St. Rasso (Grafrath)
The pilgrimage church of St. Rasso with the grave of St. Rasso is located on the edge of the Ampermoor in the Grafrath municipality in the Fürstenfeldbruck district in Upper Bavaria .
history
The oldest historical evidence of the St. Rasso Church in Grafrath is the donor's grave. It is located in the floor of the church under a tombstone, which, surrounded by an early baroque grille, forms the dominant center of the church. The current grave slab was not made until 1468, but it replaced an older, unsightly grave slab. The grave below dates from the early Middle Ages. In terms of grave type, it is a stone slab grave, as those in southern Bavaria, mainly from the 7th and 8th centuries, were found in several places in or near the church, but without the memory of a specific person being associated with them as in Grafrath . Like the grave slab, the grave has the dimensions 2.57 × 1.13 m and extends down to 1.20 m into the ground.
In 1468 the bones of the holy church donor were removed from this grave. A high grave was built on the surrounding plates of the grave in the ground , in which the bones were buried again and the grave was closed at the top by the above-mentioned cover plate. Before the current church was built in 1688–1695, the bones were removed from the high grave again, the high grave was removed and the grave slab was placed on the ground in the same place. The bones were preciously framed and raised to the high altar at the inauguration of the church, where they can still be seen today in a glass shrine.
The donor's grave and the earliest written evidence give us important data about the person of the man who was buried in this grave. As a high-ranking personality of the early Middle Ages, he founded a church on the island between Amper and Ampermoos, which was then still known (Wörth) , gave it the Erlöser patrozinium (St. Salvator), collected, as was customary at the time, high-quality relics of saints for his church , determined the place near the relics as a place for his grave and founded a monastery so that after his death the monks would pray for him and protect and care for his grave, in which, according to the epitaph, he would “wait for Judgment Day”.
For reasons about which we can only speculate, at the beginning of the 12th century the Counts Berthold II of Andechs and Otto III. von Wolfratshausen at the instigation of Bishop Hermann von Augsburg (1096–1133) and Archbishop Konrad von Salzburg (1106–1147) the monastery of Grafrath to Dießen , where it was converted into a canon . The relics, however, were brought to their castles by the counts, where they formed the basis for the well-known Andechs healing in Andechs. Since after the incorporation of Grafrath by Pope Innocent II in 1132 there was no longer any need for the Canon Monastery in Dießen to keep documents about the foundation in Grafrath, there are no documents from the early period. Furthermore, since the Andechs family of counts, who presumably continued to cherish the memory of Count Rath, perished in the first half of the 13th century and Andechs Castle was destroyed, there was a break in written records. This did not lead to the end of Grafrath's story because the founder left behind an indestructible foundation document through the stone slab grave, because the people soon venerated the buried as saints and because the saints' relics from Grafrath were finally rediscovered in Andechs in 1388 thereupon the interest in Grafrath's history awakened anew.
Because of the long gap in the tradition, discrepancies arose as to the name of the founder and the time of the foundation of the church. The canon Albert von Dießen played a momentous role in this; around 1370 he was the first to write down what he was able to find out about the lost foundation in Wörth for a compilation of the monasteries in Bavaria. Although the grave church was already named "sand Grafrath" after the name of the founder buried in it, Albert equated the founder of Grafrath with the first named Count Razo von Dießen, so that from this time on it was next to "Count Rath" also the name tradition "Graf Rasso" gives. The people kept the name Graf Rath until modern times . Only in the second half of the 19th century did the name Rasso prevail for men, so that today only the place is called Grafrath (originally "St. Grafrath"), but the church is referred to as St. Rasso Church.
The other disagreement arose because Albert the no longer known founding year of the monastery and the church - more than four hundred years after the event! - set to the year 954. However, the circumstances of the time (fights between the German princes and incursions by Hungarian horsemen in southern Bavaria) make the foundation of a monastery appear questionable at this time. In addition, the Andechs tradition is based on a different, i.e. earlier, foundation. Finally , according to recent historians, there is no historical core for the consecration of the church in 954 by Bishop Ulrich von Augsburg (923–973), as Albert claims. We can therefore, following the Andechs tradition , assume that it was founded in the Carolingian era , perhaps exactly a hundred years earlier (854).
Albert does not name the day the founder of the monastery died. Even before his time there was an entry in this regard in the Dießen Nekrologium for June 19, so that where the memory of St. Rasso is still committed today, this happens on June 19 or the following Sunday (for example in Grafrath, Untergammenried , Schweingg ( Eisenberg ) and Untermühlhausen ).
For the people, who already venerated the church founder as a saint in the Middle Ages, although he was officially neither beatified nor canonized by the church, it was unimportant when the count lived or died. For the people, the "dear sand Grafrath" was still the emergency helper who was still working from the grave in all hardships and sufferings. From all of southern and eastern Bavaria, from Swabia, Tyrol and Carinthia, up to 100,000 pilgrims came to his grave every year, because - so it says in the oldest chronicle of Andechs even before the bones were raised : “Heyligs gepain was at the same place grosen zaichen do day and night to the priceless people who are looking for his genad haym ”. Evidence in Grafrath are the around 13,000 miracle reports in the miracle books that have survived from 1444 to 1728.
The worship of the man and the influx of people to his grave were the reason for the preservation of the grave church in the formerly lonely place Wörth, and they were also the reason for the construction of the new pilgrimage church to St. Rasso in the years 1688–1695. The elevation of the bones of the church founder on the high altar at the inauguration of the new church can be regarded as final confirmation of the legitimacy of the man's veneration as a saint.
Building description
When at the end of the 17th century the medieval church, which had already been renovated several times and expanded to the west and east in 1593, needed renovation again, the Canons of Diessen decided to build a completely new and larger church right away. They could expect financial support from the donations of the numerous pilgrims and above all from the Grafrath Candle Foundation of the City of Munich. For a long time it had booked investments from investments and granted loans higher interest income than it had to spend every year for Grafrath according to the foundation. For example, on Sunday 1688, Provost Renatus gave the well-known Vorarlberg master builder Michael Thumb , who was currently busy building the monastery building in Dießen, the order to build a new church in Grafrath. It was specified that the grave of the church donor had to be further in the middle of the church.
Michael Thumb based his design on the "Vorarlberg Cathedral Scheme" he had developed. The new church was created as a hall with a strongly retracted choir , expanded by two transept-like additions. In the nave, the additions form two side chapels with side altars, in the choir they contain a sacristy on both sides and oratorios open to the church . The choir is closed off by an apse , framed by two stair turrets that are only visible from the outside and , like the apse, are closed at the top with an onion-shaped roof. The outside length of the church - dimensions rounded off - is 41 m, the inside length 37 m ( nave 24 m, choir 13 m), the width of the nave 15 m (with side chapels 20 m) and the width of the choir 11 m, the height of the interior is 15 m in the nave, 14 m in the choir. On the west side, a small tower is placed on the roof, originally with an onion hood , restored with a pyramid-shaped roof after it was destroyed by a storm in 1749. With the exception of the west side facing the moss, the facade is structured all around by a pronounced eaves cornice and pilasters . Two years after the start of construction, the client and builder died. At that time the shell was finished and the roof structure was in place. The successors, Provost Andreas Sedlmayr and site manager Michael Natter, completed the construction, so that it was inaugurated on July 17, 1695 and the remains of St. Rath / Rasso could be brought into the church in solemn procession and raised to the high altar.
Furnishing
Little remains of the baroque furnishings. These are the side altars (with the exception of the altarpieces of the rear side altars), the organ case, the confessionals , the grating under the gallery and the large candlestick above the Rassograb donated by the City of Munich for the inauguration of the church. The furnishings that dominate the church today come from the Rococo period . Since money was available from the proceeds of the Grafrath Candle Foundation of the City of Munich and from a legacy of the elector's personal physician Abraham Braunschober - both coats of arms on the choir arch! -, the Dießen Canons commissioned the most famous artists of the time to decorate the interior in 1752/53: the master builder Johann Michael Fischer with the redesign of the room shell (removal of the belt arches), the Augsburg academy director Johann Georg Bergmüller with the decoration of the church with frescoes who have favourited Wessobrunner Johann Michael Feichtmayr and Johann Georg Üblher with stuccoing of the ceiling and the walls. The Rococo furnishings are dated to 1753 through the chronogram with which Bergmüller signed his middle ceiling fresco: GeorgIVs BergMILLer / CIVIs AVgVstanVs aD / InVenIt pInXItqVe. The city of Munich commissioned a new high altar itself in 1759 to the sculptors Johann Baptist Straub and Ignaz Günther .
What the church represents on a large scale, the high altar repeats on a small scale: The church rises as a monument above the man's grave in the center of the church. On the ceiling, his life story is depicted until he was accepted into heaven: in the western fresco his secular achievements (saving the population from the enemy), in the middle fresco his spiritual achievements (building a church, founding a monastery, collecting relics, entering the monastery), and finally in the choir fresco the acceptance into heaven and his veneration as a helper in need. Similarly, the glass shrine with the man's bones forms the center of the high altar. Behind the shrine, a grave stele , adorned with the princely insignia and the inscription "S.RASSO DUX BAVARIAE", indicates the secular activity and the rank of the deceased. The title "DUX BAVARIAE (Duke of Bavaria) is taken from the oldest chronicle of Andechs and is reinforced by the Bavarian ducal coat of arms, which is presented by an angel in the ceiling painting above. From the shrine with the joined bones Rasso a band of clouds rises upwards symbolizes his way after death, at the end of which he is received in a resurrection body by Jesus , the world redeemer (with a cross in his arm and sitting on the globe). The glass shrine is flanked by larger than life statues of the apostles Philip and James the Younger Count Rath / Rasso dedicated his first church to them. After he became church patron himself , two side altars were consecrated to them in the old church. In the new church they are again on the high altar with the church donor.
In 1771, a stucco marble pulpit by Thomas Schaidhauf was added to the church, in 1783 the church stalls donated by the City of Munich, in 1901/02 the altarpieces of the rear side altars with Franciscan saints painted by the painter Kaspar Schleibner and in the year 1903.
organ
The city of Munich also financed a new organ , which the Munich organ builder Willibald Siemann built into the baroque organ case in 1903 . The organ, which was last overhauled in 2004/05 by the master organ builder Andreas Offner (Kissing), today has 22 stops on two manuals and a pedal .
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- Coupling : Normal coupling II / I, I / P, II / P and octave coupling II / I, each as sub and super octave coupling
- Playing aids : free combination , fixed combinations (p, mf, f, ff), register crescendo as swelling step, stopper and trigger
Function of the church
In addition to the function of the church as a place of burial, Count Rath / Rasso had built the church as a monastery church for the Benedictine monastery he founded , so that the monks could gather there to praise God. After the relocation of the monastery and removal of the relics, Pope Innocent II gave the church, now downgraded to a chapel, to the Canons of Dießen. In order to ensure the preservation of the chapel and the care of the grave, Dießen gave the church in Grafrath as inalienable property the courtyard near the church with its affiliations ( known as the cloister innkeeper, broken off in 2016 after lengthy local political discussions). The farm owner had the function of a church keeper and had to provide board and lodging to a priest ( chaplain ). Dießen only had the right to propose who should take over the chaplaincy; the right of appointment was granted to the Bishop of Augsburg . As more and more people made pilgrimages to the grave in the chapel because of its reputation as a place of wonder, the grave chapel became a well-known pilgrimage church , named after the church donor “St. Grafrath “was called. Popes, cardinals - twenty Roman cardinals in 1490 - and bishops granted indulgences for the construction and maintenance of the church . In 1778 the Canons of Dießen built their own priestly house, today's monastery, into which canons moved in in place of the secular chaplain in 1719. As a result of the secularization of the monastery properties, the state became the owner of the church and the monastery in 1803 and is still today. For the care of the church and the pilgrimage, he maintained two priests from the dissolved monasteries of Dießen and Andechs, the canon P. Gelasius Arnold and the former subprior of Andechs P. Veremund Dold. After their death, it is thanks to King Ludwig I that in 1836 the Franciscans of the Bavarian Order Province took care of the church and the pilgrims.
Because of the emerging shortage of priests, in 1979 the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising asked the Franciscans to take over pastoral care of the neighboring parishes of the Assumption of Mary in Höfen and St. Valentin in Kottgeisering . The St. Rasso Church was declared the central church of the Grafrath Parish Association, but nothing changed in the external parish structure and diocese affiliation (the former Wörth with church and monastery formally belongs to the Diocese of Augsburg , the two parishes to the Archdiocese of Munich and Freising). Because of its spaciousness, the parish services of the parish “Maria Himmelfahrt Unteralting” take place in the St. Rasso Church. The primary function of St. Rasso Church as a pilgrimage church is still enjoyed by the church and service visitors through the grave of St. Rasso clearly presented.
Polish Franciscans from the Wroclaw Province of St. Hedwig live in the monastery near the church, who maintain the monastery and pastoral care in the parish on behalf of the Bavarian Franciscans. A task of the monastery in 2006 could be averted through commitment from church and politics.
literature
- Fast: Grafrath - pilgrimage church to St. Rasso . Art Guide No. 519, 5th, revised edition, 2008, ISBN 978-3-7954-4309-2 .
- Norbert Lieb: The Vorarlberg baroque master builders. Fast u. Steiner, Munich 1976, ISBN 3-7954-0410-X .
- Volker Liedke, Peter Weinzierl: District Fürstenfeldbruck (= Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation [Hrsg.]: Monuments in Bavaria . Volume I.12 ). Karl M. Lipp Verlag, Munich 1996, ISBN 3-87490-574-8 .
- Angelika Mundorff, Eva von Seckendorff (Hrsg.): Staged splendor. Baroque art in the Fürstenfelder Land. Regensburg 2000, ISBN 3-7954-1323-0 .
- Ernst Messmer: The miraculous grave of Count Rasso. History of the unusual pilgrimage and pilgrimage church to St. Grafrath, St. Ottilien 2004, ISBN 3-8306-7185-7 .
- Ernst Messmer: Grafrath and the beginnings of Dießen and Andechs. New evaluation and evaluation of the sources about early connections. In: Oberbayerisches Archiv 133. Volume, (2009), pp. 161–246.
- Ernst Messmer: Count Rath and his court in Wörth. Thalhofen 2011, ISBN 978-3-941013-58-2 .
Web links
- Richly illustrated web page for the pilgrimage church in Grafrath, u. a. with a photo of the body of St. Rasso
- Literature on St. Rasso in the catalog of the German National Library
- Photos of the furnishings in the Rasso Church, in the Warburg Institute Iconographic Database .
Individual evidence
- ^ Steidl, Bernd: On the historicity of the holy Count Rasso von Grafrath, in: Bayerische Prognistorblätter 69 (2004), pp. 113–127
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↑ On the historical connection between Grafrath, Dießen and Andechs:
Messmer, Ernst: Grafrath und die Beginn von Dießen and Andechs. 'New assessment and evaluation of the sources on early connections, in: Oberbayerisches Archiv 133th Volume (2009), p. 161– 246 - ↑ a b Meßmer, Ernst: Graf Rath und seine Hof in Wörth, Thalhofen 2011, pp. 68–85
- ↑ Detailed information on the history and disposition of the organ of St. Rasso ( Memento from September 10, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ Manfred Amann Grafrath: Grafrath: Klosterwirt is threatened with demolition . In: sueddeutsche.de . March 1, 2016, ISSN 0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed on August 20, 2016]).
- ↑ Stefan Salger Grafrath: SZ series: At the Amper: Spiritual life on the water . In: sueddeutsche.de . June 12, 2015, ISSN 0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed August 20, 2016]).
Coordinates: 48 ° 7 '17.2 " N , 11 ° 9' 23.2" E