St. Maurus Shrine
The St. Maurus Shrine (also St. Maurus reliquary ; Czech Relikviář svatého Maura ) was created in the Rhine-Maas area in the style of Cologne goldsmithing from 1225 to 1230 . It is located since 1888 in Castle Bečov in Bečov nad Teplou ( Petschau ) in the West Bohemian region Karlovy Vary in the Czech Republic. In 1995 it became a national treasure .
history
The St. Maurus shrine contains the relics of the holy martyrs Maurus , Timothy and Apollinaris as well as St. John the Baptist . The first three martyrs mentioned were beheaded in Reims in the 3rd century on the orders of Prefect Lampadius . Her remains were probably initially in an older shrine. This came into the possession of the Cambraier Bishop Gérard de Rumigny in the 11th century . For this shrine he had the church of St. John and St. Maurus built in Florennes , which no longer exists today. How and when the relics of John the Baptist got into the shrine is not known. It is possible that they were in this older shrine before.
Between 1225 and 1230 the Rumigny family had the current golden reliquary made. It was named after the martyr Maurus because it contains the entire skeleton of him, while it only contains individual bone parts of the other saints. This shrine, a masterpiece of goldsmithing, came to the collegiate church of St. Gangolf in Florennes after the French Revolution . In 1838 it was acquired by Alfred de Beaufort-Spontin , lord of the castle of Florennes, for 2500 francs and then extensively restored by 1851 at his expense. After it was presented at an arts and crafts exhibition in Brussels in 1885, the shrine was transferred to the Bečov Castle in West Bohemia in 1888, which had been in the Beaufort-Spontin family since 1813.
After it became foreseeable towards the end of the Second World War in 1945 that the Beaufort-Spontin family would lose the Bečov Castle and would not be able to take the St. Maurus shrine with them on the run, they hid it under the floor of the castle chapel.
It was not until 1984 that the fate of the shrine became known. At that time, an American businessman submitted an offer to the Czechoslovak consulate in Vienna for 250,000 US dollars for the export of an unspecified art object. Czech detectives also took part in the subsequent negotiations to find out what the object is and where it is located. After the suspicion of western Bohemia grew, they examined the Bečov castle and chateau complex on November 4, 1985 thoroughly and comprehensively. One day later they discovered the St. Maurus shrine under the floor of the Gothic castle chapel. As a result, the Prague Museum of Applied Arts drew up an expert opinion from which it emerged that the reliquary is a national cultural asset that cannot be exported.
Although the found shrine was in poor condition and in need of restoration, only safety measures were initially taken. A comprehensive and professional restoration was only carried out after the political change in 1989. Responsible was the Monument Institute in Pilsen , which carried out the restoration from 1991 under the supervision of two specialist commissions, with experts from Aachen and Cologne also being involved. As new restoration methods had to be developed, the restoration took eleven years. Since 2002, the St. Maurus Shrine has been back in the Bečov Castle, where it can be viewed in a safe-like exhibition room.
description
The shrine in the form of a house or a tumba is 140 cm long, 42 cm wide and 65 cm high. It consists of a wooden core in which the relics of the holy martyrs Maurus, Timothy and Apollinaris as well as Saint John the Baptist are located. The goldsmith's work on the wooden core consists of twelve reliefs, fourteen statues in gold-plated silver sheet, precious and semi-precious stones, filigree work and enamel decoration. Antique gems that were a thousand years old were also used to decorate the tumba . The two gable sides are adorned with two approximately 25 cm tall statues of Jesus Christ and St. Maurus. On the long sides there are six apostles and the six medallions above show events from the life of Saints John and Timothy.
literature
- Ondřej Cink, Tomáš Wizovský, František Maryška and Daniela Staňková: Relikviář svatého Maura . Sokolov 2010, ISBN 978-80-87194-12-6 [with a German summary, documents and numerous historical black-and-white and current color photos]
- Relikviář sv. Maura. Prezentace jedinečné zlatnické památky. Završení oslav 25. výročí “objevu stoleti” . Leaflet for the exhibition at Prague Castle 2010/2011
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martyr Maurus on Heiligenlexikon.de
- ↑ Timothy and Apollinaris on Heiligenlexikon.de