Saarlouis religious customs

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Ludwig's Church with Marienbrunnen on the Great Market in Saarlouis

The Saarlouiser religious traditions developed in the context of the Catholic Saarlouiser Parish Church of St. Louis . The extensive historical customs are partly maintained to this day.

Fair

On the occasion of the memorial day of St. Louis of France (August 25), the Ludwigskirmes, which lasts several days, takes place annually on the Great Market in front of the church. Until the 1870s, hot punch from Metzer red wine and wreath cake was a traditional drink at Ludwigskirmes . Fireworks were set off every year on the evening of the feast day. The following Tuesday and Thursday there was a general store and cattle market.

Consecrated bread

Until the First World War there was the religious custom of "consecrated bread" (Pain bénit) in the parish. The relevant regulation was laid down in 1692. Every Sunday the church Swiss and the sexton cut loaves of bread that the priest had previously blessed into small cubes. According to the Lord's Prayer, these bread cubes were distributed to the assembled believers in a certain order (officers, officials of the higher court, mayors, town magistrates, parish magistrates, parishioners) at Holy Mass. On Easter in 1791, the revolutionary board of directors of the district administration complained that they were not the first to receive the consecrated bread during the solemn high mass. In a decision of May 5, 1791, the "Conceil municipal" confirmed the legality of the complaint of the directorate of the district administration.

The bread cubes were either eaten straight away or taken home, for example to serve as food for the sick. Every Sunday a different family was required to donate the loaves. The person who received the cut piece of the loaf (Chanteau du pain) at Holy Mass had to donate the loaves for the following Sunday. At high church festivals, wreath cakes were donated instead of loaves of bread. The "consecrated bread" should clarify the early Christian custom of agape in the sense of an antidoron .

Limberg procession

Monastery on the Limberg, Carte des environs de Sarrelouis, 1765 (Saarlouis City Museum and City Archives)
Chapel on the Limberg, built in 1827 by Louis Villeroy
Barn of the estate on the Limberg, remains of the former baroque Kalvarienberg pilgrimage chapel

The Limberg procession of the newly married couples from the parishes of St. Ludwig and St. Peter and Paul in Beaumarais , documented for the first time in 1687, took place every year on the first Sunday of Lent. The procession was led by the Saarlouis Maire, the aldermen, and the former Maires. The newlyweds and a large crowd of spectators followed. The young couples, who were obliged to take part in the procession under threat of a fine of two francs, carried bundles of straw, which they set up in the shape of the Lorraine cross at the summit of the 343 m high Limberg . The couple who were the last to marry were allowed to light the straw cross in the evening. The first stop of the pilgrimage was the place of the former Wallerfanger Capuchin monastery in Wallerfanger Engt, today the location of the Villeroy Castle. Then the procession continued up the mountain. The newlyweds paid a monetary fee to the city administration of Saarlouis, a jug of wine, white bread and a herring to the forester on the Siersburg and paid a small tax to the Duke of Lorraine. The pilgrimage of the newlyweds was abolished in this form in 1741. The custom may have been an older Wallerfang folk custom, which was then transferred to Saarlouis.

The Saarlouis fortress governor Thomas de Choisy had a chapel built on the Limberg for construction workers and soldiers of the fortress town to be built in 1680, in which holy masses were held by a Carmelite priest, but a small church cared for by monks had stood here since the Middle Ages . The Limberg was used by Choisy as a quarry for the Saarlouis fortress. The construction workers were housed in barracks on the mountain. On August 31, 1682, the archbishop's authority in Trier gave permission for the benediction of a new chapel on the Limberg, which was looked after by Franciscan hermits. With the end of the fortification work, the construction workers' settlement on the Limberg, including the makeshift chapel, was demolished. However, on the initiative of a hermit and various Saarlouis citizens, a stone chapel was built on the Limberg, which was looked after by the parish of Itzbach (renamed Siersburg in 1937 ) and Rehlingen .

In the years 1722 to 1727, the Metz stone sculptor Pierrar de Corail and his journeymen made a Calvary system with initially seven, then eight footfall stations on behalf of the hermit Claude Virion, which began at the foot of the Limberg with a mount of olives scene and at the summit of the Berges ended with a Holy Sepulcher Chapel . The stone groups of figures were life-size. The hermitage on the Limberg joined the rule and way of life of the German congregation of the Hermit Brothers of St. John the Baptist. Every three years the Trier archbishop's authority carried out a visit to the Limberg Hermitage . The Holy Sepulcher Chapel was expanded to include a Chapel of Our Lady with a garden between 1738 and 1741. The sacred building had three altars (Mother of God high altar, side altars for St. Joseph and St. Anthony), confessionals, a bell, sufficient vasa sacra and paraments. The Holy Sepulcher was located in a crypt under the high altar of the chapel. However, the chapel, which increasingly developed into a pilgrimage chapel, never seems to have been consecrated. The chapel's patronage festival was April 16. In addition, some distance from the chapel was a station dedicated to St. Mary Magdalene . An allegedly miraculous spring was contained in this station, which girls and widows sought to solicit a husband. Small wooden crosses were left at the source as offerings. Since the path from Itzbach to Oberlimberg had turned out to be too long for the priest in charge, the Augustinian canons of Wallerfang increasingly carried out the services of worship.

According to the visitation protocol of 1741, the patron saint of the chapel was the Duke of Lorraine and former King of Poland, Stanislaus I. Leszczyński , who on June 30, 1751 summoned the barefoot Carmelites of the Lorraine Order Province to pastoral care on the Limberg. With the approval of the episcopal authority in Trier, a small hospice was established in the Hermitage on August 29, 1759, which was looked after by two priests and a lay brother. The Archbishop of Trier, Franz Georg von Schönborn , gave the complex the title "Maria vom Berge Karmel". The patronage day of this chapel was July 16, the feast of Our Lady on Mount Carmel , the so-called scapular feast .

The monastery on the Limberg was attached to the north side of the church. It had a basement and rose over two floors. Remnants of the chapel have been preserved to this day in the barn of the former estate. For the year 1783, the Itzbacher Pastor Motte reports that there was increased debauchery at the pilgrimages on St. Joseph's Day (March 19), the Annunciation (March 25) and the Birth of the Virgin (September 8) following the pilgrimages Corruption of the youth of both sexes and to the trouble of the good ”. In 1784 the Carmelites gave up the settlement on the Limberg due to a lack of suitable offspring and the complex went into effect on December 18, 1788 by royal decree of Louis XVI. into the care of the Franciscan monastery in Sierck , which was founded in 1627 and belonged to the Cologne Order Province. But the Sierck monks had been pastoral care of the Limberg chapel since 1785.

In the course of the French Revolution, the facility on the Limberg with an area of ​​about 10 acres was expropriated and leased in 1791 and the monks were driven out, with the leaseholder Poligny from Niederlimberg leaving the chapel open to pilgrims. On the other hand, the revolutionary district administration intervened and sold the area on March 16, 1792 for 3500 livres to the brothers Antonius and Matthias Capitaine from Felsberg , who let the buildings deteriorate and resold the land. During the anti-church struggle of the French Revolution, the sculptural groups of Pierrar de Corail were smashed, the ruins are still on site after being secured in 1930. The Wallerfanger districts "Beim Kloster" and "Kapellenberg" remind in their names to the religious history of the place.

The Order Province did not give up the claim to the complex during the revolution and continued to appoint superiors: until 1794 this was Father Ananias Helbron from Hilringen and in 1797 Father Chrysostomus Jansen from Oberleuken was appointed. In 1802 the order province itself was dissolved.

It was not until 1827 that Louis Villeroy had the chapel that still exists today built for his estate on the Limberg. In 1840 a new Way of the Cross was also built by the Villeroy family.

To this day, many people traditionally move to the Limberg on Good Friday . The almost two kilometer long Herrgottsweg up to the chapel is lined with stations of the cross. The believers make small crosses out of twigs and place them at the foot of the stations after they have performed silent prayers. The pilgrims then fortify themselves at the top of the mountain with quark bread ("Kässchmieren") or potato pancakes ("Grumbeerkeïchelcha"). In consideration of the day of Jesus Christ's death, no music may be played when eating Good Friday food.

Oranna pilgrimage

Oranna Chapel near Berus
Oranna fountain Berus

Another historical pilgrimage of the parish is the procession to the chapel of St. Oranna near Berus . The Oranna chapel was originally the parish church of today's deserted Eschweiler. According to legend, the holy Oranna was the daughter of an Irish-Scottish viceroy. She did missionary work as part of a very early Irish-Scottish mission in the Moselle - Saar region and settled in the Berus area. Saint Wendelin is said to have been her brother. According to another tradition, Oranna is said to have been the daughter of a Duke of Lorraine who rejected her because of her hearing loss. Together with her companion Cyrilla, she was buried in the church in the village of Eschweiler. The solemn elevation of the bones of Oranna and Cyrilla on May 3, 1480 is documented. The skeletons lying upside down were lifted out of the sarcophagus, dressed again and buried again. On September 17, 1719 was the transfer of the relics held in the parish church of St. Martin in Berus. The relics survived the turmoil of the French Revolution by evacuation. During the Second World War , the bones of the two holy women were first brought to Lebach and then to the Saarlouis parish church of St. Ludwig. After the rebuilding of the Oranna Chapel, which was destroyed in the war, the reliquary chest has been in the Oranna Chapel again since September 22, 1969. In the pilgrimage chapel two iron crowns are kept, which are supposed to heal the praying believer, who wears them, from ailments in the head and ear area. In front of the chapel there is a fountain with a modern bronze statue of St. Oranna, whose water is also said to have healing properties.

The Trier episcopal authority complained about the Saarlouis pilgrimage to Berus in 1829 that, as with the Limberg procession, there were sometimes excesses that the church could not tolerate.

Passion play

Every year on Good Friday, the Sicilian amateur play group "Gruppo Via Crucis" performs a passion play on the Great Market in front of the Church of St. Ludwig to commemorate the suffering and death of Jesus.

literature

  • Severin Delges: History of the Catholic parish St. Ludwig in Saarlouis . Saarlouis-Lisdorf 1931, extension by Heinrich Unkel in 1952, extension by a third part by Marga Blasius in 1985.
  • Oranna Elisabeth Dimmig: Saarlouis Stadt und Stern / Sarrelouis - Ville et Étoile , translation into French: Anne-Marie Werner, ed. v. Roland Henz and Jo Enzweiler Saarbrücken 2011.
  • Oranna Dimmig: Oranna Chapel Berus, Art Lexicon Series Saar, ed. v. Jo Enzweiler, Saarbrücken 2016.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Severin Delges: history of the Catholic Parish of St. Louis in Saarlouis . Saarlouis-Lisdorf 1931, extension by Heinrich Unkel in 1952, extension by a third part by Marga Blasius in 1985, part I, p. 47.
  2. ↑ Severin Delges: history of the Catholic Parish of St. Louis in Saarlouis . Saarlouis-Lisdorf 1931, extension to include a second part by Heinrich Unkel in 1952, extension to include a third part by Marga Blasius in 1985, part I, p. 33 and p. 57-58.
  3. ^ Hilarion Rieck: The Oberlimberg near Wallerfangen and his pilgrimage , Saarlouis 1935, p. 4.
  4. ^ Hilarion Rieck: The Oberlimberg near Wallerfangen and his pilgrimage , Saarlouis 1935, pp. 6-7.
  5. ^ Saarforschungsgemeinschaft (ed.): The art monuments of the Ottweiler and Saarlouis districts , edited by Walter Zimmermann, 2nd, unchanged edition from 1934, Saarbrücken 1976, p. 243; Hilarion Rieck: The Oberlimberg near Wallerfangen and his pilgrimage , Saarlouis 1935, pp. 7–8.
  6. ^ Hilarion Rieck: The Oberlimberg near Wallerfangen and his pilgrimage , Saarlouis 1935, pp. 10-11.
  7. ^ Hilarion Rieck: The Oberlimberg near Wallerfangen and his pilgrimage , Saarlouis 1935, p. 12.
  8. ^ Theodor Liebertz: Wallerfangen and its history edited from archival sources . Wallerfangen 1953, p. 289.
  9. ↑ Georg Baltzer: Historical Notes on the City of Saarlouis and its Immediate Surroundings , Part One: Historical Notes on the City of Saarlouis, Part Two: Historical Notes on the Immediate Surroundings of Saarlouis, reprint of the edition from 1865, Dillingen / Saar 1979, Part I. , P. 98.
  10. ↑ Severin Delges: History of the Catholic Parish St. Ludwig in Saarlouis , Saarlouis-Lisdorf 1931, extension by a second part by Heinrich Unkel in 1952, extension by a third part by Marga Blasius in 1985, part I, p. 48.
  11. ↑ Theodor Liebertz: Wallerfangen and its history edited from archival sources , Wallerfangen 1953, pp. 285-292.
  12. ^ Hilarion Rieck: The Oberlimberg near Wallerfangen and his pilgrimage, Saarlouis 1935, pp. 15-16.
  13. ↑ Andreas Heinz: Witnesses of Faith and Advocates, The Saints of the Saarland . Saarbrücken 1980, pp. 43-48.
  14. ↑ Oranna Dimmig: Oranna-Kapelle Berus, Art Lexicon Series, ed. v. Jo Enzweiler, Saarbrücken 2016.
  15. ↑ Hermann Joseph Becker: From a saint and her village, local and parish historical commemorative sheets about St. Oranna and Berus with photographs by Max Wentz, Saarbrücken 1928.
  16. ↑ Sophia Becker: Die Heilige Oranna (The Church in Her Saints, Church History Life Pictures for Teaching and Education, founded in 1927 by H. Faßbinder, revised and expanded, as well as enriched by numerous illustrations in four-color printing, edited by Jakob Szliska), illustrations by Anne Lang, Saarbrücken 1955.
  17. ↑ Severin Delges: history of the Catholic Parish of St. Louis in Saarlouis . Saarlouis-Lisdorf 1931, extension by Heinrich Unkel in 1952, extension by a third part by Marga Blasius in 1985, pp. 87-88.
  18. ^ Sicilian tradition in Saarlouis . In: Saarbrücker Zeitung , Dillinger local section, 24./25. March 2016.