St. Alban's Abbey in front of Mainz

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Mainz seen from the southeast (1631). On the left St. Alban with choir and tower, between the Drususstein, which is usually about 500 m further away. Pen drawing by Wenceslaus Hollar

The St. Alban Abbey in front of Mainz emerged from a Benedictine abbey south of the city of Mainz on the Albansberg . Already in the first half of the 5th century there had been a 13 × 28 m single-nave aisle church of St. Alban , to which a monastic community of the so-called mixed rule age of Columbian characteristics (relations to St. . Gallen !) With verifiably considerable goods equipment. An important new building (consecrated on December 1, 805) was built by the Archbishop of Mainz Richulf (787–813). Perhaps even then, at the latest in 813, the transition to the Benedictine observance must have been initiated by Aniane as part of Benedict's monastery reform . The importance of the place was already reflected in the extraordinary size of the late antique hall building. The three-aisled Carolingian monastery church, inaugurated by Richulf on December 1, 805, reached the dimensions (central nave width approx. 12.40 m, side aisle width approx. 6.20 m), but the somewhat longer Carolingian Cologne Cathedral and was until the construction of the Cathedral of St. Martin the largest church in Mainz through Archbishop Willigis .

The monastery was known for its schools pietate doctrinaque inclinitum and for its magnificent church. The school was related to the Carolingian court school, at which both Archbishop Richulf and the later Archbishop Hrabanus Maurus , born around 780 in Mainz, had been trained. At least a part of the important early medieval manuscript production in Mainz provenance, which has a characteristic stamp, can be located in St. Alban, but the more important scriptorium seems to have existed at the cathedral.

Building history

Mainz and its churches in the late Roman and Franconian times - St. Alban's Abbey in the southeast

The oldest church, a single-nave building, with a floor area of ​​exactly 50: 100 Roman feet, and on the outside of which were numerous graves of clergy and lay people, dates back to the late Roman period. In 805 the Carolingian basilica was inaugurated, a three-aisled church with an apse (the transept and the two sides of the apses are more recent, probably 1114). In the west there was a vestibule the width of the nave, above it the Michael's Chapel, but still without a tower. The two west towers known from later illustrations were only added in the Romanesque period. The Gothic choir , built around 1300 and 1500, was of exceptional size. The layout of the Johannisberg monastery in the Rheingau has features of its mother monastery, St. Alban.

In the 8th century

The existence of a monastic community since the 7th century is proven by tombstones. Even before the completion of the St. Alban Monastery, Fastrada , the fourth wife of Charlemagne , who co-financed the construction, and later a large number of Mainz archbishops, found their final resting place in 794 . Before the completion of the monastery, or before Boniface , St. Hilary served the Mainz bishops as a church of the Holy Sepulcher.

But a cemetery with a church also existed here in Roman times and late antiquity , which excavations between 1907 and 1911 brought to light. Alban's grave can also be presumed to be among the uncovered graves. Parts of the church were destroyed in an earthquake in 858.

Imperial influence

The reputation of St. Alban in the Carolingian Empire was evident in the numerous church and imperial assemblies that took place there in 813, 847, 1084 and 1182. In the 10th century St. Alban became the most important center of Ottonian liturgy . From 1022 to 1031 Ekkehard IV of St. Gallen headed the monastery school under Archbishop Aribo . The Gospel Book from St. Alban is one of the main works of Ottonian book illumination .

The Mainz Pontifical ( ordo coronationis ) stipulated, among other things, regulations on the elevation, anointing and coronation of the king. The Pontificale Romano-Germanicum , which was probably created under Wilhelm von Mainz , became valid throughout the entire Roman Catholic Church. An important ceremonial act took place in St. Alban until 1419, the year in which the monastery was converted into a knight's monastery. As part of the inauguration of the newly elected Archbishop, he put on the pallium sent to him by the Pope for the first time after it had rested for a night on the grave of St. Alban.

The Mainz cathedral chapter maintained close relationships with St. Alban. The Archbishops of Mainz in the 9th and 10th centuries chose the monastery as a burial place. Under Archbishop Hildebert in 935 the bones of ten bishops from the time before Boniface were transferred to St. Alban from the dilapidated St. Hilary Chapel . The Abbot of Alban took the first seat after the Archbishop at festive church services. At the station services on Palm Sunday , palm consecration was mandatory in St. Alban. So the donkey got not only on the back of the later minted Albansgulden, but also on the local coat of arms of Bodenheim , where St. Alban owned a lot of land and the location of the Imperial Knights' Foundation is still known today.

In the 11th century there was a growing interest in detailed descriptions of the life of the monastery patron St. Alban. The cathedral scholastic Gozwin wrote a Vita of St. Alban, the Passio sancti Albani Martyris Moguntini , on behalf of Abbot Bardo around 1060 to promote the reputation of the monastery. Another monk, Sigehard von St. Alban, wrote another Albans vita based on the Gozwin text, in which he particularly emphasized the decapitated saint as a motif. This had not yet had an effect on the visual representation. A seal of the monastery from 1083 shows Alban still with his head, his left hand on his chest and the martyr's palm in his right. Motivated by Sigehard's work, the monastery changed its seal towards the end of the 13th century, on which the saint now holds his head in his hands.

Attachment

Mainz with St. Alban's Abbey in the east (far left) on an engraving by Matthäus Merian the Younger (1655)
Also from Topographia Archiepiscopatuum Moguntinensis (1646)

The later Archbishop (1328–1336) Baldwin of Luxembourg had the monasteries of St. Alban and St. Jakob outside the city walls and the St. Viktor monastery outside Mainz reinforced. St. Alban and St. Viktor already had towers and strong curtain walls that originated from Roman times or were added in later times. The Mainz clergy stood on Baldwin's side, which meant that the fortified churches in the run-up to the city posed a serious threat to the city, which the citizens feared. The St. Jakob monastery on Jakobsberg ( see: Citadel Mainz ) was located directly in front of the city moat and a gate and offered the best field of fire on the city wall. St. Alban on the Albansberg and St. Viktor on the northern edge of the Weisenau district, together with Weisenau Mainz Castle, literally sealed off from the south.

Forced softening

On August 10, 1329, the church, which was surrounded by strong walls, and the abbey were destroyed in a dispute between the citizens of Mainz and the administrator of Mainz, Baldwin of Luxembourg . At that time, the north west tower of the west facade was completely blown up and laid down. The abbey was rebuilt, but nowhere near as magnificent and without defensive structures. Abbot Herrmann had to waive any claims for damages against the city of Mainz in 1354.

In 1419 the Benedictine abbey was converted into a collegiate monastery (Ritterstift) under Archbishop Johann II of Nassau . Exclusively knightly members were accepted into the monastery. With the conversion and execution of the relevant bull, Pope Martin V had commissioned the Worms Bishop Johann II von Fleckenstein . In the feud between Archbishop Diether von Isenburg and Elector Friedrich von der Pfalz in 1460, the monastery buildings were only spared because money was bought out. In 1518, Emperor Maximilian I granted the knight's monastery the right to mint coins, the Albans guilder.

St. Alban was plundered and destroyed by Margrave Albrecht Alcibiades of Brandenburg-Kulmbach on the evening of August 28, 1552 during the Second Margrave War. The pen was not rebuilt afterwards. A chapel rose from the ruins of the church ( ipsius templi quae superant ruderibus ), which was repeatedly badly damaged in the Thirty Years War and completely destroyed during the siege of Mainz (1793) . In 1802, the St. Alban Abbey was finally formally abolished under Napoleon .

Possessions

Due to the loss of the early medieval document tradition, the older ownership history can only be traced incompletely, but isolated documents from non-Mainz tradition (above all from Fulda) indicate that the monastery already had important goods in Mainz itself and z. B. in Bodenheim, Laurenziberg near Gau-Algesheim, but also in Wormsgau (documents since the middle of the 8th century). Patronage methods provide further information and point to early possessions in an arc southwest of Mainz to south of Frankfurt, in the Wetterau, in the Hessian-Saxon-Thuringian border area and in Central Franconia. The archdiocese of Mainz at that time extended far into the Hunsrück on the lower Nahe . This emerges from the first documentary mention of Münster-Sarmsheim . The feudal lord was the monastery of St. Alban. Around 900 the monastery was assigned usufruct from the farm to Sarmundesheim (= Sarmsheim). The Wild and Rhine Counts , later Kurmainz , were enfeoffed with the Vogtei Sarmundesheim . 1184 confirmed Pope Lucius III. (1181–1185) gave all possessions to Abbot Heinrich, including 22 churches incorporated into the monastery and 2 chapels. In this bull the Pope of the Abbey of St. Alban confirmed all possessions, rights and privileges and also names the church in Ebersheim with a chapel. The chapel probably belonged to the so-called Töngeshof. This is the oldest written mention of a church in Ebersheim.

The rights of the St. Alban Monastery were confirmed at the request of the abbot in 1213 by the Archbishops of Mainz Siegfried II of Eppstein (1200-1230) and Matthias von Buchegg (1321-1328) from the Mainz cathedral chapter in 1325 .

Pope Boniface IX (1389–1404) confirmed the monastery again in 1402 its ownership.

Around 1100 the Archbishop of Mainz, Ruthard, gave the Benedictine monastery vineyards in the Rheingau, the then "Bischofsberg". The monks should set up a new community there. The new monastery was consecrated to St. John and is now world-famous under the name Schloss Johannisberg .

Funerals

today

Holy water kettle around 1120, from St. Alban's Abbey near Mainz, today Speyer Cathedral Treasure, in the Palatinate History Museum (Speyer)

130 years after the abolition, the veneration of the saint was revived with the establishment of the new parish of St. Alban, the first church building in the diocese of Mainz after the Second World War. The Benedictine Abbey of St. Alban was located within what is now the Upper Town on the Albansberg. The foundation walls of their church coincide today with the street Auf dem Albansberg .

The precious Sacramentarium from the so-called Mainz writing room of the Abbey (Mainz, seminary, Ms. I (saec. IXex)) is kept in the rarity collection of the Martinus Library .

In the Bavarian National Museum in Munich there is a richly decorated, Romanesque ostensorium and in the Speyer Cathedral (or currently in the neighboring Historical Museum of the Palatinate ) a Romanesque holy water kettle from the 12th century, both of which come from the Mainz monastery of St. Alban. The holy water kettle was a gift from King Ludwig I of Bavaria to Speyer Cathedral. According to the inscription in the Palatinate Museum, it came from St. Alban's Abbey to the Mainz Cathedral Treasury and hung permanently in front of the high altar of Mainz Cathedral until the 18th century .

swell

  • Le Pontifical romano-germanique du dixième siècle , ed. C. Vogel and R. Elze (Studi e Testi vols. 226-227 (text), 266 (introduction and indices), 3 vols., Rome, 1963-72).

literature

  • Franz Staab : The Mainz church in the early Middle Ages . In: Friedhelm Jürgensmeier (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte , Vol. 1 Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages (contributions to Mainz church history 6). Echter, Würzburg 2000, pp. 87-194, here pp. 102-110; Pp. 146-147; Pp. 158-159.
  • Reinhard Schmid: The St. Alban Abbey in front of Mainz in the high and late Middle Ages. History, constitution and ownership of a monastery in the field of tension between archbishop, city, curia and empire. ( Contributions to the history of the city of Mainz ) (Mainz 1996).
  • Brigitte Oberle: The St. Alban Abbey in front of Mainz. Aspects of the conversion of the Benedictine monastery of St. Alban into a knight monastery in the 15th century. (2005).
  • Friedrich Ostwald, Leo Schaefer, Hans Rudolf Sennhauser: Pre-Romanesque church buildings. Catalog of the monuments up to the exit of the Ottonen (publications of the Central Institute for Art History in Munich 3) Prestel, Munich 1966, pp. 193–196. Ibid. Supplementary Volume, 1991, pp. 262-263.
  • Hartmut Hoffmann : Book art and royalty in the Ottonian and early Salian empires (writings of MGH 30). Anton Hiersemann, Stuttgart 1986, Vol. 1, pp. 226-230.
  • Les ordines romani du haut moyen age , Michel Andrieu, Louvain: Spicilegium Sacrum Lovaniense Administration, 1961–1974.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Johann Samuelansch, Johann Gottfried Gruber: General Encyklopädie der Wissenschaften und Künste , Brockhaus Verlag, Leipzig, 1842, 2nd section, 21st part, p. 432; (Digital scan)
  2. ^ Franz Staab: The Mainz Church in the Early Middle Ages. In: Friedhelm Jürgensmeier (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 1 Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages (contributions to Mainz church history 6). Echter, Würzburg 2000, pp. 87-194, here: pp. 103-110.
  3. ^ Franz Staab: The Mainz Church in the Early Middle Ages. In: Friedhelm Jürgensmeier (Hrsg.): Handbuch der Mainzer Kirchengeschichte, Vol. 1 Christian antiquity and the Middle Ages (contributions to Mainz church history 6). Echter, Würzburg 2000, pp. 87–194, here p. 105 i. V. m. Note 74.
  4. ↑ Eric Palazzo: Les sacramentaires de Fulda. Étude sur l'iconographie et la liturgie à l'époche ottonienne (Liturgical scientific sources and research. Publications of the Abbot Herwegen Institute of the Abbey of Maria Laach 77). Aschendorff, Münster 1994, pp. 226-227.
  5. ↑ On the ostensorium from St. Alban in the Bavarian National Museum
  6. ↑ To the Romanesque holy water boiler from St. Alban in the Speyer Cathedral Treasure.
  7. ↑ Website on the Speyer holy water boiler from St. Alban.

Coordinates: 49 ° 59 '24.14 "  N , 8 ° 16' 48.54"  O