Filial Church of Saint Sebastian, Söding-Sankt Johann: A Historic Plague Sanctuary
Site at a Glance
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- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Styria, Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page15 sections
History
The Filial Church of Saint Sebastian in Kleinsöding, Austria, is a Roman Catholic filial and pilgrimage church whose late Gothic origins date to around 1508. It belongs to the Voitsberg pastoral area of the Diocese of Graz-Seckau and remains subordinate to the parish of Mooskirchen. Dedicated to Saint Sebastian, an early Christian martyr traditionally invoked for protection against plague, the church developed as a place of devotion after epidemics had severely affected the surrounding communities.
Origins as a plague sanctuary
The church’s foundation was linked to a vow made by 135 local farmers around 1480. Each pledged to donate the value of a cow during his lifetime toward the construction of a church dedicated to Saint Sebastian. This endowment, known as the Kühzins, was paid annually until the obligation was fulfilled and could pass to descendants if the original donor died before completing it.
The vow belonged to a region repeatedly struck by plague. Outbreaks in 1348 were said to have completely depopulated Hardekk, Mukkaw near Muggauberg, and the Reun settlement of Sedinge near Södingberg. Later epidemics in 1584 and 1585, 1634, 1679 and 1680, and 1713 to 1716 increased the number of pilgrims visiting the church. During the seventeenth century, it became the most important plague sanctuary in western Styria. Its broader pilgrimage role declined as the epidemics subsided, although religious processions and local pilgrimages continued.
The hill on which the church stands is associated with traditions of an ancient cult mound and a pagan temple. Another local tradition identifies the site with the burial of plague victims. A Romanesque hunting chapel belonging to the lords of Söding Castle reportedly stood here before the present building. The Diocese of Seckau’s clerical register gives 1508 as the date of the church and names Sebastian von Rollau as its commissioner. That date probably applies to the choir, which initially served as a chapel while the remainder of the building was being completed.
Completion and early pilgrimage
A sandstone statue of Saint Sebastian was already associated with the early chapel. Tradition connects its installation with monks expelled from San Sebastian in Spain who came to the Riedlhof, or Riederhof, near Berndorf. Income from pilgrimage helped finance the nave, completed by 1562, and the tower, completed by 1564. A dated stone bearing the builder’s mark on the tower portal arch refers to the construction of the nave. The Rollau family of Rollau Castle may also have been among the church’s founders, since the building served as a burial place for the family.
The church was a filial and pilgrimage church of Mooskirchen from its construction. The first documented church provosts were Gregor Gruebpauer and Sebastian Függerle, recorded in 1618. Michael Strasser was the first documented sacristan, in 1684, and Barbara Mayer was the first documented female sacristan, in 1694. Around 1630, a high altar was installed, and the statue of Saint Sebastian was placed in its principal position. From 1665, the Keller von Kellersperg family of Groß-Söding Castle appears among the church’s benefactors.
Baroque remodeling and continued endowment
In 1676 the late Gothic church was remodeled in the Baroque manner. The formerly flat-roofed nave received a vault, an organ gallery was installed, and the sacristy and externally accessible Chapel of the Cross were added. In 1694, at his own request, the Mooskirchen priest M. Simon Schoper was buried beneath the front arch beside a life-size statue of Saint Sebastian, probably donated by him.
The Kühzins continued to shape the church’s finances long after its foundation. A register recording payments was maintained from 1711 to 1880, indicating that descendants of the original benefactors continued to contribute to upkeep. At the beginning of the eighteenth century, donors from twelve different parishes were listed. In 1799, the Mooskirchen dean Alois Wagl described the church and its furnishings in a multivolume parish chronicle.
At least during the nineteenth century, several annual markets were held at the church. Those connected with Saint Sebastian’s Day on January 20 and with the Sunday after the feast of Saints Peter and Paul on June 29 continued into the twenty-first century. Masses are celebrated on Saint Sebastian’s Day and the following Sunday. Processions travel from Mooskirchen on Saint Mark’s Day and three days before Ascension Day.
War, municipal ownership, and restoration
Around 1800, a statue of Saint Anne replaced Saint Sebastian as the principal figure on the high altar. During the Fifth Coalition War, the figures of the high altarpiece were protected by a wooden enclosure in 1809. French forces commanded by Marshal Auguste Frédéric Louis Viesse de Marmont used the church as a magazine from June 25 to December 15 that year. A Uhlan regiment used it for the same purpose from July 27 to August 14, 1813.
When the parish church at Ligist was rebuilt in the middle of the nineteenth century, two figures formerly standing beside its high altar were transferred to Kleinsöding. A tabernacle came with them, but it was too large for the high altar and was placed on the gallery instead. After the free local municipality of Kleinsöding was created in 1850, the church became municipal property through a settlement with the Mooskirchen parish priest. The priest retained supervisory rights, and the church continued to belong to the parish of Mooskirchen. The municipality kept separate church accounts with the assistance of church provosts.
Lightning struck the church on April 14, 1874, burning the tower roof structure and damaging the organ. Local residents extinguished the fire quickly, limiting the destruction. The choir and nave were repainted in 1876 and 1877, covering earlier thorn and grape decorations and the sundial on the southern nave wall. A Saint Sebastian fresco on the southern exterior wall was painted over during the 1890 renovation, when old windows from the Franciscan church in Graz were donated to Kleinsöding. A tower clock was installed during the 1880s.
Under the Mooskirchen chaplain Josef Radl, extensive renovation took place from 1924 to 1926. Radl partly financed the work and completed a history of the church in 1925, known as the Radl Chronicle. Later interventions included restoration of the left side altar in 1961, renewal of the facade in 1970 and 1971, restoration of the right side altar in 1978, interior and furnishings work from 1978 to 1983, and restoration of the high altar in 1991 and 1992. Further major work on the building and its inventory followed in 1998 and 1999.
The St. Sebastian Church Community, a nonprofit preservation association, was founded in 1979. Since the 1980s it has organized the summer Riegelfest, which includes a service at the church. In 1958, the merger of Kleinsöding and Großsöding transferred ownership to the new municipality of Söding. Since the Styrian municipal reform of 2015, the church has belonged to Söding-Sankt Johann. The entire building is legally protected as a listed monument.
Repeated weather damage to the roof tiles led to reroofing in 2019 after consultation with the Federal Monuments Office. The endangered roof structure of the Chapel of the Cross was also replaced. The exterior plaster was consolidated and recolored according to an earlier scheme identified during restoration investigation, while the war memorial in front of the church was restored.
Living traditions
Pilgrimage remains part of the church’s religious life. Residents of Berndorf near Hitzendorf traditionally walk to Kleinsöding on July 20, probably continuing a practice associated with the plague. The pilgrimage formerly began at Hitzendorf and now begins at Berndorf. Residents of Sankt Bartholomä and Sankt Johann ob Hohenburg make pilgrimages on Easter Monday and Whit Tuesday respectively, although the origins of these two practices are unknown.
Since the seventeenth century, the Easter Sunday Maschta procession has traveled to the parish church at Mooskirchen in thanksgiving for deliverance from the plague. Participants come from Kleinsöding, Großsöding, Fluttendorf, and Stögersdorf. At least one person from each house is expected to attend, and only men sing the traditional songs. Each village group carries a cross decorated with ten or twelve candles and blue or purple cloth. Since at least the second half of the twentieth century, the church has also hosted weddings, baptisms, choir and orchestra concerts, and a Christmas singing event held since 1970.
The municipal coat of arms granted in 1985 and the coat of arms of Söding-Sankt Johann granted in 2021 both refer indirectly to the church. Crossed arrows symbolize Saint Sebastian’s martyrdom, while a candle refers to the wax offering and the candle-bearing processional cross associated with the church.
Remains
Hilltop building and exterior
The church stands on the small Kirchenriegel hill in the settlement of Sankt Sebastian, about 700 meters west of Kleinsöding. It occupies the northern bank of the Kainach in the middle Kainach valley at approximately 350 meters above sea level. The former sacristan’s house stands directly northwest of the church, and a war memorial to the fallen and missing of both world wars occupies the forecourt.
The building is a single-nave, five-bay hall church with late Gothic origins and Baroque alterations. It is oriented southeast. A four-storey tower stands before the nave at the northwest, while the Chapel of the Cross is attached to the southeast end of the choir. The nave, choir, and sacristy share a tiled hipped roof extending over the connected structures. The Chapel of the Cross has a tiled tent roof. All roof surfaces were covered with clay pocket tiles in 2019.
Plain exterior walls are articulated by painted window frames and corner quoins. Since the 2019 renovation, the facade has a white limewash finish with gray painted decoration. The main entrance is on the northwest side of the tower, while a profiled round-arched portal occupies the center of the western nave wall. The western facade contains a barred rectangular window set in a round niche, two larger rectangular windows, and a painted sundial between the larger windows.
Nave and choir windows
Two blocked painted pointed-arch windows survive on the northeastern nave facade. Small barred rectangular and arched windows illuminate the gallery area beside the tower. The southwestern choir wall has a barred arched window, and pointed-arch tracery windows occupy the southern and southeastern sides of the choir. The sacristy has barred rectangular windows on both floors of its southeastern side and three vertically arranged barred rectangular windows on its eastern side. Its northeastern wall contains a door with a blocked rectangular window above it.
Tower and Chapel of the Cross
The rectangular tower has four storeys, stone string courses marking the levels, and a tent roof. A copper finial supports a cross with two crossbars. Three barred rectangular windows light the upper levels on the northeastern side. Clock faces occupy three sides of the top storey, with a pointed-arch window above each clock face.
The pointed-arch tower portal opens into the tower hall and then into the nave. Beside the portal, a covered niche contains an Aflenz sandstone statue of Saint Sebastian, probably the figure that originally occupied the high altar. A sixteenth-century relief above the portal has been interpreted either as two grave guards or as the archers who, according to the legend, shot Saint Sebastian.
Added in 1676, the Chapel of the Cross can be entered from outside through a round-arched portal closed by a wrought-iron grille. The painted date “1676” appears above the entrance. Each of its northeastern and southwestern sides has a rectangular window surmounted by a semicircular window. The chapel’s roof structure was replaced during the 2019 works.
Interior spaces and furnishings
The nave is covered by a barrel vault with lunettes, or crescent-shaped openings along the vault. In the third bay, a Holy Spirit opening is paired with a depiction of Christ. The three-axis masonry organ gallery at the northwest rests on pillars supporting groined vaults. It has a painted balustrade and is reached by a stair in the western nave. A pointed-arch portal with roughened bases leads from the tower hall beneath the gallery into the nave, while a shoulder-arched portal from the gallery leads to the upper tower levels.
The three-bay choir is separated from the nave by a low, recessed front arch and has the same type of barrel vault. Its three-eighths termination contains two simple Gothic two-lancet tracery windows. The choir side of the front arch is marbled and bears the date “1876.” The sacristy, added east of the choir in the seventeenth century, has a barrel-vaulted ground floor and a flat-ceilinged upper floor. A stair connects the two levels, and two semicircular openings in the upper floor overlook the choir.
High altar and choir
The high altar, erected around 1630, is made of polychromed Aflenz sandstone and contains openwork niches. Its lower niche holds an Anna Selbdritt, an image of Saint Anne with Mary and the infant Jesus, whose representation of Mary was reworked. Saint Florian stands above it, flanked by Saint Martin dividing his cloak and Saint George with the praying princess. Saint Roch crowns the altar, with Saints Peter and Paul beside him. These figures were probably added later. The earlier arrangement probably placed Saint Sebastian in the main niche and the Virgin Mary in the crowning. A white-and-gold tabernacle and columns decorated with human faces form part of the altar, while a painted baldachin appears on the wall behind it.
Figures of Saint Oswald and Saint Pancratius from the first half of the eighteenth century stand beside the high altar as altar guardians. They were transferred from the parish church of Ligist in the mid-nineteenth century. Two angels are mounted on the choir-end walls. The nineteenth-century small tabernacle altar known as the Joglin altar stands on the northeastern choir wall beside the sacristy door. Made for a farm chapel by the farmer Scherzvater for his wife Feldpeter, remembered as the pious Joglin, it contains a statue of the Virgin Mary beneath a baldachin, a Marian monogram, and an image of the Heart of Mary. A picture of Saint Wendelin, donated in 1889, hangs beside it.
The choir also contains a crucifix with a praying figure of Mary, wooden choir stalls, a picture of the Heart of Jesus, and a stone epitaph for M. Simon Schoper. Six of the fourteen Stations of the Cross painted by Gerd Linke in 1988 hang in the choir. The windows have colorful, partly floral ornament. A blue-and-gold star-painted vault depicts heaven, while colored ribs and painted transverse arches carry floral patterns. An IHS monogram, a Christian abbreviation of the name of Jesus, appears above the high altar. A painted inscription band from 1923 continues from the nave into the choir and includes prayers for the fruits of the earth and for the eternal life of the church’s benefactors.
Saint Sebastian and the side altars
A life-size statue of Saint Sebastian made in the last third of the seventeenth century stands on a movable pedestal beneath the front arch. Two large angels made during the same period by the Graz sculptor Johann Baptist Fischer are mounted above it. A wooden ambo stands beneath the arch, which also carries a plaque from 1924 bearing the coat of arms of the Lords of Roll zu Rollau and a head of Christ.
The two side altars were assembled from parts of a late Gothic three-part winged altar traditionally said to have come from the parish church of Hitzendorf. A winged altar has hinged panels that can open and close. The original central image and one wing reached Kleinsöding during the Baroque remodeling of the Hitzendorf church around 1630. The present altars received elaborate cresting, side panels, and veil boards, while their predellas, or lower supporting sections, were placed at the two ends of the front arch.
The carved reliefs on the left altar show the Death of Mary, the Flight into Egypt, and the Presentation of Jesus in the Temple, framed by elements of a Jesse Tree representing Christ’s genealogy through Jesse. The right altar contains the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity, and Adoration of the Magi. The northern nave wall also carries a statue of Our Lady of Lourdes, images of the Hearts of Mary and Jesus, the inscription “I am the Immaculate Conception,” a 1924 burial plaque made by Josef Guggi, a Madonna of the Rosary, and a painting of the Crucifixion. The southern wall contains a Madonna of the Crescent Moon. Seven of Linke’s fourteen Stations of the Cross hang in the nave.
Pulpit, organ, and bells
A pulpit installed on the northern nave wall in 1876 by two sculptors and gilders from Hitzendorf has painted figures of the four Evangelists on its basket. Its sounding board supports two angels with trumpets and two tablets bearing the Ten Commandments. A Latin inscription invoking Saint Sebastian survives on the attic wall above it. Before the nave was vaulted in 1676, the inscription could be seen from the nave.
The Baroque parapet positive organ, a small organ placed on a gallery or parapet, was probably installed around 1690 by a South Tyrolean organ builder. Philipp Fischer rebuilt it in 1867 and expanded it to six stops, recording the work in an inscription on the wind chest. Fifteen old facade pipes were surrendered for wartime metal collection in 1917. The organ was repaired and cleaned in 1923, restored by the Graz firm Gebrüder Krenn in 1980 after eighteen years of disuse, serviced by Gottfried Gschier in 2004, and cleaned and restored by Ulrich Aschermann in September 2020. Parts of the Baroque instrument survive, including some of its approximately 300 seventeenth-century pipes.
Three bells hang in the tower. The oldest surviving bell was cast by Florentin Streckfuß in Graz in 1710 and raised in 1711. A bell cast by Salesius Feltl in 1794 was originally donated to the parish church of Sankt Johann ob Hohenburg. It was sold to Kleinsöding in 1923, consecrated, and raised on April 29 of that year. The tin-bronze Florian bell was cast on May 24, 1985, and consecrated and raised on June 30.
The seventeenth-century peal included at least three bells, among them one cast by Lorenz Selner in 1675. Three older bells were melted down in 1860 and replaced by bells cast by Johann Feltl in Graz. Two, raised in 1860, weighed 798 and 215 kilograms and bore images of Saint Sebastian and Saint Anne, and of the apostles Peter and Paul. A third bell followed in 1861.
During the First World War, two bells were removed for military purposes in 1917. The approximately 2,000-kilogram bell known as the Jockl, probably cast before 1600, was smashed before the community learned that its special casting might have exempted it from delivery. The 1794 bell was also threatened with removal, but a farmer paid the soldiers with a barrel of beer so that they took a smaller bell instead. The 1711 and 1794 bells were removed in 1942, were not delivered, and returned to the tower in 1945.
Chapel of the Cross
The Chapel of the Cross contains a cross altar with a crucifix flanked by statues of Saints Roch and Sebastian, all made around 1676. A statue of the Virgin Mary stands in front of the altar. The crucifix originally formed a Crucifixion group with high Gothic statues of Mary and Saint John the Apostle. Those two figures were stolen during the night of February 6, 1968, and remain missing.
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