Church of the Holy Ghost: A Lutheran Parish Church in Copenhagen
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.4
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Denmark
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Danish, Knights Hospitaller
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page24 sections
History
The Church of the Holy Ghost is a Lutheran parish church in Denmark, in central Copenhagen, whose origins are connected with a medieval hospital. It has served as a parish church since the Reformation and retains a particularly close relationship with Copenhagen’s Greenlandic congregation, which holds a service in Greenlandic each month.
Hospital and medieval church
Roskilde Bishop Johannes Krag founded a Hospital of the Holy Spirit in Copenhagen in 1296. The institution cared for sick people, the poor, the elderly, foundlings, and orphaned children. The bishop and the citizens divided the construction costs equally, while property rents and endowments supported the hospital afterwards. A small church belonged to the hospital, although its exact construction date is unknown.
A Copenhagen cadastre from 1377 shows that the plot already had the same size as it did during the Reformation. This suggests that a church probably stood there by that time. Its date remains uncertain. Its architectural character could indicate the fourteenth century, but the first half of the fifteenth century is considered more probable. The first secure written mention of a church on the site dates from 1449.
The medieval building was associated with the institution that later became the Hospitalers of the Holy Spirit monastery. The order was a medieval religious community whose houses cared especially for vulnerable people. In 1469, King Christian I transformed the hospital into a monastery of the order. During Christian I’s journey to Rome in 1474, Pope Sixtus IV formally recognized the Copenhagen institution as a monastery.
The monastery enlarged the church’s eastern end for its religious community. The chancel, the eastern part of a church containing the altar, was extended from probably one bay to three bays and received a polygonal eastern termination. A bay is a repeated structural division of a church. The monastery complex had four wings around a herb garden, with the church forming the south wing and the surviving Holy Ghost House forming the west wing.
Reformation and Lutheran parish
The monastery closed in 1530, before a second tower had been completed. The Reformation, the sixteenth-century religious movement that changed Denmark from Roman Catholicism to Lutheranism, brought the monastery to an end. The city took over the church and assigned it to a parish. An inscription dated 1538 in a recess beside a northern chancel window probably commemorates this transition.
The former monastery buildings acquired new uses. The church remained a place of parish worship, while the Holy Ghost House was reacquired by the church in 1650 for use as a burial chapel. Burials began there in 1652 and continued until 1858, when burials within Copenhagen’s city walls were prohibited. The cemetery itself was closed in 1851 for the same general reason. It remained closed to the public except during services until it became a public facility in 1895.
The church’s burial functions expanded during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The Griffenfeld Burial Chapel was built in 1672 and 1673 for Karen Nansen, the wife of Peter Griffenfeld, who died in 1672. After Griffenfeld’s downfall, her coffin was transferred to Vær Church. A small chapel for councillor Ditmer Bøfke was built around 1680 at the northeast corner of the Holy Ghost House, and a similar chapel for Hans Christopher Hersleb was added on its south side in 1768. Both were demolished in 1879.
Towers, portals, and the Copenhagen Fire
A tower begun around 1520 was resumed in 1582 at the initiative of Copenhagen Governor Christoffer Valkendorf. Its spire, the pointed termination of a tower, was erected in August 1594 and is attributed to Hans van Steenwinckel the Elder, although the attribution is not securely documented. The original spire collapsed on 16 August 1671 after church overseers had reported weaknesses in its timber construction. An order to remove the upper section had been issued on 10 April, but the collapse occurred before the work could be carried out. Repairs were completed during the same year, and a commemorative inscription was added.
The southern entrances were altered during the seventeenth century. Thomas Lorck supplied the western portal with a sandstone surround in 1612. The eastern portal later received a porch assembled from elements of different periods. Its cornice carries the date 1620, its lintel bears Christian IV’s monogram and baroque details probably from the 1630s or later, and its gable has Christian VI’s monogram from a renovation in the 1730s. The portal may originally have been made for the Copenhagen Stock Exchange but became surplus during its construction.
Around 1650, the southern aisle was extended eastward by one bay. This reduced the chancel to two bays and changed the shape of its eastern end. A crypt beneath the extension is documented by 1678. A record from 1654 states that the baptismal font was moved there when the Holy Ghost House became a burial chapel.
The Copenhagen Fire of 1728 caused the church’s most destructive transformation. Flames reached the building on 21 October. At about eight o’clock in the evening, the tower collapsed, the vaults fell into the chancel, and the interior and furnishings were destroyed. Parish priest Knud Tommerup had placed his fortune in the church before fleeing the burning city, and the money was lost as well.
Rebuilding after 1728
Architect Johan Cornelius Krieger designed the reconstruction, retaining the general plan of the destroyed church. Church authorities requested timber vaults, restoration of the roof ridge, and a taller octagonal termination for the tower. The timber vaults were approved, while the other principal elements of Krieger’s design remained largely unchanged.
Only parts of the outer walls could be reused. The rebuilt church had lower cornices than its medieval predecessor, equal cornice heights for the nave and aisles, and a shared roof over those spaces. The chancel received a lower hipped roof. The church was rededicated on 30 November 1732.
The rebuilding also established important parts of the interior seen today. A new organ by Lambert Daniel Kastens was completed in 1733. The present altar retable was installed in 1732 after being transferred from the chapel at Copenhagen Castle. When Frederick V came to the throne in 1747, the remaining figures and architectural elements needed to complete it were supplied.
The church’s commercial surroundings also changed over time. In 1607, Christian IV granted the monastery’s herb garden to the church, allowing the cemetery to extend northward. Part of the ground was later cut away after the 1728 fire when Kokkegade, now Valkendorfsgade, was laid out. Linen stalls had stood along the cemetery boundary since the magistrate authorized four large three-storey stone stalls in 1528. These survived the fire but were removed in 1732 when the streets were widened and the cemetery wall moved.
Twenty-seven smaller stalls were then installed in Lille Helliggeiststræde, now Niels Hemmingsensgade. Seven stood south and 20 north of the gate. They sold textiles and other dry goods under regulations that excluded drinks, fatty or salty foods, hemp, and similar materials. The stalls received Neoclassical gables around 1797 and were removed during the redevelopment of 1878 to 1880.
Restoration and continuing use
Major restoration was prepared from 1872 and carried out by Hermann Baagøe Storck in 1878 to 1880. The work gave the church essentially its present appearance. Storck reconstructed the Valkendorf tower as closely as possible to Jan van Wijck’s view of 1611 and returned the roof turret to the centre of the nave ridge. The church was rededicated on Ascension Day in 1880.
The restoration exposed, replaced, or repaired much of the masonry, installed granite bases, simplified the cornice, and repaired the roof and windows. The blocked eastern chancel window was reopened, most traces of internal burials were removed, and the portals and gables were altered. The surviving east wing of the monastery was converted into a confessional. The Griffenfeld Chapel received a new copper onion dome, while the former iron grille of the rebuilding-period tower was reused around part of the old herb garden.
No major structural alteration has taken place since Storck’s restoration. In 1989 and 1990, new roof tiles were installed, fungal damage in the roof structure was repaired, and damage to the tower, spire, and copper cladding was treated. The building remains affiliated with the Church of Denmark and the Diocese of Copenhagen.
Clocks, bells, and memorial history
A tower clock is recorded from 1562. In 1651, guild regulations required Copenhagen’s merchants and hawkers to follow the church clock. Peter Matthiesen installed a replacement mechanism in 1734, and an additional dial displaying lunar phases was connected to it in 1747. That dial appears to have been removed during the 1846 renovation.
The bells in the tower before the fire included two dated 1589 and 1640, together with two smaller bells in the roof turret. All were lost in 1728. Four replacement bells were acquired in 1732 and 1733 and recast in 1931 while retaining their original inscriptions. They remain in the tower.
The first carillon, a set of tuned bells played mechanically or from a keyboard, was installed in 1647 to 1649. Henrik Vestrinck cast its 19 bells. It played a hymn every half-hour and was often used at funerals. Johan Mercki modified it in 1718 to produce double strikes, but the instrument was destroyed in the fire. A 41-bell carillon was installed in 1947 and dedicated with the same hymn. In 2003, it was replaced by a 49-bell carillon made by Koninklijke Eijsbouts.
The church’s memorial history includes a seventeenth-century record preserved through Peder Hansen Resen’s drawings and transcriptions. His copy of the oldest tombstone he recorded gives the death year of Copenhagen mayor Peder Villadsen as 1535, although later historians considered 1539 more likely. The Danish inscription and its proverb reflect religious and cultural changes associated with the Reformation.
The church commemorates choir director Ejnar Asbo, who died in 1944 as a “victim of the Danish cause.” A memorial to an unknown concentration-camp prisoner was dedicated in 1950 in the square south of the church. The ashes of two unidentified camp prisoners lie beneath it.
Remains
The surviving complex combines a red-brick church on a low granite base with the former Holy Ghost House, remnants of the monastery’s east wing, the Griffenfeld Chapel, and an enclosed former herb garden containing memorial stones. The present church follows the broad arrangement of the medieval building, but its fabric and interior also preserve the consequences of the 1728 fire and Storck’s nineteenth-century restoration.
Church structure and exterior
Medieval plan
The medieval church was a basilica, a plan with a higher central nave flanked by lower side aisles. Its broad nave had five bays and was the same width as the chancel. Five-bay aisles ran along both sides beneath lean-to roofs, while windows opened above them in the raised nave walls. Buttresses articulated the exterior, and each bay contained a pointed-arch window.
Inside, elongated profiled piers and arcade arches separated the nave from the aisles. Each bay had a groin vault. The church probably began with a short chancel of one bay ending in a flat gable and apparently had no tower. After the monastery was founded, the chancel was enlarged to three bays for the monks and given a polygonal eastern end. Its original cornice and windows stood higher than those of the present church, and traces of that earlier height remain above the easternmost chancel window.
Present nave and chancel
The present nave is six bays long, although its western bay is enclosed by a wall to form a vestibule and a stairway to the pulpits and organ gallery. The narrower chancel has two bays and a curved eastern termination. Equal-height vaults cover the nave and aisles and rest on two rows of white-painted octagonal columns with grey capitals and gilded details. The columns stand on high wooden bases.
The exterior walls are divided into bays by copper-clad buttresses. Each bay contains a tall round-arched window with an iron frame. The nave has a gabled roof covered in black-glazed tiles, with a copper-clad Gothic turret at the centre of the ridge. The chancel has a separate, lower hipped roof of the same material, rising slightly above its eastern termination.
Gables and portals
The chancel gables have horizontal decorative bands and Renaissance-style sandstone details. The west gable bears the date 1878 in iron anchor-shaped numerals and has small round-arched windows on two levels. Its three bays correspond to the nave and aisles. The central bay contains the former western southern portal, now the principal entrance, with a round iron-framed window above it. An inscription in the upper portal summarizes the church’s history through 1879.
The west gable is not exactly perpendicular to the side walls, so the south wall is slightly longer than the north wall. The east gable is partly concealed by the chancel and tower but retains a tall southern window. On the south side, a porch occupies the second bay from the east and contains a large sandstone portal. Storck blocked the former west portal on the south side and transferred it to the west gable.
Tower and monastery buildings
Bell tower
The eight-storey bell tower stands north of the church, opposite the eastern bay of the southern side. Pointed-arch openings and round-arched windows punctuate its walls. The upper bell storey is approximately twice the height of the other storeys. An exterior stair tower was incorporated into the structure, which is crowned by a copper-clad reconstruction of Valkendorf’s Renaissance spire and lantern. A lantern is an open or windowed structure crowning a tower or dome.
Holy Ghost House and east wing
The Holy Ghost House stands at the northwest corner of the church and overlaps it by slightly more than one bay. It contains six wall epitaphs, seven large floor tombstones, and two smaller inscription plaques. Among the surviving stones are an inscription associated with Eggert Rasmussen and another naming Heindrich Mottel, his wife, and the Birman family in a text dated 1669. Other identified stones mainly date from 1757 to 1786.
On the north side of the chancel, remnants of the monastery’s east wing form a low annex. Pointed-arch windows and door frames survive beneath a black-glazed tiled gabled roof with dormers. The building ends in a ridge gable with tall pointed openings. The former east wing now serves as a confessional.
Griffenfeld Chapel
The Griffenfeld Chapel is a circular building immediately west of the tower on the north side of the church. Built in 1672 and 1673, it has an external diameter of nine metres, oval windows with sandstone surrounds and iron grilles, and a copper-clad onion dome. Its entrance is from the northern aisle. The original portal was apparently lost in the 1728 fire, and its appearance is unknown. The chapel is now used as a prayer and meditation room.
Burial ground and memorials
Former herb garden
The area between the Griffenfeld Chapel and the Holy Ghost House is enclosed by a wrought-iron fence made partly from the grille of the tower lantern of 1731. Many tombstones survive inside this enclosure, which occupies part of the former herb garden along the north wall.
Twenty-seven tombstones remain in the fenced garden. The oldest surviving epitaph is probably that of Heindrich Potthof van Felen, from around 1580. Other identified memorials include stones for Arvid Christian Linde dated 1762, Gabriel Linde dated 1791, Hans Kofoed dated 1795, and Sara Jensen Liebenberg dated 1801. A stone associated with Hans Federsen and his wife was erected in 1758, while a memorial for Johan Gabriel Linde dates from 1865.
Church memorials
The former monastery and church complex retains a substantial group of memorial stones. Two early epitaphs dated 1590 and 1602 are built into the church’s east wall. The interior contains two memorial plaques listing nine dignitaries who died between 1544 and 1697. The Holy Ghost House and the former herb garden preserve further tombstones and epitaphs, including a 1779 memorial to Agnete Lunding and an 1896 memorial to judge Christian Hee-Wadum and his wife Margrethe Lange, who endowed a foundation for training young naval officers.
Interior furnishings and art
Altar and baptismal furnishings
The present altar retable was made in 1727 by Diderik Gercken, with reliefs and figures by Just Wiedewelt. Its central image is Henrik Krock’s Ascension scene. Above it, a medallion contains Frederick IV’s portrait and monogram, while Frederick VI’s monogram with palm branches was added in 1732. Frederick V’s monogram was added in 1747, when the retable’s missing elements were supplied. A radiant dove representing the Holy Spirit appears above the medallion.
The retable originally lacked its flanking columns and the figures of Faith and Hope. Temporary imitation-marble columns were installed, and the figures were added in 1747. Two altar cloths from before the fire were acquired from Saint Nicholas Church in 1806 after that church was dissolved.
A marble baptismal font by Bertel Thorvaldsen stands in the centre of the chancel. The Danish Neoclassical sculptor made it as a copy of a font originally commissioned for Brahetrolleborg Church. The copy was intended as a gift to Iceland but instead passed to the second Earl of Caledon before being acquired at auction in London in 1939. Its inscription states that Thorvaldsen gave it to Iceland in 1827, although Iceland later received a different copy.
The centre of the Griffenfeld Chapel contains a baroque sandstone baptismal basin by Diderik Gercken, made after the 1728 fire. It originally had a broad bowl on an octagonal base, imitation-marble colouring, and gilded ornaments. Storck returned it to the church after it had been moved elsewhere. It later went to Gørslev Church and then to the Danish National Museum in 1992 before returning. The associated wooden font dates from 1682 and was donated by Assessor Hans Nielsen and his wife, who were buried in the crypt beneath it.
Pulpits, pews, and royal seating
The present closed oak pews date from 1940 and were designed by Thomas Havning, with much earlier pew-door material retained. Dark-brown longitudinal benches stand in the side aisles. Elevated family seats after the Reformation were sometimes called pulpits, and the church had such seats for Griffenfeld, Corfitz Ulfeldt, and Leonora Christina, each with coats of arms. Proper pulpits are documented by 1706.
After the fire, single-level pulpits were installed, with an upper level added on the south side in 1759. Storck’s restoration created single-level pulpits extending along both aisles and supported by wooden columns in the Classical Composite style. The present Renaissance-style pulpit replaced Peder Malling’s 1846 Classical pulpit. Its detail drawings were probably by Martin Nyrop, and its figures are said to have been modelled by Herman Wilhelm Bissen. A royal pew has stood in the eastern aisle since 1878.
Organ and chandelier
The main organ stands behind Storck’s Renaissance-style case of 1879, designed by Storck and carved by H. C. Berg. Knud Olsen built the original instrument in 1879 with 40 stops on three manuals and pedal. Marcussen rebuilt it in 1935, and Marcussen and Son restored and enlarged it in 1986. The present organ has 75 stops on four manuals and pedal, approximately 5,000 pipes, mechanical key action, electric stop action, and an electronic combination system. It incorporates older pipework, and the formerly decorative Rückpositiv was reconstructed as a functioning division.
A six-stop choir organ with pedal, built by I. Starup in 1899, was installed in 1998 above the southern vestibule entrance. It had previously been used at Smørum Church until 1989 and was restored and moved by Svend E. Nielsen.
A choir chandelier of gilded bronze with silver fittings has 12 arms in two rows of six. A clockwork mechanism lies inside its large sphere, with a horizontal dial beneath. Putti heads, fauns, a crown, and a pelican feeding three young decorate the sphere. The chandelier probably dates from around 1610 and was donated by baker Christian Drevitz in 1750. Its silver fittings carry marks associated with the silver altar of Christian IV in Frederiksborg Castle Chapel.
Paintings and stained glass
Adam Müller’s 1837 painting of Martin Luther at Worms hangs on the north chancel wall. Beneath the organ gallery is Joakim Skovgaard’s 1897 Annunciation, donated by churchwarden Georg Bestle.
Four chancel windows received stained glass between 1892 and 1894. The northeast window depicts the Apostle John and was donated by Georg Bestle and his wife for the golden wedding anniversary of Christian IX and Queen Louise. The southeast window, donated by Carl Jacobsen for the same occasion, depicts James the Greater. A southern window donated by Jacobsen for the silver wedding anniversary of Frederick VIII and Crown Princess Louise depicts Mary Magdalene.
The central chancel window received a design by Christen Nielsen Overgaard executed by August Duvier in 1894. Its original subject was the Gate of Heaven, but the design appears to have been lost, and the window is now clear glass. Four small eighteenth-century oval windows showing scenes from the life of Jesus were transferred to the National Museum. A crucifix by Henrik Strocke, made in 1967, is also associated with the church.
