St. Christophorus-Kirche

About

St. Christopher Church is the Protestant-Lutheran parish church located in the village of Reinhausen in the district of Göttingen, Lower Saxony. The church stands on the sandstone rock of the Kirchberg above the village center. It was originally built as a castle chapel by the Counts of Reinhausen in the 10th century and later served as a church for the collegiate monastery and the Benedictine monastery of Reinhausen that emerged from it in the 12th century. The church in Reinhausen, commonly known as the Reinhausen monastery church, has served as the parish church of the village of Reinhausen for many years. Following the introduction of the Reformation in 1542, the monastery was gradually dissolved, and the church was then solely used as a parish church, with brief interruptions. Today, it belongs to the Göttingen church district in the Hildesheim-Göttingen branch of the Hanoverian regional church.

Despite significant structural changes in the Gothic and Baroque styles, the overall appearance of the Romanesque monastery church remains prominent. This is especially evident in the west facade with its double tower. The building type underwent several construction phases, transforming...

The monastery church is situated at an altitude of approximately 210 meters above sea level on the Kirchberg. It is located about 30 meters north of a cliff edge that drops steeply down to the valley of the Wendebach stream and the village center of Reinhausen, which is situated in the valley to the southeast of the church. The church's location on a spur of the Knüll, which extends to the west and rises steeply above the village, makes it highly exposed. In contrast to the village center, the location is visible from the adjacent hills to the west and even from the western slope of the Leinetal valley.

Access to the church from the village was only possible on foot via three steps carved into the rock until the early 19th century. The road leading from the village to the church hill was built during this time. The steps are now very worn out. Carts could only access the church from the north-east via State ownership.

The church is oriented at an angle of approximately 23 degrees to the north, but its truthfulness is not relevant to this description. The west wing of the church faces west-southwest and borders a paved parking lot where the current access road ends. The terrain slopes significantly to this side. To the west of the church, there is a former school and the village kindergarten located on a spur of the Kirchberg. The churchyard is enclosed, with the south and east sides bordering it, while the north side is not accessible to the public. It is adjacent to the former monastery grounds, which now house the Reinhausen forestry office in the former office building, separated from the churchyard by a sandstone wall. Unfortunately, the intermediate building that connected the west front of the church with the Amtshaus was destroyed by fire in 1955, leaving only the outer walls of the two massive basement levels. The Reinhausen estate is located to the northeast of the cemetery.

The Reinhausen Kirchberg's oldest archaeological evidence of human activity is a fragment of a stone axe from the Neolithic period. However, continuous settlement was not evident until the early Middle Ages. Beginning in the 9th century, the Counts of Reinhausen had a castle complex on the spur of the mountain above the village of Kirchberg, which was naturally protected by rockfalls towards the valley. Numerous archaeological discoveries from the vicinity of the monastery church have been dated to the 9th and 10th centuries. During the 10th and 11th centuries, the Counts of Reinhausen held the office of Count of Leinegau and were therefore of supra-regional importance. Their ancestral castle in Reinhausen was accordingly sizable. The residential area with the church in the west covered approximately 1.5 hectares, while the adjoining farmyard to the northeast covered an additional hectare. The current location of the church, churchyard, and adjoining areas were included. Since 1980, smaller areas of the castle grounds have undergone archaeological investigation through several individual excavations and surveys. A double-shell fortification wall, up to 3.30 meters thick, was discovered along a nine-meter stretch at the edge of the spur. The wall was demolished in the 12th century, as evidenced by small finds from the High Middle Ages in the building remains and demolition debris. Towards the gently rising slope, the fortification comprised two section ditches and a three-meter-thick mortared wall. Reconstructing the interior of the castle is challenging due to the site being built over by the monastery in the High Middle Ages. Excavations inside the monastery church revealed remains of the castle church of the Counts of Reinhausen. However, the exact structural design of the castle church remains unknown.

At the end of the 11th century, the Counts Konrad, Heinrich, and Hermann von Reinhausen and their sister Mathilde converted their ancestral castle into a monastery. However, the dating of the conversion to a monastery to the year 1079 in older literature is contradicted by more recent research. Instead, based on possible dates of death of one of the founders, Count Konrad von Reinhausen, the years 1089 or 1086 are assumed as the latest date of foundation. According to the historical building research by Ulfrid Müller in the years 1963-1967, it is considered certain that the building substance of the private church was used for its church after the castle was converted into a collegiate church and later into a monastery. This is indicated, among other things, by the design of the southern choir wall. Thus, the layout of the castle church in the Ottonian period can be seen as the basic concept of the later collegiate church. The southern wall of the choir, with a still recognizable added arched window, its northern wall, the choir arch with imposts emphasizing the lower base of the arch, and the lower parts of the pillars in the nave are considered to be the remains of the castle church. Ulfrid Müller assumed that the original church had a west portal, on the site of which the present tower front was later built. Compared to other castle chapels in the region, the church is unusually large, reflecting the regional supremacy of the Counts of Reinhausen in the 10th and 11th centuries.

The monastery church of Reinhausen thus goes back to a proprietary church in the noble castle of the Counts of Reinhausen, which has been archaeologically documented at this location since the 10th century. Accordingly, the construction history of the church can be dated back to the 10th century. Despite the lack of written evidence from the early period, it is almost certain that the church has a history of over a thousand years. Müller's research initially suggested that the castle church was built in the 11th century.

Like the pre-monastic history, the early history of Reinhausen Monastery is mainly known from a report written by Reinhausen's first monk, Reinhard, between 1152 and 1156. The transformation from a monastery to a convent was probably a process that took several decades. The consecration of the monastery church is dated between 1107 and 1115 and was performed by Bishop Reinhard of Halberstadt. Reinhausen belonged to the archbishopric of Mainz, so the consecration of the church was the responsibility of the archbishop of Mainz. Since the archbishopric of Mainz was vacant after the death of Bishop Ruthard and before the consecration of Adalbert, an external, neighboring bishop was commissioned to perform the consecration. Count Hermann of Winzenburg, the initiator of the foundation of the monastery, had hoped for a generous donation from Bishop Reinhard, but this was not granted. In the Lower Saxony Monastery Book, the probable date of the consecration is assumed to be December 3, 1111. The information about the consecration of the monastery most likely refers to the consecration of the monastery church, since the appointment of an abbot took place in 1116 at the earliest.

The appearance of the monastery church can be roughly reconstructed for the first half of the 12th century. Ulfrid Müller and Klaus Grote, based on the results of their architectural research, assume that this form of the castle and collegiate church can also be assumed for the original building of the monastery church, i.e. that major alterations took place only after the monastery had already existed for some time. Although the church was unusually large for a castle chapel, it was and is very small compared to other Romanesque monastery churches. There is almost no evidence of architectural ornamentation in the building fabric from the oldest monastic period, and the church was not vaulted - unlike the church of Lippoldsberg Monastery, which was an architectural pioneer in the region and was built in the mid-12th century. This suggests that the church was built much earlier. Parts of this first monastery church have been preserved in the north and south walls of the chancel, possibly in the chancel arch including the crossbeams, in the eastern pair of pillars, and in the lower half of the two western pillars that stand in the central nave of the present church. According to reconstructions, the church was a pillar basilica with a cruciform floor plan. It had a transept that extended north and south beyond today's outer walls and a central nave that was raised above the aisles and lit by clerestories above the aisles. The transept, with its strong architectural crossing, could have been built in the same way as the front part of the nave, which corresponds to it today, but the floor level was raised by three steps compared to the nave so that the floor level of the nave was correspondingly lower. The aisles were separated from the transept by a wall - probably with an opening - the foundations of which were found on the south side of the church. According to the foundation finds, the eastern pillars of the central nave originally had a cruciform floor plan. There is no information about the design of the western front of the first monastery church, such as a tower or a westwork ; the present Romanesque western building is more recent. However, according to the report of the first Abbot Reinhard on the history of the Reinhausen monastery, the monastery was moved from the south side to the north side and extended due to lack of space, contrary to the plan of the monastery. This information may refer to the monastery church, as there is only about 10 meters of space south of the church to the cliff. During its time as a monastery church, several alterations were made, chapels were built and added, and altars were donated.

- Construction phase reconstruction according to Ulfrid Müller

The Romanesque west façade with its two towers, which is the most distinctive feature of the exterior, was built around 1170. The mid-12th-century alterations were probably influenced by Abbess Eilika von Ringelheim, who came from the family of the Counts of Reinhausen and spent several months a year at her former ancestral seat in Reinhausen Abbey. The steep slope of the terrain did not allow for a portal in the west façade, so the entrance for visitors not coming from the monastery was moved to its present location in an intermediate bay on the south side to the east of the tower. The entrance from the monastery area was on the opposite side of the north wall. Opinions differ as to whether a gallery was already built into the central building when the west transept was constructed: Ulfrid Müller suggests that a gallery was almost certainly present since it could have served as a gallery for the Abbess and Countess Eilika, allowing her to attend services in the monks' church in the manner of a nun's gallery. Furthermore, there is a connection between the later wall paintings and the northern access to the gallery from the upper floor of the monastery building. Tobias Ulbrich does not necessarily see these references and disputes the compelling dating of a gallery system to the time before 1400. In addition to the clerestory windows, the nave was lit by two large arched windows in the west transept, which were later altered and reconstructed in 1893.

The clear protrusion of the side aisle foundation on the inside leads to the assumption that the side aisles were widened slightly in the second half of the 12th century. Based on the walled-up arched windows and the interior paintings, it can be determined that they were three-quarters as high as they are today. The new walls of the side aisles were constructed with greater thickness. Their thickness, similar to that of the west transept, is approximately 1.30 meters, while the older walls are only approximately 90 centimeters thick. Ulfrid Müller also postulates that the central nave was significantly elevated during this construction phase, yet this theory is contested by others. The separated crossing remained unaltered during the late Romanesque construction phase.

A renewed economic upswing at the monastery between 1245 and 1309 brought with it new construction work on the monastery church. In a Mainz indulgence document of 1290, Archbishop Gerhard II of Mainz granted a forty-day indulgence to anyone who contributed to the construction of the Reinhausen church. At the end of the 13th century, the northern and southern bays of the west transept and the two adjoining intermediate bays were given a simple groined vault, the belt arches of the lower tower floors were redesigned as pointed arches, as were the arches on the east side of the first upper floor in the tower. The main entrance on the south side lost the tympanum that had originally filled the vaulted field of the round-arched portal and received a pointed arch doorway. On the south side, west of the transept, a second portal, now closed, was broken in.

During the same construction period, a chapel of Saint Maurice with three Gothic lancet windows was built above the entrance on the south side of the church. The chapel of St. Maurice extended over two bays and the wall of the side aisle was raised for the chapel at this point.Access was through the gallery. Due to the size of the chapel room, the east wall was not on the axis of the existing pillar, but one meter east of it. The wall on the first floor was supported by a wall directly below it, creating a separate entrance hall under the chapel. The altar of St. Maurice's Chapel had its brick foundation, visible as a column in the northeastern corner of the vaulted entrance hall. The altar, and thus the chapel, was first documented in 1415 on the occasion of the establishment of a mass for the souls. According to the Göttingen chronicler Franciscus Lubecus, another chapel was built by Abbot Gunter von Roringen before he died in 1300 as a burial place for the abbots of Reinhausen monastery. This dating is questionable because Gunter was still abbot of the monastery in 1382 and 1385.

During the renovation works in 1965, the beginnings of a rib vault were found to the north of the choir, in the area of the sacristy built there. It belonged to a Gothic side chapel with a 3/8 end. There was a narrow corridor between the northern arm of the transept and the chapel, which provided direct access to the choir from the monastery building. The remains of the chapel are related to the chapel to the north of the choir, which was mentioned in a document in 1394 and served as the burial place of the Lords of Uslar. It is also called St. John's Chapel because tradition mentions it as the site of an altar dedicated to St. John the Evangelist: A new altar in the ambulatory is mentioned in writing in 1360, a burial place for the knight Ernst of Uslar in front of the altar of St. John the Evangelist in 1378, and a donation by the four sons of Ernst of Uslar for the altar of St. John in the new chapel in the ambulatory in 1399. The Uslar burial chapel is still listed in the inventory of 1707. Older literature dates the chapel to 1322. The dating is based on two damaged keystones of a ribbed vault with inscriptions that were found in the area in the 19th century and attributed to this chapel. They are now kept in the Maurice Chapel. The recent deciphering of the inscriptions " •an(n)o•1•5•22•d(omi)n(u)s•m[at]hias• […] " and " frater•reÿnerus•prior• ", which differs from the earlier reading, argues against this early dating of the keystones. The attribution of these keystones to the burial chapel of the Lords of Uslar is therefore no longer probable, and the dating of this chapel to 1322 is no longer valid.

According to recent findings, the passage from the northern bay of the church to the southwestern corner of the adjacent cloister was walled up from the inside already in the Middle Ages. On the outside, a niche was created, the lower part of which was later also walled up. Four Gothic tracery tiles were found under a layer of humus during drainage works in 1993. Neither in the adjacent area of the cloister nor in the area of the door threshold under the medieval wall was there any continuation of the tiling or any evidence of it. Hildegard Krösche thinks that these tiles belong to the chapel north of the choir.

From the beginning of the 14th century until the dissolution of the monastery in 1574, construction work was mainly devoted to the decoration of the church and its chapels. Between 1387 and 1442, the interior walls were decorated with murals, at least in the entrance hall, on the side walls of the gallery, and in the southern aisle. After the Reinhausen monastery joined the Bursfelde Congregation in 1446, more late Gothic furnishings were donated. The last written donation specifically for the construction of the church and monastery was made by the Lords of Uslar in 1451. In 1498 and 1507 a late Gothic carved altar was donated, large parts of which are still preserved today. According to a recent reading of the inscriptions on the two keystones in the Maurice Chapel, it is likely that a major expansion or rebuilding of the monastery took place in 1522, and that a vault was added to one of the buildings. This could also be indicated by the inscription on a stone, now lost, which was set into the cemetery wall as a spolia in the 19th century: "M.ccccc.xxii. / S.georivs ora pro nobis." ("1522 / St. George (?), pray for us.")

Even before the Reformation, the monastery was already in a downward economic and personnel trend, which was accelerated by the introduction of the Reformation in 1542 and the establishment of a manor house on the monastery grounds. 20 years after the introduction of the Lutheran monastic order, the inventory of the monastery and the church was listed because the monastery was to be handed over to Ludolf Fischer, who was appointed bailiff. The last monk of the old monastery died in Reinhausen in 1564.

The further reconstruction of the church building after the dissolution of the monastery can be seen only in the first pictorial representation on an engraving by Matthäus Merian, published in 1654 in the Topographia Germaniae. At that time, the basilica form was no longer recognizable from the outside. The transept was combined with the transept, choir and nave under a gabled roof. The towers were crowned with high pointed spires and there was also a ridge turret on the choir. This is confirmed by an inventory of the monastery from 1707, which mentions a bell above the choir.