St. Gervasius und Protasius: Parish Church of Sechtem in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.5
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Modern
- Civilizations
- Kingdom of Prussia, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page20 sections
History
St. Gervasius und Protasius is the Catholic parish church of Sechtem in Bornheim, Germany. The present building was designed in a Neoclassical style in 1842 and completed in 1848, continuing a Christian tradition on the Kirchberg that may reach back to the region’s oldest church. The church is dedicated to Gervasius and Protasius, Christian martyrs traditionally associated with Milan whose relics were publicly elevated by Bishop Ambrose in 386.
Roman and Late Antique Sechtem
The church stands on the Kirchberg, also called the Nikolausberg, a raised area southwest of Sechtem’s old village center between the Vorgebirge and the Rhine. The elevation was probably created for military purposes during the Roman period and has been gradually eroded over almost two thousand years. The hill may have contained a square Roman fort within a settlement. Excavations carried out during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries revealed large quantities of Roman masonry together with varied objects connected with everyday life.
The area also served as a Late Antique burial ground, with graves and votive stones dedicated to the Matrons, mother goddesses worshipped in the Roman provinces of northwestern Europe, especially in the Rhineland. A Roman villa rustica, a rural estate combining agricultural production with a substantial residence, remained inhabited until around AD 400. A Mithraeum, a sanctuary used for the worship of Mithras, stood on the grounds of a Roman estate in the southwestern part of Sechtem.
Five altars or votive stones dedicated to Mercury, the Roman god associated especially with trade and commerce, were found mainly around the church, the St. Nicholas Chapel, and the rectory. Their concentration suggests a substantial Mercury sanctuary connected with the ancient settlement known as ad septimam leugam. A Matron stone was discovered in 1975, while another recovered votive stone was dedicated to the goddess Amanda.
The Roman sanctuary was apparently destroyed around AD 400, after the prohibition of pagan cults, possibly during the reign of the emperor Theodosius. Pagan and Christian forms of worship subsequently blended before Christianization intensified during the Frankish and Carolingian periods. This transition gave the Kirchberg a long religious continuity, although the character of worship changed substantially.
Early Christian and Medieval Church
A fragmentary grave monument for a boy named Godewin, placed in a mid-seventh-century context, provides evidence for the early existence of Sechtem and for a Christian church with burial rights. Its inscription identifies the church at the burial place as a basilica of St. Gervasius. The monument therefore connects the later parish dedication with an early Christian foundation and indicates continuity in both settlement and religious life.
The Annales Rodenses record that two churches stood in the village center around 1122. They probably originated during the Frankish period. The smaller St. Nicholas Chapel, rebuilt in 1771, may have been the first parish church. The larger church was probably a stone hall with a towerless design. Some of its masonry may have reused Roman concrete, or opus caementicium, from earlier construction.
From the early twelfth century, the church was connected with Dietkirchen in Bonn. Dietkirchen developed from a Benedictine women’s convent into a later foundation for canonesses. It held the patronage of the Sechtem church and by 1166 possessed the right to present candidates and exercise other rights in the appointment of the parish priest. Sechtem paid tithes to Dietkirchen for centuries, and the former tithe barn is now preserved at the Kommern open-air museum.
Dietkirchen expanded its influence through land transactions and leases. In 1279 the Bonn institution leased the clearing tithe in Sechtem and Urfeld from the collegiate church of St. George in Cologne. In 1307 Archbishop Henry II of Cologne transferred 103 morgen of arable land near Sechtem to Dietkirchen in exchange for land near Honnef. These arrangements placed the parish within a wider network of ecclesiastical landholding and administration.
Around 1122, Sechtem is said to have come into the possession of the lords, later counts, of Saffenberg. Ailbertus of Antoing, the priest who founded the Augustinian canons’ abbey of Rolduc, also called Klosterrath, is said to have died near Sechtem that year while visiting the region. He was buried in the chapel beside the parish church until 1771. Rolduc and other religious institutions held land in the Bornheim area.
Dedication and Parish Administration
The joint dedication to Gervasius and Protasius probably reflects the spread of the Milanese martyrs’ cult through Roman-Frankish Gaul. Their veneration flourished particularly during the period associated with Gregory of Tours, while the dedication later became rare in Germany. One hypothesis links the Sechtem dedication with Benedictine nuns from Soissons. Their convent, under the authority of the Abbey of Notre Dame, may have maintained an early settlement at Keldenich and owned the nearby Landskroner, or Stapelhof, within sight of the church. The connection remains a proposed explanation rather than an established fact.
The earliest known medieval cleric of Sechtem was Pastor Heinrich, who appeared as a witness in 1249. The rectory was first mentioned in 1426. By the middle of the fifteenth century, Dietrich Vonk served as Sechtem’s vicar and as a priest of Dietkirchen.
The parish historically consisted of two districts, a division that complicated responsibility for maintaining the church. Traditional regulations assigned the choir to the parish priest, the nave to the holder of the great tithe, and the tower, churchyard wall, and ossuary to the parish. An ossuary is a structure used to house human bones after burials have been disturbed or graves reused. A visitation in 1687 recorded the churchyard and ossuary, noting the enclosure’s incomplete condition and ordering the ossuary to be closed.
From the Sixteenth Century to Secularization
In 1530 Arnold von Siegen acquired the lordship of Sechtem, including the Graue Burg and rights connected with St. Nicholas Chapel. The von Siegen family retained the title of lord of Sechtem until 1734. Although the family owned the Kirchberg and chapel rather than bearing formal responsibility for the parish church, it probably acted as a benefactor. A later visitation recorded a von Siegen tomb in the choir.
A visitation in 1569 described the medieval church as being in exceptionally poor condition. In 1607 the parish supplied it with a shingle-covered facade and a timber-framed tower, and a bell was cast at the same time. By 1687 the church contained a high altar dedicated to Gervasius and Protasius, a side altar dedicated to St. Anne and assigned to a vicarage, and another side altar dedicated to the Virgin Mary. The church also possessed consecrated hosts, a silver-and-gilt monstrance, and a silver ciborium. The lead-lined baptismal font was cracked and lacked its cover, while defective roofing allowed dampness to enter the building.
The old St. Nicholas Chapel was demolished in 1768 and 1769 under its new owner, Heinrich von Monschaw. A smaller replacement was completed in 1771. During the French period, the chapel became the Mairie, or municipal office, of Sechtem from 1804 or 1805 until 1809. It later returned to religious use and remained the house chapel of the Graue Burg until 1930.
A fire in 1784 spread from a neighboring building to the church and severely damaged the wooden tower and its bell. A replacement bell was commissioned from Matthias Waßenbergs, and a bell cast in 1785 bore the name of Anna Maria von Bourscheid, abbess of Dietkirchen. A roof repair noted for 1785 was probably among Dietkirchen’s last contributions before secularization.
During the French annexation of the Rhineland, church property in Sechtem was confiscated and leased. Dietkirchen’s patronage rights ended, and the former feudal tithe arrangements were abolished. Sechtem became a subsidiary parish within the canton of Brühl, whose principal church was St. Margaret in Brühl. Peter Bollig, appointed mayor of Sechtem in 1800, defended both church buildings despite their poor condition and secured the continued existence of St. Gervasius und Protasius as a subsidiary parish. The St. Nicholas Chapel survived in part through his efforts.
Demolition and Reconstruction
By 1829 the medieval tower was considered dangerously unstable, and the bells were temporarily silenced. The tower was dismantled in 1834. The medieval church itself was demolished in July and August 1844, and services were held in the temporarily adapted St. Nicholas Chapel while a new parish church was built.
Peter Josef Leydel designed the present church in 1842. After his death in 1845, the royal Prussian municipal master builders Schopen and Werner directed the construction. The building was completed in April 1848 after less than two years of work. Archbishop Johannes von Geissel consecrated it on 1 June 1852, when the tower and the principal parts of the church were substantially complete.
The churchyard was enlarged with 481 square metres of adjoining rectory garden in 1883 and extended again in 1896. A brick boundary wall with pointed-gable entrances was then built. The cemetery closed on 1 January 1959. Its entrance structures were demolished in the early 1960s, the remaining graves were levelled, and the bodies were reburied in 1979. The area became a green space incorporating remnants of the cemetery wall and memorial plaques. The church is now part of the Bornheim-Vorgebirge pastoral area and is a protected historic building in Bornheim.
Remains
Archaeological Remains of the Kirchberg
Roman Settlement and Sanctuaries
Archaeological remains beneath and around the church include Roman masonry incorporated into earlier church foundations and building material from the medieval church. The wider Kirchberg contains evidence of the Roman settlement, the villa rustica, the possible Mercury sanctuary, the Mithraeum, Late Antique graves, Matron stones, and other Roman artefacts. Together, these remains place the later church within a landscape that had served military, domestic, funerary, and religious purposes during antiquity.
Votive Stones and the Godewin Monument
Several Matron stones remained in the ground or were built into later masonry, while others were recovered. The Roman Mercury material includes five altars or votive stones, as well as a relief dedicated to Mercury and associated with the Sechtem finds. The relief dates from the early third century. A recovered votive stone dedicated to Amanda adds another named deity to the religious evidence from the site.
The white-sandstone grave monument of Godewin survives in fragmentary form and measures approximately 16 by 25 by 7 centimetres. Its incomplete inscription is written in an early Carolingian form of vernacular Latin. It names the deceased boy and identifies the church of St. Gervasius at the burial place. A plaster cast of the monument is associated with the Rheinisches Landesmuseum Bonn.
Exterior of the Present Church
Hall, Choir, and Entrances
The present church is a long, east-facing hall built of brick, with a clearly articulated exterior. A tower projects in front of the western end of the nave. At the east, the rounded choir terminates in an apse-like form and is flanked by a sacristy and a vestment chamber. The nave carries a gabled roof with three dormers on each side, while the rounded choir has a hipped roof with one dormer. The interior roof structure was designed without a vault, so the exterior walls required no Gothic-style buttresses.
West Tower
The square west tower is a Late Neoclassical structure integrated into the facade through the thickness of its walls. Its provisional roof was installed during the winter of 1848 and 1849. Horizontal string courses divide the tower into three levels. The entrance level contains the main portal and a large round window above it. Narrow, vertically arranged rectangular windows mark the middle level, while the upper bell stage opens on all four sides.
The bell openings consist of paired round-headed windows resting on a continuous sill or impost course and enclosed by a common blind arch. The roof changes from a square base to an octagonal form. The principal and subsidiary entrances were renewed in 1903 with rectangular concrete surrounds, which contrast with the decorative brick panels elsewhere on the building. Exterior renovation in 1969 included sandblasting, repair of a masonry crack, and repointing.
Interior and Liturgical Furnishings
Nave, Choir, and Windows
The interior forms a pillarless, light-filled hall. A central aisle extends from the western entrance beneath the organ gallery toward the raised choir, high altar, and two side altars. Confessionals stand on both sides of the nave, and the unobstructed arrangement permits views toward the choir and altar area throughout the building.
The original floor was planned in December 1846 with square slabs. Berkumer stone was selected for the area between the choir and communion rail, while Andernach stone was chosen for the nave. The worn choir floor was replaced with Mettlach mosaic tiles in 1887, and the nave floor was completely renewed in 1899.
The nave originally had tall windows and a flat painted beam ceiling. Around the turn of the twentieth century, the ceiling received a blue starry ground, a large white dove representing the Holy Spirit, and diminishing golden rays extending across several beams. A restoration in the late 1950s repaired the timberwork and preserved this nineteenth-century ceiling scheme. The work was carried out under the monument authority and directed by the Brühl restorer Gangolf Minn.
The choir originally contained three round windows. The central window was blocked and reopened in 1956, while the side windows were adapted to correspond with the ten Romanesque-style windows of the nave. Plain glass initially filled the nave windows. Between 1899 and 1901, they received stained glass with Rosary motifs. Shelling caused wartime damage that required temporary cardboard repairs, followed by complete reglazing by a Bonn glass workshop in 1951.
Altars, Font, and Madonna
The first high altar in the new church was a marble baldachin altar, an altar covered by a canopy or architectural pavilion, transferred from the secularized parish church of St. Brigida in Cologne. After renovation, it was installed provisionally in 1848. A stone high altar replaced it in 1864. Alterations followed in 1903 and 1908, and a sacrament house behind it was exposed in 1939. The stone altar remained until the renovation of 1968 to 1976, when it was removed after liturgical changes associated with the Second Vatican Council. An altar of Wölflinger trachyte, made by the Cologne sculptor Hein Gernot, took its place.
The church retains a Romanesque baptismal font consisting of a stone basin supported by columns. The date when it was acquired and the time when it entered the former parish church are unknown. A delicate white-marble Madonna in Gothic style, probably dating from the early fifteenth century, is also preserved. It is said to have come from the secularized Benedictine monastery of Königsdorf.
Organ and Bells
Organs
The central section of the first organ was a fine Rococo work. Made by Adolph Ibach, it was acquired second-hand in 1848 for 1,050 thalers after having been installed temporarily in St. Lambertus in Düsseldorf. A new organ by the Bonn builder Klais was purchased in 1911. Its tin pipes narrowly escaped wartime dismantling in 1917.
Bells
The old bells had stood in a provisional frame uncovered on the Kirchberg, where exposure damaged them. When the new bell frame was prepared, all but one of the old bells proved unusable. Two bells cast by Dubois in Münster were delivered in 1848. They sounded in G and F and were combined with the surviving St. Anne bell in A.
The Dubois bell in F is 75 centimetres high, 95 centimetres in diameter, and weighs 510 kilograms. Its inscription presents the bell as an instrument of warning and prayer. The G bell measures 88 centimetres in height and 108 centimetres in diameter and weighs 810 kilograms. Its inscription identifies it as the Maria bell and calls sinners to repentance.
About forty years later, Christian Claren of Sieglar recast the larger Dubois bell after it cracked. During the First World War, the historically important small Legros bell escaped requisition, while three other bells were confiscated for military administration. New bells were ordered from Petit and Gebr. Edelbrock in Gescher in 1927. The small historical St. Anne bell cracked during the severe winter of 1928 and 1929, and the same firm cast a duplicate in 1933. In 1942, the bells were again confiscated, this time without compensation.
After the Second World War, a new four-bell peal was ordered from the Bochumer Verein steelworks and installed in 1947. The remaining small Anna bell was later transferred to St. Petri in Ketten in Lengsdorf. An electric ringing system was installed in 1959.
Former Churchyard
The former parish church grounds retain eighteenth-century stone grave crosses. One, dated 1705, commemorates Bernatus Bauch, a court alderman and tithe official of Sechtem. Another commemorates Andreas Urbach and Anna Bauch, whose deaths are dated to 1729 and 1760. A wooden cross for Heinrich Adolph, dated 1825, formerly stood behind the nave. The former cemetery area now forms a landscaped green space, while sections of the cemetery wall and memorial plaques remain incorporated into the grounds.
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