Contest of the cathedrals – the Romanesque period | DW Documentary

This is what the first Christian churches look like in the Roman Empire. After the crucifixion, Christianity was a persecuted religion and its followers were forced to hide, they buried their dead in catacombs like this one and they also worshiped here in the presence of the dead in the 4th century. to pope damasus the first transformed this crypt into an underground church the early christians believed that their physical resurrection would come soon and that they would be guided to heaven by christ, the light of the world, so they had little need for church buildings, but a thousand years later, great stone

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They stretched into the sky like fortresses of god as here in Spire Christianity had long become an integral part of people's lives in the Middle Ages and in this era rulers competed to erect ever more powerful symbols of his faith in Mainz. These researchers study the

period

. I stumbled upon some evidence and it attracted a lot of media attention. A modern heating system was due to be installed in St John's Protestant Church, but clues dating back a thousand years were revealed beneath the church floor. The excavation director, the archaeologist Guido Fakhani and his representatives. From the Protestant and Catholic churches they watched fascinated as a stone sarcophagus weighing two tons was discovered.

Its location in the nave, opposite the altar, suggested that it was the final resting place of a high-ranking person, possibly the medieval bishop of Mainz. For the first time in a thousand years, the lid of the 700-kilogram sarcophagus was lifted. Could the person buried here really be Bishop Erkenbald, archbishop of Mainz until his death in 1021? If so, it would prove that the city's first original cathedral was located here. The question may seem unspectacular to non-specialists, but for researchers the remains contain a wealth of information about the

period

known as Romanesque, the world of that time was the result of a remarkable historical development, until the 4th century the Christians They had been the subject of bloody persecution, but then came a revolutionary turn of events that led Bishop Eusebius of Caesarea to praise the Roman imperial power that had previously threatened him.

He wrote that the emperor came among us Christians as a heavenly angel of God. He was referring to the Roman emperor Constantine Constantine. Suddenly he had decriminalized Christian worship and for Christians he was an emissary from heaven and the patron of the church. Since then the churches became palaces. The Pantheon in Rome was a temple in which the ancient Romans had worshiped their gods. domed structure became the model for the buildings erected to honor the Christian god and his earthly representative the emperor in the Eastern Roman Empire the Byzantine Empire the Hajjiya Sophia in Constantinople became the largest church in Christendom ten thousand workers built the Giant basilica adorned with the magnificence that the imperial court considered its five centuries after Jesus' death on the cross, the Christian church had become a highly political body.

The imperial splendor of the southeastern reaches of the ruined Roman empire contrasts sharply with the more modest style of the northwest from the early 9th century. charles the first king of the francs ruled as successor to the roman emperors charles later called charles the great or charlemagne built a church in achen as a sign of his sovereignty and also copied the ancient symbols of the ancient roman empire the palatine chapel of achen is a domed building like the hajjiya sophia in byzantium in the year 800 when the newly crowned emperor charlemagne ascended the steps to his throne it was an important development for the churches in the west charles allowed much plurality in his empire he allowed the various ethnic groups in his dominion to have its own laws, languages ​​and customs, but throughout his great kingdom he standardized religious service, liturgical practice, the implementation of God's will, because this can only be unique and unambiguous.

People can live their lives in many ways, but there is only one way for God so God is ironic. From then on the task was to impose unity of faith in the Frankish Empire and for that Charles needed his bishops the three ancient Roman settlements. Trier colony and Mainz became its most important archdiocese but soon the bishops competed to expand their own power and prestige in the west soon reached its limits colony was able to extend its dominion northwestwards to the North Sea coast Mainz was the most successful of the three soon the influence of the bishop of Mainz reached from Verdan in the north to kur in the south and into the eastern territories the man who so energetically promoted the influence of mainz around the turn of the millennium was buried here in the church of st.

Built on the highest hill in the city, the mortal remains of Archbishop Villagus have lain here until this day. Villegas sought to underline the superiority of the diocese of Mainz. For this, he developed an ambitious architectural plan at the end of the 10th century. The idea was to replace the old cathedral. wooden by a stone one much larger than the powerful abbey built by the monks of the island of Reichenau in Lake Constance was to be a palatial church with a painted wooden ceiling, the walls were also to be painted with scenes from the Bible, the people of the time rarely saw paintings and the towns were convinced that the church would be a lasting impression on the faithful and would lead them to God and he was also convinced that his cathedral would reinforce the importance of his diocese would be the man who would crown kings the son of a carter villagus had risen above his humble origins to become regent of the empire and the vigor of the pope his personal insignia a wheel made its way into the coat of arms of mainz villagus's plan to acquire coronation rights seemed to be on the right track its cathedral was going to shine like the heavenly Jerusalem in the year 1009 the time had come for the largest building north of the alps to be consecrated but then disaster occurred on the day of its consecration the church of villegas caught fire it aspired to be the first among the bishops and archbishops of the East Frankish kingdom in Germany and reinforced it by building an imposing cathedral, a stone structure demonstrated the rank of the archbishop and he wanted to highlight that it was particularly tragic that the cathedral building burned immediately Just as it was being consecrated, which essentially predicts the burden it would place on future archbishops, after all, a diocese without a functioning cathedral was unthinkable.

The sarcophagus that archaeologists opened in the church of St. John in Mainz was closed again on body inside was left to rest in peace the lid of the coffin was vacuumed to clean only microscopic samples were taken to obtain definitive information about the identity of the dead among the The material is this gold thread, it is part of a real gold border that He was lying near the head of the corpse. Matthias Heinzel is a conservator and specialist in metal alloys. With a reflected light microscope he studies the structure and folding of gold. alloy and measures it with micrometric precision a comparison with other finds suggests that the thread was part of a gold border of a chassis a liturgical vestment of a bishop the dead man dressed in the garment was undoubtedly a clergyman probably a bishop but the sample taken from the area of ​​her left arm is even more conclusive: it is a fragment of a larger piece of cloth to which small pieces of trim made of dark silk are attached despite the decomposition of the material, even now, a thousand years Later, the microscope reveals that it is of animal origin.

Here we clearly see the scaly structure like overlapping tiles of the epidermis layer and in the middle we can still see a little of the medullary canal and these two properties clearly indicate that it is volley wool that suggests a garment called a pallium this woolen band is seen in illustrations from the early Middle Ages it is a kind of stole that even the Pope wears and which is still today conferred on his archbishops it is spun from the wool of two lambs that the Pope blessed every year by the For archaeologists is another clue as to the identity of the buried man, once it became clear that the piece of cloth we had found was wool and that this wool also had a silk trim, it became obvious to us that it was a pallium and that the man he was wearing was an archbishop.

Carbon 14 dating of the other fabric samples gave us definitive certainty, allowing us to say that it is air enveloped by the archbishop who lived a thousand years ago and who went ahead with the reconstruction of my cathedral, which was the conclusive piece of There is evidence to show that today St. John's Church stands on the site of Mainz's first cathedral and that Archbishop Erkenbald, Villagus's successor, was buried here, presumably because the new cathedral was still under construction after the devastating fire, it seems that out of respect for the old church the new site had not been chosen exactly here, but very close to the archbishop's prestige project there was a building destined to make Mainz a second place in a central point of the empire where the monarchs would be The crowned east towers were already standing in Airkenbald's lifetime and he himself may have walked this way on the southeast tower, however it would not have been as tall back then, the towers were not raised to their current height 55 meters until much later, despite all the reconstruction over the centuries, the interior of the cathedral mines.

It still exudes the spirit of the Romanesque, the solemn darkness and the enormous angular masonry that flaunts its solidity. It is difficult to imagine how impressive these stone spaces must have seemed to the people of the Middle Ages, accustomed to small houses of wood and mud with their prestigious village project had started a feud, a challenge not only to its great rival, the archbishop of colony, but also for the powerful rulers, to whom these palatial churches were to remind them that god and his representatives were above them, the tomb of the 14th century. The influential archbishop peter von aspelt shows how even three centuries later the clerics saw their relationship with the crowned rulers, the greatest being he with the right to crown and anoint kings the anointing is described in the book of exodus in the old testament the oil The sacred anointing was a means of consecrating priests and prophets in Western Europe.

The anointing gradually became customary at the coronation of monarchs. The oil represents the transfer and legitimation of political power to the ruler, therefore he would be ruler by the grace of God implemented by the church and yet dependent on Did this ritual not imply the subordination of the monarch? What would happen if the bishop or the Pope withheld the anointing? Suppose the clergyman did not utter the words angote in regum I will anoint you king. The anointing with sacred oil turned the king into the anointed of God Christ and that literally gave him a dominant position but also made him dependent on whoever had anointed him, who could be the bishop or in the case of the emperor's anointing it was the pope.

Rome and this system worked well until there was a dispute over rank between worldly and ecclesiastical powers. The dispute over rank between church and state was already raging in the first century of the new millennium fifty miles up the Rhine River the city of The forms were experiencing friction between the dominant ruling dynasty and the new bishop immediately after his investiture had begun planning a cathedral at the highest point of the city. Two forms were to boast an imposing building that, like a castle, would highlight the supremacy. of the church the idea was also to rebuild the city in the shadow of the new cathedral the new bishop borghat was the right man for the job burchard was a collaborator of the dynamic archbishop of the towns of mainz with the same determination he set out to underline the hegemony of the Burkhardt church was a talented organizer and as a city administrator favored by Villagus, he immediately set to work when Berchard arrived here in the year 1000, he intended to prove that he was the lord of this city as its bishop and did everything that he could, including activating his connections at the imperial court to get the salients to renounce their properties in forms to give up his castle and leave forms in a symbolic act he raised the fortress of prominence and established a monastery in the church of st.

Paul to prove that I am the only ruler here to this day the building retains its 11th century outlines, although only a few foundation stones of Burchard Church remain standing. Unique specimens of Romanesque sculpture. The rare animal representations all date back to the 12th century. This is because just two years after its hasty construction and consecration in 1018, Borchardt's representation of the palace collapsed, and when the new church with its late Romanesque colonnade was completed one hundred and sixty years later, the ideal of hegemony of Borchardt's church had long been questioned. He was borna new era, it was as if the architects had already sensed how the coming Gothic period would bring to life a new wealth of shapes and colors.

The citizens had begun to see this space as their own. They attached themselves more to their kings than to their bishops and The dissipated Saliens had already begun a competing project next door in Shpaya Saint Christopher the Christ Bearer whose side was believed to prevent sudden death now looked down upon the changed conditions The aliens were unlucky enough to be expelled from their hereditary seat In vons they quickly ordered the construction of a new diocesan church St. Mary's Cathedral The spire-shaped building that emerged under the prominence was truly an imperial cathedral No other medieval cathedral on the Rhine was a symbol of imperial power like St.

Mary's Cathedral It rose above the river like a castle and was a highlight of imperial architecture, a sign carved in red sandstone of a dynastic claim and the spire itself. Before the prominence was established there, it was known as Patina or Cow Town, but with The cathedral underwent rapid urban expansion until it became an imperial metropolis forced to change shape and deprived of much political influence. Duke Conrad was anointed king of Germany two decades later and eventually Holy Roman Emperor in 1024. The election of the first prominent king Conrad, the second, was possible because the last Liu dwarf ruler, Henry II, had died without a heir and this matrilineal descent was very important to the most prominent sense of their importance they saw themselves in a long imperial tradition conrad was buried in 1039 wearing a crown with the inscription sower of peace and benefactor of the city his time as emperor coincides With the climax of medieval imperial rule the conflicts between emperors and popes were just beginning to simmer and the cathedral he had built as a worthy burial place for himself and his successors was just beginning today Hedwig Drabik is the master of works of the world heritage site that conrad had planned as his imposing mausoleum perhaps too imposing when he died not even the outer walls were complete the english tragic the tragedy was that conrad was unable to experience his vision he had the idea of ​​building the largest church in the world Western world but because he died before it was completed he was basically buried in an unfinished building site which was something new in the medieval

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an emperor who built a gigantic burial site for himself and his dynasty one that could compete with the cathedrals of minds and forms was a symbol in stone of the emperor's self-image, one that may have gained strength from the family's bitter experience in forms, but the ambitious plan initially remained in the construction phase the crypt with columns of The cathedral, the largest of its time, was completed at the time of Conrad's death.

This testifies to his optimism about future humanity, if you could describe it like this, he had this vision and the heart, the faith, the hope that he would be able to make it a reality and that this idea would be adopted by others, that he could ignite the idea. In them in 1061 the prestigious building of prominence was consecrated in all its Romanesque splendor, but only 20 years later came a surprise: the new prominent emperor Henry IV ordered most of the new cathedral to be demolished, he wanted it to be even larger and more imposing and above all more sophisticated in its design, he demolished a large part of the cathedral and rebuilt it with another shape, we can see the biggest change here in the applications that went from having a straight end to a semicircular one, the transepts were completely demolished. the path towards masonry and changed in its depth through a restructuring of the façade and the spiers were raised.

This is the old early Romanesque part of the tower and under Henry IV it was raised up to the transept tower it was also changed although what we see today is the Baroque period dome the sacristy is a later addition the main change to the interior is the Vault The central nave is 14 meters wide with a height of 33 meters to the vault and they are very very large dimensions. What immediately catches the eye seen from the outside is the change due to the insertion of a dwarf gallery that was not originally there that The character radiated outwards.

Henry IV really wanted to build the largest church in the Western world and here he achieved it in 1106. The Romanesque wonder was completed. It is difficult to imagine a more imposing building. A vaulted ceiling of this size had not been seen in the West since ancient times. For a thousand years and in terms of size, the cathedral of the spire did not have to fear competition, certainly neither from the forms nor even from the mines, and while the towns work in Mainz is dark and early Romanesque in style, the cathedral of Henry was brighter, as if silently anticipating the Gothic period.

The Palatinate Historical Museum has a model of Henry IV's head made by a forensic scientist based on the original discovery of his skull and perhaps we can read the tragedy of life. of henry on his face, it was a life marked by a struggle the pope excommunicated him his children rebelled against him and the year in which his cathedral was consecrated was also the year of his death henry iv was an emperor who reigned and thought entirely of The tradition of his ancestors saw his monarchy as given by God and inherited from his parents and that left him very unprepared for an epic conflict that broke out in the second half of the 11th century and that suddenly called the king's authority into question. ;

The church reformers viewed the king as a layman and no longer one anointed by God and there became a fundamental conflict over the question of which should have priority in the land, the power of the church or the power secular; This conflict erupted into the so-called investiture controversy, which was much more than the investiture of bishops but it was about the question of who needed whom who had precedence over whom and who should obey Henry IV did not want to obey that was his tragedy but also his pride as a king and he expressed this pride most of all in the reconstruction of The Cathedral of the Spire was an exceptional architectural achievement that led to the largest church in Western Christendom at the time.

In fact, the cathedral fulfilled the function for which it had originally been intended as a tomb for prominence. In the summer of 1900, historians excavated the floor of the church and opened the more than 800-year-old coffins in an investigation intended to enhance the historical importance of the new German empire under Emperor Wilhelm II and inform the public about the great deeds of His predecessors who figure prominently in this story were the first The noted emperor Conrad, who had begun building the largest Romanesque church, his remains and those of his family, including his wife Gizella, described as a woman of beauty and intelligence , now had to be carefully studied.

Historical research describes Henry IV as a man of impeccable form. Described as handsome, full of masculine strength and almost feminine grace, a special find was the gold and sapphire ring on Henry's right ring finger. It was a bishop's ring, perhaps the last defiant message from an emperor who believed he possessed the exclusive authority to invest bishops with the ring. and the staff henry's funeral crown was carefully restored in the historical museum of the palatinate it was the symbol of the power of an emperor who was seen by his supporters as anointed by god by his opponents as the incarnation of evil and who throughout his life insisted In that his crown was conferred upon him directly by God without the intercession of the church, his cathedral dedicated to Mary, the Mother of God, represented to him the divine affirmation of an outstanding government written in stone that surpasses any papal claim and seems to have provided a foothold for His own personal faith must have been deeply shaken when the bishop of his cathedral made him give the imperial insignia to his disloyal son.

The ancient chronicles show him surrounded by the bishops and his two sons in apparent harmony, but that story is an example from the Middle Ages. propaganda both sons had rebelled against their father and the supposed harmonious handover of power to his youngest son was in reality an act of great violence this construction is an affirmative development this image is a complete distortion of reality in reality against the divine order when The sun rose against the father was a relatively rare generational conflict in the history of the early Middle Ages, but it forced all his contemporaries to take sides in this conflict between father and son, between the old and the new order, the winner as in all those conflicts.

Generational conflicts were the sun and actually tried to rethink and rescue this strange monarchy. The fact that she ended up wielding power just as his father did is the particular tragedy of Henry V and marks the gradual end of the outgoing period in the German Empire. Times were also changing in ways and it was here that the last prominent emperor played an early role in creating a new social order. Along with the clergy, a new group was growing in society, one that had not been counted with the middle class. Economic power was soon something that neither the emperors nor the church could ignore.

The archive of the city of Vorm has a document from the 12th century. An example of charters that were issued more and more frequently. This so-called charter of freedom granted rights to citizens. common to the bishop and the aristocracy the increasingly self-confident citizens began to be seen by the kings as useful allies to be encouraged. The bishops were perhaps still the city of Lourdes but could not object if the emperor put his seal In it the document was issued, that is, for the benefit of the citizens of Vaughan, the main content of the middle part alleviates the tax burden, expands the rights of the citizenship that was being formed, improves opportunities for economic development and clarifies ambiguities about certain taxes and the important thing is that all this granting of privileges is carried out in consensus with all those who have power over these citizens.

We can see that here in the formulation those who have used power over the sives vomaciences, that is, take care that no one can say later oh I did it I don't know and above all I am opposed and this is very important, it is the bishop as lord of the city who appears here as a proponent along with other clerical and worldly people who somehow have rights over the citizens in which they are They were converting the Romanesque cathedrals. More and more churches in the town and their facades changed too soon, appearing in Gothic clothing and not only that the facade of the Vorms Cathedral has a funny popular stone figure that originated in the middle class of the 20th century.

Tourists who come here always ask first. about the cathedral dachshund where is he? It is in the entrance portal a master builder from the last century Philip Brand who carried out renovations in the cathedral in the 1920s left a monument to his pet dachshund there are many different versions of the story, but at the core of this is that the dachshund somehow saved his life. We'll let the story of the early 20th century cathedral tell itself. Ah, but the master builder's bronze rescue by his dachshund isn't the only animal story the cathedral has to tell. It takes us directly to the Middle Ages and shows an ape delousing the medieval master builder.

The scene is a thousand years old and is the only known representation of a Romanesque architect. There are many stories of emperors and bishops and the battles of the powerful, but the builders of Romanesque cathedrals are hidden in the shadows of history. They are the ones whose spirit and hands made all these structures that we admire today. Their rivalry to create churches that were increasingly beautiful, larger and more divine. How exciting a competition for the richness of forms must have been. about the many possibilities of carving ever new things in sandstone it was a

contest

of imagination that never came to an end that's human nature what was yesterday will be different tomorrow the rigor of Romanesque construction began to wear down the idea of ​​thick walls like fortresses of god that projected into the sky, structures of imposing solidity and architectural challenge soon gave way to a new, more expensive style, the Gothic dedicated to a different ideal light, hmm, you