Marienkirche Büdingen: The Principal Church of Büdingen
Site at a Glance
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- 4.6
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- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page17 sections
History
Marienkirche Büdingen, also called the Liebfrauenkirche, is the principal church of Büdingen, Germany. It developed from a wooden chapel established in 1367 into a late Gothic church rebuilt between 1476 and 1491, replacing the older parish church of St. Remigius outside the town’s fortifications.
From marketplace chapel to town church
Heinrich von Isenburg established the wooden Liebfrauen Chapel on Büdingen’s marketplace in 1367. Its position within the fortified town gave residents a safer place for worship than the exposed route to St. Remigius. In 1377, Johann I von Isenburg and his wife, Sophie von Wertheim, replaced the wooden structure with a stone three-aisled basilica, a church with a higher central nave flanked by lower side aisles. Altar services and Masses began there in 1378.
Worship at St. Remigius became increasingly difficult because people travelling beyond the fortifications faced the danger of enemy attacks. Diether von Isenburg, Archbishop of Mainz, authorized Masses at the Liebfrauenkirche. The Salve Regina, a hymn dedicated to the Virgin Mary, could be sung there from 1444, and Archbishop Theodorius of Mainz approved a daily Mass in 1445. St. Remigius consequently lost importance as the town church grew in religious and practical importance.
A building known as the New School was added between the church and the bell tower in 1456 and was established there in 1556. The church itself was transformed during the rebuilding carried out under Count Ludwig II and his wife, Maria of Nassau. Between 1476 and 1491, several houses in the old town were demolished to make room for a late Gothic residence church. After its consecration in 1492, the building received baptismal rights in 1495 and took over all liturgical functions from St. Remigius.
Ecclesiastical administration and the Reformation
Before the Reformation, Büdingen belonged to the Archdiocese of Mainz and was ecclesiastically subordinate to the Archdeaconry of the Marienstift zu den Greden. The monastery of Marienborn held patronage over the parish church and chapels. The church’s changing role reflected the authority of the Isenburg comital house, whose members shaped its foundation, rebuilding, and later institutional development.
The Reformation reached Büdingen in 1543. The Reformation was the sixteenth-century movement that divided Western Christianity and produced Protestant churches. At first, the changes were mainly liturgical. Latin Mass continued until 1584, while fasting practices and much of the church furnishing remained in place as Lutheran teaching was introduced.
From the Reformation onward, the choir served as the burial place of the ruling and comital house rather than the monastery of Marienborn. Confessional disputes among the different Isenburg lines intensified from 1584. After Count Heinrich of the Ronneburg line died in 1601, Büdingen became Calvinist. Calvinism was a Protestant tradition distinct from Lutheranism. The change brought iconoclasm, the deliberate removal or destruction of religious images and furnishings. Altars, crucifixes, saints’ images, baptismal stones, and other Catholic or Lutheran objects were removed or destroyed. The high altar and surviving epitaphs remained.
Medieval wall paintings were whitewashed in 1601 in accordance with the Reformed interpretation of the prohibition of images. Religious life was subsequently shaped by restrictions on the veneration of images, statues, and related objects. In 1602, the New Consistory, also called the Presbyterium, was built on the south side in the position of the second bay of the earlier choir. A consistory was a church governing council. This council served the County of Isenburg and Büdingen under Count Wolfgang Ernst.
Later religious and architectural changes
Count Ernst Casimir issued a tolerance edict on 29 March 1712. It encouraged Pietists, Separatists, and other Christian groups to settle in Büdingen. The stated purpose was to counter population decline caused by war and plague, and the policy contributed to the town’s wider religious diversity.
In 1776, the damaged Gothic tower helmet was replaced by a Baroque hood. In 1817, Büdingen’s Lutherans and Reformed Christians united as one Protestant congregation. A Catholic congregation was re-established in Büdingen from the late nineteenth century.
Archaeological excavations in 1956 and investigations during the renovation of 1957 to 1961, carried out under Peter Nieß, clarified the existence and orientation of the earlier church. The work also revealed surviving medieval wall-painting fragments, some of which were exposed again. These investigations helped distinguish the successive building phases that shaped the present church.
Remains
Marienkirche Büdingen preserves fabric from four principal phases: the wooden chapel of 1367, the stone basilica begun in 1377, the late Gothic hall church built between 1476 and 1491, and alterations made after the Reformation from the mid-sixteenth century onward. The building’s unusual early alignment and later east-west orientation can still be understood through surviving masonry and archaeological evidence.
Earlier church and changing orientation
Remains of the stone basilica
The first stone church was arranged on a north-south axis. This orientation followed the alignment of the marketplace, the restricted space inside the town walls, the position of St. Remigius outside the town, and the need to reserve land for the settlement of castle retainers. Parts of the structure survive in the present church, including the triumphal arch, the first bay of the chancel on the south side, now incorporated into a side chapel, and a Gothic portal beneath the vault of the present tower on the north side.
Portal and excavated wall
The Gothic portal bears the date 1370 and an inscription naming Johann and Sophie as lords of Isenburg and Büdingen. Excavations during the 1957 to 1961 renovation uncovered the abandoned eastern longitudinal wall of the 1377 church. It lay between the paving of the former chapel and that of the old marketplace, providing physical evidence for the church’s earlier north-south arrangement.
The south portal beneath the tower lies well below the present street level. The floor of the old chapel is more than 1.25 metres below the current road surface. Repeated flooding by the Seemenbach and the accumulation of soil from successive repavings of Büdingen’s streets and squares account for this change in level.
Late Gothic hall church
Hall and vault
The late Gothic rebuilding changed the church to an east-west orientation, the conventional arrangement for Christian worship. The construction incorporated elements associated with the Frankfurt school of church architecture. It created a hall church, a form in which the central nave and side aisles have relatively similar heights. The choir is strongly illuminated, while the broad central nave is divided into wide bays. Narrow, longitudinally rectangular bays in the side aisles correspond to broad, transversely rectangular bays in the central nave and produce its wide arcade arches.
A wide-span net vault covers the central nave. A net vault is a ribbed ceiling whose intersecting ribs form a network-like pattern. At the rib intersections, sculpted heraldic shields representing the ancestors of Ludwig II and Maria of Nassau replace the figured foliage often associated with buildings of the Frankfurt school. This treatment was innovative in the Middle Rhine region and influenced later buildings connected with the Büdingen school of architecture.
Post-Reformation consistory
The New Consistory, or Presbyterium, occupies the position of the second bay of the earlier choir on the south side. Built in 1602, it forms part of the church’s post-Reformation architectural fabric and housed the governing council of the County of Isenburg and Büdingen.
Paintings, furnishings, and memorials
Last Judgment fresco
The principal surviving medieval wall painting is a fresco of the Last Judgment above the triumphal arch between the hall and the choir. A fresco is a wall painting made on wet plaster, allowing the pigments to become integrated with the surface. Dating from the construction period, the scene shows Christ enthroned on a rainbow and globe, with his hands raised both defensively and in blessing. A double-edged sword and a palm emerge from his mouth.
Two angels with trumpets call the dead to resurrection. Mary and John the Baptist appear beside Christ as intercessory figures, while Adam and Eve are shown below. On Christ’s left, a dragon consumes the damned. On his right, Simon Peter welcomes the resurrected through the gate of heaven. Further medieval fresco fragments were found on the side walls during the 1961 restoration and later renovations, and some were partially uncovered.
Altars and crucifix
The former interior contained a high altar, a Marian altar, a Martin altar, and a St. George altar. The high altar survived the destruction of furnishings during the confessional conflicts. The altar is decorated with a late Gothic crucifix dating from around 1500.
Burial slabs and epitaph
The church contains numerous burial slabs and gravestones. A plain slab found during the 1956 excavations had a hole and a cross and was made from an unusually hard green stone quarried in the forest near Schlierbach in the Brachtal. Its material corresponds to the jamb stones of St. Remigius, indicating that it probably formed part of the oldest altar slabs transferred from that church.
The choir contains the sandstone epitaph of Count Anton of Isenburg and his wife, Elisabeth of Wied, dated 1563. Attributed to a Mainz sculptor identified as “Schro,” it depicts the life-sized couple in courtly dress and carries the inscription, “I will be your death, O Death.” Members of important families connected with the Isenburg feudal court were buried in the nave in front of the altar steps.
Choir plaque and organ
A bronze memorial plaque in the choir commemorates those killed in the First World War. Above the main entrance, the west gallery holds an organ built in 1971 by the Hillebrand organ-building company of Hanover. It has 28 stops on two manuals and pedal, with a swellable upper manual. The key actions and couplers are mechanical, while the stop actions are electric. Its couplers are II/I, I/P, and II/P, and its playing aids include two free combinations, one free pedal combination, and a tutti.
Marks on the exterior stonework
The outer buttresses on the south side of the choir carry numerous vertical scraping marks and small bowl-like depressions. These traces are probably connected with a sixteenth-century practice of scraping dust from consecrated church stonework for use in medicines and protective remedies.
