St. Sebald am Heiligenstein: A Pilgrimage Church in Gaflenz, Austria
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.8
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- Country
- Austria
- Primary era
- Medieval
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern, Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Austria, Habsburg, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Church
On this page14 sections
History
St. Sebald am Heiligenstein is a Roman Catholic pilgrimage church in Gaflenz, Austria, built during the late Gothic period and consecrated in 1413. It stands on the 782-metre summit of the steep Heiligenstein ridge and is the only church in Austria dedicated to Saint Sebald of Nuremberg. Today it is a filial church, meaning that it is served from a parish church rather than functioning as an independent parish, and since 1 January 2023 it has belonged to the Ennstal parish of the Diocese of Linz.
The sacred mountain and the 1413 consecration
The summit’s rock formation, small cave, and spring below the peak have encouraged the belief that the mountain may have been a pre-Christian sanctuary. Whether the Lords of Gaflenz maintained a high-medieval residence there remains uncertain. The dedication to Saint Sebald may have reached Heiligenstein through commercial links between Nuremberg and the ironworking towns of Weyer and Gaflenz. Nuremberg steel merchants obtained iron from Innerberg, now Eisenerz in Styria, which was forged into steel in Weyer and Gaflenz.
A later entry in a missal made at Lambach Abbey around 1160 states that the chapel ad sanctum lapidem, meaning “at the holy stone,” was consecrated on 29 August 1413 by Auxiliary Bishop Andreas I. Tallaci. The ceremony took place under Passau Bishop Georg von Hohenlohe, Garsten Abbot Florian Tanpeck, and Gaflenz parish priest Nikolaus. The chapel was dedicated to all the saints, with particular honour given to Saint Sebald.
The altar contained relics associated with Veronica’s sweat cloth, the Apostle Andrew, Saint Constantine, and the place where the Holy Spirit appeared over the Apostles. Other relics were linked to the Ten Thousand Martyrs, soldier martyrs, Bishops Udalrich and Alexander, the confessor Paulinus, Saints Christopher and Pancras, and the virgins Catherine, Barbara, Cecilia, Margaret, Erentrudis, and the Eleven Thousand Virgins.
Pilgrimage and Baroque expansion
Devotion to Sebald grew after his canonization in 1425. Saint Sebald was traditionally regarded as a miracle-working hermit associated with Nuremberg, where he was believed to have worked and been buried. His cult became deeply established in the surrounding region. A 1554 tax register for Weyer Parish shows that 15 percent of its male population bore the baptismal name Sebald.
Pilgrimage continued during the Reformation, when much of the surrounding population became Protestant. Protestant citizens, including people from Steyr, also attended services at Heiligenstein. In 1626 the Steyr citizen Jakob Zettl described seeing a large crowd at the church. The pilgrimage therefore remained active across confessional divisions during a period of religious conflict.
A bell tower was erected in 1665, and the present tower was built in 1691 before receiving its current form in 1733. The Baroque Sebald Chapel and its grotto were constructed soon afterward. Musical life was also established early: a regal organ was repaired in 1670, and further repairs followed in 1709, 1763, 1884, and 1939. The old Heiligenstein organ was transferred to Gaflenz Parish Church in 1732, and a new organ was acquired in 1785.
During the eighteenth century, the church generated enough income to support lending activities. A five-station Calvary route was established between Gaflenz and Heiligenstein, while construction of the sacristan’s house began in 1707. The building provided shelter for pilgrims and visitors as well as for the sacristan, who was also known as the hermit.
Reform, war, and renewal
Enlightenment reforms placed pilgrimage churches under severe restrictions. Heiligenstein was scheduled for closure in 1783 under Emperor Joseph II’s policy of closing pilgrimage churches that were not parish churches. A decree of 5 October 1785 allowed the church to continue, provided that 100 gulden was donated each year to a charitable institution and the remaining funds were transferred to the Upper Austrian estates.
The church treasury helped Gaflenz meet a wartime demand in 1801, when the municipality received a loan of 200 gulden to pay a contribution imposed during the French occupation in the Second Coalition War. French soldiers heavily damaged the church in 1806 during the Third Coalition War, and all its silver had to be surrendered in 1810. Repairs were carried out in 1811 and 1812, and the work concluded in 1813 with the purchase of a 600-kilogram bell.
After a period of decline, the old organ from Weyer Parish Church was installed in 1832 and its case was restored in 1841. Parish priest Constantin Zwirtmayr, who served from 1830 to 1856, had revived the pilgrimage by 1843, alongside a renovation of the church interior.
The twentieth century brought further losses. A stained-glass window donated in 1925 for the five-hundredth anniversary of Sebald’s canonization was destroyed during the Second World War. Both bells were removed for the German metal collection and taken to a bell cemetery. In 1945, Soviet occupation soldiers caused extensive damage: doors and windows were smashed, statues were knocked from their bases and shot, the organ was destroyed, the floor was torn up, and the sacristy furnishings were demolished. Four bullet impacts remain visible in the tabernacle.
The larger bell had been submerged in Hamburg harbour near the end of the war and returned in 1950. A replacement for the smaller bell was consecrated in 1949. The first postwar pilgrimage took place in 1948 as the Hollenstein pilgrimage, with an outdoor mass held in front of the church. Repairs to the church and sacristan’s house were completed by 1949, and the reopening was marked by the Sebald Festival in 1951, attended by about 2,000 pilgrims.
Conservation and continuing devotion
St. Sebald am Heiligenstein appears on the coat of arms granted to the municipality of Gaflenz by the Upper Austrian provincial government on 4 April 1955. The church is protected as a historic monument. Exterior renovation of the church and Sebald Chapel took place in 1984 and 1985. During the interior renovation of 1991, well-preserved Late Gothic and Early Baroque frescoes were found beneath eight layers of paint. The Baroque appearance of the interior was retained rather than exposing the earlier decoration.
A new people’s altar was inaugurated on 22 August 1993 at the end of the interior renovation. Designed by Franz Salcher and executed artistically by Alfons Grossberger of Gaflenz, it takes the Burning Bush from Exodus as its theme, recalling Moses’s encounter with God. Devotion at Heiligenstein also continues through personal petitions, including a frequent wish among female pilgrims for a husband and children.
Remains
Building and churchyard
The church is a cubic Late Gothic building with a high hipped roof dating from the second half of the fifteenth century. Its five-eighths choir, an apse-like end formed by five sides of an octagon, was built in the early fifteenth century. A sacristy adjoins the choir on the north, with an oratory above it reached from outside by a stone spiral staircase. The south portal has a shoulder arch and a Late Gothic shaft frame. On the west, a porch as wide as the nave, known as the Laube, adjoins the building; its vault collapsed at the beginning of the nineteenth century.
A cemetery wall surrounds the church on three sides. Its upper edge was newly capped with wooden boards in 1969. The entrance portal in the southwestern part of the wall carries a black inscription translated as “Come to me, all of you; I will give you rest,” placed in the niche above the entrance.
Tower and bells
The tower occupies the southeastern corner of the choir and is constructed from tuff stone. The first tower, built in 1665, was a small roof turret, as shown in Andreas Matthäus Wolfgang’s engraving Heyliger Stain. The present tower dates from 1691. Garsten court painter Johann Georg Staindorfer added a sundial in 1692, and the tower was raised to about 20 metres in 1732 and 1733. A Baroque roof was then placed above the belfry, which contains two bells.
Both bells are still rung by hand. The larger measures 110 centimetres across, weighs 600 kilograms, and is tuned to f’. Dedicated to Saints Sebald and Florian, it bears the words “Blessed be the name of the Lord” and identifies Caspar Dominik Staffelmayr of Steyr as its caster in 1814 at the expense of Gaflenz Parish. The smaller bell measures 80 centimetres, weighs 250 kilograms, and is tuned to d”. Dedicated to Saints Anthony and Leonard, it was recast from fragments of an earlier bell that had been thrown down the steep slope in 1945 and broken into eleven pieces.
Nave, lower church, and choir
The interior forms a three-aisled hall measuring 12 metres in length and 10 metres in width. Two-light tracery windows in the north and south walls of the nave admit light. The central nave has three bays and forms a four-pier hall with two octagonal piers. Its net vault, a Gothic vault whose ribs form a geometric network, begins with short offsets and ends at the walls on round consoles carrying downward-hanging rosettes.
The side aisles have elongated net vaults with longitudinal diamond patterns. Curved ribs in the ribbed vault rest on semicircular wall-pier shafts. Red-chalk graffiti from the sixteenth century survives beside the gallery stairs, and a central opening associated with representations of the Holy Spirit is set in the nave vault. Beneath the northwestern bay of the side aisle, an entrance leads to the lower church, an elongated three-bay room covered by a cross-ribbed vault.
The floor consists of an unusually composed screed whose surface was originally polished smooth. Its materials include light-grey dolomite, white marble, dried lime, and a dolomitic lime binder, with casein and curd used as organic additives. The steps leading to the choir are made of conglomerate stone.
A richly profiled triumphal arch separates the nave from the choir. The two-bay choir has a five-eighths plan and a star-rib vault. Its original diamond-shaped star had six sections, but one rib was removed when the high altar was installed. The remaining ribs descend along the walls onto polygonal consoles. One apse window retains fragments of Late Gothic stained glass from 1470 showing the Agony in the Garden. The choir opens into the Late Gothic sacristy through an iron-studded door with a keyhole frame, and the sacristy has a cross-ribbed vault.
Altars and devotional furnishings
High altar
The high altar was made in 1776 and 1777. At its centre, a life-size Saint Sebald stands before a golden halo of rays on a white-painted tabernacle structure with Rococo decoration made in Seitenstetten in 1778. Corinthian columns and pilasters support the upper structure, which is crowned by a depiction of the Coronation of Mary among clouds. Johann Jakob Sattler of St. Florian carved the statues, while the altar structure came from the workshop of the Garsten court cabinetmaker.
Franz X. Gürtler of Steyr revealed the altar’s original black-and-white finish in 1992 by removing a later black lacquer with white veining. Severe woodworm damage required extensive consolidation of the timber. A partial restoration had already taken place in 1834.
Pulpit and side altars
The black-marble-effect pulpit was made in 1751 by Garsten court cabinetmaker Matthias Pokorny. A half-length Saint Sebald appears among clouds on its sounding board. The pulpit was regilded in 1842 and again in 1992. Pokorny also made the two side altars in 1754. The left altar presents the miracle of the Manna, with the Last Supper above it and a Baroque devotional panel of Saint Joseph. The right altar depicts the Sacrifice of Melchizedek, above which are the Crucifixion and figures of Mary, John, and Mary Magdalene. Roman soldiers divide Christ’s clothing at the edge of the scene, while a devotional panel shows Saint Anthony.
The side altars originally had black finishes. Later layers imitated dark marble and were followed by blackened shellac. The first overpainting was uncovered during the 1992 restoration, since removing it entirely would have damaged the original surface.
Paintings and sculptures
Seven large eighteenth-century oil paintings on the north and south nave walls illustrate the legend of Saint Sebald. The four paintings on the north side show his departure from his wife, his receipt of permission to preach from Pope Gregory II with Willibald and Wunibald behind him, his crossing of the Danube near Regensburg on his outspread cloak, and his incorrupt body in a coffin twenty years after his death. In the final scene, a mocker pulls the saint’s beard and is struck blind in one eye.
The three paintings on the south side portray miracles. They show Sebald helping a farmer recover lost oxen, restoring the sight of a blind wagoner by retrieving his eyes from an execution ground, and bringing two dead children back to life through his intercession. Christoph Auhueber of Bad Hall made the fifth painting in 1711. Joseph Gabriel Frey overpainted four works in 1842, Joseph and Ignaz Frey treated the remainder in 1847, and Theodor Bohdanowicz restored six in 1975.
Console figures stand beside the high altar along the walls of the polygonal choir. The figure on the Gospel side is identified either as Saint Berthold of Garsten or Saint Benedict, while the Epistle side contains a Late Gothic statue of Saint Sebald. The approximately 78-centimetre-high statue was carved around 1430 in the Soft Style, an International Gothic style known for graceful figures and flowing drapery. It shows the bearded saint wearing a pilgrim’s hat and holding a two-towered church model and pilgrim’s staff.
The statue’s richly folded cloak has an ornamental hem, a pilgrim’s bag, and a buckle at the chest. It was restored in 1967 and 1979, and its Baroque overpaint was removed during an art exhibition in Nuremberg. The original is now kept in Gaflenz Parish Church for security, while a replica by sculptor Adelsberger stands at Heiligenstein.
A Baroque Pieta occupies a shrine in a niche in the southern part of the presbytery, above the tower entrance. The wrought-iron communion rail dates from 1847. Two Baroque canopy altars at the front nave piers contain Neo-Gothic figures of Saint Leonard and Saint Anthony from 1896. Figures of Saint Sebastian and Saint Andrew stand beside the north and south portals, and two confessionals transferred from Gaflenz Parish Church were installed beneath the gallery in 1992.
Sebald Chapel and Calvary
The small Baroque Sebald Chapel stands below the church’s northwestern corner. Built in 1691 over a rock niche, it contains a stone recumbent figure of Saint Sebald representing the bed in the cave where legend says he lived as a hermit. An elaborate forged grille encloses the figure. Weyer locksmith Philipp Schwälbl made the grille in 1693, and the painter Brösinger of Waidhofen an der Ybbs coloured it red and green. A crucifix made by a Garsten sculptor in 1793 crowns the grotto. Above it, a Latin chronogram, an inscription whose selected letters encode a date, is dated 1692 and identifies the place as the grotto where the pilgrim Saint Sebald rested.
The chapel ceiling carries frescoes by Garsten court painter Johann Georg Staindorfer and his son. The pendentive-dome scene shows an angel feeding the hungry Sebald and his companions Willibald and Wunibald. Sebald kneels awaiting the food, while his companions and servant Dionysios wait in a bower. The episode transforms the story of the prophet Elijah. Angels in the corners hold Sebald’s pilgrim’s hat, staff, and cloak, while a fourth angel carries a cross and lily associated with missionary work and purity of soul. The frescoes contrast these signs with worldly emblems of power, including a crown, sceptre, brocade, and the Order of the Golden Fleece. The chapel was last renovated in 1987 and 1988.
A burial chapel was built above the Sebald Chapel for a figure of the Entombed Christ made by a Weyer sculptor in 1702. Along the steep footpath from Gaflenz, an extensive Calvary was created during the first half of the eighteenth century. Its scenes from the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Rosary include stations for the Agony in the Garden, the Flagellation, and the Carrying of the Cross, all made in 1701. The Crown of Thorns chapel-shrine was built in 1738 and received its figures in 1739 from a Weyer sculptor, who also made the Crucifixion group on the southern churchyard wall in 1743.
