St. Mary of the Angels (Brühl)
The castle church of St. Mary of the Angels is in the immediate vicinity of Augustusburg Castle in Brühl . It was built in 1493 and served as a monastery church for the Brühl Convent of Franciscan Observants until the secularization in 1802 . It got its name from the founding church of the Franciscans in Assisi .
Origin of the church
First builders
The foundation stone for the church was made in 1491. The church was named "Eclesia ad S tam Mariam de Angelis," St. Mary of the Angels. It was built at the same time as a monastery of the Order of the Franciscan Observants by Archbishop and Elector Hermann von Hessen . Under him was Johann Spender , auxiliary bishop in Cologne, and at the same time official of the Franciscans in Brühl.
After his death in October 1508, Hermann IV of Hesse was buried in front of the high altar of the monastery church in the form of a heart burial.
The medieval construction
The church was built with a single nave in a simple Gothic style and has a small roof turret. The nave was 148 Prussian feet long , 28.5 feet wide, and 43 feet high from the floor to the vaulted roof. The southern long side of the ship was not provided with windows, as it was directly connected to the monastery.
Therefore, one could enter both the church and the monastery through several doors from the corridor at ground level. One entered the pulpit from an upper corridor, not from the church interior . A staircase led to two boxes on the epistle side (right) of the high altar , which were reserved for the archbishop and his entourage. A door behind the high altar led through a corridor into the Prince-Bishop's castle .
After completion in December 1493 and the takeover of the monastery and church in May 1494, the representative of the Franciscan Provincial of the Cologne Franciscan Province ( Colonia ) made it a condition of this " secret door " that it should only be accessible to "his Archbishop's Grace" and his successors.
On each long side of the choir , there are two rows of choir stalls, each of which is connected to the side altars that are positioned horizontally . The lower part of the nave has four wall niches on each long side , two of which have altars and the rest of them with confessionals .
The interior was divided into roughly two equal parts by an iron grille decorated with ornamentation , of which the eastern side formed the slightly raised choir for the monks and the western side served the faithful.
Completion and consecration
The church and high altar were consecrated in December 1493 by the elector .
Another four altars were later "consecrated", that is, each individual altar was consecrated to a saint . The main patroness of the church is Mary , the Mother of God .
In 1633 an organ was installed above the western main entrance, the organ front was decorated with a representation of King David playing the harp , lined with angels playing music .
Remodeling from 1735
By order and according to the wishes of Elector Clemens August , the interior of the church was redesigned in the Baroque style in 1735 . He commissioned Balthasar Neumann (1745) with this interior design . He had already carried out work in Augustusburg Castle shortly before (1740).
The main altar consisted of a front and a rear cafeteria , so that two masses could be read at the same time: in front the holy mass for the monks and the people, in the back for the elector Clemens August and his entourage.
Clemens August had the vaulted ribs and belt arches supporting half columns replaced by pilasters and the still existing high altar was erected with a column structure made of marbled stucco in plait style . The plaster marble side altars consecrated to St. Francis and St. Anthony were also renewed in 1744.
In 1744, the relics of Theban and Gorcumensian martyrs that had been in the castle chapel until then found their new place for veneration in a beautifully designed new version under the altars of Francis and Anthony.
The parish church in Lechenich , which was damaged by fire in May of the same year, received the old altars as a gift. In 1755, Clemens August had a new church portal built from Königswinterer Gestein, and stones for Cologne Cathedral had been broken on the Drachenfels since 1273 . The church and monastery courtyard were provided with a grid.
secularization
After the Concordat concluded in 1801 between Napoléon Bonaparte and Pope Pius VII , the abolition and dissolution of the monasteries and churches as well as all their spiritual goods took place in 1802 in the course of general secularization . At the time of the abolition, the Brühl convent consisted of 14 fathers and six brothers. The ownership of the monastery and church was given as 6 acres of garden.
On August 2, 1802, the Portiunculafest , the Franciscans held the last Holy Mass in the monastery church. After that the church stood unused for a few years.
When the furniture of the monastery church such as the organ, bells, altars, pulpit, confessionals and choir grids had already been announced for sale to the public by order of the domain recipient , the then Maire Brühls, Zaaren, turned to the responsible prefect to prevent the sale. The prefect managed to suspend the sale.
In 1807 the church was donated to the parish of Brühl as a side church . In 1863 the door in the choir room leading to the passage into the castle was bricked up.
Reconstruction after 1945
The castle church was almost completely destroyed in the Second World War , but work on restoration began as early as 1949. It was only reopened as the Rector's Church in December 1953 .
The heavily damaged main altar with the figures created in 1745 by Johann Wolfgang von der Auwera could, however, be restored. Parts of the damaged Annunciation group, showing her in life-size, freestanding, white figures held the Annunciation , however, were replaced in the middle of copies.
Man of Sorrows (1520)
Wilhelm von Arborch
The monogram of the elector
The new font
Today's access to the pulpit from the inside
Pulpit, detail
This was followed by the restoration of the Lady Chapel, which is now used as a sacrament chapel, and the installation of a new baptismal font . The preliminary conclusion of the work was a new bronze portal, created by the Cologne sculptor Elmar Hillebrand , a student of Ewald Mataré , which was installed in 1955. The carved pulpit from 1757 was also rebuilt after it was largely destroyed. Only the dark wooden parts are from the original. The pulpit shows representations from the life of saints of the Franciscan order.
The organ was completely destroyed in 1944. A replacement was found in an organ built by Jakob Brammerz from Kornelimünster in 1727 for the Franciscan church of the monastery of the same name in Lechenich . The organ building company Klais from Bonn took over their reconstruction and installation . In 1967 the organ was inaugurated.
In the roof turret hangs a three-part bell with the tone sequence d 2 –f 2 –g 2 , the larger bell of which was cast in 1682 by Laurentius Wickrath and the two smaller ones in 1964 by Johannes Mark (Brockscheid).
In 1958 the rectorate was elevated to a parish and St. Maria von den Engeln has been an independent parish church ever since.
The restoration work begun in 1949 concluded with the restoration of the side altars.
The former division of the church interior into almost equal halves has been changed. Since 1996, a new, simple celebration altar has been used for the celebration of the divine service, this was placed in front of the grating that separates the main and side altars from the divine service room in order to be able to celebrate the parish mass according to the new liturgical guidelines .
The altar was created by the designer Bussenius, as was the ambo , the sediles and an Easter candlestick . A new coat of paint based on historical findings was carried out, baroque frescoes were exposed again, the benches were restored and arranged so that a central aisle leads to the altar. Only two of the former six confessional niches are still used for the granting of this sacrament , nothing is reported about the whereabouts of the remaining stalls. The new baptismal font is in one of the niches and a Pietà (17th / 18th century) is placed in another .
All work was completed in 1999. The church connected to the castle by an orangery is one of the sights of the city of Brühl.
literature
- Robert Wilhelm Rosellen: History of the parishes of the deanery Brühl , JP Bachem Verlag, Cologne 1887
- Fritz Wündisch: 500 years of the Franciscan monastery , sources on the history of the city of Brühl VII. Brühl 1991
Individual evidence
- ^ Fritz Wündisch, 500 Years of the Franciscan Monastery, Regest No. 1 with reference to HAStK Foreign Affairs No. 46; also Regest No. 3, excerpt from Koelhoff's chronicle
- ↑ year according to Rosellen
- ^ Rosellen, files parish archive Brühl
Web links
Coordinates: 50 ° 49 ′ 40.1 ″ N , 6 ° 54 ′ 19.3 ″ E