St. Gunthildis Chapel

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St. Gunthildis Chapel

St. Gunthildis Chapel was a pilgrimage chapel of the Middle Ages and is a new building, an ecumenical chapel within the district of Suffersheim , a district of the city of Weißenburg in Bavaria in the central Franconian district of Weißenburg-Gunzenhausen . Due to the shape of the new building, it is also called "God's snail shell". It is located on the edge of the Lohleite forest, west of Suffersheim and above the Schambach river .

Previous construction

According to a legend, the holy maid Gunthildis von Suffersheim lived in a hermitage in the 11th century , where a chapel was built in her honor, which was enlarged by a new building in the 13th century. A pilgrimage is first documented in writing from 1398. The bones of Saint Gunthild are said to have been brought to the chapel from the nearby Michaeliskirche at the end of the 14th century . In the 16th century the chapel fell into disrepair after the Reformation and it was completely destroyed during the Thirty Years War . During excavations in 1957, foundation trains of the medieval pilgrimage church were uncovered. Further archaeological excavations were carried out from 1996 to 1998.

New Gunthildiskapelle

From 1993 to 1995, volunteers from a development association and the city of Weißenburg built the new chapel not far from the medieval foundations according to the plans of Professor Johannes Geisenhof . The ecumenical chapel has the shape of an ammonite . A “spiral passage” leads to the interior and the center, a stone ambo made up of twelve pillars, which symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel . The tent roof of the chapel is supported by twelve beams, which symbolize the twelve apostles . Ecumenical pilgrimages are taking place at the building, which shines in white.

literature

  • Gotthard Kießling: City of Weißenburg i. Bay. (= Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation [Hrsg.]: Monuments in Bavaria . Volume V.70 / 2 ). Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-87490-582-9 .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ St. Gunthildis Chapel on the Neudorf parish homepage
  2. ↑ St. Gunthildiskapelle on fraenkisches-seenland.de
  3. ^ Suffersheim - the village in the narrow Schambach valley
  4. ↑ St. Gunthildis Chapel at the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation
  5. ↑ Ecumenical Gunthildiskapelle , www.pointoo.de. Retrieved December 26, 2012
  6. ↑ Diocese of Eichstätt: Ecumenical service at God's snail shell

Coordinates: 48 ° 58 ′ 41.3 "  N , 11 ° 0 ′ 4.7"  E