Chartreuse de Bâle: A Carthusian Monastery in Basel, Switzerland
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Switzerland
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page15 sections
History
Chartreuse de Bâle was a Catholic Carthusian monastery in Basel, Switzerland, founded in the early fifteenth century on the right bank of the Rhine. Also known as the Chartreuse of Saint Margaret, it was established in 1403 and developed as a late medieval religious, intellectual, and scholarly center.
Foundation and construction
The monastery occupied the site of the former Bischofshof, an episcopal residence that Jakob Zibol bought from the city of Basel in 1401 for 600 gold florins. Basel had acquired Kleinbasel in 1392. Zibol entrusted the new foundation to Winand Steinbeck, a native of Strasbourg, and on 8 February 1403 Marquard of Randegg, Bishop of Constance, approved it. Because Kleinbasel lay within his diocese, he gave the monastery the name Monasterium Vallis beate Margarethe, meaning Val-Sainte-Marguerite, after its patron saint, Margaret.
The small community initially used the former episcopal residence. The monastery joined the Carthusian Order in 1407, and Winand Steinbeck became its first prior. The Carthusians combined communal worship with long periods of individual solitude. Their choir monks lived in separate residences, while lay brothers carried out manual work within the monastery and cultivated fields and vineyards outside it. Construction of the church and monastery began in November 1408 according to a comprehensive plan by the master builder Johann of Hungary.
Financial problems slowed the early work. In 1409, political circumstances forced Jakob Zibol to pay Basel a substantial fine, weakening his finances. The Great Cloister was not completed until 1441. The monastery eventually contained sixteen residences for monks, alongside the separate quarter used by the lay brothers.
Prosperity during the Council of Basel
The Council of Basel, a major fifteenth-century church council that brought ecclesiastical representatives to the city, helped raise the monastery’s prestige and resources between 1431 and 1448. Priors Albert Buer and Adolf Bruwer guided the community during this period. Representatives of the Carthusian Order attending the council stayed at the monastery, while senior churchmen made donations and left bequests to the convent.
Emperor Sigismund confirmed the monastery’s protections and privileges in 1434, and Emperor Frederick III renewed the document in 1442. These confirmations strengthened the position that the community had acquired during the council. The monastery’s church was structurally complete in 1414 and consecrated in 1416, although work on its interior continued for several years.
Learning, books, and prominent monks
During the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, Chartreuse de Bâle became an important center of religious learning and humanist book culture in Basel. Its monks produced theological, liturgical, devotional, and scholarly writings, and its library grew through the work and gifts of members and associates.
Heinrich Arnoldi served as prior from 1449 to 1480. He supervised the buildings and library and wrote numerous devotional works. After resigning because of illness, he composed a history of the monastery as a dialogue with Saint Margaret. Jakob Lauber succeeded him and remained prior from 1480 to 1501. A former law lecturer and rector of the University of Basel, Lauber reorganized the library and administered the monastery carefully. He became prior of Buxheim in 1501, returned to Basel in 1507, and died there in 1513.
Johannes Heynlin entered the monastery in 1487. He was a theologian, preacher, early humanist, and university rector with connections to the developing European printing world. He brought a valuable personal library that included some of the earliest printed books produced in Rome and Paris, continued his scholarly work at the Chartreuse, and worked for the printer Johann Amerbach, who had formerly been his student.
Hieronymus Zscheckenbürlin also entered the monastery in 1487. A wealthy, university-trained lawyer, he brought his fortune into the community and became prior in 1502. He emphasized the monastery’s representation and hospitality. Amerbach maintained close relations with the Chartreuse, enriched its library with books from his press, and was buried there after his death in 1513. His sons and the printer Johann Froben continued the family’s association with the monastery. Georg Carpentarius, who became a monk in 1509, prepared new library catalogues, edited sermons by Johannes Tauler, translated writings by Erasmus of Rotterdam, and continued the monastery’s chronicle.
Reformation and suppression
The Reformation, the sixteenth-century movement that challenged the authority and practices of the Roman Catholic Church, placed the monastery under growing pressure in Basel. In 1525, the city council prohibited monasteries from accepting novices, ordered inventories of monastic property, and urged monks to leave their orders. Only one lay brother responded, while the remaining community continued to follow the Catholic faith.
During the iconoclasm of Lent 1529, when religious images and furnishings were attacked, followed by Basel’s introduction of the Reformation, Prior Hieronymus Zscheckenbürlin fled to Freiburg im Breisgau. The city appointed administrators to control the monastery’s finances and expenditures and to pressure the monks to depart. An agreement in 1532 allowed Zscheckenbürlin to return and the prior and convent to resume administration, but civic supervision continued.
After Zscheckenbürlin died in 1536, the city council prohibited the election of a successor. The final conventual, Thomas Kresszi, died in 1564, bringing monastic life at Chartreuse de Bâle to an end. The church furnishings had already been auctioned in 1530, and the medieval altars were lost. Many valuable books, however, stayed together. The surviving collection of 2,737 volumes was transferred almost intact to the University Library of Basel in 1592.
From 1669, the former monastery buildings were used by Basel’s civic orphanage. The surviving complex is protected as a cultural property of national importance.
Remains
The former Chartreuse occupies the angle between the Rhine and the former city wall in Kleinbasel, upstream from the Middle Bridge. Its gate passage opens into a long courtyard. The church and other monastic rooms stand on the right, the former lay-brothers’ quarter on the left, and the Great House closes the far end. Some parts of the complex may predate the monastery’s foundation. The surviving buildings have largely remained in place, although their exteriors have been altered and their interiors repeatedly adapted.
Entrance court and monastic buildings
Gate and courtyard
The former monastery gate stands some distance opposite the facade of St. Theodore’s Church. Beyond it, the long courtyard organizes the surviving complex, with the former choir-monks’ area and church on one side and the lay-brothers’ buildings on the other.
Great House
The Great House probably served as the principal building of the former episcopal court. A corner tower from the former city wall is incorporated into it. Two first-floor rooms preserve panelling from the monastery period, including the lay-brothers’ refectory, which faces the courtyard.
Cloisters and monk residences
The Great Cloister once formed the center around which the monk residences were arranged. It was demolished in 1776. The residences were small two-storey houses, each accompanied by a small garden. The separate lay-brothers’ quarter occupied the opposite side of the courtyard and was connected to the community’s practical work.
Church and adjoining spaces
Church interior
The church turns considerably northward rather than following the customary eastward direction because of the site’s topography. Its narrow, high interior is lit by three large tracery windows at the chancel end and a fourth window in the right-hand wall. Nine fragments of coloured glass survive from an earlier elaborate glazing scheme, which suffered severe storm damage in 1449 and 1487.
In 1487 and 1488, Remigius Faesch replaced the former flat chancel ceiling with a net vault. The walls required reinforcement with buttresses, and one vault boss bears the coat of arms of Hieronymus Zscheckenbürlin, who supported the work. The simple choir stalls along both long walls date from 1428. Fourteen wooden, polychrome mortuary shields hang above them, most commemorating high-ranking participants in the Council of Basel who died in the city.
At the front right are a priest’s seat and a combined piscina, a shallow basin or niche for washing sacred vessels, and cupboard niche, both made from red sandstone. A door at the front left leads to the sacristy, beside the former chapter room. The monastery library was formerly situated above these rooms.
After the monastery was suppressed, the nave was separated from the rood screen, the substantial screen dividing the monks’ choir from the nave. The nave was secularized and fitted with intermediate floors, while the monks’ choir remained intact. Entry from the courtyard passes beneath the rood screen before reaching the church.
Small Cloister and mural
The Small Cloister lies between the sacristy and the north side of the church and survives approximately half intact. One corner contains the Amerbach family burial place, which the family preserved through the Reformation. Bonifacius Amerbach planned the large family epitaph in 1519, and it was executed and installed in 1544. Hans Holbein’s painting The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb may originally have been intended for this monument.
The former passage between the Small and Great Cloisters contains a long mural on the church’s exterior north wall. It depicts the legend of Saint Bruno of Cologne, the eleventh-century founder of the Carthusian Order, and the foundation story of the order itself. The painting probably dates from around 1440, during the period of the Council of Basel.
Monastery-period rooms
Zscheckenbürlin Room
The outward-facing room known as the Zscheckenbürlin Room preserves monastery-period panelling and was remodelled by Hieronymus Zscheckenbürlin in 1509 as a representative guest room. Several Basel citizens contributed donations to the work, including the half-brothers Hieronymus and Hans Bär the Younger.
The room has a flat wooden star vault with carved medallions bearing ecclesiastical motifs at its center and rib junctions. Its floor follows a corresponding star-shaped parquet pattern, and the original fittings include a wall cupboard decorated with vines. A richly made bed that originally belonged to the room is now held by the Historical Museum of Basel.
