St. Anna Chapel (Mulfingen)

St. Anne's Chapel

The St. Anna Chapel in Mulfingen is a Catholic pilgrimage church.

history

The modern water dispenser

At the foot of the Jagstberg there is a spring, the water of which was already considered medicinal in old Germanic times and was still used in the Christian Middle Ages. In 1510 the bailiff von Jagstberg, knight Zaisolf von Rosenberg, had the chapel built in honor of Mary . The altar was probably designed in the school of Tilman Riemenschneider between 1514 and 1518 . The first heyday of the pilgrimage chapel ended in 1551. At that time the chapel was given to the forester Pankratius Nuss as a stable building because fewer and fewer pilgrims appeared. After this forester and his wife died, the chapel was renovated and consecrated again in 1596 at the instigation of the Jagstberg bailiff Johann Arnold, who was driven to do so by dreams. The supposedly dried up source was also found again.

After the particularly successful pilgrimage years of 1597 and 1598, in which numerous healings were recorded by the water of the spring - an official list compiled by order of Bishop Julius Echter von Arnold named 98 healings of blindness, paralysis and skin diseases - the water of the spring dried up 1598 complete for a long time, and the pilgrimage declined again. Towards the end of the Thirty Years War , the spring gushed so strongly that it was even possible to create a second well. In 1646/47 and 1763/64 numerous healings took place again; however, the reports have not survived. In 1870 the pilgrimage to St. Anna was revived. The chapel was then renovated and redesigned. Since then, St. Anne's Day has been celebrated every year on July 26th by the chapel, which ends with a light procession in the town center. There will also be a celebration on September 8th, the day of Mary's birth. In the summer months the chapel is used for devotions and rosary prayers .

Using an electric pump, water can be drawn from the St. Anna spring behind the church during the summer months. In the entrance to the chapel there are numerous notes of thanks from the faithful who are said to have benefited from this water.

The St. Anna Chapel, which is not far from the Mulfingen Jagstbrücke on the left bank of the river, served the Sinti girl Angela Reinhardt , who was housed in the Mulfingen Josefspflege, as a secret meeting place with her parents during the Third Reich .

altar

The altar

The colorfully painted altar is designed as a clan altar of St. Anne . In the middle of the lower row Anna can be seen with her daughter Maria from her marriage to Joachim . Anna and Maria hold the baby Jesus between them. On the left is the daughter Maria , who Anna had with Cleophas, her second husband. She holds her son James in her arms and the other son, Barnabas, sits at her feet. On the right is the third daughter Maria, who came from Anna's marriage to Salomas, together with her children James the Elder and the evangelist John .

In the row above, from left to right, the figures of Zebedee , the husband of Anna's third daughter, Salomas, Joachim, Joseph , Cleophas and Alphaeus can be seen. The latter is the husband of Anna's second daughter.

The side wings show the sons of Anna's second daughter, Simon Zelotes and Judas Thaddäus . These two martyrs are shown with their tools of torture, the saw and the wooden club.

The predella is decorated with a representation of Jesus and his twelve disciples.

More works of art

On one of the outer sides of the chapel is a large wooden crucifix. The interior is adorned with four round frescoed ceilings . There is also a Pietà on the left side wall and a representation of Mary on the globe above the entrance.