Assumption of Mary Church in Schlanders: A Parish Church Shaped by Gothic and Baroque Renewal
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Italy
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire, Italian
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page16 sections
History
The Assumption of Mary Church in Schlanders, Italy, is a Roman Catholic parish church with medieval origins, a Gothic basic plan, and Baroque alterations. Schlanders was already the center of a parish district in 1170, when a priest named Thebaldus was recorded there. The parish may have originated as early as the seventh or eighth century, during the expansion of large rural parishes by the Diocese of Chur.
The medieval parish
The medieval parish once covered a much wider territory, including Laas and Martell. Its size made pastoral work demanding. A record from 1380 states that the community was required to provide the parish priest with a horse so he could reach the dependent churches and celebrate Mass there.
In 1235, Emperor Frederick II gave the church to the Teutonic Order, a religious and military order founded during the Crusades. The parish thereafter belonged to one of the order’s local establishments, known as a commandery. Its priests were members of the order, but they were not appointed archpriests despite Schlanders’ central position. This arrangement may have reflected the generally poor relationship between the bishops of Chur and the Teutonic Order.
War, Gothic rebuilding, and Baroque transformation
In 1499, the Engadine War, a conflict between the Swiss Confederation and the Swabian League allied with the Habsburgs, brought severe damage to the Vinschgau after the Swiss victory at the Battle of Calven. The parish church and adjoining St Michael’s Chapel were badly damaged and then completely renewed in the Late Gothic style under Oswald Furter of Latsch. The rebuilding was finished by 1505.
The church was reshaped again in 1758 and 1759 under the court painter Josef Adam Mölk. The nave was extended toward the west and converted into a single-hall church with a barrel vault, a continuous curved ceiling. Much of the earlier Gothic building remained incorporated into the new form, allowing the church to retain a medieval structural basis beneath its eighteenth-century interior.
Ecclesiastical and political reorganization
The Napoleonic Wars and the Tyrolean uprising brought major changes to the church’s ecclesiastical setting. On 17 September 1808, the Vinschgau was transferred from the Diocese of Chur to the Diocese of Brixen. A diocese is a territorial Roman Catholic jurisdiction responsible for church administration. After the separation from Chur, the parish became a deanery in 1812 and was transferred to the Diocese of Trent on 12 October 1818.
Following the defeat of Andreas Hofer’s Tyrolean forces in 1809, Schlanders became part of the Kingdom of Bavaria. In 1811, the Bavarian government occupied the Teutonic Order’s commandery in Schlanders and sold its property. Tyrol returned to Austria in 1814, but the order was not restored. The church consequently became a secular parish church administered by diocesan priests.
Since 1964, the parish has belonged to the Diocese of Bolzano-Bressanone. A separate Capuchin monastery with a small church dedicated to St John the Baptist remains in Schlanders.
Marian devotion
A kneeling image of Mary is venerated as the grace-bearing image called “Our Lady at the Field Margin.” A grace-bearing image is a devotional image regarded by worshippers as a focus of Mary’s intercession or miraculous favor. Local tradition says that a farmer from Kortsch found the statue at the edge of a field.
In 1799, advancing Napoleonic troops threatened Schlanders. The local riflemen vowed that, if the danger passed, they would carry the statue through the town every year on the Feast of the Holy Name of Mary. The French soon withdrew without causing war damage, and the annual procession has continued since that time.
Remains
Tower and exterior
Gothic bell tower
The church tower rises on its north side as a slender Gothic structure approximately 91 metres high. It is regarded as the highest church tower in South Tyrol and in the wider Tyrol region. Its present slender form belongs to the rebuilding after 1499, while changes in the masonry up to the middle of the third storey suggest that this may have been the tower’s original height before it was extended after the Engadine War.
The tower ends in a pointed octagonal roof covered with wooden shingles. It leans slightly westward, probably because of a lightning strike that was not adequately repaired. The fourth storey has bell openings decorated with tracery, a Gothic pattern of intersecting stonework. Six bells form a peal tuned to C-sharp, E, F-sharp, G-sharp, B, and high C-sharp. The largest weighs about three tonnes and was cast in Bolzano by Michael Zach in 1800.
Baroque interior and furnishings
Nave and choir
The Baroque rebuilding created a single-hall nave with a barrel vault and lengthened the building westward. The vault still reveals the original Gothic form. On the exterior, two inserted conches, or large shell-shaped recesses, and a series of elements resembling buttresses divide the walls. Regional marble was used inside, and numerous parts of the Gothic church were incorporated into the later structure.
High altar
The high altar has passed through several forms. After the Late Gothic renewal, Jörg Lederer of Swabia created a carved altar in 1513. A small number of its figures survive, including Saint Anne with the Virgin and Child. The Late Gothic altar was probably replaced during the Baroque period, but the central group showing the Coronation of Mary remained the altar’s focus. Its principal figure is a statue of Mary, and the present Neo-Baroque form dates from 1910.
Before the annual procession, the Marian statue is lowered from the altar on a rail and placed on a carrying canopy known locally as a Fergele. The statue is then carried through the village.
Altars, baptismal font, and organ
A modern freestanding altar, positioned so that the celebrant can stand around it rather than face a wall, stands in the center of the choir. Karl Grasser created it in 1990. Beside the left entrance to the choir is a Gothic baptismal font dated 1529, with a wooden upper section added in the seventeenth century.
Two Neo-Romanesque side altars occupy the lateral conches. They are dedicated to Saint Joseph and Saint Sebastian. Their altar paintings are older and are probably by Josef Adam Mölk, who also painted the ceiling frescoes. The present organ was made by Paolo Ciresa of Trentino in 1986 and installed in the case of an earlier instrument. The 1912 predecessor, built by Josef Behmann’s workshop, had two manuals, a pedal, and 20 stops. The current organ has 25 stops, two manuals, and a pedal operated by mechanical action.
Frescoes
Mölk omitted the stucco commonly used in Baroque interiors, leaving room for large-scale fresco painting. In the nave, Esther kneels before King Xerxes I within an extensive illusionistic architectural setting. The choir contains a large painting surrounded by smaller scenes in the vault fields. Together they depict the continents venerating Mary, with Europe given the features of the reigning Empress Maria Theresa.
St Michael’s Church
Crypt and upper chapel
St Michael’s Church adjoins the parish church on its eastern side. The two-storey building was consecrated in 1488. Its lower level has two aisles and serves as a crypt. It was formerly linked by a passage to noble graves beneath the choir of the parish church.
The upper storey has a net vault, a Gothic vault whose ribs form a mesh-like pattern. It contains the parish church’s former high-altar painting of the Assumption of Mary, a life-sized Late Gothic crucifix, and several frescoes dating from 1511. Since the Baroque period, the western part of the upper church has served as the parish church’s sacristy.
Roof turret and mortuary use
A roof turret crowned by an onion-shaped cupola rises above St Michael’s Church. It houses the death bell, locally called the Zügenglocke. The building functions as a mortuary chapel and is otherwise kept closed.
