Kloster Schienen: A Former Benedictine Monastery and Pilgrimage Church in Germany
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Very Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page10 sections
History
Relics and the Early Church
Kloster Schienen is a former Benedictine monastery in Germany, on the Höri peninsula of Lake Constance. Its origins are connected with the arrival of relics associated with Saint Genesius, traditionally regarded as a Christian martyr, and Saint Eugenius around AD 800. The relics were brought to the Michaelskirche on Schiener Berg, which was subsequently dedicated to Saint Genesius.
A monk of Reichenau, the major Benedictine abbey and intellectual center on an island in Lake Constance, described the translation of the relics to Schienen around AD 830. His account also referred to miracles that had already taken place there. According to the narrative, Count Gebhard of Jerusalem had taken the bodies of Genesius and Eugenius to Treviso. Scrot, a local landholder serving Pippin of Italy, then transferred a thigh bone of Genesius to the Lake Constance region and assigned the relics a suitable place of safekeeping, probably a church or chapel.
Benedictine Foundation and Reichenau Rule
Count Schrot of the nearby Schrotzburg had a Benedictine monastery built around AD 900. The Benedictines followed the Rule of Saint Benedict, a form of monastic life combining prayer, worship, learning, and the preservation of religious traditions. The foundation increased pilgrimage to Schienen, and tradition associates visits to the monastery with Pippin of Italy and Radolt of Verona.
The monastery appears to have remained relatively small. Its confraternity books, medieval records of people remembered in a religious community’s prayers, list considerably more benefactors than monks. The names of its earlier abbots can be reconstructed only approximately as Ambricho, Hetti, Adalram, Kerhelm, Lambert, and Engilpret. The last of these was probably active around the transition from the ninth to the tenth century.
In the tenth century, later tradition associated the monastery with poor administration. During the reign of Louis the Child, an early medieval East Frankish king, the abbey was converted into a priory and transferred to Reichenau. Its territorial affiliation was with the Prince-Bishopric of Constance, an ecclesiastical principality whose prince-bishop exercised both religious and territorial authority. Recorded later provosts included Hans Schenck of Landegg, Johannes nobilis de Hynwil in 1454, Uolrich Schenk in 1468 and 1503, and Marcus nobilis de Knöringen in 1520.
Later Pilgrimage and Dissolution
After the Reformation and the Thirty Years’ War, a major seventeenth-century European conflict, pilgrimage at Schienen was revived with a new focus on the Virgin Mary. This Marian pilgrimage followed the earlier religious tradition centered on Saint Genesius and his relics. The monastery was dissolved in 1757.
The former abbey church, dedicated to Saint Genesius and the Virgin Mary, now serves as the parish and pilgrimage church of the Catholic parish community of Höri, within the Hegau deanery of the Archdiocese of Freiburg. The former convent building became the parish house and was also used as a school for a period.
Remains
Church Architecture
The surviving church is an early Romanesque basilica, a longitudinal church with a central nave broader than its side aisles. Its main building was constructed chiefly in the eleventh century, and its pebble masonry dates it to around AD 1030. The broad nave is divided by two rows of piers into three aisles. The central aisle is twice as wide as each side aisle, while the chancel, the part containing the main altar and reserved for the clergy, is slightly narrower than the central nave and ends in a flat wall. The arrangement has simple, balanced proportions.
Basilica and Interior Changes
The church’s eleventh-century form was altered by successive interior campaigns. Baroque furnishings were installed in the early eighteenth century, then replaced by Neo-Romanesque furnishings at the beginning of the twentieth century. Neo-Romanesque refers to the modern revival of Romanesque architecture, the medieval style known for massive construction and simple forms. A restoration in 1959 sought to recover the appearance of the eleventh-century building.
Roof Turret and Bells
A wooden roof turret, a small tower rising from the roof rather than from the ground, was built in 1595. It is crowned by an octagonal pointed spire and contains a historic bell frame with three bronze bells. Clock faces appear on two sides. On the south side, the lower face shows the hours and the smaller upper face shows the minutes. The first bell strikes the hours, while the other two mark the quarter-hours.
Convent Building
The former convent building is now the parish house. Built in 1574, it was remodeled during the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries. The small size of the convent meant that its buildings formed a limited complex, and the present parish house preserves the structure identified with the former convent.
Organ
The church’s electronic Ahlborn instrument is housed within an organ case fitted with imitation pipes. The case contains the sound radiators, and the instrument provides 42 sounding stops across two manuals and a pedal.
