Speyer chair brotherhood

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Speyer chair brother around 1550

The Speyer chair brothers were a lay community based in the Speyer Cathedral , with the task of praying for the rulers buried there.

history

prehistory

The Speyer Cathedral is the burial place of eight German kings or emperors and three empresses. From the beginning, the memorial system was an important part of the cathedral , the cathedral chapter and the citizenship. Already in the civil privilege of 1111 , issued on the occasion of the solemn burial of Emperor Heinrich IV , his son Heinrich V demanded of the Speyer residents “that they all gather solemnly to commemorate our father for the night services and day mass, carrying candles in their hands and give bread from every house as alms to be given to the poor. "

The Community

Johannes Ruland : Speyer Cathedral, inside, around 1780. In the middle the ruler's graves in the area of ​​today's folk choir, to the right and left of it the chairs of the chair brothers.

The exact time when the chair brotherhood was founded is unclear. It is documented for the first time in 1212 and was dissolved in 1803 in the course of secularization as a result of the French Revolution. It was a community of lay people who had to pray daily in the cathedral for the rulers buried here. The brothers sat west of the crossing in the nave, in choir stalls , to the left and right of the graves (the vaulted crypt did not exist at that time), from which their name “Stuhlbrüder” was derived.

Its chairman was the provost of the chair brothers to be appointed by the bishop, who had to be a clergyman of the cathedral chapter . This provost held the right of presentation, although the right of appointment occasionally led to disputes between the emperor and the bishop, which were ultimately decided in favor of the latter. Any honorable person of at least 24 years of age, aristocratic or non-aristocratic origin, could be accepted as a chair brother. They were allowed to live in marriage, but not remarry if the woman died. The brothers lived on alms and a low salary from the foundations available to them , the most important of which was in Mutterstadt , a gift from their former provost Werner von Bolanden († 1324). Originally there were twelve, after 1689 only four people. Until around 1400 the community also included women, the so-called “chair sisters” .

The chair brothers wore black choir robes and a white, later black, bonnet, which was eventually replaced by a leather hat. They should have a beard to distinguish them from the clergy.

The preserved Stuhlbrüder houses in Stuhlbrudergasse in Speyer

The chair brothers had to appear in the cathedral seven times a day and pray a total of around 200 Our Fathers and as many Ave Maria . In addition, they provided also acolytes - or Sakristandienste . They had to serve the priests during the daily church services, to keep the various altars in good condition, and to store and prepare the chasubles. The association temporarily kept its own sea ​​book , which was published in book form in 2015. The members lived near the cathedral, in small, separate houses in today's Stuhlbrudergasse; four of them have been preserved.

When Speyer was cremated in 1689, the episcopal governor (and later prince-bishop) Heinrich Hartard von Rollingen , together with chair brother Aegidius Graff, at their own risk of death , rescued the miraculous image of Patrona Spirensis from the burning cathedral.

According to the diocesan historian Franz Xaver Remling , in 1799 and 1801 under Bishop Philipp Franz Wilderich Nepomuk von Walderdorf , a chair brother was appointed from Bruchsal on the right bank of the Rhine . However, these were probably only nominal names - probably with a view to a hoped-for restoration of the diocese on the left bank of the Rhine - since the community could no longer work in the Speyer Cathedral at that time. The last former chair brother died in 1821.

The Speyer group of the Cartel Association of Catholic German Student Associations (KV) is named after the chair brothers.

literature

  • Sven Gütermann: The chair brothers of the Speyer cathedral monastery - prayer brothers, church servants and almsmen of the empire ( Bensheimer research on personal history 2), Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2014 ISBN 978-3-465-03866-5 ( review ).
  • Sven Gütermann: Das Seelbuch der Stuhlbrüder of the Speyer Cathedral Monastery: Edition and commentary , sources and treatises on the Middle Rhine church history, Volume 136 , Mainz 2015, ISBN 3929135728
  • Anton Röder: Contributions to the history of the Stuhlbrüder with special consideration of Speyer , unprinted dissertation, University of Heidelberg, 1950
  • Karl Schmid in: Iconologia sacra , Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 1994, p. 475, ISBN 3110132559 (Google Books)
  • Fritz Klotz: Speyer: Kleine Stadtgeschichte , Historischer Verein der Pfalz , Speyer 1971, p. 22 u. 24
  • Philipp Simonis : Historical description of all the bishops of Speyr , without page number, 2nd page after the preface, Freiburg im Breisgau 1608; (Google Books)

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ PDF document on the privilege of 1111 ( Memento of March 4, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  2. ↑ Sven Gütermann: The chair brothers of the Speyer cathedral monastery - prayer brothers, church servants and almsmen of the empire , Volume 2 of: Bensheimer research on personal history, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2014, p. 24, 199-202
  3. ^ Michael Borgolte: Foundations and Foundation Realities : From the Middle Ages to the Present , Verlag Walter de Gruyter, 2000, p. 21, ISBN 3050047356 ; (Digital scan)
  4. ↑ Historisches Jahrbuch der Görres-Gesellschaft , Volume 54, 1934, p. 150; (Detail scan)
  5. ^ Website on the community of Mutterstadt
  6. ^ Sven Gütermann: The chair brothers of the Speyer cathedral monastery - prayer brothers, church servants and almsmen of the empire , Volume 2 of: Bensheimer research on personal history, Vittorio Klostermann Verlag, Frankfurt am Main 2014, pp. 9, 83, 136; (Detail scan)
  7. ↑ Georg Litzel , Johann Michael König: Historical description of the imperial burial in the Speyer cathedral: how it was from the year 1030 to 1689 , Speyer, 1825, p. 15 u. 16; (Digital scan)
  8. ^ Carl Cäsar von Leonhard: Foreign book for Heidelberg and the surrounding area , part 1, Heidelberg, 1834; (Digital scan)
  9. ↑ Speyer website on the history of the chair brother
  10. ^ Johann Michael König: Life and government stories of the eight German emperors buried in the Speyer Cathedral, together with the history of the Speyer Cathedral , 1832, p. 75; (Digital scan)
  11. ^ Franz Xaver Remling : History of the Bishops of Speyer , Volume 2, Mainz, 1854, p. 819; (Digital scan)
  12. ↑ Speyer website on the history of the chair brother
  13. ^ Website of the Cartel Association