St. Medardus (Nörvenich)

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Parish Church of St. Medardus (2014)
Church and churchyard

The Roman Catholic parish church of St. Medardus is in Nörvenich , Düren district , North Rhine-Westphalia . It is dedicated to St. Medardus .

history

The parish of Saint Medardus is first mentioned in 1177. But the church must have existed before. Today's church had three previous buildings, the last of which was badly damaged in 1642. The current church was built between 1658 and 1664.

The church was entered on March 19, 1985 in the list of monuments of the Nörvenich community under no.46.

Since the merger of the former parishes of St. Medardus, St. Gertrud, St. Heribert, St. Mariä Visitation, St. Martinus and St. Viktor to form the parish of St. Josef, Nörvenich, St. Medardus has been the parish church of the Grand Parish.

Building

The three-aisled hall church made of brick with a protruding west tower under a kinked slate pyramid, with an east choir closing on three sides, stands on a 1.10 meter high quarry stone plinth that is about two meters deep in the ground. The nave has a high, the side aisles three transverse gable roofs. All roofs are slated . The high ogival windows in the tower, the naves and the choir and the round window in the south wall of the west aisle are fitted with late Gothic tracery . The cross vault of the central nave rests on four mighty round columns made of shell limestone, the net and star vaults in the choir and side aisles on consoles.

A three-storey tower is built on the eastern corner of the north wall and is crowned with a French dome . The former residential tower, which was formerly inhabited by the pastor, was converted into a sacristy in 1959 .

The building history of the church is well documented by the records of Conradus Flocken, who initiated the reconstruction of the church and made efforts to furnish it with altars, stalls, pulpit, etc. His successor Hermannus Isenkraedt continued to complete the church furnishings.

Furnishing

The baroque altarpiece of St. Medardus by an unknown artist depicts St. Medardus, the patron saint of the church.

A Medardus relic and a Sebastianus relic of the second patron saint were collected from Flocken in 1668 in Cologne and the Arnstein monastery . They are kept in an ostensorium . A Fabianus relic is incorporated into a silver bowl from this period . The believers drank the blessed wine from it .

The picture above the side altar

A large painting has stood above the left side altar of the parish church since February 2011. It is probably a work from the early 17th century that was painted in the style of the Rubens School. Neither the artist, nor the exact year of creation, nor the title of the painting are known. Traces of fire indicate, however, that it was part of the art treasure of St. Medardus even before the great church fire in 1678 and probably adorned one of the side altars. Years ago, the poor condition of the painting prompted the church council to leave the painting to the “ Rhenish Office for Monument Preservation ” for expert restoration work.

The large-format canvas work that can now be admired in the church essentially revolves around the mystery of the Eucharist , the transubstantiation . Since, in addition to a monstrance , the four Latin church fathers St. Gregory, St. Jerome, St. Augustine and St. Gregory the Great also characterize the scenery, the restorer, referring to Paul Clemen , assumed that the artist was in his depiction based on the classic motif of the so-called " Gregor's Mass ".

The picture has been stored in the attic in the Nörvenich rectory for a long time - unfortunately not very professional. Under Pastor Lausberg, it was then discovered under rubble and temporarily hung up in the rectory for the first time.

The mission cross from 1770 is on the south side of the church building .

Bells

The Otto bell foundry from Hemelingen / Bremen cast bronze bells a total of three times for the parish church in Nörvenich, namely in 1908, 1929 and 1951. Of the five bells that were cast before 1939, only one survived the destruction of bells in the two world wars a′-bell from 1929. Today it is bell 2 in the three-part Otto chime of St. Medardus. Bells 1 and 3 are from 1951. The chimes have the following sequence of strikes: g ′ - a ′ - c ″. The bells have the following diameters: 1089 mm, 957 mm, 816 mm. They weigh: 820 kg, 475 kg, 300 kg.

See also

Pastor

See parish St. Medardus (Nörvenich)

Altarpiece

The altarpiece

In the middle of the picture is St. Bishop Medardus depicted with miter , choir cloak and pectoral cross . His right hand blesses the viewer. St. Trinity towers over him on a cloud. Mary , the Mother of God , kneels to the right of Christ . Clockwise follows St. John the Baptist . He kneels on a cloud below God the Father. To the right of Medardus you can see two holy bishops, namely Cornelius and Hubertus of Liège . You are two of the Four Marshals of God . Between the two saints stands a young monk who could represent Timerlin . Below this group, an angel points to Medardus, who touches him on the back of his head with his left hand, pointing him to the viewer as a guardian angel . Two women kneel in the lower left corner. They could be the founders of the picture or female saints, namely Margaret of Antioch and Barbara of Nicomedia . The two are among the fourteen helpers in need . An angel hovers over these two women . Above it stands St. Sebastianus . The Nörvenich Rifle Brotherhood is under his protection . A bearded monk can be seen above Sebastianus . It could be a hermit from Mündt bei Titz . The village is close to the birthplace of Pastor Flocken ( Hasselsweiler ).

The painter of the altarpiece is not known.

parish

The parish was first mentioned in a document in 1177. There must have been a parish much earlier, then the patronage comes from the Frankish times. The parish is mentioned in the liber valoris around 1300. Up to the beginning of the 19th century, 31 houses in the village belonged to the Hochkirchen parish . After the French revolutionary troops marched in on October 4, 1794, the parish no longer belonged to the Archdiocese of Cologne , but to the newly formed Diocese of Aachen , which was dissolved again in 1821. It was not re-established until 1930.

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Dehio. Handbook of German Art Monuments. North Rhine-Westphalia. Vol. 1. Rhineland. Munich 2004.
  2. ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells. Family and company history of the Otto bell foundry dynasty . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, here in particular pp. 515, 533, 550 .
  3. ↑ Gerhard Reinhold: Church bells - Christian world cultural heritage, illustrated using the example of the bell founder Otto, Hemelingen / Bremen . Nijmegen / NL 2019, p. 556, here in particular pp. 310, 458, 481, 493, 506 , urn : nbn: nl: ui: 22-2066 / 204770 (dissertation at Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen).
  4. ↑ 800 years Parish Nörvenich - On the history of the parish , Karl Heinz Türk in the yearbook of the district of Düren 1977, pp. 47–51

Web links

Commons : St. Medardus  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Coordinates: 50 ° 48 ′ 21.7 "  N , 6 ° 38 ′ 40.8"  E