Sankt Arnual Abbey
The St. Arnual Abbey is a former Augustinian Canons - Abbey in the Sankt Arnual district , which today belongs to Saarbrücken , and which was converted into a Protestant monastery during the Reformation . The most important immediate neighboring abbeys were Busendorf , St. Avold , Glandern , Weiler-Bettnach , Fraulautern , Mettlach , Tholey and Hornbach . The neighboring intellectual centers were Trier and Metz . The monastery still owns the monastery church in St. Arnual, which has been available as a place of worship for the evangelical parish of St. Arnual since 1575, and extensive forests south of Saarbrücken, the so-called "Stiftswald". The monastery is legally an independent corporation under ecclesiastical law, the chairman of the board of directors of the monastery was the current superintendent of the Saarbrücken church district until 2000 . Since 2000, Prof. Hans-Walter Herrmann has been chairman of the foundation's administrative board.
history
Origins
The village of Merkingen , forerunner of the Sankt Arnual district, is said to have been donated by the Merovingian king Theudebert II to the Metz bishop Arnual (also Arnoald ) around 600 . The document of the Metz bishop Adventius about it from the year 857 (the beginning of his episcopate is dated to the year 858) is not preserved in the original, but only in French-language summaries from the 18th century. Bishop Arnual founded a successful mission center around 600 and is probably buried here as well. Five different churches were the forerunners of today's collegiate church in the Middle Ages . Archaeological excavations in the 1990s have confirmed an important Merovingian burial site in the crossing of the collegiate church. Soon Arnual was venerated as a saint , and Merkingen was renamed Sankt Arnual.
middle Ages
The St. Arnual Abbey was first mentioned in a document in 1135 (a deed of donation from Emperor Henry III from 1046 is probably a forgery). However, there is a medieval seal on the monastery that points to a founder named Odoacer . Although this was a widespread name in the early Middle Ages , there are several counts of this name from the 10th century in the vicinity who could therefore be considered as donors. It cannot therefore be ruled out that a community of clerics had already lived here under Arnual (which is supported by the above-mentioned archaeological finds), so that the foundations of the 10th and 12th centuries could be re-foundations or extensions. It is unknown whether it was originally a collegiate pen of regular or (unregulated) secular canons . When the canons of the rule for Augustinian canons adopted, is not detectable in the late Middle Ages they lived in any case after this monastic rule .
In accordance with the old relationship of the village of Merkingen, the monastery was subordinate to the diocese of Metz and was the seat of an Archipresbyterate that comprised around 40 parishes. The monastery was thus responsible for supervising a number of independent parishes (e.g. St. Ingbert and Dudweiler ), and the monastery also included the seven monastery parishes of Gersweiler , Sulzbach , Fechingen , Güdingen , Bübingen , Hesslingen and Thedingen .
It is estimated that never more than five to seven canons resided in St. Arnual. Since they were not monks , they did not live in a common monastery building ( convent ), but in individual mansions near the collegiate church. The head of the monastery was not an abbot , but carried the title of dean .
The monastery also had a small Latin school , which was first mentioned in 1223 and which later became the Saarbrücken Ludwigsgymnasium .
A highlight in the history of the monastery was the visit of King Louis VII of France in 1147 , who stopped here with his crusaders.
Reformation time
Since the 1550s, the canons of the monastery have been open to Martin Luther's evangelical teaching . Dean Nikolaus Beuck , who had been a canon in St. Arnual since 1551, resigned from his office as early as 1554 because the course of the Catholic Count Philip II . too little was decided.
In 1561 the monastery church treasure was plundered, parts of the booty were later found in the Saar.
Beuck's successor as dean, Jodocus Bruer , tried one last time to reform the pen. He asked the patron of the monastery, Count Johann IV from Saarbrücken, to allow priestly marriage and the distribution of the Lord's Supper in both forms (i.e. bread and wine) - both would have been permissible under the provisions of the Augsburg Interim of 1548. Johann forbade that, whereupon the canons brought a lawsuit against him before the Imperial Court of Justice, claiming that they had always been a direct imperial pen and could therefore determine their denomination themselves according to the provisions of the Augsburg Religious Peace (from 1555). The count could not allow that, because in the event of a victory for the monastery, as bailiff he would have lost control of the monastery’s extensive land holdings, which made up a considerable part of the county. So he had the dean thrown into jail without further ado until he withdrew the complaint and resigned from his office. Johann then prevented the election of a successor and in 1569 transferred the property (the church and the land and forest holdings) to a separate foundation. The irony of history: Johann, the last Catholic count of Saarbrücken, dissolved the monastery! But since he died in 1574 without a (legal) son, the county of Saarbrücken fell to the count's Protestant cousins from the Nassau-Weilburg line , who introduced the Reformation in 1575 . So there is still the Evgl. St. Arnual Abbey as an independent corporation under ecclesiastical law.
Before and after the Reformation, the assets of the monastery were mainly used for educational and ecclesiastical social purposes. The counts used the fortune to expand the Latin school, which was already attended in the late Middle Ages, and finally to transfer it to the Ludwigsgymnasium Saarbrücken in 1604 , the oldest grammar school in Saarland. To this day, the board of the monastery is entitled to vote in the decisions of the Ludwigsgymnasium.
Modern times
Carl Klein , who later became the first state curator of the Saar region, made a detailed survey of the building of the collegiate church in 1895 during his time as a young government building supervisor and published it in a much-noticed newspaper article.
Collegiate church
building
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Dimensions
- Name: Collegiate Church of St. Arnual
- Total length (outside, with vestibule): 61.20 m
- Total length (inside): 59.70 m
- Transept (width, outside): 25.50 m
- Transept (width, inside): 24.25 m
- Central nave (width, inside): 7.45 m
- Nave with side aisles (width, inside): 13.10 m
- Central nave (clearance to keystones): 15.80 m
- Longhouse (ridge height): 22.10 m
- Tower height: 50.20 m
- Central nave (floor height): 192.75 m above sea level
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Geographical coordinates (tower)
- Longitude: 7 ° 1 '05.8 "
- Latitude: 49 ° 13 '06.5 "
- Orientation of the nave axis: 62 °
- Horizon height in the axis: 5 °
The construction of today's collegiate church began in 1315 and was probably completed at the end of the 14th century. It became the burial place of the house of Nassau-Saarbrücken . In Oberhomburg ( Hombourg-Haut ), now in Lorraine , there is another collegiate church (St. Etienne), which has many architectural and stylistic features in common with the collegiate church of St. Arnual, especially in the lower tower floors. In the eighteenth century, the church was renovated under the direction of the Nassau-Saarbrückisches General Building Director Friedrich Joachim Stengel and, like all churches in Saarbrücken, was given a baroque dome.
While the predecessor buildings of the Gothic church were still quite small overall, the new building from the 14th century contained a fundamental problem in the truest sense of the word: while the tower and nave of the church stand on the natural rock of the Saar valley, the choir is only barely on the alluvial land Saar running a hundred meters behind the church. That was not a problem until the Saar sewer system in the 1960s. The lowering of the groundwater level, which was caused by the expansion of the Saar, threatened to collapse at the end of the 1980s, because the choir and the substructure virtually began to slide. In an extremely complex process and 15 years of construction, the choir had to be supported with 20 m deep concrete piles. Extensive archaeological investigations could also be carried out and the church as a whole renovated.
The most important art monuments in the church are the tombs of the Counts of Saarbrücken (including that of Elisabeth of Lorraine ) and the windows of the Hungarian artist György Lehoczky .
Organs
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Main organ
Since 1995, the Collegiate Church of St. Arnual has an organ of the company Kuhn . The slider chest instrument has 44 registers on three manuals and a pedal . The game actions are mechanical, the stop actions are electric.
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- Coupling : II / I, III / I, III / II, I / P, II / P, III / P
- Playing aids :
positive
While the main organ is largely French and romantic, there is a small baroque organ in the eastern arm of the transept. It has 6 registers distributed over a manual and pedal. The disposition is as follows:
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- Pairing : I / P
Bells
Previously, in 1948, the congregation received three steel bells from the Bochum Association on loan from the burned down castle church with the tone sequence Es 1 - Gone 1 - a 1 . They survived the fire and its crash from the bell chamber unscathed. The year 1921 could be read on the bells. The existing oak bell chair was redesigned to meet the needs of the steel bells on loan. In 1958, the trio was given to the rebuilt castle church and a new bronze bell was procured for the collegiate church. The five-part chime comes from the Saarlouis bell foundry in Saarlouis-Fraulautern. This was founded in 1953 by Karl (III) Otto from the Otto bell foundry in Bremen-Hemelingen and Aloys Riewer. The wooden bell chair was also dismantled and replaced by a new steel bell chair. Since then, the bells have also had a steel yoke suspension. In 2011, the clapper of the Belief Bell was exchanged for a newly forged clapper. The old clapper is currently below the bell chamber. In terms of sound, Otto's bell is one of the most beautiful in the Saarbrücken district of St. Arnual.
| No. | Surname | volume | Casting year | Foundry, casting location |
Weight (kg) |
Diameter (mm) |
| 1 | Belief Bell | b 0 | 1958 | Otto, Saarlouis | 3360 | 1754 |
| 2 | Communion bell | d 1 | 1610 | 1392 | ||
| 3 | Baptismal bell | f 1 | 1020 | 1170 | ||
| 4th | Our Father Bell | g 1 | 710 | 1042 | ||
| 5 | Ten Commandments Bell | a 1 | 470 | 924 |
photos
Tumba Elisabeth of Lorraine (Collegiate Church of St. Arnual)
Baptismal font (early Middle Ages)
Gothic Madonna and Child (Lorraine-Trier art space, 14th century)
Church window by György Lehoczky, apse
Church window by György Lehoczky, left aisle
Tomb of Count Johann IV († 1574) and Count Philip III. († 1602) with his two wives
Tomb of Countess Anna Maria's grandson Moritz
Tomb of Johann Nikolaus von Hagen and his wife
Memorial plaque for the Beuck family
Memorial plaque for Jodocus Bruer
Epitaph of Henning von Stralenheim
Evangelical Collegiate Church of St. Arnual
literature
- Literature on St. Arnual Abbey in the Saarland Bibliography
- Traudl Brenner: Meager sky festivals were Lehoczky's first bang. In: Saarbrücker Zeitung ,. 24./25. May 2008, p. E1 (east).
- Evangelical parish of St. Arnual (ed.): The collegiate church of St. Arnual in Saarbrücken. Ed .: Hans-Günther Marschall with the collaboration of Hans-Walter Herrmann and Rolf J. Kiderle. Self-published, Saarbrücken no year (31 pp., Ill.)
- Evangelical parish of St. Arnual (ed.): Collegiate Church of St. Arnual, resumption of service on September 18, 1994, Saarbrücken 1994.
- Stefan Flesch, Joachim Conrad, Thomas Bergholz: Monks on the Saar. The medieval settlements in the border region between Saarland and Lorraine . Minerva-Verlag Thinnes and Nolte, Saarbrücken 1986, ISBN 3-477-00073-0 .
- Andreas Heinz: Saints in Saarland , 2nd edition, Saarbrücken 1991. ISBN 3-925036-44-X
- Hans-Walter Herrmann (Hrsg.): The collegiate church St. Arnual in Saarbrücken . Rheinland-Verlag, Cologne / Bonn 1998, ISBN 3-7927-1724-7 (= series of publications by the Association for Rhenish Church History, Volume 130).
- Hans-Walter Herrmann: The collegiate church in Saarbrücken / St. Arnual, Art History Series of the State Institute for Education and Media, Saarbrücken 1997.
- Hans-Walter Herrmann , Jan Selmer (Ed.): Living and dying in a medieval collegiate monastery. Archaeological and architectural studies in the former St. Arnual Abbey in Saarbrücken. (= Publications of the Institute for Regional Studies in Saarland, vol. 43). Saarbrücken 2007, ISBN 978-3-923877-43-0 (584 pages, 628 illus., 19 tab., 4 plans, 1 CD-ROM).
- Film: “St. Arnual " , 1996 (bibel-tv and Landesbildstelle)
- Joachim Conrad: Stiftsdekan Nikolaus Beuck. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 90-92.
- Joachim Conrad: Stiftsdekan Jodocus Bruer von Lumbeck. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 23, Bautz, Nordhausen 2004, ISBN 3-88309-155-3 , Sp. 177-178.
Web links
- Website about the excavations in the cloister area of the collegiate church
- Website of the advisory board "Music in the Collegiate Church"
- Full bells of the collegiate church St. Arnual (video with sound)
Individual evidence
- ↑ See Hans-Walter Herrmann: The collegiate church of St. Arnual in Saarbrücken. SVRKG 130, p. 590
- ↑ See Hans-Walter Herrmann: The collegiate church of St. Arnual in Saarbrücken. SVRKG 130, pp. 591-595
- ^ Stift and Ludwigsgymnasium ( Memento from January 30, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Hans-Walter Herrmann: The Collegiate Church of St. Arnual in Saarbrücken , Rheinland-Verlag, 1998, p. 430
- ^ Johann Josef Böker : On the dating of the collegiate church St. Arnual in Saarbrücken, in: 22. Report of the State Preservation of Monuments in Saarland , 1975, pp. 39–43.
- ↑ Information on the main organ on OrganIndex; see. also the information on the organ builder's website
- ↑ The baroque positive on OrganIndex
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells - family and company history of the bell foundry dynasty Otto . Self-published, Essen 2019, ISBN 978-3-00-063109-2 , p. 588, here in particular pp. 30, 87 to 95, 568 .
- ↑ 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. 53, 105 to 112, 355, 518 .
- ^ Gerhard Reinhold: Otto bells . 2019, p. 570 .
Coordinates: 49 ° 13 ′ 3 ″ N , 7 ° 1 ′ 4 ″ E