Mariazell Basilica: Austria’s Marian Pilgrimage Church
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
- Popularity
- Medium
- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Austrian Empire, Duchy of Styria, Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page19 sections
History
Mariazell Basilica is a Roman Catholic pilgrimage church in Austria dedicated to the Nativity of the Virgin Mary. Its history as a Marian shrine reaches back to the twelfth century, while the present building combines a fourteenth-century Gothic church with a major Baroque enlargement. Mariazell became Austria’s most important pilgrimage destination, one of Europe’s major Marian shrines, and the only national shrine in the German-speaking world. The basilica remains affiliated with St. Lambrecht Abbey in Styria and is also associated with the Diocese of Graz-Seckau.
Monastic foundation and early pilgrimage
Around 1103, Duke Henry III of Carinthia gave the territory around Mariazell to St. Lambrecht Abbey. The abbey established a monastic cell there, whose monks served and evangelized the local population. Tradition places the foundation of the pilgrimage site on 21 December 1157. According to the foundation legend, the monk Magnus was travelling from St. Lambrecht as a pastoral minister when a rock blocked his way. After he placed a Marian figurine before it, the rock split apart. Magnus then built a wooden cell that served as both chapel and dwelling.
Mariazell appears in written records in 1243, and a Marian altar was consecrated in 1266. An independent parish existed by 1269. Another foundation tradition tells of the Moravian Margrave Henry and his wife, who were cured of severe gout through the Virgin’s intercession. In gratitude, they travelled to Mariazell and had a first stone church built around 1200 in place of the wooden chapel.
A third legend connects the Gothic church with King Louis I of Hungary. After a victory over a numerically superior Turkish army, he was said to have endowed the church with the treasury image, which he had seen resting on his chest in a dream. Pilgrims were reportedly coming to the sanctuary from the twelfth century, while larger recorded numbers begin around 1330. At least one secular court imposed a Zellfahrt, a penitential journey to Mariazell, as punishment for crimes. The practice helped extend the pilgrimage beyond the immediate region into neighbouring lands.
Medieval privileges and religious change
In 1399, Pope Boniface IX granted the sanctuary the right to dispense plenary indulgences, remissions of the temporal punishment associated with sin in Catholic teaching. The Gothic church was damaged by fires in 1420 and 1474. During the Reformation, a sixteenth-century movement that challenged the authority and practices of the Catholic Church, Mariazell’s importance declined. Some furnishings were confiscated and melted down for military purposes.
The Catholic revival associated with the Counter-Reformation, the Church’s institutional response to the Protestant Reformation, restored Mariazell’s importance. The Habsburgs treated it as an imperial and national Catholic sanctuary. Emperor Ferdinand III initiated a rebuilding programme, and Domenico Sciassia prepared the design for the Baroque expansion and reconstruction carried out from 1644 to 1683. The Gothic presbytery was demolished in 1654, the eastern part was built before 1662, and the two façade towers rose in 1678–1681. The work was completed in 1683, followed by another renovation in 1755–1756.
Suppression, recovery, and modern restoration
Emperor Joseph II dissolved the Mariazell confraternities in 1783 and banned pilgrimage to the shrine in 1787. These restrictions were later withdrawn, and the pilgrimage function recovered. Around one million pilgrims eventually visited each year. The Mariazell Railway was built from 1905 to 1907 to carry the growing numbers of pilgrims.
A major fire on All Saints’ Night in 1827 destroyed the roof and the roofs or spires of all three towers. The interior survived, although soot and firefighting affected its furnishings. Repairs took place from 1828 to 1830, and eight bells were melted in the fire. The miraculous image was temporarily moved to the chapel on Sigmundsberg. The basilica underwent further interventions in 1862–1865, 1896–1900, 1925–1939, 1954–1957, and 1977–1980. It was electrified in 1899, and a general restoration from 1992 to 2007 addressed the conservation of the building.
Pope Pius X raised the pilgrimage church to the rank of minor basilica in 1907. This is a papal honor granted to churches because of their liturgical, historical, or devotional importance, and is distinct from the architectural meaning of the word basilica. The Marian image was crowned by papal decree in 1908. Mariazell hosted the Central European Catholic Day in May 2004 and received the Golden Rose during Pope Benedict XVI’s visit to Austria in 2007, held in connection with the 850th anniversary of the traditional foundation. Pope John Paul II visited in 1983, and Pope Benedict XVI visited in 2007. The COVID-19 pandemic reduced pilgrim numbers in 2020 to approximately one-fifth of their usual level.
Mariazell continues to serve as a centre of Marian devotion and pilgrimage. The venerated image receives a specially made devotional dress each year, and more than 150 such dresses are preserved or displayed in the treasury. Many were donated as votive offerings or by wealthy benefactors. The basilica is also associated with Joseph Haydn’s Missa Cellensis in honorem Beatissimae Virginis Mariae and Missa Cellensis. It later provided the model for Erwin Perzy’s first patented snow globe, registered around 1908.
Remains
Gothic and Baroque building
Three-towered façade and church plan
The basilica retains a Gothic central tower flanked by two Baroque towers, creating a three-towered façade. The central tower rises approximately 90 metres. The medieval church had a pointed-arch main portal and a Gothic hall layout. The present building has a three-aisled nave, a transept, an eastern dome or crossing lantern, which is a raised structure above the intersection of the nave and transept, and twelve side chapels arranged six on each side of the nave.
Baroque enlargement
The seventeenth-century rebuilding lengthened and widened the nave and added the two flanking towers, a new choir, and a new transept. The side chapels contain frescoes and furnishings connected with the saints to whom their altars are dedicated. The roof now has a flatter gabled form and copper-sheet covering, replacing the steep original roof after the nineteenth-century fire. This change made the oval high dome project more prominently above the roofline and altered its relationship with the transept roof.
Central tower bells
The central Gothic tower contains the main peal of seven bells in a substantial wooden frame. It is described as the largest peal in Styria. The heaviest bell, cast in 1950, weighs 5,702 kilograms. The oldest is the bell known as Ferdinand, the Mariazell Bell, or the Mary Bell, cast in Salzburg by Franz Xaver Gugg in 1830. Six other bells made in 1950 replaced bells requisitioned during the Second World War. The large Mariazell bell received a lighter clapper in February 2013 after its previous clapper broke in November 2012.
Altars and devotional furnishings
Main altar and side chapels
The main altar is dedicated to the Holy Trinity and was consecrated in 1704. Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach designed it. The twelve side chapels contain Baroque red-marble altars made by Carlo Gianollo after designs by Domenico Sciassia. The northern altars are dedicated from west to east to Saints Leopold and Ladislaus, Saint Catherine, Saint Stephen, Saint Emeric of Hungary, and Saint James. The southern altars honour Saint Anthony, the Holy Family, the Holy Trinity, Saint Barbara, Saint Giles, and Saint Benedict.
Pulpit and chapel screens
Baroque confessionals date from the mid-eighteenth century, while wrought-iron grilles from about 1675 separate the side chapels from the nave. The pulpit was made by Andreas Grabmayr in 1689–1691 and carries statues of the four Evangelists and Saint Paul. Before the main entrance stand two life-size lead statues made by Balthasar Moll in 1757. The figure on the left represents Louis I of Hungary, and the figure on the right represents Henry, Margrave of Moravia.
Chapel of Grace and Marian images
Chapel of Grace
The Gnadenkapelle, or Chapel of Grace, occupies the traditional site of the first wooden cell at the centre of the basilica. A Chapel of Grace is dedicated to a miraculous or especially venerated sacred image. Its present trapezoidal plan dates from 1690 and incorporates older fourteenth-century elements. A stone relief above the entrance is attributed to the Parler school, a family network of Gothic architects and sculptors active in Central Europe, and dated 1369. The relief is said to show portrait busts of Louis I of Hungary and his wife Elisabeth as patrons of the Gothic chapel. An imperial coat of arms with the German imperial crown and a Hungarian coat of arms appear at the sides.
Bell Madonna
The chapel contains the Late Romanesque miraculous image known as the Magna Mater Austriae, or Bell Madonna. The 48-centimetre-high limewood statue represents the Virgin and Child. Mary wears a blue, red-lined overgarment, while the Child wears a white garment with a gold border. The Child holds an apple interpreted as a symbol of original sin from which humanity is redeemed. Mary holds either a pear or a red fig. A gilded copper halo was added in 1709.
Mary and the Child wear golden crowns with blue globes and crosses. The crowns were donated in 1821 by the Primate of Hungary and consecrated by the pope in 1908. The statue survived the 1827 fire. Behind the chapel stands a nearly two-metre-high Late Gothic Madonna and Child dating from around 1520. It rests on a five-metre-high marble column with a stucco capital, and its crowns are made of gilded copper.
Chapel grille and altar
Emperor Francis I and Empress Maria Theresa donated the Chapel of Grace’s silver grille in 1756 to mark the six-hundredth anniversary of the pilgrimage church. A large double-headed eagle crowns the grille. The chapel altar dates from 1726, and Lorenzo Mattielli made its statues of Saints Benedict, Lambert, Joseph, Anne, and Joachim in 1734.
Organs and musical features
Viennese and Emperor Jubilee Organs
Four organs are preserved in the basilica. The Viennese Organ stands on the west gallery in a case derived from an instrument completed by Gottfried Sonnholz in 1739. Johann Wagner created its figural decoration, and Franz Reich of Graz carried out the gilding. The case has a Baroque exterior but houses a modern Mathis instrument supplied in 2003 with 54 registers, three manuals, and pedals. The small organ division known as a Rückpositiv, placed behind the organist in a separate case facing the congregation, was reconstructed after its removal in 1868.
The Viennese Organ was altered in 1850 and 1868. After Emperor Franz Joseph I visited in 1910, he donated a new instrument known as the Emperor Jubilee Organ. Swoboda built it, and it was dedicated in 1912. It was electrified in 1929 and repaired in 1957. A previous organ made by Christoph Egedacher in 1689 had been transferred to Sankt Veit am Vogau in 1753, where it survives.
Mariazell, Konrad, and Mary Organs
The asymmetrical Mariazell Organ stands on the north wall of the domed crossing space. Mathis completed it in September 2000 with two manuals and 29 registers. A general console installed in the nave in 2003 allows the two Mathis organs to be played together. Two smaller organs occupy matching historical cases on the side galleries. Pflüger built both in 2003. The Konrad Organ has one manual, pedals, and nine registers, while the Mary Organ has one manual and six registers. One case bears an inscription identifying Josef Georg Schnepfleithner as its maker in 1758.
The organ-gallery sculpture and the decoration of the 1737 organ case were made by the Viennese sculptor Johann Wagner in 1740. The surviving case presents a Baroque exterior around the modern instrument, joining the basilica’s historic furnishings with its later musical equipment.
