Minoritenkirche, Cologne: A Gothic Franciscan Church
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page19 sections
History
The Minoritenkirche, in Cologne, Germany, is a Roman Catholic church built for a Franciscan monastery. Construction began in 1245, in the Gothic period, and the church is dedicated to the Immaculate Conception of Mary. Today it is used by the Minorites and the International Kolpingwerk, serves the Catholic pastoral area of Cologne-Mitte, and is a subsidiary church of the Parish of the Holy Apostles.
Franciscan foundation and medieval use
Franciscan brothers arrived in Cologne in 1222 and first lived in the parish of St. Severin. From 1239, their monastery belonged to the Cologne Franciscan Province, a regional administrative unit of the order. It became the provincial minister’s seat and the province’s principal monastery. In 1245, the brothers began work on the church and a four-wing monastery arranged around a courtyard.
By about 1260, the convent had established an advanced school where members of the order could study. The Franciscan theologian and philosopher Johannes Duns Scotus taught there from 1307 and was later buried in the church. In the division of the Franciscan order in 1517, the Cologne friars joined the Conventual branch, whose rule was less strict than that of the Observants.
When the monastery housed many priests, the church had between five and ten side altars. Guilds and religious brotherhoods endowed many of them and used the church and its surroundings for services, meetings, and celebrations. Burials of nobles and monastery benefactors gave the church the local nickname the “Knights’ Church.” During renovations in 1727, most grave slabs set into the floor and walls were removed.
Early modern alterations
A fire damaged the monastery in 1619. Over the following decades, from 1621 to 1643, the church’s interior was substantially reorganized, following the example of the Minorite church of St. Remigius in Bonn. In the 1720s, the monastery’s local superior, Georg Richermo, arranged new decoration and acquired elaborate furnishings and vestments. Market stalls outside the church and monastery were cleared in 1728, and a new church portal followed in 1731.
Suppression and nineteenth-century renewal
French revolutionary troops occupied Cologne from 1794, and the church was put to use as a storehouse before falling into poor condition. The monastery was dissolved in 1802 during the suppression of religious institutions, and the friars had been expelled by 1804. From 1808, the city’s poor-relief administration used the church as a chapel for its institution and hospital. The monastery buildings also served the administration before being demolished in 1855. The Wallraf-Richartz Museum was built on the former monastery site in 1861. After wartime destruction, the museum building was reconstructed from 1953 to 1957 and now houses the Museum of Applied Arts.
The church passed to the chapter of Cologne Cathedral in 1846. Archbishop Johannes von Geissel formally took possession in 1850 and designated it for confirmations and ordinations. Cathedral master builders Ernst Friedrich Zwirner and Richard Voigtel directed exterior renovation and Gothic Revival work that continued until 1866; Johann Heinrich Richartz contributed 42,000 talers toward the renewal.
Adolph Kolping’s newly founded Cologne Journeymen’s Association had used the church since 1849. Kolping was ordained a priest there and became the association’s rector in 1862, organizing extensive fundraising for the interior renovation. The Minorites returned to Cologne in 1929 and resumed pastoral work at the church and the nearby Columbakapelle.
War damage and later use
Bombing on the night of 30–31 May 1942 severely damaged the church, destroying its vaults and parts of the south aisle. The Kolpingwerk completed reconstruction in 1958. Redesign of the interior, drawing on 13th-century models, continued until 1975, while the Minorites re-established themselves nearby by 1958. A comprehensive restoration in 2009–10 renewed the roof and ridge turret.
Johannes Duns Scotus and Adolph Kolping are buried in the church, and both were beatified, a Catholic recognition of a deceased person as blessed and eligible for public veneration. Pope John Paul II prayed at their graves on 15 November 1980, during his first apostolic journey to Germany.
Remains
The church is an elongated, east-facing Gothic building, with a central nave and two side aisles leading to an early Gothic choir. Its surviving fabric combines the tall, restrained form of the main body with more richly detailed work in the choir. Traces of the former monastery also survive in the church and in the neighboring Museum of Applied Arts.
Church plan and exterior
Nave and choir
The three-aisled nave has eight structural divisions, or bays, and a ceiling of rib vaults, whose projecting ribs define and support the vaulted form. The interior measures 58.4 metres long, 32 metres wide, and 21.3 metres high. The choir, the eastern sanctuary area, is one bay deep and matches the nave in height and width. Its two-part Gothic windows sit between vertical supports and exterior buttresses. The choir’s richer decoration contrasts with the simpler treatment of the nave, a difference architectural historian Meinrad Sehi interpreted as expressing Franciscan simplicity. The church’s design and decoration developed independently of nearby Cologne Cathedral.
The builders first planned a three-aisled hall church with a crossing and a transept that did not project beyond the sides of the building. This form was used in parts of Hesse and Westphalia but was unusual around Cologne; the plan was abandoned while construction was underway.
West façade and windows
An eight-light Gothic window fills much of the west façade between two buttresses. Below it stood a stepped entrance divided by a central stone support. The church once had richly colored stained glass funded by Archbishop Friedrich von Westerburg and the counts of Holland, Cleves, Berg, and Jülich. Hail destroyed the windows in 1637. Simpler replacements followed, and ordinary glass was installed from 1709.
The church has a small roof turret rather than a bell tower. A turret has stood on the ridge of the roof since 1438, and it was renewed in 1713. The open area in front of the church and monastery was once planted with trees. After the market stalls were removed in 1728, an iron railing enclosed the space.
Monastery and interior
Monastery remains
A four-wing monastery stood along the north side of the church, enclosing a courtyard with a covered walkway. Ornamental stonework from the west wing survives as part of a wall of the Museum of Applied Arts. Fragments of decorative wall paintings also remain inside the church.
Interior arrangement
The 17th-century reorganization removed the partition that had separated the choir from the nave. The high altar was moved westward toward the nave, with the choir stalls placed behind it in the apse, the curved end of the choir. Richermo’s 18th-century work brought elaborate decoration and furnishings to the interior.
Altarpiece and relics
Winged altarpiece
A late-Gothic altarpiece made around 1480 in Lower Saxony was installed behind the high altar in 1889. Its hinged panels can be opened to reveal carved scenes, while the exterior is painted. The altarpiece had been removed from St. Nicholas’s Church in Alfeld in 1888 and was purchased by Auxiliary Bishop Baudri, who gave it to the Minoritenkirche on the sixtieth anniversary of his ordination as a priest.
The exterior panels show four scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary and four from the legend of St. Nicholas. Cologne painter Batzem restored these paintings using surviving traces of the original color. The carved interior probably retains its earlier work: the Virgin and Child beneath a canopy, surrounded by angels and accompanied by saints, form the center of scenes from the life of Jesus, from the Annunciation to the Resurrection.
Relics
The church possessed numerous relics, meaning physical remains or objects associated with saints and venerated in Christian practice. These included a fragment of the Cross and what was claimed to be the whole body of one of the children killed at Bethlehem. Archbishop Friedrich von Saarwerden certified the claimed identity of that body in a document dated 18 June 1384. Other relics were associated with Saints Barbara, Clare of Assisi, and Anthony of Padua.
Memorials, organs, and bells
Tombs and memorials
The tombs of Duns Scotus and Kolping remain in the church. Both men also appear on the west doors, designed by sculptor Paul Nagel in 2006. Outside the west façade, Kolpingplatz has a monument depicting Kolping as the “Father of Journeymen.” Sculptor Johann Baptist Schreiner made it, and it was unveiled in 1903.
Organs
Before the monastery’s dissolution, the church had two organs. The older instrument is mentioned in connection with a repair in 1577. Jean Nollet of Luxembourg built a later organ in 1727, and Balthasar König of Cologne renewed it in 1747. It had two keyboards and 34 sets of pipes and stood on a gallery in the western nave bay. The 1942 bombing destroyed it.
The present organ was installed in 1997 by Romanus Seifert and Son of Kevelaer. It has 44 sets of pipes, three keyboards, and a pedal keyboard played with the feet. Its keys operate mechanically, while its pipe controls operate electrically.
Bells and recent additions
Two bells hang one above the other in the roof turret. Feldmann and Marschel of Münster cast them in 1952 and 1954 to replace bells from 1754 and 1853 destroyed during the Second World War. An earlier bell cast in 1707 had also hung in the turret.
A large glass crucifix stands above the choir altar. It measures 4.50 metres high and weighs 650 kilograms. A bust of Kolping is placed beside his tomb.
