Zofingen town church

City Church

The Stadtkirche Zofingen is a reformed church building in Zofingen in the Swiss canton of Aargau . The three-aisled basilica in Romanesque - Gothic style is a symbol of the city. Today's church building goes back to the foundation of a canon monastery by the Frohburgers at the end of the 11th century, which was dedicated to Saint Mauritius . Previous buildings can be traced back to the early 7th century. In the course of the Reformation in 1528, the Canons' Monastery was dissolved. Today the city church is owned by the Evangelical Reformed Parish of Zofingen, which is part of the Reformed Regional Church of Aargau .

history

Around the year 600, an original parish was established in Zofingen , which soon developed into the religious center of the region. The first parish church dates from this time. During excavations in 1979 and 1980, archaeologists came across two stone box graves . It is very likely that the two founders of the first church were buried there in the first half of the 7th century, a noble Alemannic couple. While the man's grave was cleared out later, the woman's grave remained intact, along with additions in the form of precious gold jewelry in the Lombard style.

The construction of a new church building began in the 11th century, with a single-nave aisle church being built around the early medieval church . Shortly before the completion of the choir , however, there was a fundamental change in plan. This was in connection with the upgrading of the parish to a canon monastery consecrated to Saint Mauritius . With this step the Counts of Frohburg tried to consolidate their rule. The monastery was probably founded towards the end of the 11th century; the first documentary mention was made in 1201. In line with its increased importance, the church was expanded into a three-aisled basilica , with the choir being taken over from the former hall church. A crypt with an anteroom was built under the choir .

Between 1317 and 1344 the church was rebuilt in several stages and supplemented with Gothic elements. This included a new choir, the north wall of the central nave and the adjoining aisle. In addition, the transept was redesigned. The city fire of 1396 caused great damage, which took several decades to repair due to lack of money. The dilapidated choir had to be demolished between 1514 and 1518 and completely rebuilt, which is why the crypt also had to be filled in.

The impoverished Frohburgers, divided into several lines, sold the Canons ' Monastery in the 1290s to the Habsburgs , who confirmed the monastery' s previous rights. After the conquest of Aargau in 1415, the patronage passed to Bern . From 1461 the Bernese began to gradually push back the privileges and influence of the monastery. From 1527 the monastery was subject to the jurisdiction and tax sovereignty of the city of Zofingen. A year later, in the course of the Reformation, the canon monastery was dissolved. Monastery conductors appointed by Bern administered the extensive property until 1798, with the proceeds going to the parish of Zofingen, the school and the poor.

A year after a storm damaged the church tower , it was demolished in 1646 and rebuilt by 1649. As early as 1655, the tower foundations had to be reinforced. Stiftsgut and Kollatur came into the possession of the newly founded Canton of Aargau in 1803, and in 1907 to the parish. In 1860 the rood screen was torn down. During renovation work in 1911/12, the Romanesque crypt was exposed again after four centuries. The last major renovation, both inside and outside, took place from 1976 to 1986.

building

The town church stands in a west-east direction in the middle of the old town of Zofingen between Kirchgasse, Vorderer Hauptgasse and Marktgasse; to the south is the church square. The building eras are clearly recognizable in the floor plan. The nave goes back to the Romanesque complex, the two chapels on the northern long side are late Gothic , the choir on the east side and the church tower in the west. From the south, the Romanesque structure of the nave can be seen in the high, side and transept. The corner blocks of the masonry, which is otherwise plastered, are also Romanesque . Common to all parts of the building are uniform pointed arch windows from the 15th and 16th centuries. The lintels show some ornamental patterns.

Inside, the delimitation of the central nave is uneven. To the north there are four narrow late Gothic pointed arches on polygonal pillars, to the south there are three wider Romanesque round arches on square pillars with a transom profile . A pointed arch made of red bricks on Romanesque pillars forms the transition to the transept. The plaster- clad ceiling from 1732 is decorated with patterns in the Regency style, and a Zofingen coat of arms is attached in the area of the central nave. A pointed choir arch on unprofiled pillars leads to the two-bay choir. This is divided into the square antechamber between the two sacristies and the choir head with three octagon sides. From the choir you can get to the restored crypt with a main room and an adjoining room to the west. The locations of three earlier altars are recognizable.

The church tower is made of yellow sandstone , supplemented by Mägenwil shell limestone and tuff stone . It is divided into five floors by cornices , the two lower floors being rusticated . A cornice with copper gargoyles and a triglyph-like frieze complete the tower. A curved onion helmet rises above it , surrounded by clock gables, which merges into a slender pointed helmet. The south tower of the town church of Winterthur and the tower of the town hall of Lenzburg are based on the Zofingen model .

Furnishing

In the northern sacristy, today's baptistery, a crucifixion image in the form of a fresco was uncovered in 1913 . The crucified Jesus , Mary and the apostle John are shown in front of a landscape. The work, dated 1518 and probably by Bartlome Schürmann, is based to a large extent on Albrecht Dürer's copper engraving passion ten years earlier . Wall paintings from the first half of the 14th century can be found on the supporting arches in the crypt, but only fragments have been preserved.

The central choir window, which dates from around 1400, is particularly worth seeing. It is divided into twelve image fields that are distributed over three lancets . The two middle horizontal stripes represent the Crucifixion, the lowest one the Entombment and Resurrection, the uppermost canopy with architectural fragments. Six cabinet panes are attached to the sloping windows of the choir closure . These are gifts from canons and religious bodies on the occasion of the extension of 1518. They were originally in the north side chapel and were moved here in 1879. Three discs each come from Niklaus Herport from Lucerne and from Hans Funk from Bern .

The font dates from 1651 . The octagonal chalice with a baluster-shaped foot on a curved base plate was donated to commemorate the construction of the church tower and has stood in front of the choir arch since 1706. In 1630/31 the pulpit was built , a richly carved polygonal basket made of oak that rests on fluted corner pillars. The three-part choir stalls date from the time of the renovation in 1518 and have flat and plastic carvings. In 1984 a new organ from Metzler Orgelbau in Dietikon was installed in the church .

Bells

From the high Gothic tower of the town church Zofingen a mighty and solemn big bell can be heard. “Wake up the voice calls us” (with a doubled root note) is the selected tone sequence on Gb ⁰ . The ringing consists of six bells. The smallest and oldest is from 1403, the others are from 1929. All bells except for the smallest were cast by H. Rüetschi in Aarau during the heyday . The bells have a sonorous and fundamental sound. The Zofinger bell is considered one of the most beautiful Rüetschigel bells.

Dates of the bells:
No.	volume	Surname	Weight
1	Ges ⁰	Matthew Bell	6867 kg
2	b ⁰	St. Mark's Bell	3506 kg
3	of the ^1st	Luke Bell	2050 kg
4th	it ¹	St. John's Bell	1463 kg
5	ges ¹	Paul Bell	779 kg
6th	as ¹	Mauritius bell	approx. 300 kg

literature

August Bickel: Zofingen from prehistoric times to the Middle Ages . Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau 1992, ISBN 3-906419-09-6 .
Christian Hesse: St. Mauritius in Zofingen . Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau 1993, ISBN 3-7941-3602-0 .
Manuel Kehrli: The Bernese coat of arms stone from 1706 in the town church of Zofingen. In: Zofinger Neujahrsblatt. 2011, ZDB -ID 351099-2 , pp. 13-18.
Michael Stettler : The art monuments of the canton of Aargau . Ed .: Society for Swiss Art History . Volume I: The districts of Aarau, Kulm, Zofingen. Birkhäuser Verlag, Basel 1948.
Johann Ludwig Meyer-Zschokke: On the building history of the collegiate church . In: Basler Zeitschrift für Geschichte und Altertumskunde , Vol. 12, 1913, pp. 312–328. ( Digitized version )