The Church of St. Michael (german: Michaeliskirche) is an early- Romanesque church in

Hildesheim Hildesheim (; nds, Hilmessen, Hilmssen; la, Hildesia) is a city in Lower Saxony, Germany with 101,693 inhabitants. It is in the district of Hildesheim, about southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste River, a small tributary of the L ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. It has been on the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization is a specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) aimed at promoting world peace and security through international cooperation in education, arts, sciences and culture. It ...

World Cultural Heritage A World Heritage Site is a landmark or area with legal protection by an international convention administered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). World Heritage Sites are designated by UNESCO for h ...

list (along with the nearby

Hildesheim Cathedral Hildesheim Cathedral (German: '), officially the Cathedral of the Assumption of Mary (German: ''Hohe Domkirche St. Mariä Himmelfahrt'') or simply St. Mary's Cathedral (German: ''Mariendom''), is a medieval Roman Catholic cathedral in the city cent ...

) since 1985 because of its outstanding

Romanesque architecture Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe characterized by semi-circular arches. There is no consensus for the beginning date of the Romanesque style, with proposals ranging from the 6th to the 11th century, this lat ...

and art. It is now a shared church, the main church being

Lutheran Lutheranism is one of the largest branches of Protestantism, identifying primarily with the theology of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German monk and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practice of the Cathol ...

and the crypt being

Roman Catholic Roman or Romans most often refers to: *Rome, the capital city of Italy * Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD * Roman people, the people of ancient Rome *'' Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a let ...

History

Bishop

Bernward of Hildesheim Bernward (c. 960 – 20 November 1022) was the thirteenth Bishop of Hildesheim from 993 until his death in 1022. Life Bernward came from a Saxon noble family. His grandfather was Athelbero, Count Palatine of Saxony. Having lost his parents a ...

(996–1022) built a Benedictine monastery from the ground up on a hill linked with the archangel Michael just a half kilometer north of the city walls of his seat (Hildesheim), a monastery that featured an imposing church some 70 meters in length overall. Bernward set the first stone for the new church in 1010 and dedicated the still unfinished building to Michael on the archangel's feast day, 29 September 1022, just a few weeks before his death. Construction, however, continued under his successor, Bishop Godehard (died 1038), who completed the work in 1031 and reconsecrated the church to Michael on September 29 of that year. The church has double choirs east and west, double tripartite transepts at either end of the nave, and six towers—two large ones over the crossings east and west, and four other tall and narrow ones attached to the small sides of the two transepts. The eastern choir featured three apses, and the west had a deep chapel with a huge single apse rising high over an elaborate cross-vaulted hall crypt with an ambulatory. Bishop Bernward's remains were placed in the western crypt. The monastery comprised a church family and had two other sanctuaries dedicated to Martin and the Holy Cross lying in the cloister that extended northward from St. Michael's north flank. The monastery and church opened southward toward the city of Hildesheim, its south flank comprising a facade of a sort. It seems likely that the monastery on the Hill of St. Michael was surrounded by a wall. In 1186, after a reconstruction following a fire, Hildesheim's Bishop Adelog of Dorstedt – assisted by Tammo,

Prince-Bishop of Verden This is a list of bishops, prince-bishops, and administrators of Verden. The Catholic Diocese of Verden (german: link=no, Bistum Verden), was a suffragan of the Archdiocese of Mainz. From the 12th century, the Bishop of Verden was also, ''ex of ...

– reconsecrated St. Michael's. When the people of Hildesheim became Protestant in 1542, St. Michael's became Lutheran, but the Benedictine monastery operated here until it was secularized in 1803. Monks continued to use the church, especially its western choir and crypt, down to that moment. St. Michael's Church was heavily damaged in an air raid during

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

on 22 March 1945, but reconstruction was begun in 1950 and completed in 1957. In 1985, the church became a UNESCO

site, along with the Cathedral of Hildesheim, its collection of medieval treasures and its 1000-year-old rosebush.

Architecture

St. Michael's Church is one of the most important churches of early Christian period architecture. It is a double-choir

basilica In Ancient Roman architecture, a basilica is a large public building with multiple functions, typically built alongside the town's Forum (Roman), forum. The basilica was in the Latin West equivalent to a stoa in the Greek East. The building ...

with two

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform churches, a transept is an area set crosswise to the nave in a cruciform ("cross-shaped") building wi ...

s and a square tower at each crossing. The west

choir A choir ( ; also known as a chorale or chorus) is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform. Choirs may perform music from the classical music repertoire, which sp ...

is emphasized by an

ambulatory The ambulatory ( la, ambulatorium, ‘walking place’) is the covered passage around a cloister or the processional way around the east end of a cathedral or large church and behind the high altar. The first ambulatory was in France in the 11th ...

and a crypt.

Nikolaus Pevsner Sir Nikolaus Bernhard Leon Pevsner (30 January 1902 – 18 August 1983) was a German-British art historian and architectural historian best known for his monumental 46-volume series of county-by-county guides, ''The Buildings of England'' (1 ...

wrote that St. Michael's "is the earliest surviving example of a truly Romanesque exterior." The ground plan of the building follows a geometrical conception, in which the square of the transept crossing in the ground plan constitutes the key measuring unit for the entire church. The square units are defined by the alternation of columns and piers. Pevsner described this as a "more thorough 'metrical system' " than found in any prior Romanesque architecture. The ceiling of the church is decorated with a fresco, 27.6 m long and 8.7 m wide, depicting the

Tree of Jesse The Tree of Jesse is a depiction in art of the ancestors of Jesus Christ, shown in a branching tree which rises from Jesse of Bethlehem, the father of King David. It is the original use of the family tree as a schematic representation of a g ...

, the ancestral line of Jesus. The genealogy has been dated to roughly 1130. The famous

Bernward Doors The Bernward Doors (german: Bernwardstür) are the two leaves of a pair of Ottonian or Romanesque bronze doors, made for Hildesheim Cathedral in Germany. They were commissioned by Bishop Bernward of Hildesheim (938–1022). The doors show r ...

, featuring bronze reliefs of scenes from the Bible, were originally commissioned for St. Michael's but are now found at the nearby Cathedral of Hildesheim. Hildesheim-Christussaeule-Rekonstruktionszeichnung.png, The

Bernward Column The Bernward Column (german: Bernwardssäule) also known as the Christ Column (german: Christussäule) is a bronze column, made for St. Michael's Church in Hildesheim, Germany, and regarded as a masterpiece of Ottonian art. It was commission ...

in St. Michael's (before 1810); reconstruction by Carpiceci/Gallistl Hildesheim-St Michaels Church.interior.01.JPG, St. Michael's from inside before restoration 2005 St. Michaelis Hildesheim.jpg, The Woehl-organ from 1999 Holzdecke der Michaelis Kirche in Hildesheim.jpg, The wooden ceiling, together with the wooden ceilings of Zillis (Switzerland) and Dädesjö (Sweden), is one of the few monumental panel paintings of the high Middle Ages that have survived. St Michael Hildesheim Mittelschiff.jpg, St. Michael's from inside after complete restoration between 2005 and 2010

Measurements

* Total length: 74.75 m * Total length of the

s: 40.01 m * Total width of the transepts: 11.38 m * Length of the crypt: 18.36 m * Length of the

nave The nave () is the central part of a church, stretching from the (normally western) main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type ...

: 27.34 m * Width of the nave incl. lower

aisle An aisle is, in general, a space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, certain types of buildings, such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, par ...

s: 22.75 m * Width of the nave without lower aisles: 8.60 m * Height of the nave without lower aisles: 16.70 m * Thickness of the walls: 1.63 m

Location

St. Michael's Church is situated at the Western rim of the city centre of Hildesheim, on the so-called ''Michaelishügel'' ("St. Michael's Hill"). The main entrance to the Church is at the south side. Magdalenengarten, a baroque park, is very close to the church in the west. The cloister is also accessible from there. It leads to the Church's contemporary (administrative) buildings. From the south and east of the Hill is Hildesheim's downtown, to the west is the River

Innerste The Innerste is a river in Lower Saxony, Germany. It is a right tributary of the Leine river and in length. Origin of the name The river name is not related to the German word ''innerste'' meaning innermost. ''Innerste'', in earlier times c ...

and in the north the Gymnasium Andreanum school.

Burials

References

External links

St Mary's Cathedral and St Michael's Church at Hildesheim / UNESCO Official Website

Exhibition "Bernwards Schätze" (Bernward's Treasures)
online Hannoverische Allgemeine photo gallery
St. Michael's Church, Hildesheim
on sekulada.com {{DEFAULTSORT:Saint Michaels Church, Hildesheim

Hildesheim Lutheran churches in Hildesheim