Karmeliterkirche: A Gothic Carmelite Monastery Church in Boppard, Germany
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- Medieval
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- Holy Roman Empire
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- Religious
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On this page31 sections
History
Karmeliterkirche is a Gothic Carmelite monastery church in Boppard, Germany, built from around 1300 for the neighboring Carmelite monastery. Dedicated to Mary, the mother of Jesus, it belonged to what was described as the third-oldest Carmelite foundation in Germany. The church stood west of Boppard’s Roman-era walled core, inside the fortifications of the Lower Town established during the thirteenth century.
Foundation and Medieval Expansion
Construction began on the north side of the monastery with a single-nave church. The choir took approximately ten years to complete and was finished around 1330. After a lengthy interruption, work resumed on the nave. The building was financed over several centuries through numerous donations from Boppard’s urban nobility.
The choir was unusually spacious for a church belonging to a mendicant order. Its size may have been connected with the wishes of wealthy citizens who sought burial within the church. Several medieval and early-modern grave slabs remain identifiable, preserving evidence of this long funerary association.
Between about 1430 and 1440, the originally flat-roofed nave received a cross-ribbed vault, a masonry vault supported by intersecting ribs. From 1439 to 1444, a north aisle was added. Its consecration in 1444 was performed by the titular bishop of Salona and Gerhard, an auxiliary bishop of Trier. The aisle received six cross-groined vaults in 1454, built by the Bacharach master Heintz Schmirling. The addition transformed the building into a two-aisled hall church.
The church and monastery formed part of a dense urban setting. The monastery adjoined the church to the south, while a hospital that had existed from the thirteenth century stood to the west. The area now known as Karmeliterplatz, north of the church, contained sixteen houses until a major fire destroyed them in 1867.
Reformation of Ownership and Nineteenth-Century Change
Secularization, the transfer of religious institutions and property into secular ownership, abolished the Carmelite monastery in 1802. The monastery and church then passed to the city of Boppard. The church organ was moved to Niederspay and replaced by the organ from the dissolved Benedictine convent of Marienberg.
The church’s medieval stained glass underwent a more disruptive change. In 1818, the city sold the Gothic windows of the north aisle before their historical importance was fully recognized. A contract dated 26 August transferred six windows and probably another choir window to Count Hermann von Pückler-Muskau for 1,200 Rhenish guilders, together with 400 guilders for reglazing the church. The windows were sent to Muskau before official approval had been granted.
Pückler’s planned neo-Gothic chapel at Muskau was never completed, and most of the windows remained crated. After he sold Muskau Castle in 1845, the glass was moved to Branitz. His heirs offered the windows back to Boppard in 1871, but the city did not accept the requested repurchase terms. In the same year, the windows were taken to Berlin’s Royal Institute for Stained-Glass Painting for restoration and valuation.
Except for the Throne of Solomon Window, most of the glass was sold in late 1874 to the Paris dealer Charles Mannheim for 10,000 Reichstaler. Friedrich Spitzer acquired a collection probably comprising four and a half windows in 1877. After his death in 1890, the pieces were increasingly sold separately. Heraldic images, donor portraits, and saints were divided from their original compositions, and knowledge of the cycle’s original arrangement was gradually lost.
In 1856, the Catholic parish of St. Severus received Karmeliterkirche in exchange for the former Franciscan church, while the former monastery remained city property. The church was restored in 1875 and was subsequently used by Boppard’s Old Catholic congregation, founded in the town several years earlier.
War Damage, Restoration, and Continuing Use
During the Second World War, a bomb struck the western bay of the north aisle in 1945 and severely damaged the organ. The church was rebuilt and reconsecrated in 1950.
A further restoration campaign began under Otto Spengler in 1977. The exterior plaster was renewed, some windows were reglazed, and the choir’s east window, which had been closed since the eighteenth century, was reopened. Interior paintings were restored as well. A serious roof fire in August 1984 caused additional damage, and repairs continued until summer 1985. Interior restoration and the renewal of fourteen wall paintings then proceeded. The campaign formally ended with the consecration of the altar by Auxiliary Bishop Karl Heinz Jakoby on 13 September 1987.
The Marienberg organ had been sold in 1903 to the Church of St. Aegidius in Bad Salzig. A new organ by Christian Gerhardt, with sixteen stops, was installed in 1904 and later sold to Ernst on the Moselle during twentieth-century restoration work. The church continues to belong to the Catholic parish of St. Severus and remains in use for worship.
In 2012, a decision was made to create a columbarium, a place for urn burials, in connection with the church’s long tradition as a burial place for bishops, nobles, and wealthy citizens. The columbarium was consecrated on 15 August 2017. It occupies the open church interior while the building continues to serve for worship, and it provides 1,100 urn spaces.
Karmeliterkirche and the adjacent former monastery building are protected cultural monuments under the monument-protection law of Rhineland-Palatinate. Since 2002, they have formed part of the UNESCO World Heritage Site Upper Middle Rhine Valley. The church is also protected cultural property under the Hague Convention, whose blue-and-white emblem identifies cultural property protected during armed conflict.
Remains
Karmeliterkirche stands near the Rhine, west of Boppard’s historic town core and within the former Lower Town fortifications. The former monastery adjoins the church on the south, and the former hospital site lies to the west. The building consists of a broad choir, a nave, and a north aisle that is slightly narrower than the nave but equal in height. Together they form a two-aisled hall church. A small roof turret rises above the building instead of a bell tower.
Medieval Church Structure
Choir and Nave
The choir, completed around 1330, is broad and retains visible medieval burial slabs. Its unusually generous dimensions reflect the church’s historic connection with elite burial. The nave preserves the cross-ribbed vault added around 1430 to 1440, when the earlier flat roof was replaced. The choir and nave therefore embody two major phases of medieval construction, beginning with the early fourteenth-century foundation and continuing through the fifteenth-century rebuilding.
North Aisle
The north aisle was built between 1439 and 1444 and is slightly narrower than the nave while reaching the same height. Its six cross-groined vaults were installed in 1454. The aisle originally contained seven stained-glass windows. Five windows in the north wall and one in the west wall are divided by round-arched stone tracery into upper and lower sections. Each section contains three vertical panels, six rectangular fields measuring approximately 49 by 66 centimeters, and terminal panes framed by tracery. The smaller east-wall window, restricted by the attached sacristy, has a single level with three panels containing nine fields and terminal panes with trefoil arches.
Dispersed Medieval Glazing
Origins and Reconstruction
The stained glass was made between 1443 and 1446, probably by one workshop in the Middle Rhine region and another in Lorraine. Its donors included a bishop of Trier, Boppard brotherhoods, and members of regional noble families who held property or administrative offices in the town. The richly colored cycle was removed in the nineteenth century, and surviving elements are now divided among museums and private collections in Europe and the United States.
By the early twenty-first century, 282 fields were thought to have existed before 1817. Of these, 217 could still be described, while 22 were regarded as missing and the destruction of 42 was known. A possible modern reconstruction was published by the Museum of Modern Art in New York in 1969. Later research, including a 2013 dissertation from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, revised earlier identifications and arrangements. Berlin’s restoration and numbering had followed surviving drawings only in part, making reconstruction of the original glazing difficult.
J. Hayward’s reconstruction identified the Virgin Mary, especially the Immaculate Conception, as the probable overarching theme. The Immaculate Conception is the Catholic doctrine that Mary was conceived free from original sin. Individual subsidiary themes may have been selected by donors. Proposed window identities include the Pyrmont or Knight Window, the Cloisters or Virgins Window, the Ten Commandments Window, the Bourgeois or Apostles Window, the Jesse Tree Window, and the Throne of Solomon Window.
Cloisters or Virgins Window
The Cloisters or Virgins Window is regarded as the only Boppard window surviving complete, although its parts have been rearranged. Its two halves are displayed in the Boppard Room at The Cloisters, a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The coopers’ and tailors’ guilds or brotherhoods may have contributed to its donation.
Each half contains three panels, with a saint standing centrally on a pedestal beneath multilevel Gothic canopies. The canopies are decorated with tracery, pinnacles, flying buttresses, crockets, and finials. Red, blue, white, and gold create strong contrasts throughout the composition.
The lower half shows Catherine of Alexandria, Dorothy of Caesarea, and Barbara of Nicomedia. Each wears richly ornamented clothing, loose hair, and a martyr’s crown. Two angels hold a coopers’ emblem above a wine barrel in the left panel, while two others display the arms of Maastricht in the right panel. The central lower panel shows the Throne of Mercy, a visual symbol of the Trinity.
The upper half centers on the Virgin, whose garment is decorated with ears of grain. She stands with folded hands amid extensive gold decoration. Servatius of Tongeren, identified by a large key, and probably Lambert of Liège, shown with a mitre and crozier, flank her. The archangel Michael appears below Servatius, standing victoriously on a dragon. James the Elder and Hubert of Liège carry pilgrims’ staffs and wear pilgrims’ hats. A tailor’s emblem with a pair of scissors and the arms of the Diocese of Liège appear nearby.
Pyrmont or Knight Window
The Pyrmont or Knight Window takes its name from its donors, Cuno von Pyrmont and Margarethe von Schönburg auf Wesel. Its surviving or documented imagery includes the Virgin and Child standing on a crescent moon within a radiant aureole, the archangel Michael, Saint George as a dragon slayer, Bishop Cunibert, an unidentified bishop, the prophet Jeremiah, and Saint Quirin. The lower section showed the donor couple with their children and a family coat of arms that is now lost.
More recent research attributes the window with the monumental figures of Michael and George to the Boppard Brotherhood of Saint George and to the brotherhoods of smiths, bakers, and weavers. After the Paris auction of 1893, parts entered several collections. Ogden Goelet installed the lower section at Ochre Court in Newport. The left upper panel is in the de Young Museum, the central and right upper panels are in the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, and a monumental figure of Michael is in the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. The Virgin has been in unknown private ownership since a 1948 auction.
A donor panel made between 1442 and 1444 depicts the young knight Cuno von Pyrmont und von Ehrenberg with his three kneeling sons. Opposite him is his wife Margarethe von Schönburg of Oberwesel with their two daughters. The family arms are missing.
Ten Commandments Window
The Ten Commandments Window was first identified in an 1874 sale notice. Its lower half was exhibited by the Cologne Museum of Applied Arts in 1912, its upper central panel by the Burrell Collection in 1961, and its upper side panels were rediscovered at Salve Regina University in the United States in 1989.
The main figure is Saint Elisabeth giving clothing and bread to beggars, beneath two small green-winged angels. Four additional angels display the arms of Boppard with the imperial eagle. Earlier interpretations called the work the Emperor Window and identified the saint as Elisabeth of Hungary, but no connection with Boppard could be established for that reading. The window’s position opposite the pulpit and its treatment of Mosaic law have led to the suggestion that high-ranking donors commissioned it. The upper section depicts scenes from the Ten Commandments, and King Rupert III with his wife Elisabeth of Hohenzollern has been proposed as a possible donor pair.
Bourgeois and Jesse Tree Windows
The Bourgeois or Apostles Window was intended to glorify Catholic saints and apostles. Panels associated with it show John the Evangelist, James the Elder, Saint Agatha, and an unidentified donor couple. Saint Norbert of Xanten, probably Saint Gerard of Csanád, and the Virgin are also attributed to the window. Its central image of James the Elder, patron of pilgrims, was destroyed in a 1957 fire at a mausoleum in a Hollywood cemetery.
The Jesse Tree Window presented episodes from Jesus’ life, from the announcement of his birth to his death. It included a rare scene of Peter before the risen Christ. A Jesse Tree traces Christ’s lineage through Jesse, while a Passion cycle depicts events surrounding Christ’s suffering and crucifixion. The Boppard cycle was divided into many small scenes and dispersed among museums and private collections in France, Switzerland, and the United States. A missing Passion scene found in 1990 made it possible to describe the window almost completely. Most of the cycle survives, including its many narrative scenes.
Throne of Solomon Window
The Throne of Solomon Window was probably installed in the eastern wall of the side choir. Unlike the larger two-level windows, it was a single-level composition. Its proposed donors were Archbishop Jakob I of Sierck of Trier and an unidentified couple. Only the Virgin and Child from the central panel survives, in the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt, where it has been held since 1931.
Other reconstructed imagery includes the enthroned Solomon, a Crucifixion group, the Man of Sorrows, prophets, and female saints holding scrolls. The chapel at Muskau where the rearranged window was installed was destroyed with the window in 1945. Surviving Boppard glass is held at The Cloisters and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Schnütgen Museum in Cologne, the Hessian State Museum in Darmstadt, the Burrell Collection in Glasgow, the de Young Museum, and the Fine Arts Museum of San Francisco. Other elements remain in private ownership or have unknown locations, while parts of the Jesse Tree Window have been associated with eight locations in the United States.
Altars and Liturgical Furnishings
High Altar
The high altar has a gray-sandstone base dating from the church’s construction period. Its two-level superstructure is made of partly gilded walnut and was donated in 1699. The lower painting shows the Virgin giving the scapular to Saint Simon Stock, whom the Carmelite tradition reveres as an early leader of the order. The upper oval painting depicts Teresa of Ávila. Two kneeling wooden angels flank it, and the arms of Friedberg and an inscription dated 1734 appear between the paintings. A tabernacle occupies the center of the lower level. The altar was restored in 2013.
Saint Severus and Saint Peter Altar
The side aisle contains a Baroque altar dedicated to Saint Severus and Saint Peter. Its case dates from the middle of the seventeenth century, and it served as the high altar of St. Severus Church until 1841. The large 1739 altarpiece depicts the Last Supper, with Judas leaving the table. The painting above shows the Nativity. The apostle Matthias enters from the rear right, restoring the number of apostles to twelve after Judas’s departure. The altar was restored in 1992.
Cross Altar
The neo-Gothic Cross Altar stands at the rearmost pier between the nave and north aisle. It contains a six-figure Crucifixion group that originally came from a pilgrimage chapel in Hagnau on Lake Constance. Franz Reuter of Schöneck reportedly acquired the group in 1846. It was later moved to Boppard’s Kreuzberg Chapel and transferred to Karmeliterkirche in the early twentieth century.
A robbery in 1970 removed Mary Magdalene, the apostle John, and the Weeping Madonna. Mary Magdalene was recovered within days. The figure of John was repurchased in Brussels on 8 April 1971 for 27,000 Deutsche Marks. The wooden Weeping Madonna, made around 1510 in the workshop of the Ulm sculptor Nikolaus Weckmann, returned on 27 April 2015 after an out-of-court purchase for 28,000 euros. Katrin Etringer of Koblenz subsequently restored all six sculptures.
Choir Stalls and Clergy Seating
Choir Stalls
The oak choir stalls were made around 1460 to 1470 and are described as the most richly furnished choir stalls in the Middle Rhine region. They occupy both side walls of the choir in two rows. Each raised rear row has nine seats, while each front row has eight. On both sides, a passage replaces the fourth seat from the west.
The high backs carry elaborate blind tracery, keel arches, trefoils, and quatrefoils. A half-barrel canopy has a renewed hanging arch frieze and an openwork tracery crest. The north side bears the arms of Schöneck and the south side those of Boos von Waldeck, identifying the donors.
The carved decoration includes the four Evangelists with their symbols, the Virgin, Berthold of Calabria, Christ, and Simon Stock on the rear cheek-pieces. The front cheek-pieces show Paul of Tarsus, Nicholas of Myra, Sebastian, Catherine, Barbara of Nicomedia, George, Apollonia of Alexandria, and Simon Peter. Prophets with scrolls, fighting peasants, a couple riding a mythical creature, foliage, masks, parrots, and mythical beasts decorate other parts of the stalls. Restoration began in September 2012 and continued through 2013.
Sedilia and Communion Rail
An oak three-seat sedilia, a set of clergy seats near the altar, stands on the south wall of the sanctuary. Made in the last quarter of the fifteenth century, it has carved animals, mythical creatures, and foliage. Its three-bay half-barrel canopy contains the arms of Schöneck, Beyer von Burgen, and Beyer von Boppard, while each seat has a projecting keel-arched canopy. The sedilia is regarded as one of the most important examples of its type in the Rhineland.
The late-Baroque communion rail probably dates from around 1700. It spans the choir and separates the apse from the rest of the choir. A central double-leaf opening and a single-leaf opening near the sacristy entrance structure its passageways. The rail combines a walnut upper rail and balusters with oak-veneered frames, acanthus volute foliage, forged floor anchors shaped as horned masks, and a solid oak kneeling board. It was restored in 2013.
Organ Loft and Sculptural Works
Organ Loft
The organ loft at the west end of the nave is accessible only from the former cloister. It is attributed to the Rhenish Late Gothic period around 1460 to 1470 and rests on a four-bay cross vault. The three southern bays have pear-shaped moulded ribs, while the ribs in the northern bay, which projects into the side aisle, are painted.
Three keel-arched openings form the east-facing front. They are framed by four fluted octagonal piers, crockets, finials, canopies, and consoles. Four figures stood above the piers until 1970. The outer figures represented bishops, one holding a church model. The central figures probably formed an Annunciation assembled at a later date. The Virgin holding an open book dates from the first half of the fifteenth century, while the kneeling angel, now without wings, was made around 1480.
Mount of Olives Group
The Late Gothic Mount of Olives group was made in 1437 and consists of four sculptures representing Christ praying before his arrest. It was first placed in the cemetery outside St. Severus Church. The group later moved with the cemetery to Säuerling, then to Buchenau, and subsequently to the courtyard of the Electoral Castle. The parish received the sculptures back from the city on 21 October 2003 and installed them in Karmeliterkirche in 2004. They now stand on the north wall of the side aisle.
Grape Madonna
A copy of the Grape Madonna stands in a niche in the northern exterior wall of the sacristy, near the side portal and between two buttresses. The original statue was made around 1330 and measures 105 centimeters in height. Mary wears a later-added crown, a veil falling to her shoulders, and a richly folded garment and mantle. She holds the clothed Christ Child in her left hand.
The statue is associated with a local viticultural custom. Boppard winegrowers offer the Madonna the best of the first grapes harvested in Bopparder Hamm. In 2017, a local civic association and neighborhood group cleaned the figure and niche and refreshed their colors.
Funerary Monuments and Heraldic Memory
Conrad Kolb Epitaph
The red-sandstone epitaph of Conrad Kolb, a nobleman who died in 1393, is set into the south choir wall. Measuring 222 by 113 centimeters, it shows him in life-size frontal relief wearing knightly armor and standing on a lion. He holds a dagger and displays the Kolb von Boppard arms. Crocketed keel arches frame the monument, which is relatively well preserved apart from damage to the mouth.
The inscription identifies Conrad Kolb of Boppard as an armed nobleman who died on 27 March 1393 and includes a prayer for his soul.
Later Noble Memorials
The memorial of Siegfried von Schwalbach records that he died on 27 June 1497 while defending the Balz Gate against men of Archbishop Johann II of Trier during the Boppard War. The monument is exceptionally well preserved. A later replacement of the original, possibly removed before 1840 because it was considered too immodest, changed the representation of his armor.
Under the southeastern choir window stands the wall tomb of Johann the Younger von Eltz and his wife Maria von Breitbach. Its three-part gray-sandstone structure has a central scene of the Baptism of Christ and kneeling reliefs of the couple in the side sections. The base shows the head of John the Baptist on a platter held by two angels, with an inscription identifying it as the head of Saint John the Baptist.
Prophets, angels, foliage, portrait busts, inscriptions, and coats of arms complete the monument. A tablet bears the date 1548, while the inscription gives Johann von Eltz’s death as 4 November 1547. Parts of the cornices, inscription fields, the dove’s head, and sections of the angels were added in 1903. The monument was commissioned during Johann’s lifetime and is attributed on stylistic grounds to the sculptor Hieronymus.
A black Lahn-marble tombstone commemorates Philipp Anton von Eltz, who died as a child in 1693. It measures 76 by 56 centimeters and bears five coats of arms belonging to the families von Eltz, von Hohenfeld, and von Metternich. Drapery surrounds an inscription recording his death on 4 November 1693.
Funerary Shields
Fifteen funerary shields of nobles buried in the church hang in the choir. They include shields of Kolb von Boppard, probably Husilstam or Heusenstamm, Ehrenberg, Schöneck, Schwalbach, Boos von Waldeck, and Peltz von Boppard. Round or octagonal inscribed shields commemorate Maria Zandt von Merl, Johann the Younger von Eltz, Johann Richard von Eltz, Philipp von Flersheim, and Johann Boos von Waldeck. Additional shields once associated with Ehrenberg and Pyrmont, and possibly Bassenheim, are lost or unverified.
Columbarium
The columbarium occupies the main nave beneath the organ loft, rather than the side aisle originally considered for the installation. It provides 1,100 urn spaces in an area regarded as architecturally less important in terms of spatial experience. The arrangement remains integrated into the open church interior, allowing Karmeliterkirche to retain its liturgical use while continuing its long association with burial.
