Michael Schindler: Saints and Patrone in the course of the year. Pattloch, Munich 2001
    Walter Kasper (Ed.): Lexicon for Theology and Church. 3rd edition, Volume 8. Herder, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999
  9. ^ Translation by Siegfried G. Schoppe
  10. ^ Parish of St. Reinhildis Hörstel. ( online )
  11. ↑ Heinz Weyer, Kultur- und Heimatverein Westerkappeln eV (Ed.): Known and unknown from the history of Westerkappeln. 1994, quoted from Alexander Jonas: The coat of arms: Die Heilige Reinhildis. ( online )
  12. ^ Franz Jostes : St. Reinhild von Riesenbeck and St. Reiner von Osnabrück. In: Westfälische Zeitschrift 70 (1912) I 191-249
  13. ↑ a b August Winkelmann: Sünte Rendel or St. Reinheldis. A legend and legend study. With contributions by Karl Wagenfeld and Burkhard Meier. Regensbergsche Buchhandlung, Imprimatur Münster (Westphalia), 1912.
  14. ↑ Gerhard Knärich: Reinold and Reinhildis. In: Contributions to the history of Dortmund and the county of Mark , XXXI, 1924, pages 77–128.
  15. ↑ Heinrich Schauerte: St. Reinheldis of Riesenbeck. The legend and its historical-critical investigation. In: Heimatverein Riesenbeck (Hrsg.): Riesenbeck. 1961, p. 7 ff.
  16. ↑ Gabriele Böhm: Medieval figural tombs in Westphalia from the beginnings to 1400. LIT Münster, 2000, page 40 ff.
  17. ↑ Heimatverein Riesenbeck (ed.): Sünte Rendel, Riesenbecker Heilige. Commemorative script for the 75th anniversary of the Ossenlock monument. Riesenbeck-Hörstel 2004.
  18. ↑ Werner Heukamp : Sünte Rendel - A picture of life in high and low German . Ibbenbürener Vereinsdruckerei (IVD), Ibbenbüren 2011, 26 pages
  19. ↑ August Bahlmann : St. Rendel. Munster in Westphalia. Print by Friedr. Regensberg, 1858
  20. ↑ Peasant girl or a countess of Tecklenburg? In: Neue Osnabrücker Zeitung , August 16, 2005
  21. ^ Ecumenical Lexicon of Saints: Canonization in the Catholic Church. ( online )
  22. ^ Siegfried Schoppe: Saxon land and Roman civil law in conflict with church donations of property in the Middle Ages. The case of the Westphalian "sole heir Reinheldis" . Publishing house Dr. Kovac, Hamburg 2018.
  23. ↑ Schoppe 2018, p. 1
  24. ↑ Schoppe 2018, p. 115
personal data
SURNAME Reinhild von Riesenbeck
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Reinhild von Westerkappeln; Reinhildis; Rendel
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Saint and martyr
DATE OF BIRTH 13th Century
DATE OF DEATH 13th Century