Essen Minster
Essen Minster, since 1958 also Essen Cathedral, is the seat of the Roman Catholic Bishop of Essen, the "Diocese of the Ruhr", founded in 1958. The church, dedicated to Saints Cosmas and Damian and the Blessed Virgin Mary, stands on the Burgplatz in the centre of the city of Essen, Germany.
The minster was formerly the collegiate church of Essen Abbey, a community of secular canonesses, founded in about 845 by Altfrid, Bishop of Hildesheim, around which the city of Essen grew up. The present building, which was reconstructed after its destruction in World War II, is a Gothic hall church, built after 1275 in light-coloured sandstone. The octagonal westwork and the crypt are survivors of the Ottonian pre-Romanesque building that once stood here. The separate Church of St. Johann Baptist stands at the west end of the minster, connected to the westwork by a short atrium – it was formerly the parish church of the abbey's subjects. To the north of the minster is a cloister that once served the abbey.
Essen Minster is noted for its treasury, which among other treasures contains the Golden Madonna, the oldest fully sculptural figure of Mary north of the Alps.
History
Foundation to 1803
From the foundation of the first church until 1803, Essen Minster was the church of Essen Abbey, which was a community not of nuns but of secular canonesses under an abbess, and the hub of community life. Its position was comparable to a nunnery church, but a more worldly version, since the canonesses of Essen did not obey the Rule of Saint Benedict but were governed by the Institutio sanctimonialium, the rule for communities of canonesses issued in 816 by the Synod of Aachen. The canonical hours and masses celebrated by the community occurred in the minster, as well as prayers for deceased members of the community, the noble sponsors of the order and their ancestors.The number of canonesses from the nobility which the church served varied over the centuries between about seventy during the community's heyday under the Abbess Mathilde in the tenth century and three in the sixteenth century. The church was open to the dependents of the community's members and the people of the city of Essen only on the high feast days. Otherwise, the Church of St. Johann Baptist, which had developed out of the Ottonian baptistry, or the Church of St Gertrude served as their place of worship.
The Reformation had no effect on the minster. The burgers of the city of Essen, who maintained a long-standing dispute with the abbey about whether the city was a Free city or belonged to the abbey, mostly joined the revolution, but the abbesses and canonesses remained Catholic. The Protestant burgers of the city took over St Gertrude's Church, the present-day Market Church, which was not connected to the abbey's buildings, while the burgers who remained Catholic continued to use the Church of St. Johann Baptist, located in the abbey complex, as their parish church. The canonesses continued to use the minster.
From 1803 to the present day
In 1803, Essen Abbey was mediatised by the Kingdom of Prussia. The minster and all its property was immediately taken over by the parish of St. Johann Baptist. For the next 150 years the church was their parish church. The name "minster church", which had become established, was retained even though the original community no longer existed. As a parish church, it served the Catholics of Essen's inner city area which significantly increased in population in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.Though the first aspirations of setting up a bishopric of the Ruhr were dashed in the 1920s, a new bishopric was formed in 1958 from parts of the dioceses of Münster, Paderborn, and Cologne and Essen Minster was made the cathedral. On 1 January 1958 the first Bishop of Essen, Franz Hengsbach was consecrated by the Nuncio Aloisius Joseph Muench. Since then Essen Minster has been the religious heart of the diocese. The visit of Pope John Paul II in 1987 marked the high point of the minster's thousand-year history.
Structural history
Previous buildings
The site of the church was already settled before the foundation of the abbey. The Bishop of Hildesheim, Altfrid is supposed to have founded the community of canonesses on his estate, called Asnide. A direct attestation of Asnide has not yet been found. But from postholes, Merovingian pottery sherds and burials found near the minster, it can be concluded that a settlement was in place before the foundation of the abbey.The first church
The modern Essen Minster is the third church building on this site. Foundation walls of its predecessors were excavated in 1952 by Walter Zimmermann. The first church on this site was erected by the founders of Essen Abbey, Bishop Altfrid and Gerswid, according to tradition the first abbess, between 845 and 870. The building was a three-aisled basilica with a west-east orientation. Its central and side aisles already approached the width of the later churches on the site. West of the nave was a small, almost square narthex. The arms of the transept met at a rectangular crossing, which was the same height as the nave. Rooms in the east ends of the side aisle were accessible only from the arms of the transept. It is uncertain whether these rooms were the same height as the side aisles, as Zimmerman thought on the basis of his excavations, or the height of the side choir, as in Lange's more recent reconstruction. East of the crossing was the choir with a semicircular end, with the rooms that were accessible from the transepts on either side of it.This first church was destroyed in a fire in 946, which is recorded in the Cologne Annals: Astnide cremabatur.
The early Ottonian church
Several dedicatory inscriptions for parts of the new church survive from the years 960 to 964, from which it can be concluded that the fire of 946 had only damaged the church. No inscriptions survive for the nave and choir, which were probably retained from the earlier church. The individual stages of construction are uncertain; some parts could have been begun or even completed before the fire. Taking advantage of necessary renovations to expand the church enclosure was not unusual. The new parts, presumably built at the order of the abbesses Agana and Hathwig, were an outer crypt, a westwork and a narthex and an external chapel of St John the Baptist. This building can be reconstructed from archaeological finds and did not have a long existence, because a new church was erected, perhaps under the art-loving Abbess Mathilde, but maybe only under Abbess Theophanu. Possibly, a new building was begun under Mathilde and completed under Theophanu. Significant portions survive from the new Ottonian building.The later Ottonian church
The expansion of the new Ottonian building was predetermined by its two predecessors. The greater part of the foundations were reused; only in locations where the stresses were increased or the floorplan differed were new foundations laid.The new building also had three aisles with a transept and a choir shaped like the earlier choirs. A crypt was now built below the choir. The choir was closed with a semi-circular apse, which was encased within a half decagon. A two-storey outer crypt was connected to the choir, the west walls of which formed the east walls of the side choirs. Towers next to the altar room gave direct access to the crypt. The near choirs contained matronea, which were open to the transepts and the main choir. The outer walls of the ends of the transepts were made two storeys high, with the upstairs portion composed of three niches with windows. On the ground floor were niches, and the pattern of niches continued on the side walls. A walkway ran along the walls above these niches, leading to the matroneum galleries. The double bay between the westwork and the nave was maintained. The structure of the nave walls is unknown, but reconstructions based on other churches, especially that of Susteren Abbey which appears to draw from the new Ottonian church in many aspects, assume an interchange of piers and columns. There were probably wall paintings between the arcades and the windows on the walls, since remains of wall paintings have been found in the westwork. Outside, the clerestory of the nave had a structure of pilasters and volute capitals, probably with twelve windows.
Westwork
The belief that the unknown architect of Essen Abbey church was one of the best architects of his time is based particularly on the westwork, which even today is the classic view of the church. As in the earlier churches, the westwork is only a little wider than the aisles of the nave. From the outside, the westwork appears as an almost square central tower crowned by an octagonal belfry with a pyramidal roof. At the west end there were two octagonal side towers, containing staircases to the belfry, which reached to just below the bell storey of the belfry. The bell storey of the central tower and the uppermost stories of the side towers have arched windows. Two-storey side rooms with arched windows on the upper floor are attached to the north and south sides of the central tower. On the ground floor of these side rooms, doors set in niches lead into the church – the central entrance of the earlier church was abandoned and a large, round-arched window installed in its place. With that, the westwork ceased to operate as a processional entrance to the church. Instead, the squat structure offered an optical counterpoint to the massive east part of the building.From the outside the westwork appears to be composed of three towers, which envelop the west choir, which takes the form of a crossing which has been divided in half. No similar structure is known. There is a west choir in the central room in the shape of a half-hexagon, surrounded by a passageway. A flat niche is located in the middle of the west wall, with the entrances to the two side towers in flat niches on either side of it. The westwork opens toward the double bay through a large arch supported by pillars. An altar dedicated to Saint Peter stands in the west choir in front of this arch. The walls follow the model of the west choir of Aachen Cathedral in their construction, which also has the use of the octagon as a belfry in common. On the ground floor there are three arches divided by hexagonal pillars. There are two levels of arch openings of the upper level in colonnades, with recycled ancient capitals on the columns.
The westwork was richly decorated, with the Last Judgement painted from the half-cupola to the nave. The painting shows the appearance of Jesus to the commissioner of the painting, the Abbess Theophanu