The Church of St. Michael (

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany, the country of the Germans and German things **Germania (Roman era) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizenship in Germany, see also Ge ...

: ''Michaeliskirche'') is an early- Romanesque church located in

Hildesheim Hildesheim (; or ; ) is a city in Lower Saxony, in north-central Germany with 101,693 inhabitants. It is in the district of Hildesheim (district), Hildesheim, about southeast of Hanover on the banks of the Innerste River, a small tributary of t ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. It has been on the

UNESCO The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO ) is a List of specialized agencies of the United Nations, specialized agency of the United Nations (UN) with the aim of promoting world peace and International secur ...

World Cultural Heritage World Heritage Sites are landmarks and areas with legal protection under an international treaty administered by UNESCO for having cultural, historical, or scientific significance. The sites are judged to contain "cultural and natural heritag ...

list since 1985 due to the before mentioned early-

Romanesque architecture Romanesque architecture is an architectural style of medieval Europe that was predominant in the 11th and 12th centuries. The style eventually developed into the Gothic style with the shape of the arches providing a simple distinction: the Ro ...

and art found within such as the Tree of Jesse and the now relocated

Bernward Doors The Bernward Doors () 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 relief images from the ...

. Following the Protestant reformation, St. Michael's became a

shared church A shared church (), simultaneum mixtum, a term first coined in 16th-century Germany, is a church in which public worship is conducted by adherents of two or more religious groups. Such churches became common in the German-speaking lands of Europe ...

, with the majority of the structure being

Lutheran Lutheranism is a major branch of Protestantism that emerged under the work of Martin Luther, the 16th-century German friar and Protestant Reformers, reformer whose efforts to reform the theology and practices of the Catholic Church launched ...

and the crypt

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

History

Bishop

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

(996–1022) commissioned this Benedictine monastery to be constructed on a hill linked with the archangel Michael just half a kilometer north of the city walls of his seat in Hildesheim. The structuring of the church began in 1010 and the unfinished monastery was dedicated to the Archangel Michael on archangel's feast day (29 September) in 1022 by Bernward, mere weeks before his death. Along with Bernward's significant influence on the building, layout, and physicality of the Abbey, he was personally trained in bronze casting as well as "painting and metalwork" which he honed during his time as a private tutor to Otto lll. This knowledge proved valuable within his critical position in the creation of the church, and we see much of his personal Romanesque style, which he garnered with Otto lll in Rome, within. As Bernward died before the completion of the church, construction was continued under his successor, Bishop Godehard, who completed the work in 1031 and reconsecrated the church to Michael on 29 September of that same year. After the church's completion in 1033, Godehard transported Bernward's remains from their original resting place to the crypt of the Abbey.Kingsley, Jennifer P. “Picturing the Treasury: The Power of Objects and the Art of Memory in the Bernward Gospels.” ''Gesta'', vol. 50, no. 1, 2011, pp. 19–39. ''JSTOR'', https://doi.org/10.2307/41550547. Accessed 14 Nov. 2024. The monastery comprises a church family and has 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 open southward toward the city of Hildesheim, its south flank comprising a facade of a sort. With this information, 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 Church, Catholic Diocese of Verden (), was a suffragan of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Mainz, Archdiocese of Mainz. From the 12th century, the Bishop of Verden ...

– reconsecrated St. Michael's. During the Reformation ca. 1542, with the support of governmental bodies overseeing Hildesheim, newly empowered Lutheran Protestants began to systematically overtake parts of the church and left very little to the previously administrative monastic body.Krüger, Kristina. (2019). St Michael’s at Hildesheim: Scripture Networks and the Perception of Sacred Space: The Interlacing of Real Places and Conceptual Spaces in Medieval Art and Architecture. 10.1515/9783110629156-006. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/330446198_St_Michael's_at_Hildesheim_Scripture_Networks_and_the_Perception_of_Sacred_Space_The_Interlacing_of_Real_Places_and_Conceptual_Spaces_in_Medieval_Art_and_Architecture Under this new ownership, much of the structural elements of the church were damaged, but with the help of modern technology, many of these places in the church affected by a lack of maintenance have been cared for, and much of the church has been rebuilt to emulate its former appearance. St. Michael's Church also was heavily damaged by a British air raid on 22 March 1945. Reconstruction on the church began in 1950 and was completed in 1957.

Architecture

St. Michael's Church is a double-choir

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

with two tripartite

transept A transept (with two semitransepts) is a transverse part of any building, which lies across the main body of the building. In cruciform ("cross-shaped") cruciform plan, churches, in particular within the Romanesque architecture, Romanesque a ...

s at either end of the nave and a square tower at each crossing. Along with these large towers at the crossings, there are four other tall and narrow towers attached to the small sides of the two transepts. The eastern choir featured three apses, and the west

choir A choir ( ), also known as a chorale or chorus (from Latin ''chorus'', meaning 'a dance in a circle') is a musical ensemble of singers. Choral music, in turn, is the music written specifically for such an ensemble to perform or in other words ...

is emphasized by a single apse rising high over an elaborate cross-vaulted

crypt A crypt (from Greek κρύπτη (kryptē) ''wikt:crypta#Latin, crypta'' "Burial vault (tomb), vault") is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, Sarcophagus, sarcophagi, or Relic, religiou ...

with an

ambulatory The ambulatory ( '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 century but by the 13t ...

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'' (195 ...

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. During his time as Otto's tutor, it is recorded that Bernward visited Rome and lived there for a time.Watkin, David. A history of Western architecture. London, Laurence King Publishing, 2005, pp. 118-119. https://www.google.com/books/edition/A_History_of_Western_Architecture/39T1zElEBrQC?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=history+of+st.+michael%27s+church+at+hildesheim&pg=PA118&printsec=frontcover During this time abroad, Bernward would have taken notice to the Early Christian Basilicas in Rome which were notorious for their unexciting interiors at this time. Through the many architectural feats and intricacies found in the church such as the Tree of Jesse and the Bernward doors, we see the Bishop completely rejecting this practice of monotony previously found in many popular, current works. The ceiling of the church is decorated with a painting, 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 (biblical figure), Jesse of Bethlehem, the father of King David. It is the original use of the family tree as a schemati ...

, the ancestral line of Jesus. This artwork, created around 1130, was created using over 1,300 oak planks and was heavily restored to its current form in 2010. The famous

, which feature bronze reliefs of scenes from the Bible, were most likely commissioned after 1008, and were originally ordered for St. Michael's by Bernward but are now found at the nearby Cathedral of Hildesheim. These incredibly detailed doors depict 16 scenes in total and begin with scenes on the left with stories of Genesis and move into New Testament depictions on the right.Cohen, Adam S., and Anne Derbes. “Bernward and Eve at Hildesheim.” ''Gesta'', vol. 40, no. 1, 2001, pp. 19–38. ''JSTOR'', https://doi.org/10.2307/767193. Accessed 9 Oct. 2024. The doors were crafted in this way to allow the viewer the opportunity to see the decline and Holy Redemption of humanity through Christ's resurrection. Along with this, many of the stories depicted in the doors were almost certainly drawn from works Bernward himself encountered on his various travels. File:Hildesheim-St Michaels Church.interior.01.JPG, Interior of St. Michael's St. preceding restoration in 2005 File:Holzdecke der Michaelis Kirche in Hildesheim.jpg, The wooden ceilings found in Hildesheim along with the wooden ceilings of Zillis (Switzerland) and Dädesjö (Sweden), are some of the few panel paintings of the high Middle Ages that have survived. File:St Michael Hildesheim Mittelschiff.jpg, Interior of St. Michael's after the completion of the restoration carried out 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

: 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 a linear space for walking with rows of non-walking spaces on both sides. Aisles with seating on both sides can be seen in airplanes, in buildings such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parliaments, courtrooms, ...

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 on 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 time ...

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 Buildings and structures completed in 1022 Churches completed in the 1020s

Lutheran churches in Hildesheim