St. Maria ad Gradus (Cologne)

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Model of the collegiate church in the city ​​museum
Just one point
Cologne Cathedral & St. Maria im Pesch.jpg
The church foundations on the
cathedral hill, no later than 1825

St. Maria ad gradus ("Mary on the Steps") is the name of a historical Romanesque collegiate church with its own immunity district . It was east of Cologne Cathedral , between the cathedral and the Rhine . It was popularly called St. Mariengraden . The bones of the blessed Richeza , Queen of Poland and granddaughter of Emperor Otto II and his wife Theophanu , rested in it . Richeza's bones were transferred to Cologne Cathedral in 1817.

history

St. Maria ad gradus was donated by Archbishop Hermann II and built on the site of a baptistery belonging to the cathedral. In a document from Archbishop Annos II of 1075, the latter declares that the monastery was built according to plans and with Hermann's funds. The construction was probably completed around 1062 when the relics of St. Agilolf were transferred to it. It was a two-choir basilica with west and east transepts, which connected to the cathedral with a double portico open to the inside. The external dimensions of the church were about 55 m in length and 42 m in width. Construction must have already started under Hermann.

The church burned down in 1085, was rebuilt and later extended Gothic.

After the French occupation of the Rhineland in 1794, the monasteries and monasteries were dissolved and monastery and monastery churches were threatened with demolition or, in some cases, with a profane (non-religious) conversion. In order to save the churches, many of them were taken over by the parishes, who gave up their previous parish churches. In the case of St. Maria ad Gradus, such a takeover was not possible because it was too close to other churches ( Great St. Martin , Cathedral, St. Andreas ) and no further parish church was needed in this area.

For this reason, after its initial use as a storage room, the church was demolished in 1817, and the foundations were also lost when the cathedral hill was demolished in 1827. On the east choir of Cologne Cathedral, the only remnant of the church building is a column with the capital of the columned halls, the so-called cathedral column. A gospel book from the church is in the manuscript Hs. 1a in the Diocesan Library of Cologne , the Richeza gospel , which was also part of the furnishings of the church, as Hs. 544 in the Hessian state and university library in Darmstadt. A crucifix with secondary figures from the workshop of Master Tilman was taken over in 1803 by parishioners in the village of Bliesheim , which was formerly dependent on the collegiate church . Original now in the local parish church of St. Lambertus.

Before the church was demolished, there were also at least three bells , namely a bell consecrated to the Blessed Mother and All Saints from 1356 (or 1354) with a diameter of 1.17 meters, which came to Bachem in St. Mauritius and has been preserved there to this day. as well as the two bells cast by Christian Duisterwalt in 1416 and 1424 and also consecrated to the Mother of God with a diameter of 1.25 and 1.09 meters, which were hung on the tower of St. Peter . The smaller of the two survived the destruction of the Second World War and was welded in 1960.

photos

  • Drawing by Johannes Vinkenboom, 1660

  • East choir of Cologne Cathedral with cemetery and remains of St. Maria ad Gradus, photo from 2008

  • Cathedral column, photo from 2008

Web links

Commons : St. Maria ad Gradus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

literature

  • Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken : The St. Mariengraden Abbey in Cologne. Documents and files 1059–1817 . 2 volumes. Neubner, Cologne 1969 ( communications from the Cologne city archive, no. 57 and no. 58).
  • Richard Hardegen: The Canonical Monastery Maria ad Gradus in Cologne (1056-1802). An examination of the history of canon law with special consideration of its internal structure . Shaker, Aachen 2008, ISBN 978-3-8322-7223-4 , ( reports from jurisprudence, also : Cologne, Univ., Diss., 2008).
  • Konrad Bund: St. Mariengraden - Reception Church of Cologne Cathedral, Gescher 2012, ISSN  1862-8613 , ( writings from the German Bell Museum, issue 9)
  • Klaus Gereon Beuckers : The magnificent gospel from Mariengraden. A masterpiece of Salic book illumination. with a foreword by Harald Horst and a contribution by Doris Oltrogge, Quaternio, Lucerne 2018.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Pictures and description at bliesheim.info (accessed in January 2013).
  2. ↑ Romani Kant: Frechen-Bachem (D-BM) - Bells of St. Mauritius. May 31, 2014, accessed September 30, 2016 .
  3. ↑ Martin Seidler: Cologne bells and peals . In: Förderverein Romanische Kirchen Köln eV (Ed.): Colonia Romanica . tape IV . Greven-Verlag, Cologne 1989, p. 19-25 .
  4. ↑ Brief synopsis of the publisher

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 ′ 28 "  N , 6 ° 57 ′ 36"  E