St. Agidius Church (Schönfeld)

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St. Aegidius

The church of Sankt Agidius in the Schönfeld district of the municipality of Wald , district of Cham , stands in an open field in the middle of the rural cultural landscape of the Falkensteiner Vorwald .

It is a single-nave building, built in a purely Romanesque style . Due to stylistic features, the construction of the church is dated between 1160 and 1170.

The Aegidius Church in Schönfeld is the most remarkable monument in the Parish Altenthann , in its size and style, as well as the care in its execution, it extends far beyond other examples of rural Romanesque in the region. Almost tower-like and almost “urban” in size, the church stands alone today, only lined with meadows and fields as well as three agricultural properties that once emerged from a medieval manor.

architecture

The church is designed as a single-nave hall structure with two vaulted yokes , a retracted, semicircular apse in the east and an arched west gallery .

The unusually strong and high walls of up to 2 m thick reveal high stonemasonry . They are made of relatively large, carefully hewn, but in some cases very brittle granite blocks of different origins, which are placed on minimal layers of cement or without cement, that is to say "with friction". So the building could survive the centuries almost without damage. There are no recesses in the stones to hold elevator pliers, nor in the masonry with the otherwise widespread scaffolding holes. The joints were later covered with cement in order to compensate for minor weathering losses.

The church has a gable-less, clapboard - clad roof , hipped on both narrow sides , with a roof turret from 1853. A roof cornice is missing, the wall crown in the area of ​​the nave shows repairs from later times, much less skilful than the original construction.

The windows are Romanesque arched windows, 2 m high and only 20 cm wide. Two of these windows adorn the south wall and another one the apse. The lower part of the eastern south wall window was extended to a large arched window in 1809 to improve the lighting conditions, the upper part was bricked up.

You enter the interior through a simple rectangular portal via a southern staircase with eleven steps . The tympanum is carved out of a block and shows a simple relief with a cross rod (isosceles cross with an indicated paw shape, on a rod crowned with a ball or disk).

The interior is separated from the outside world by a 1.60 m thick wall. The interior receives light mainly through the south window, which was subsequently broken into; originally the church interior must have been very dark because of the narrow slit windows.

The raised choir is separated from the community room by a 1.43 m wide choir arch. The apse jumps back half a meter. Both - the choir arch and apse - have a continuous cornice made of bulge and plate, in the choir arch there are rectangular niches on both sides for the reception of sacred objects.

The two yokes, which are separated by rectangular belt arches resting on profiled warriors, span the ship. The ridges of their cross vaults are sanded. The old west gallery also rests on burred cross vaults, the rise of pillars show fighters from throat bulge and disk. The gallery itself was provided with a wooden balustrade towards the church interior from the start.

In the mighty north wall, a narrow staircase above ground level with rising barrel vaults and stone steps leads up to the gallery. At the entrance you can see wall niches for locks. The door, which ran in tenons, could be barricaded from the stairs by a beam bolt, the passage of which is still preserved. There is also a small, round oculus that is the only element that breaks through the otherwise closed north wall.

A round arched doorway leads from the gallery to another, identically designed staircase that leads to the attic. This does not have a smooth floor, only carries the old oak roof structure.

The west gallery was once also accessible from the outside through a door in the west wall at gallery height. This could also be locked with beams, today it is walled up. There are no stone indications that a permanent access construction / staircase was attached outside.

On the walls of the choir arch and the apse you can see the remains of frescoes , some of which have been whitewashed, depicting the crucified Christ (left) and Saint Christopher (right). A red consecration cross is painted in the ring on the right choir arch , next to it on the apse wall two similar ones in a poor state of preservation, the upper arm of the cross subsequently blackened. A similar representation can also be found on the left apse wall, hardly recognizable.

The floor of the church is about 1.80 m above the outer level and is covered with heavy oak planks in the area of ​​the nave. Under the nave there is a head-high cellar, ventilated through narrow wall slits at the base of the side walls. It probably served as a storage room.

The altar is built from the same stone blocks as the entire building and is therefore part of the overall construction from the start.

There is nothing left of the original equipment of the church. On the left pillar of the choir arch is a 15th century Madonna and Child. A sculpture of the church patron Saint Giles from the 14th century has now been relocated, in its place there is a figure of Saint Francis. The altar is decorated with a more recent crucifixion group.

Numerous stones on the outer wall and the interior, primarily in the area of ​​the vaulted arches, show medieval stonemasons' marks , some of which are designed as a cross, some as a "T with stylized ends" and indicate a building tradition or a stonemason brotherhood .

Views

  • South facade with side portal and stairs

  • West facade with walled-in upper entrance

  • View from the east, choir and apse

  • Tympanum with cross staff

  • Ground plan and elevation of St. Giles

  • View from the gallery to the choir

  • Right side of the choir with three consecration crosses

  • Stonemason's mark on the belt arch

Emergence

The church and its surroundings are still awaiting archaeological exploration and an exact historical classification. Almost nothing is known about the circumstances in which it came about.

In the past, the building was often referred to as the “ castle chapel ”, although due to the strategically unfavorable location on a flat valley flank, a previous castle building is unthinkable and neither documentary nor archaeological evidence has been taken. The church has a simple, almost Carolingian -style floor plan and a construction technique that goes far beyond the level of regional castle chapels.

Approx. 2 km as the crow flies is the approximately 900-year-old Siegenstein Fortress , which is now in ruins , which fell to the prince- bishopric of Regensburg from 1282 and from there over the centuries, until 1606, to various noble families in the region the Prackendorfer , was borrowed. As the owner of the Schönfeld farm, to which St. Giles also belonged, individual rural residents can be identified in the 12th and 13th centuries; An Arnold von Schönfeld is documented between 1193 and 1240 and a Regensburg canon named Dietrich von Schönfeld between 1219 and 1238. A Heinrich von Schönfeld was a monk in the nearby Reichenbach monastery in 1205 . Siegenstein Castle had its own castle chapel (oldest components from the 13th century), which has been preserved to this day, so that Saint Giles belonged to Siegenstein, but cannot be explained as a castle chapel in the real sense.

Regarding the time of origin, the size and construction of Saint Egidius, however, there are pronounced analogies to the chapel in the Kreuzhof near Barbing (today urban area of Regensburg ), which is also consecrated to Saint Egidius and was built around 1160 AD at a historical location in the immediate vicinity to a manor. Like St. Giles in Schönfeld, this church, which is now profaned and therefore not accessible, looks like a tower due to its oversized height, but its execution is far less artful, in rough small blocks. According to tradition, the chapel and the surrounding area were the collection point for the armies of the Crusades in 1147 and 1189 , which started from Regensburg.

With regard to the double function, Sankt Giles von Schönfeld also shows parallels to the oldest church in the neighboring Altlandkreis Oberviechtach, the Sankt Gogidius Church in Hof , the construction of which is dated between 1150 and 1170 and which was built in the 13th century as well as the Kreuzhofkapelle near Barbing is said to have belonged to the Dominican nuns monastery Heilig Kreuz in Regensburg. However, it is built with a much coarser wall design (partly with barely hewn and little carefully layered granite blocks) and a simpler construction (rectangular choir, avoidance of round arches) and the upper part has been badly affected by previous destruction. Here, too, there was once a staircase to the upper floor.

Systems of the Romanesque country church type with a secular upper floor can also be found in Wilchenreuth near Weiden , Schönkirch near Plößberg , Sankt Koloman in Regensburg-Harting , Obertrübenbach near Roding , in Zinzendorf near Wörth on the Danube , in Hof near Oberviechtach and in Hof am Regen , some others in the Altmühltal and in the Ingolstadt area.

In the absence of documentary evidence, the function of these double systems remains unclear. It is rather unlikely that these are former castle chapels, as often claimed, especially since, with a few exceptions, no castle complexes around the churches could be proven and the structural conditions of the churches speak against it. Presumably these churches had a function as a refuge for the local farms, but also as a place of asylum and overnight accommodation for travelers, pilgrims and journeyman journeys, possibly also for the crusaders. If the church was already locked in the evening, visitors could enter via a ladder on the outer wall without affecting the church interior. It is possible that some of these churches belonged to a hospital order, especially since they were on old roads - in the case of Schönfeld on an old military road to Bohemia - and close to the crusade routes.

See also

Sources - small selection

Web links

Commons : St. Agidius (Schönfeld)  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 49 ° 5 ′ 33.6 ″  N , 12 ° 19 ′ 48.6 ″  E