Gurk Cathedral: A Romanesque Former Cathedral in Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Cathedral
On this page24 sections
History
Gurk Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church in Gurk, Austria, built as a medieval Christian cathedral in the High Romanesque style. Construction began around 1140 under Bishop Roman I, and the building became the centre of the Diocese of Gurk. It is dedicated to the Assumption of the Virgin Mary, remains Gurk’s parish church, and has served as a co-cathedral since the cathedral chapter moved to Klagenfurt in 1788.
Before the cathedral
The site had religious associations before the medieval church was built. A temple dedicated to Epona, a Celtic goddess especially associated with horses, reportedly stood here before the Christian period. A Roman cult building is also suspected, and excavations in 1926 found part of an altar.
In 898, Emperor Arnulf of Carinthia granted estates in the Gurk and Metnitz valleys, including a farm at Gurk, to the Swabian nobleman Zwentibold. His descendant Hemma of Gurk inherited these possessions during the first half of the eleventh century. Hemma built the Church of St John at Gurk and secured parish rights for it from Archbishop Baldwin of Salzburg in 1043. In the same year, she founded an aristocratic convent for women with its own Church of St Mary. The convent was settled from Nonnberg Abbey in Salzburg.
Foundation of the Diocese and cathedral
Archbishop Gebhard dissolved the women’s convent in 1070 or 1072 after receiving permission from Pope Alexander II to establish a bishopric in Carinthia. Its endowed property passed to Salzburg and helped establish the suffragan Diocese of Gurk in 1072. A suffragan diocese is subordinate to a metropolitan archdiocese within an ecclesiastical province. Günther of Krappfeld became the first bishop, although the new diocese initially had neither its own territorial administration nor a cathedral chapter, the body of clergy responsible for a cathedral’s liturgical and administrative life.
Gurk was documented as a parish from 1162. Its parish church was Hemma’s Church of St John, which stood inside a cemetery with a charnel house. The church was demolished in 1892, while the charnel house was removed in 1842. The relationship between Hemma’s earlier convent church and the present cathedral remains unresolved, although the convent church probably stood west of the new building.
The present cathedral rose under Bishop Roman I, whose episcopate lasted from 1131 to 1167. Its crypt was completed in 1174, before the church itself, and Hemma’s tomb was transferred there in the same year. The high altar was consecrated in 1200, and the cathedral with its adjoining abbey buildings was complete before 1220. The result was a major Romanesque foundation built with massive masonry, round arches, and a carefully ordered basilican plan.
Medieval rebuilding and later alterations
Several fires damaged the cathedral during the thirteenth century. Repairs and alterations culminated in its reconsecration in 1287. The church continued to change during the later Middle Ages. The transept acquired a net-rib vault, whose ribs form a network, around 1446, and the abbey complex was fortified with a ditch and ring wall between 1447 and 1520.
A fire in 1525 destroyed the wooden ceilings of the nave. The side aisles received vaults between 1526 and 1549, a wooden shingle roof was installed in 1563, and the central nave was finally vaulted in 1591. The choir received a star-rib vault, whose ribs form a star-shaped pattern, around 1500. These interventions altered the medieval interior while leaving much of the Romanesque structure intact.
Under Provost Vizdom, who held office from 1617 to 1632, the Romanesque abbey buildings were demolished. A chapter house was built, the provost’s court was remodelled in Baroque style, and Baroque altars were installed in the cathedral. The distinctive tower roofs were added in 1678. Provost Otto Kochler later commissioned extensive changes, including the alteration of Hemma’s tomb, the Cross Altar, and the pulpit. He was deposed in 1744 because of the debts created by these commissions and subsequently worked as a carpenter on the church’s decoration.
From cathedral chapter to parish church
The cathedral chapter moved to Klagenfurt in 1788, and Gurk became a parish church and co-cathedral. The chapter remained in the adjoining abbey complex until 1792. Between 1792 and at least 1797, the complex sheltered Salesian nuns who had fled Lyon during the French Revolution. Ursulines from Klagenfurt stayed there in 1809 and 1810 during the Napoleonic Wars.
A fire in 1808 destroyed the roofs and parts of the Bishop’s Chapel. The clock faces and coats of arms on the north tower were painted after the fire. Benedictine nuns from Nonnberg settled at Gurk in 1890 and founded the Priory of St Hemma. They opened a girls’ elementary school in 1894, received public recognition for it in 1900, and closed it in 1915. They later ran a private secondary school for boys aged eleven to sixteen, but economic difficulties led to the priory’s abandonment in 1921. The buildings were sold to the Redemptorists in 1922, and the last of the twenty-eight nuns left in 1924.
The Redemptorists took responsibility for the abbey buildings and cathedral in 1923, carried out extensive restoration, and transferred their theological school there from Mautern in Styria. Father Josef Löw helped promote Hemma’s canonization, which took place in 1938. The Salvatorians took over the abbey and parish in 1932 and remained responsible for the complex until 2008. Since then, diocesan priests of the Diocese of Gurk-Klagenfurt have provided pastoral care with assistance from two Missionary Sisters of the Precious Blood from Wernberg. Salvatorian women have lived at Gurk since the St Hemma guesthouse opened in 1988.
Conservation and continuing religious role
Ferdinand von Quast drew attention to the cathedral through publications in 1850, helping prevent it from falling into obscurity. Extensive renovation followed from 1924 to 1933. Further restoration in 1988 and 1992 recovered the historic architectural polychromy, while the Baroque furnishings were treated in the 1950s after severe infestation by wood-boring insects. The cathedral received a stone-slab roof in 1960.
The building escaped physical damage during the Second World War, although six bells were requisitioned for wartime metal collection. Pope John Paul II visited Gurk Cathedral on 25 June 1988. Hemma’s tomb continues to make Gurk an important pilgrimage destination. The former cathedral now serves as Gurk’s parish church, while the adjoining chapter wing contains the parish office and the former provost’s court houses the Gurk Treasury, the diocesan museum. The cathedral and its adjoining chapter wing, provost’s court, and surviving fortifications preserve the institutional setting of the former cathedral chapter.
Remains
Plan, exterior, and western entrance
Gurk Cathedral stands on a low terrace at the eastern edge of Gurk, near the Gurk River. Its twin western towers rise about 60 metres above the church and are visible across the sparsely built valley. The building is a three-aisled, five-and-a-half-bay pier basilica with a raised two-bay choir, a one-bay transept, three eastern apses, twin western towers, two porches, a gallery, a Bishop’s Chapel, and a crypt beneath the choir and transept.
The central nave has a gabled roof, while the side aisles have lean-to roofs. The transept and apses are covered with black stone slabs. Most of the church is built of unrendered, marble-like limestone with a slightly reddish colour caused by iron. The north side and towers are rendered above the level of the main nave roof and coloured like limestone. The towers retain narrow Romanesque round-arched windows, some blocked, together with large Baroque sound openings. Their tapered onion domes with lanterns date from 1678 and were re-covered in 1988. A clock on the north tower bears the arms of the cathedral foundation and Provost Ferdinand von Litzlhofen, painted after the 1808 fire.
Western porches and portals
The main western entrance originally stood open between the towers. A Gothic infill wall closed the outer porch in 1337 and 1338. The pointed-arch portal frame fills the porch’s height, while slender side windows contain bands of tracery. Romanesque columns, bases, and capitals beside the portal were uncovered again in 1931. Figurative stained glass above and beside the entrance depicts God the Father, the sun and moon, the Evangelists, the Virgin and Child, the Man of Sorrows, and twelve saints. Tomas Hoke installed the present four-part door in 1988 using bronze, stainless steel, and pear wood, with vertical metalwork echoing the façade’s tracery.
The outer porch is an almost square room with a barrel vault, and its walls are largely covered by paintings from around 1340. Four rows of biblical scenes follow the manner of a Biblia pauperum, a visual sequence that communicates scripture through images. The north wall presents Old Testament scenes, while the south wall and part of the west wall contain twenty-six New Testament scenes. The lower rows are partly damaged, and the vault is painted as a starry sky centred on the Lamb of God.
Built in the early thirteenth century, the inner porch projects about three metres into the nave and supports the Bishop’s Chapel. Half-columns with varied capitals stand against its piers, while half-arches give the space the appearance of a triumphal arch. Its inner west portal, dating from around 1200, is a funnel-shaped Romanesque entrance about 5.5 metres wide and 7 metres high. Its seven-stage jambs and archivolts have simple ornament, and the plain tympanum probably once held a fresco. The portal was originally painted, although the final traces of colour were removed in 1912. Medallions above it show Christ and the Apostles and date from around 1340. Early thirteenth-century wooden doors preserve carved and painted foliage, Christ with the Evangelists, and scenes from the life of Jesus paired with related Old Testament scenes.
Side elevations and eastern apses
Side aisles and transept exterior
The side-aisle walls recede slightly behind the towers. Differences in limestone blocks and window placement reveal two construction phases separated by a building break around 1179 and 1180. The south aisle has a profiled base and a round-arched frieze. Its portal belongs to the first building phase, around 1140 to 1150, and has three-stepped jambs with simple mouldings. A relief in its tympanum shows Christ blessing and holding an open book inscribed with the words translated as “I am the door,” followed by a paraphrase of John 10:9. Another inscription runs along the underside in mirror-written letters.
The transept does not project beyond the side-aisle wall, probably because it was added to the plan later. Its round-arched frieze continues the aisle design and includes palmettes and interlaced ornament. Three tall round shafts with cushion capitals articulate the façade, while windows and a second frieze rise toward the gable. The north side is simpler because the cloister and former cathedral buildings stood against it. The former cloister portal is blocked, and a small projecting structure from 1775, once the chapter entrance, now displays Hemma’s relics. Early thirteenth-century wall paintings from the former cloister and fragments of Roman-period reliefs and inscriptions remain embedded in the masonry.
Eastern apses
The three eastern apses have profiled bases, pilasters with half-columns, richly carved capitals, and two levels of blind arcades. Each has a round-arched window. The larger central window is as wide as a blind arch and has six stepped orders. Above it, a relief from around 1175 shows a lion fighting a basilisk, symbolizing the struggle between good and evil. The main apse also has a round-arched frieze, an ornamental band, and a chequerboard pattern. The side apses are half as wide, lower, and less richly decorated.
Nave, choir, and transept interior
Nave and choir
The nave has five and a half bays, slender square piers, and round-arched arcades. Painted window frames with heraldic shields mark the springing level of the former Romanesque flat ceiling. Leonhard Uttner of Passau and the stonemason Philipp Wernerscon of Klagenfurt made the central barrel vault in 1591. Its lunettes and net ribs use Gothicising forms that correspond with older vaults. Master Kräußl of St Veit an der Glan painted the vault and its curving grotesque ornament, including the shield of Provost Grimming dated 1591, a figure above the organ gallery, and angels surrounding the opening for the Holy Spirit.
The side aisles received net-rib vaults in 1525. The south aisle includes access to the Bishop’s Chapel, windows lighting its stair, and an entrance to the tower. The choir and transept stand about 1.75 metres above the nave because of the crypt. The two-bay choir has square piers with strengthened corner responds. Master Hans made its star-rib vault in 1500, and its painted stone reliefs depict Mary and seven female saints. The side-aisle vaults, made between 1526 and 1549, contain six-pointed stars in the south and net ribs in the north, with terracotta reliefs of saints.
Transept and painted decoration
The transept is one bay deep and as wide as the nave and choir. Its crossing has half-columns attached to the piers. Western capitals with geometric palmettes date from before 1200, while eastern capitals show naturalistic foliage, animals, and heads from the early thirteenth century. The crossing vault, made around 1450 as an eight-rayed star, is the oldest vault in the church. Its sixteenth-century foliage painting is attributed to Anton Blumenthal.
The north transept contains a sacristy portal from around 1450 and a black-and-gold oratory built in 1678. A marble epitaph commemorates Bishop Polykarp Count Khuenburg, who died in 1675, while a monumental fresco depicts St Christopher. Paintings on the south transept wall date from around 1390 and include the Fall of Saul, Christ as enthroned Judge of the World, and the twenty-four elders from the Revelation of John. A donor couple and their seven children kneel at Christ’s feet.
Anton Blumenthal painted the eastern apse wall in 1598. The decoration includes allegories of Caritas, Justice, Prudence, Temperance, and Fortitude; the Church Fathers; scenes from the lives of Mary, Peter, and Paul; the Miracle of the Mass; the stoning of St Stephen; and St Hemma beside the altar. Much of the work is concealed by the Baroque high altar, and substantial areas were overpainted during the 1926 and 1927 restoration.
Western gallery and Bishop’s Chapel
The Bishop’s Chapel occupies the western gallery between the towers, above the porches. Bishop Walther built it during his episcopate from 1200 to 1213. Its elongated rectangular interior is divided into two groin-vaulted bays by a transverse arch. After a fire, it was restored by 1264 and decorated with frescoes in the zigzag style, a transitional form between Romanesque and Gothic art.
The central eastern arch originally opened into an apse, which was removed when the organ gallery was installed in 1779. The chapel’s eastern paintings concern the glory of Mary, while its western section depicts the glory of Christ through scenes including the Transfiguration, the procession of the Magi, Christ’s entry into Jerusalem, the heavenly Jerusalem, and the Lamb of God. Four Paradise scenes fill the vault, although one was destroyed in the 1808 fire. A stained-glass Descent from the Cross in the west circular window dates from about 1260 to 1270 and is the oldest surviving Austrian example of the zigzag style.
Crypt and Hemma’s tomb
The crypt beneath the choir and transept is approximately 20 by 20 metres and rises about 1.75 metres above ground level. It is reached by two stairways from the upper church and is the oldest part of the cathedral. Ninety-six slender columns, two double columns before the apse, and six rectangular piers support a steep, high groin vault. The column bases carry corner knobs, foliage, and figurative decoration, while the capitals are plain cubes.
Hemma’s tomb stands beside the southeast crypt pier. The original stone sarcophagus was supported on six columns, three of which survive with unusual female and male faces. A tradition held that women could crawl beneath the sarcophagus to seek fertility. In 1721 Provost Kochler of Jochenstein enclosed it in red marble and commissioned Antonio Corradini to make a relief of Hemma’s death, accompanied by figures of Faith and Hope. Part of the casing was removed in 1925, revealing the Romanesque column heads again. An iron grille surrounds the tomb, while foliage stucco and votive tablets decorate the nearby walls.
A chlorite-schist stone known as the Hemma Stone stands in a corner of the crypt. It was formerly outside the cathedral and is associated with a tradition that Hemma sat on it while supervising construction. Another tradition says that a wish is granted to anyone who sits on it.
The south crypt altar has been dedicated to St Thomas Becket since 1167, and the north altar to St John the Evangelist since 1189. Both were later moved to their present positions and are table altars on marble columns. The Liebfrauen Altar, made in 1766, carries a statue of the nursing Virgin dating from around 1200. Tradition associates the statue with Hemma as owner or donor, and it was recarved in 1784. Another altar is dedicated to St John Nepomuk.
Altars, pulpit, and organ
High altar and Lenten cloth
Michael Hönel made the Baroque high altar between 1625 and 1632, and Johann Seitlinger largely gilded it in 1654. About 16 metres high and nearly 9 metres wide, it fills the main apse and contains seventy-two full figures and eighty-two angels’ heads. Its reused Romanesque mensa has a geometric inlaid marble covering from around 1200, a rare example of this Italian-associated decoration outside Italy.
The altar presents the four Evangelists, the four Church Fathers, numerous saints, allegorical virtues, a tabernacle with a Crucifixion group, the Apostles, and the Assumption of the Virgin beneath the Holy Trinity. Saints Cunigunde and Hemma kneel beside representations of the cathedrals they founded at Bamberg and Gurk. Before the high altar, an approximately 80-square-metre Lenten cloth made by Konrad of Friesach in 1458 contains ninety-nine panels of Old and New Testament scenes. A low red-marble grille dates from 1730.
Side and nave altars
Michael Hönel also made the two side altars in the apses, with paintings by Johann Seitlinger from 1638. The north altar is dedicated to St Stephen and shows his stoning, with related scenes and figures of Saints Martin, Nicholas, Vincent, and Lawrence. The south altar depicts the crucifixion of St Peter and the beheading of St Paul, with scenes of Peter on the sea and Paul’s conversion near Damascus. Its figures include the Salzburg patrons Rupert and Virgil.
The Cross Altar stands before the ascent to the elevated choir. Georg Raphael Donner made its over-life-size lead Pieta in 1740 as his final work, casting it from eighteen tonnes of Carinthian lead. Balthasar Moll added the Rococo tabernacle in 1766. The composition was arranged to preserve the view toward the high altar. Tomas Hoke made the people’s altar in 1988 as a cube with steel corners and a textile covering bearing a wave motif.
Two black-and-gold pier altars beside the Cross Altar date from 1670 and were made by Sißenbacher with paintings by Seitlinger. The pulpit, designed in 1740 and 1741 by Giuseppe and Antonio Bibiena, expresses Counter-Reformation teaching through allegories of the Church, Faith, and Hope and scenes contrasting salvation with the punishment of evil. Lead reliefs by Georg Raphael Donner depict biblical episodes including the Sermon on the Mount, Paul’s conversion, and the Good Shepherd.
Organ gallery and bells
The organ gallery was built around 1730, requiring the removal of the Bishop’s Chapel apse. Its Classicist case dates from 1779, and the gallery organ was made in 1780 and 1781 by an organ builder from Ljubljana. Earlier instruments are recorded from 1560. The gallery organ was rebuilt in 1897 and 1926, while a new organ was installed in the presbytery in 1983. Some stops of the older instrument were restored to operation in 2000.
The towers contain a large post-war peal regarded as one of the finest of its period. The large Sturmerin bell hangs separately in the south tower. Wooden bell frames, wooden yokes, small sound openings, and clapper-catchers on bells one through five contribute to the bell system’s acoustics.
Adjoining abbey complex and fortifications
Chapter wing and provost’s court
The chapter wing adjoins the transept on the north. Peter Franz Carlone built it in 1637 and 1638, incorporating parts of the medieval chapter house. The undecorated fifteen-bay building has a plain portal bearing Provost Vizdom’s arms. Restoration in 1979 and 1980 revealed sundials dated 1528 and 1655.
The provost’s court lies west of the chapter wing. It is a square, four-winged, three-storey complex surrounding a rectangular courtyard. Built between 1468 and 1490, it was remodelled from 1637 and adapted to the chapter wing, with courtyard arcades added at that time. Its eastern wing contains the Gothic Trinity Chapel, whose star-rib vault carries fourteen painted wooden reliefs.
Gatehouse and surviving walls
Jorg Zechner built the abbey gatehouse between 1680 and 1682. Its cubic form has a monumental portal dedicated by inscription to Provost Wolfgang Andreas Gosel of Thurn. Pilasters frame the arch, and a covered columned stairway leads from the courtyard to a loggia-like upper structure.
Parts of the medieval fortifications survive in the ring wall, which no longer stands at its original height, and in two circular towers at the southwest and southeast corners. The towers have conical roofs and gun loops. Between them, the cemetery’s south wall contains the former charnel house, now the Death Agony of Christ Chapel and funeral hall. First mentioned in 1275, it has an octagonal ground plan and an octagonal upper drum.
