St. Makkabäer: A Benedictine Nunnery and Church in Cologne
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.6
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- Germany
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Classical, Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Holy Roman Empire, Roman
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Monastery
On this page17 sections
History
St. Makkabäer was a Benedictine nunnery in Cologne, Germany, founded in 1178 beside an older chapel during the medieval period. It stood in the northern suburb of Niederich near Eigelstein and became one of Cologne’s early convents governed by Benedictine nuns, women religious following the Rule of Saint Benedict. The community developed beside a cemetery landscape with Roman and Frankish origins and later became associated with the relic tradition of the seven Maccabee brothers and their mother.
Early chapels and the medieval convent
The site was linked to an older religious building before the nunnery was established. A chapel dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene was traditionally believed to have stood on the Greesberg, or Greesberger Feld, by about 1070, during the time of Archbishop Anno. It was probably a cemetery chapel. The building was first mentioned on 18 July 1134 in a donation by the Count of Saffenberg, while another record from the same year referred to a church of the Maccabees near the Eigelstein Gate.
By about 1180, the convent had greatly increased its landholdings, and its buildings may already have been enlarged. A burial right granted in 1201 was later withdrawn. In 1224, the monastery and chapel were described as subordinate to St. Kunibert, which served as their parish or mother church. Around 1178, the older chapel was converted into a larger church. Further work took place under Archbishop Philipp von Heinsberg, and around 1200 the convent’s head, Mechtildis, referred to a “new church.”
During the tenure of Archbishop Engelbert of Cologne from 1216 to 1225, construction of a new choir began. The choir was completed under Archbishop Heinrich, who held office from 1225 to 1238. Bishop Johannes of Mytilene consecrated the church in 1232, establishing the medieval building as the liturgical center of the convent.
The cemetery landscape and relic tradition
St. Makkabäer stood at the edge of the extensive Roman and Frankish cemetery known as the ager ursulanus, which extended eastward from St. Ursula across Eigelstein. Roman burials had been placed along the military road from Roman Cologne, then called the CCAA, toward Neuss. Numerous ancient graves containing grave goods were uncovered in the northern suburb during the early modern period, and nineteenth-century research recorded Roman-period finds from the first to the third centuries on the monastery grounds.
The later name of the monastery was connected with a legend about the relics of the seven Maccabees, seven Jewish brothers traditionally regarded in Christian tradition as martyrs who died for their faith, and their mother, Salome. The tradition said that their remains were carried from near Antioch to Constantinople, then to Milan, and finally to Cologne by Rainald von Dassel. A fourteenth-century legend placed their arrival in Cologne in 1164, together with the relics of the Three Kings, and described them as a gift from Emperor Frederick Barbarossa. The precise history of the Maccabee relics is not established.
The alleged relics became the focus of a dispute between the Benedictine nuns of St. Ursula in the Blutgasse and the canonesses of St. Ursula. Canonesses belonged to a collegiate religious community rather than to a monastery of nuns. Both groups claimed the relics in connection with plans for a monastery at the place where Saint Ursula was believed to have suffered martyrdom. The archbishop reportedly awarded them to the Benedictine nuns, after which the monastery became known as the Maccabee monastery and the Blutgasse was renamed platea Machabeorum.
Fire, rebuilding, and the late medieval church
A fire in 1376 destroyed part of Niederich and the parish, including St. Kunibert Church. On 4 May 1462, a second fire began in the monastery brewery and destroyed all the convent buildings except the church. Dietrich Hoerheym, a brewer from Meviren, was held in custody in connection with the fire.
Helias Mertz of Düren, an archiepiscopal official who held the title Komturmeister and, from 1491, served as rector, parish priest, and confessor to the Benedictine nuns, helped finance the rebuilding. Although the church had suffered comparatively little damage in 1462, Mertz regarded its older structure as deteriorated and began replacing it. The new church was begun in 1504 and completed in 1506. After Mertz died in 1527, Ortwin Gratius continued his work.
Mertz also promoted the cult of relics associated with the convent. Discoveries reportedly made while the old high altar was dismantled were identified as relics connected with Saint Ursula, encouraging donations. The public display of Hungarian relics was intended to enhance the monastery’s prestige and attract pilgrims. In 1536, the chapter house, the room where the religious community met for governance and devotional business, was reportedly painted by a painter named Jasper, probably Jasper Woensam of Worms, the father of Anton Woensam. The late Gothic complex was later furnished and decorated according to Baroque taste.
Dissolution and archaeological rediscovery
The monastery was dissolved in 1802 during secularization, the state suppression or transfer of religious institutions and their property. Efforts to preserve the church did not prevent its deterioration. The lead covering was removed from the roof in 1806, the building had partly collapsed by 1808, and it was demolished soon afterward. A sugar factory was established on the former monastery grounds, followed by a public elementary school in 1899–1900.
Excavations in 1995 and 1996 exposed the foundations of the former Maccabee church and masonry belonging to a substantially older building. These remains added archaeological evidence to the earlier records of Roman burials and finds from the site.
Remains
The former church and monastery occupied a walled precinct near Eigelstein on ground associated with the Greesberg and the wider Roman-Frankish cemetery area north of Cologne. Excavations have revealed the foundations of the Maccabee church together with masonry from an older late Roman apsidal building, a structure ending in a rounded or polygonal apse. The surviving archaeological evidence therefore represents more than one phase of construction on the site.
Earlier building and medieval church
Late Roman building
The older late Roman structure had a brick dome and probably included a crypt, a chamber below a church or choir used for burials, relics, or religious purposes. The crypt would have extended deeply below ground, as comparable buildings of the period did. Its foundations and masonry were uncovered during the excavations of 1995 and 1996.
Medieval choir
The medieval church had an elevated choir reached from the middle of the nave by a staircase that could be closed. This arrangement separated the clergy from lay worshippers within the church. The later choir was built over a crypt, preserving the connection between the church’s elevated sacred space and its lower chamber.
Late Gothic church
Structure and exterior
The church built between 1504 and 1506 was a late Gothic, three-aisled hall church measuring approximately 30 by 17 metres. In a hall church, the nave and side aisles are approximately equal in height. The choir ended on three sides and stood over a crypt. Foundations were made from column basalt and tuff, while the lower masonry followed a construction method used in Cologne during the twelfth century.
The south aisle ended in the Chapel of Saint Catherine. The north aisle ended in a sacristy connected to the choir. Both aisles originally had small round-arched openings that were later blocked. Instead of a tall western tower, the higher central nave carried an octagonal wooden turret at its western end. The turret was covered with lead and ended in a slender spire decorated with crockets, small hooked ornaments characteristic of Gothic design.
Interior construction
The vaults had ribs springing from clustered piers without capitals. The western structure rested on a central pier. Galleries ran along the side aisles and were separated from the nave by slender tracery, ornamental stone framework used in Gothic openings and windows. The arches of the church doors were crowned with sculpture or inscriptions.
Altars, relics, and works of art
High altar
The high altar from the demolished church was later moved to St. Andrew’s and in 1963 to the Church of the Black Madonna. The altar and the semicircular communion rail before it are carved oak works from the first third of the eighteenth century by Johann Franz van Helmont and Johannes van Damm. Other artworks from the church were destroyed in wartime fires.
Relics and reliquaries
The church possessed a reliquary bust of Saint Joachim, traditionally identified as the father of Mary and the maternal grandfather of Jesus. Made in Cologne around 1520, it was probably created by the goldsmith Peter vur der Paffenpforten or Peter Hanemann. The silver-and-enamel reliquary was partly gilded and set with gemstones. It belonged to the monastery treasury and is now in St. Kunibert. Its connection with the Maccabee relics said to have been brought from Milan by Rainald von Dassel remains unproven. The Maccabee shrine depicted the brothers’ legendary martyrdom and scenes from the Passion and Resurrection of Christ.
Memorials and paintings
A family epitaph for Stephan Brölmann stood before the convent church’s Lady Altar. Brölmann commissioned and probably designed it in 1606, possibly after his wife’s death. Four ancestral coats of arms appeared above the monument, with the Brölmann and Bachhoven von Echt arms below. A panel painting of Saint Erasmus, dated 1541, stood before the choir. Another panel showed the Crucifixion at its center, with the Maccabees and Saint Ursula on the wings.
Organ
The church had a sixteenth-century organ. It was replaced in the eighteenth century and, during the French period of political and administrative rule in Cologne, transferred at the request of the parish of St. John the Baptist to a church in the city’s southern district.
