Spitalkirche (Bad Leonfelden)
The Spitalkirche Bad Leonfelden (also Spitalskirche or Josephi Church ) in the town of Bad Leonfelden in the Mühlviertel in Upper Austria is a listed building that was added to the previously founded citizen hospital of Leonfelden in the early 16th century . In the 1780s, the church building was profaned.
history
After the establishment of the Citizens Hospital, the judges and councilors of Leonfelden asked the patron saint, Abbot Thomas Dienstl of Wilhering Abbey, for permission to build a church for the hospital in 1505 , but the letter was not issued until his successor, Caspar I, on June 29, 1514. The hospital church was built between 1517 and around 1520. A hospital chaplain, who was subordinate to the pastor of the parish church in Leonfelden , took care of the mental well-being of the residents of the citizens' hospital . The nurses could be transported in their beds to the church at ground level to perform their daily foundation prayers.
In the following decades, Lutheran clergy preached in the hospital church. During the Counter-Reformation, the hospital church was closed by a court ruling on October 24, 1615, and Protestant religious practice was forbidden. Only on November 25, 1673 was the hospital church consecrated again by the Josephi Brotherhood according to the Catholic rite. As a result, the hospital church was popularly referred to as the Josephi Church .
After the market fire of October 28, 1776, which destroyed numerous town houses, the civil hospital and the hospital church, the church was redesigned in Baroque style. In addition, modifications were made to the tower and the associated church yoke.
Under Emperor Joseph II the hospital church was closed on January 6, 1787. The market commune Leonfelden wanted to auction the church. But since no buyer could be found, the market in Leonfelden bought it on March 28, 1787 for only 200 guilders and set up the municipal office in it. The interior was removed and over time the Spitalkirche served as a savings bank, imperial and royal calibration office, garage, workshop, registry office in World War II, elementary school, apartment, printer, community dungeon and local history museum. In 1987 and 2013 as part of the state exhibition, the medieval welfare complex was renovated.
architecture
The late Gothic nave is a two-aisled, three-bay gallery with simple wall pillars and a polygonal apse . The uniform star rib vault of the apse merges into an arched rib vault in the nave area.
One of the stonemasons who worked on the Leonfeldner parish and hospital church, can be based on its Steinmetz sign of Rožmberk nad Vltavou (Rosenberg on the Moldau) until after Stare Mesto pod Landštejnem (Old Town at Landštejn in) South Bohemia traced. Other stonemason marks of the hospital church can be found in Sankt Anna in Steinbruch in Neufelden and in the parish church of Ottensheim and point to a Danubian tradition.
literature
- Martina Birngruber: The Bürgerspital and the Spitalkirche in Bad Leonfelden - testimony to Christian charity and late Gothic architecture. In: Upper Austrian homeland sheets . Linz 2013 (on the Upper Austrian State Exhibition 2013), pp. 4–21, PDF on land-oberoesterreich.gv.at
- Martina Birngruber: The citizen hospital and the hospital church in Bad Leonfelden. Late Gothic architecture in the focal point of Bavaria, Bohemia and Austria. Diploma thesis, University of Vienna, Vienna 2011 ( PDF on univie.ac.at).
