St. Quintins Chapel
The St. Quintins Chapel was a Catholic church in Essen that was demolished around 1823. It stood north of the Essen Minster in the cloister of the Essen Monastery and, along with the minster, the baptismal and later parish church of St. Johann Baptist and probably a Marian oratory , a St. Pantaleon chapel and a private chapel of the abbess, belonged to the church family of the women's monastery .
The older research
The chapel was long considered the oldest church in Essen, which St. Altfrid , the founder of the Essen monastery, built around 835 on his parents' estate in Astnithi. 835 were in Saint-Quentin , the relics of St. Quintin raised. Older research assumed that Altfrid received relics of this saint, who was particularly venerated in the Franconian Empire, on this occasion. The ground plan of St. Quintin was also believed to be comparable with churches that were dated to the 9th century. It was also assumed that Gerswith I , the first abbess of Essen, had been buried in St. Quintin, since at the time of her death the cathedral church, begun around 850, was not yet finished.
state of research
The foundation of the chapel
When St. Quintin was built is unknown. The churches of St. Severin in Passau and St. Remigus in Büdingen, which were used as a comparison for the floor plan, have since been dated to the 11th century. Altfrid's acquisition of the Quintins relics is also doubtful. Altfrid is in the Miracula s. Quintini , the source for the collection of the relics, was not named as a participant in the ceremony. According to the Essen abbess catalogs compiled in the early modern period, Gerswith was not buried in St. Quintin, but in the cathedral.
The sacraments of the monastery, which have been preserved from the 10th century , do not show any signs of special veneration for St. Quintin. The first source that certainly mentions St. Quintin is the so-called testament of the Abbess Theophanu from around 1050 . This determined that candles should burn ad sanctum Quintinum in her memory . Among the fifty-seven saints whose relics Theophanu had locked in the altars of the crypt she had built in the cathedral, there were also those of Quintin and Saints Trudo and Remigius , who were venerated together in St. Trond . Röckelein therefore considers a joint translation of these saints to be possible, with which Theophanu could be accepted as the founder of the St. Quintin's Chapel. The Consuetudines ecclesie Assindies , a ceremonial for the Essen canons, which arose in the 13th century , contained extensive regulations for St. Quintin and thus form the term ante quem for the creation of the Quintinskapelle. One of these regulations said that on the feast of St. Florinus , November 17th, the abbesses Agana and Ida and all deceased members of the monastery should be commemorated in the chapel . This is possibly a reference to the founders of the chapel. The problem at this point, however, is that the terms of office of Aganas and Ida are uncertain and the veneration of Florins was only introduced in Essen by Ida's supposed successor, Mathilde . The fact that the Quintinskaplan received two ohms of wine annually from a vineyard that Mathilde had donated also speaks for the creation of the Quintinskapelle in the 10th century .
The appearance of the building
The chapel was demolished at the beginning of the 19th century. In 1812 a floor plan and a view were drawn. After that, it was a transversely rectangular hall building with an elongated choir closing on three sides . This drawing does not match the one on the city view of Braun-Hogenberg from 1546. This shows a rectangular hall church with an apse , possibly the church was longer at that time. The Essen monastery archive does not contain anything about construction work on St. Quintin, so that the contradictions in the drawings cannot be resolved. Archaeological findings are not possible because the property has now been built over several times; today there is a commercial building there. When the current building was rebuilt on the property, individual architectural poles were found in the foundation of the previous building , which may have come from the chapel.
The liturgical function
The Quintinskapelle had an important function within the monastery liturgy. St. Quintin was the place to which newly accepted canonesses were taken to venerate the relics of the saint and to pray for the dead and living. After her death, the canonesses were laid out in St. Quintin. St. Quintin, located between the monastery gate and the atrium, was a station both when entering and when leaving the community. The general convention's commemoration of the dead took place there. Due to its important function for the monastery, the chapel had its own chaplain and its own bell- ringer, and there was also a canon office for a canon lady who had to say the prayers of the hours and the funeral prayer every day in St. Quintin and was therefore exempt from the common choral service of the canonies . The Quintins chaplain read mass in the chapel three times a week , as well as the canonesses' funeral masses and the memorial masses. On October 31st, St. Quintin's Day, he celebrated at the main altar of the minster. The chapel had its own fortune for paying the chaplain and lighting. The Vicariate of St. Quintin, which was held by one of the canons of the canons, was one of the best endowed benefices of the monastery.
Current condition
In the place of the quintet , as the chapel was called in Essen, there is now a commercial building, the property is still owned by the church. A memorial plaque for the chapel is attached to the building. The cul-de-sac that leads to the cloister of the minster between the commercial building and the parish church of St. Johann Baptist is named in memory of the chapel An St. Quintin .
literature
- Katrinette Bodarwé: “Church families ” - chapels and churches in early medieval women's communities . In: Herrschaft, Liturgie und Raum - Studies on the medieval history of the women's monastery in Essen . Klartext Verlag, Essen 2002, ISBN 3-89861-133-7 .
- Klaus Lange: The west building of the Essen Cathedral. Architecture and rule in the Ottonian period , Aschendorffsche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Münster 2001, ISBN 3-40206-248-8 .
- Hedwig Röckelein : Life under the protection of the saints . In: Herrschaft, Bildung und Gebet , Klartext Verlag, Essen 2000, ISBN 3-88474-907-2 .
- Erwin Dickhoff: An unknown representation of the Quintinskapelle . In: Das Münster am Hellweg (Bulletin of the Association for the Preservation of the Essen Minster), Volume 31, Essen 1978, Pages 131-140
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lange p. 84, Bodarwé p. 126.
- ↑ Röckelein, p. 94.
- ↑ Röckelein, p. 95.
- ↑ a b c Röckelein, p. 96.
- ↑ Lange, p. 83.
- ↑ Lange, p. 84.
- ↑ Detlef Hopp, Remains of St. Quentin discovered , in: Das Münster am Hellweg, 2012, pp. 15–20.
Coordinates: 51 ° 27 '21.89 " N , 7 ° 0' 47.38" E