Salem Minster
Salem Minster is the Roman Catholic parish church of the community of Salem, Baden-Württemberg and was the abbey church of the former imperial abbey of Salem. It was built in Gothic architecture from around 1285 to 1420 as a three-aisled columned basilica and is one of the most important High Gothic Cistercian buildings in the German-speaking world. The exterior of the church largely corresponds to the original design, while alterations to the interior have had a lasting effect on the sense of space within. The inventory includes furnishings from the late Gothic, Baroque, Rococo and Classicist periods. It is the third largest Gothic church in Baden-Württemberg after Ulm Minster and Freiburg Minster.
First monastery church
In 1137, a delegation of Cistercians from the Lützel monastery arrived in the Salmannsweiler district on Lake Constance to found the Salem monastery. At the time of settlement, there was already a chapel there, which was subject to the double patronage of St. Verena and St. Cyriac. This chapel was demolished around 1150 for the construction of a new monastery church.No structural evidence of the first monastery church has survived. If the church of the primary abbey of Clairvaux and the churches of Lützel, Kaisheim and other Cistercian monasteries built at the same time allow conclusions to be drawn, it was a three-aisled basilica with a cruciform ground plan in the Romanesque style. According to Knapp, the transept may have been divided into three chapels on the north side and two east-facing chapels on the south side, in addition to the central rectangular apse. It is documented that it was built entirely of stone and had at least eight altars, the first four of which were consecrated by the Bishop of Chur and the Bishop of Constance on September 13, 1152. The church itself was consecrated on July 14, 1179 after around 30 years of construction. It was demolished a century later to make way for the construction of the minster.
Construction Period
Until the death of Frederick II in 1250, the monastery was under the protection of the Hohenstaufen kings. The power vacuum in the Holy Roman Empire that followed his death was exploited by the monastery's neighbors to take hold of its possessions. The ascension of Rudolf I in 1273 ended the interregnum, after which he took Salem under his protection and ensured that the lost property was returned. Thanks to the income secured in this way and a series of letters of indulgence issued in the 1280s, the monastery found itself in a financial position to build a new, larger church. The building of the minster thus also documents a new era in the history of the monastery - the beginning of Habsburg protection, which was to secure the monastery's independence in the following centuries.The initiator of the new building was Abbot Ulrich II von Seelfingen. The main reason for the new building was probably that the old church had become too small for the convent, which had grown to around 300 monks and lay brothers within a few decades. For a long time, it was thought that the new building was started in 1299; however, more recent building surveys and the connection between the church building and Rudolf I's policy of revindication suggest that construction began around 1285. Rather than roughly hewn quarry stones, as in the previous church, large blocks of hewn sandstone were used for the new building, which came from quarries in the surrounding area. The workers and planners were probably mostly lay brothers, some of whom were also active beyond Salem, for example in the construction of the tower of the Bebenhausen monastery church.
Construction began on the east side and progressed rapidly at first. Eleven altars were consecrated in 1307; twelve more were consecrated in 1313 and 1319. When the choir and transept were completed and roofed around 1319, construction was only continued slowly, if not temporarily halted. The number of monks had decreased since 1300, so that the already roofed room under the eastern nave provided sufficient space for the convent.
The interruption was initially due to financial problems, as Louis the Bavarian, an opponent of the Pope, was in power from 1314 to 1347, who revoked the Habsburg protection over Salem and thus terminated the legal security of many estates. After Louis' successor Charles IV affirmed the abbey's rights again, the plague struck southern Germany in 1348. It was not until around 1400 that the building could be continued and completely rebuilt in the 1420s, as recent dendrochronological studies have shown. The construction period of around 150 years is nevertheless quite short in comparison, as many Gothic church buildings remained incomplete for a long time or, like Ulm Minster, were only completed in the Gothic-inspired 19th century.
The church was consecrated even before construction was completed. Abbot Jodokus Senner took advantage of the Council of Constance, which had begun in 1414, and invited the Archbishop of Salzburg Eberhard III, who was present there, to consecrate the church. Eberhard III probably felt a connection to Salem because his predecessor in office, Eberhard II, had taken the monastery under his protection around 200 years previously. It is likely that King Sigismund was also present at the consecration of the church on December 23, 1414, as he had spent the night in the Salem town courtyard in Überlingen the day before and arrived at the council on December 24.
With Salem as a pioneer, Gothic architecture had found its way from Strasbourg on the Upper Rhine to Lake Constance: At around the same time, the diocese of Constance also had Constance Minster modernized in the Gothic style, and shortly after the completion of construction in Salem, work began in the neighbouring imperial city of Überlingen to expand the parish church of St. Nicholas into a five-aisled basilica to surpass Salem.
Architecture
Building Structure
The minster is integrated into the monastery precinct and is barely taller than it. Today, the austere, simple forms of the church contrast with its expansive baroque architectural style. The architectural reduction of the Salem church, which is only broken up by individual decorative elements on the façade, demonstratively distances itself from the pomp of the official church cathedrals and the monastery architecture of the Cluniac monks.To the south is the cloister, which leads directly to the convent building. This entrance, known as St. Bernard's Portal, served as the entrance for the monks, while other churchgoers used the west portal. Another portal - closed since 1750 - can be found on the north side of the transept; it originally served as a separate entrance for high-ranking guests.
Salem Minster is a three-aisled basilica with transept, choir and ambulatory on a rectangular base measuring 67 × 28 m ; the narrow, tall structure of the transept does not protrude laterally beyond the basic quadrangle. The dimensions of Salem Minster are roughly the same as those of Constance Minster and its length is similar to that of Basel Minster. The building material is finely textured molasse sandstone in yellow-grey, greenish and brown tones, which is unrendered on the outside. The monastery church in Kappel am Albis and the Petershausen monastery cathedral, which no longer exists today, may have served as regional models for the cruciform building. As Petershausen, like Salem, had become independent from the diocese of Constance and Salem wanted to demonstrate this independence, the Petershausen monastery church was probably the direct model for Salem Minster.
The roof ridge of the transept extends up to the 32 m high ridge of the central nave. The gabled roofs of the nave and transept tower over the low side aisles with their mono-pitched roofs by around twice as much. The roof truss above the high choir dates back in part to 1301. Original glazed roof tiles, which once gave the roof a golden sheen, have been preserved on the south side of the choir; until it was re-roofed in 1997, the entire roof of the nave was still largely covered with tiles from the period of construction.
On the outside of the building, only the harp gables and the lancet windows lend a certain filigree to the architecturally rather coarse building. The west front is surmounted by a high triangular harp gable, the basic shape of which, an equilateral triangle, could be understood as a worship of the Trinity in medieval numerical mysticism. Two mighty buttresses support the façade and frame the entrance to the church. The design of the gables is repeated in a similar form on the east side and on the south and north sides of the transept.
Ten tracery windows on each side of the central nave provide light to the interior. Six of these are located to the west and four to the east of the transept. The side aisles have one more window axis, as the window arches of the eastern nave have been further apart than the bays of the ambulatory since the renovation of 1750. There are further tracery windows on the four gables of the church, although the windows on the east side were bricked up during the remodeling of the interior around 1750. The front side of the northern transept also has a large eight-pane fan-shaped rose window based on the model of Strasbourg Cathedral, which proves that it was designed as a showpiece side of the church. The tracery lattice in front of the gable wall with staggered two-lane lancets, which are connected horizontally by cloverleaf shapes, was probably also modeled on Strasbourg.
Tower Construction (1753–1757)
In accordance with the rules of the Cistercian order, which demanded simplicity and modesty, the minster was not given a church tower, but only a simple ridge turret to carry the bells. This changed in the 18th century: in 1697, a fire destroyed almost the entire monastery building. The building survived the fire largely undamaged, while a large part of the inventory was destroyed in the flames. When the monastery complex was rebuilt by the Vorarlberg master builder Franz Beer between 1697 and 1708, the minster was in danger of disappearing visually behind the huge complex of buildings. Beer therefore planned a free-standing bell tower, but this was not built.Abbot Anselm II Schwab, who had already demonstrated his sense of prestige with the construction of the Birnau pilgrimage church, could no longer resist the temptation to equip the church with a magnificent crossing tower. The master builder Johann Caspar Bagnato, who had made a name for himself with the construction of Altshausen Castle, was commissioned to plan and build the tower in 1753, and it was completed in 1756. The tower was constructed using timber framing and clad with copper panels. The corner pilasters were made of lead and decorated with bronze, so that from a distance the tower did not look any different from masonry towers of this type, but must have appeared even more magnificent in its copper sheen. With the gilded spire knob, which itself was almost two meters in diameter, the tower reached a height of over 85 meters - more than fifty meters higher than the roof ridge of the nave. Sixteen new bells decorated with reliefs and a new clock mechanism were purchased.