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0:12
This is what the first Christian churches look like. In the Roman Empire after the crucifixion, Christianity was a persecuted religion. Its followers forced into hiding buried their dead in catacombs like this and they also worshiped here in the presence of the dead. In the 4th century, Pope Damasus I transformed this crypt into an underground church. The earliest Christians believed that their physical resurrection was coming soon, that they would be led to heaven
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by Christ, the light of the world, so they had little need of church buildings. But 1,000 years later, great stone cathedrals stretched up to the sky like fortresses of God, as here in Shpaya. Christianity had long become an integral part of the lives of people in the Middle Ages. And this era saw rulers competing to erect ever mightier symbols of their faith.
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In minds, these researchers studying the period stumbled on a piece of evidence and attracted lots of media attention. The Protestant Church of St. John had been due to get a modern heating system installed. But beneath the floor of the church, clues going back 1,000 years were revealed. Excavation director, archaeologist Guido Fakani, and representatives from the Protestant and Catholic churches watched, fascinated, as a stone sarcophagus weighing two tons was
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uncovered. Its location in the nave in front of the altar suggested that it was the final resting place of a highranking person, possibly the medieval bishop of mines Erinbald.
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For the first time in a thousand years, the 700 kg lid of the sarcophagus was raised. Might the person buried here really be bishop Ekenbalt, Archbishop of Mines until his death in the year 1021? If so, it would prove that this was the location of the city's first original cathedral. The question may seem unspectacular to non-speists, but for the researchers, the remains contain a wealth of information about the period known as [music] the Romanesque.
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The world of that time was the result of a remarkable historical development. Until the 4th century, Christians had been subject to bloody persecution. But then came a revolutionary turn of events, one that led Bishop Ucius of Cesaria to eulogize the Roman imperial power that had previously [music] threatened him. He wrote, "The emperor came among us Christians like a heavenly angel of God." He was referring to the Roman Emperor Constantine. Constantine had suddenly decriminalized
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Christian worship. And for Christians, he was an emissary from heaven and [music] the patron of the church.
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From then on, churches became palaces. The pantheon in Rome was a temple in which the ancient Romans had worshiped their gods. This domed structure became the model for the buildings erected to honor the Christian god and his earthly representative, the emperor. In the Eastern Roman Empire, the Byzantine Empire, [music] the Hajia Sophia in Constantinople became the largest church in Christendom. 10,000 laborers built the giant basilica adorned with the magnificence that the
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imperial court saw as its due. 5 centuries after Jesus died on the cross, the Christian church had become a highly political body. The imperial splendor of the southeastern reaches of the crumbling Roman Empire stands in sharp contrast to the more modest style in the northwest. There, from the start of the 9th century, [music] Charles I, King of the Franks, ruled as successor to the Roman emperors. Charles, later called Charles the Great or Charlemagne, built a church in Aken
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as a sign of his sovereignty and he also copied the ancient symbols of the former Roman Empire. The Palatine Chapel in Aken is a domed building like the Hajia Sophia in Bzantium.
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In the year 800, when the newly crowned emperor Charlemagne climbed the steps to his throne, it was an important advance for churches in the west.
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Charles permitted much plurality in his empire. He allowed the various ethnic groups in his dominion to have their own laws, languages, and customs. But across his large realm, he standardized the religious service, lurggical practice, the implementation of God's will because this can only be unique and unambiguous. People may lead their lives in many ways, but there is only one way to God. From then on, the task was to enforce the unity of faith in the Frankish
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Empire. And for that [music] Charles needed his bishops. The three former Roman settlements, Trier, Cologne and Mines became his most important arch dascese. But soon the bishops were vying to expand their own power and prestige. Trier in the west soon reached its limits. Cologne was able to extend its domain northwest up to the North Sea coast. Mines was the most successful of the three. Soon the influence of the bishop of Mines reached from Verdan in the north to Kur in the south and far into
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the eastern territories.
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The man who so energetically advanced Mines's influence around the turn of the millennium was buried here in St. Steven's Church, built on the highest hill in the city.
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The mortal remains of Archbishop Villigus have lain here to this day.
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Villigus sought to underscore the superiority of the dascese of mines. For that he developed an ambitious architectural plan at the end of the 10th century.
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The idea was to replace the old wooden cathedral with one made of stone, [music] much larger than the mighty abbey built by the monks of Raichenal Island in Lake Constance. It was to be a palatial church with a painted [music] woodpanled ceiling. The walls were to be painted too with scenes from the Bible.
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People of the time rarely saw pictures and Villigus was convinced that the church would make a lasting impression on the faithful and lead them to God.
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And he was also convinced that his cathedral would reinforce the importance of his dascese. He would be the man to crown kings. The son of a wheelright, Villigus had surpassed his humble origins to become regent of the empire and the pope's vigor. His personal inson, a wheel, found its way into the code of arms of minds. Villeigus' plan to acquire coronation rights seemed to be on track. His cathedral was to shine like the heavenly Jerusalem.
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[music]
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In the year 109, the moment had arrived for the largest building north of the Alps to be consecrated.
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But then disaster struck. On the day of its consecration, Villigus' church went up in flames.
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Villigus aspired to be the first among the bishops and archbishops of the Kingdom of the East Franks in Germany. And he reinforced that by building an imposing cathedral. A stone structure demonstrated the archbishop's rank and he wanted to highlight that. It was particularly tragic that the cathedral building immediately burned down just as it was being consecrated. That essentially forecast the burden it would place on future archbishops. After all, a dascese without a
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functioning cathedral was unthinkable.
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The sarcophagus that the archaeologists opened in St. John's Church in Mines is closed again. The body inside was left to rest in peace. The lid of the coffin vacuumed clean.
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Only microscopic samples were taken to glean definitive information about the dead man's identity.
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Among the material is this golden thread. It is part of an edging made of real gold that was lying close to the head of the corpse. Matias Heinsel is a conservator and a specialist in metal alloys. Using a reflected light microscope, he studies the structure and folding of the gold alloy and measures it with micrometer precision.
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A comparison with others suggests that the thread was part of a gold edging of a chosible, a bishop's lurggical vestment. The dead man dressed in the garment was undoubtedly a cleric, probably a bishop.
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But the sample taken from the area of his left upper arm is even more conclusive. It's a fragment of a larger piece of fabric to which are attached two small pieces of edging made of dark silk.
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Despite the decomposition of the material, even now, 1,000 years later, the microscope reveals that it is of animal origin.
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Here we clearly see the scaly structure like overlapping roof tiles of the epidermis layer. And in the middle we can still see a bit of the medullery canal canal. And these two properties indicate clearly that this is wool of wool that suggests a garment called a palium. This woolen band is seen in illustrations since the early middle ages. It's a kind of stole that even the pope wears and that today is still conferred on his archbishops. It is spun from the wool from two lambs
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that the pope blesses every year. For the archaeologists, it's another clue to the identity of the buried man.
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Once it was clear that the piece of fabric we had found was wool and that this wool also had a silk edging, it was obvious to us that it was a palium and that the man who wore it was an archbishop. The carbon 14 dating of the other fabric samples gave us the final certainty, allowing us to say that this is the archbishop who lived a thousand years ago and who pressed ahead with the reconstruction of mine's cathedral.
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That was the conclusive piece of evidence showing that today St. [music] John's church stands on the site of Mines's first cathedral and that Archbishop Erkinbalt, the successor of Villigus, was laid to rest here, presumably because the new cathedral was still under construction following the devastating fire. It seems [music] that out of respect for the old church, the new site had been chosen not exactly here, but right close by. The Archbishop's prestige project
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was a building intended to make mines a second Rome, [music] a central point of the empire where the monarchs would be crowned.
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The east towers were already standing [music] in Ekenbalt's lifetime, and he himself may have walked this way in the southeastern tower. However, it would not have been this high back then. The towers weren't raised to their current proud height of 55 m until much later.
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Despite all the reconstruction over the centuries, the interior of Mines's Cathedral still exudes the spirit of the Romanesque, the solemn darkness and the massive angular stonework that flaunts its solidity.
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It's hard to imagine how impressive these stone spaces must have seemed to the people of the Middle Ages who were used to small houses made of wood and mud. With his [music] prestige project, Villigus had kicked off a contest, a challenge not only to his great rival, the Archbishop of Cologne, but also to the powerful rulers who were to be reminded by such palatial churches that God and his representatives stood above them. The 14th century tomb of the influential
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Archbishop Peteron Aspelt shows how even three centuries later the clerics saw their relationship to crowned rulers. The greatest is he with the right to crown and anoint kings.
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[singing]
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Anointment is described in the book of Exodus in the Old Testament. [singing] The sacred anointing oil was a means of consecrating priests and prophets. In Western Europe, anointment gradually became customary at the coronation of monarchs. The oil represents the transfer and legitimation of political power for the ruler.
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He would thus be ruler by the grace of God as implemented by the church and yet in dependence upon it.
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[singing] Did this ritual not imply the subordination of the monarch? What would happen if the bishop or the pope withheld the anointment?
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Suppose the cleric [music] did not speak the words in reggum, I anoint thee king.
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Would that king or emperor still be accepted by his subjects? Amen.
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[music]
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The anointment with sacred oil made the king the anointed of God domini and that gave him a dominant position literally. But it also made him dependent on the one who had anointed him. That could be the bishop or in the case of the anointment of the emperor it was the pope in Rome. And this system functioned well until there was a dispute over rank between the worldly and ecclesiastical powers. The dispute over rank between church and state was already smoldering in the
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first century of the new millennium. 80 kilometers up the Rine, the city of Vorms was experiencing friction between the ruling Salon dynasty and the new bishop.
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Immediately after his investature, he had begun planning a cathedral on the highest point in the town. Vorms too was to boast an imposing building that like a castle [music] would highlight the supremacy of the church. The idea was also to rebuild the town in the shadow of the new cathedral. The new bishop Borhart was the right man for the job. Borhart was an associate of the dynamic archbishop of Mines Villigus. With similar determination, he set out to underscore the hegemony of
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the church. Borcart was a talented organizer [music] and as the town administrator favored by Villigus, he immediately set to work.
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[music] When Bersard arrived here in the year 1000, he intended to show that he was the lord of this town as its bishop. And he did everything he could, including activating his connections at the imperial court to get the salons to give up their property in Vo to give up their castle and leave vo in a symbolic act. He raised the salon's fortress and set up a monastery St. Paul's church to demonstrate I am the sole ruler here.
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To this day, the building retains its 11th century contours, although only a few foundation stones from Bushart's church are still standing. The unique specimens of Roman-esque sculpture, the rare animal depictions all date from the 12th century. That's because just 2 years after its hasty [music] construction and consecration in 1018, Bushart's representational palace collapsed.
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And by the time the new church with its late Romanesque colonade [music] was completed 160 years later, Borchart's ideal of the hegemony of the church had long been called into question. A new epoch had been born. It [music] was as if the architects had already sensed how the coming period, the Gothic, would bring a new wealth of forms and [music] color to life. The citizens had begun to view this space as their own. They adhered more to their kings than their bishops, and the
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dispelled salons had already started a competing project next door in Shpaya.
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St. Christopher, the carrier of Christ, the sight of whom was believed to prevent sudden death, now looked down on [music] changed conditions.
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The Salens had the bad luck to be driven out of their hereditary seat in Vongs. They quickly ordered the construction of a new diosis and church, the Cathedral of St. Mary inpire.
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The building that arose in Shp under the salons was truly an imperial cathedral. No other medieval cathedral on the Rine was such a symbol of imperial power as St. Mary's Cathedral in Shpaya.
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Looming over the river like a castle, [music] it was a high point of imperial architecture, a sign carved in red sandstone of a dynastic claim. And itself before the salons settled there, it had been referred to as Bachina or cow town. But with the cathedral, it underwent rapid urban expansion to become an imperial metropolis. Forced out of forms and deprived of much political influence, Duke Conrad was anointed king of Germany two decades later and ultimately Holy Roman Emperor.
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In 1024, the election of the first Salon king, Conrad II, became possible because the last Leuing ruler, Henry II, had died without an heir. But Conrad was a descendant of Otto the Great. And this matrinal descent was very important for the salon sense of their significance. They saw themselves in a long imperial tradition.
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Conrad was laid to rest in 1039 wearing a crown with the inscription swer of peace and benefactor of the city. His time as emperor coincides with the high point of medieval imperial rule. The conflicts between the emperors and the popes were only just beginning to simmer.
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And the cathedral, which he had built as a worthy burial site for himself and his successors, was only just started. Today, Hedvik Draik is the master builder of the world heritage site that Conrad had planned [music] as his imposing mausoleum. perhaps too imposing. When he died, not even [music] the outer walls were complete. [music] The tragedy was that Conrad was not able to experience his vision. He had the idea of building the largest church in the Western world, but because
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he died before it was completed, he was basically buried in an unfinished construction site.
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That was something new in the medieval contest of the cathedrals. An emperor who built a gigantic burial place for himself and his dynasty. One that could compete with the cathedrals of mines and vorms. It was a symbol in stone of the emperor's self-image, [music] one that may have grown in force due to the family's bitter experience in Borms. But the ambitious plan initially remained in the building phase. The cathedral's column crypt, the largest of its time, was completed by
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the time of Conrad's death. It testifies to his optimism about the future.
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You could describe it like this. He had this vision and the heart, the faith, the hope that he would be able to make it succeed and that this idea would be adopted by others, that he could kindle the idea in them. In 1061, the Salon's prestige building was consecrated [music] in all its romanesque glory.
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But just [music] 20 years later came a surprise. The new Salian emperor Henry IV ordered most of the new cathedral to be demolished.
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He wanted it to be even larger and more imposing and above all more sophisticated in its design.
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Everything changed under Henry IV. He tore down large parts of the cathedral and rebuilt it in another shape. We can see the biggest change here in the apps which changed from having a straight end to a semic-ircular one.
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The transcepts were taken down all the way to the stonework and changed in their depth by a restructuring of the facade
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and the spires were raised. This is the old early romanesque part of the tower and under Henry IV it got its rise.
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The crossing tower was also changed. Although what we see today is the Barack era dome. [music] The sacry is a later edition. The main change in the interior is the vaulting of the center nave.
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We believe that in the early Romanesque building the ceiling was flat. The central nave is 14 m wide with a height of 33 m up to the vated ceiling and those are very very big dimensions. What immediately catches the eye from outside is the change due to the insertion of a dwarf gallery which wasn't there originally. that changes the appearance of the outer wall that was typical of the Romanesque with windows recessed into the walls. [music] The revolutionary thing about this
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building is the way its character radiated outward. Henry IV really wanted to build the biggest church in the Western world and here he succeeded. I'd say
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in 1106 [music] the Romanesque marvel was completed. It's hard to imagine a more imposing building. A vaulted ceiling of this size had not been seen in the west since antiquity for 1,000 years. And in terms of size, Cathedral did not have to fear the competition. Certainly not from vorms and not even [music] from mines.
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And while Villigus' work in minds is dark and early romanesque in style, Henry's cathedral was more luminous, as if it were quietly anticipating [music] the Gothic period.
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The historical museum of the Palatinate [music] has a model of the head of Henry IV made by a forensic scientist based on the original find of his skull. And perhaps we can read the tragedy of Henry's life from his face. It was a life marked by strife. The pope excommunicated him. His sons rebelled against him. And the year his cathedral was consecrated was also the year of his death.
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Henry IV was an emperor who reigned and thought entirely in the tradition of his ancestors. He viewed his monarchy as god-given and inherited from his fathers and that made him very unprepared for an ethical conflict which broke out in the second half of the 11th century and which suddenly called the authority of the king into question. The king was viewed by the church reformers as a layman, no longer as one anointed by God. And that developed into a fundamental
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conflict around the question of which was to take precedence on earth, the power of the church or the secular power. This conflict erupted in the so-called investature controversy which was about much more than the investature of bishops but was about the question of who needed whom, who had preceded over whom and who had to obey whom. Henry IV didn't want to obey. That was his tragedy but also his pride as a king and he expressed this pride above all in the rebuilding of Cathedral.
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It was an outstanding architectural achievement leading to the largest church in western Christendom at the time.
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In fact, the cathedral fulfilled the function for which it had originally been intended to be a tomb for the salons. In the summer of 1900, historians excavated the floor of the church and opened the more than 800year-old coffins. It was an investigation intended to boost the historical [music] significance of the new German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II and to inform the public about the great deeds of his predecessors. Featuring large in this history was the first Salon Emperor Conrad who had
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started building the largest Roman-esque church. His remains and those of his family, including his wife, Gizela, described as a woman of beauty and intelligence, were now to be carefully studied. The historical investigation describes Henry IVth as a man of impeccable form. He was described as handsome, full of masculine strength [music] and almost feminine grace.
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A special find was the gold and sapphire ring on Henry's right ring [music] finger. It was a bishop's ring, perhaps the final defiant message from an emperor who believed he possessed the sole authority to invest bishops with ring and staff.
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Henry's burial crown was carefully restored at the historical museum of the Palatinate. It was the symbol of power of an emperor who was viewed by his supporters [music] as anointed by God, by his opponents as the embodiment of evil and who throughout his life insisted that his crown was conferred upon him directly by God without the intercession of the church. His cathedral dedicated to Mary the mother of God represented for him the divine affirmation of saline rule
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set in stone surpassing [music] any papal claims and it seems to have provided him with a foothold for his own personal faith.
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He must have been deeply shaken when the bishop of his cathedral made him turn over the imperial insignia to his disloyal son. Old chronicles show him surrounded by his bishops and his two sons in apparent harmony. But that account is an example of medieval propaganda. Both sons had rebelled against their father, and the supposed harmonious handover of power to his youngest son was in fact an act of great violence.
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This picture is a complete distortion of reality. In reality, against the divine order, the son rose up against the father. It was a generational conflict that was relatively rare in the history of the high middle ages but which forced all their contemporaries to take sides in this conflict between father and son between the old and the new order. The winner as in all such generational conflicts was the son and he actually tried to rethink and rescue the salient monarchy.
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The fact that he ended up exercising power just like his father did is the particular tragedy of Henry V and it marks the gradual end of the salient period in the German Empire.
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The times were changing in forms as well and it was here that the last Salon emperor played an early part in bringing about a new social order. Alongside the clergy, a new group was growing in society, one which had not been reckoned with, the middle class. [snorts] Its growing economic power soon was something neither the emperors nor the church could ignore. The Vorum City archive has a 12th century document, an example of charters that were being issued more and more
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frequently. This so-called freedom charter granted rights to common citizens visav the bishop and the aristocracy.
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The increasingly self-confident citizenry began to be seen by kings as useful allies to be fostered. The bishops may have still been the town lords, but they couldn't object if the emperor set his seal on it.
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The document was issued at favorensium that is for the benefits of the citizens of VS. The main content of the middle part relieves the tax burden. It expands the rights of the citizenry that was forming. It improves opportunities for economic development and it clarifies ambiguities about certain levies. And what's important is that all this granting of privileges takes place in consensus with all those who have power over these citizens. We can see that here in the formulation those who have
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potestas over the cves vases. In other words, it is taking care that no one can say afterwards, oh I didn't know and I object. Above all, and this is very important, it is the bishop as the lord of the town who appears here as a proponent along with other persons, clerical and worldly, who in some way have claims on the citizens.
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The Roman-esque cathedrals were becoming more and more churches of the people, and their facades were changing too, soon appearing in Gothic Raymond. And not only that, the facade of Vor's Cathedral has an amusing popular stone figure, one that originated in the middle class 20th century.
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Tourists who come here always ask first about the cathedral dachshund. Where is it? It's at the entrance portal. A master builder in the last century, Philip Rand, who carried out renovations on the cathedral in the 1920s left a memorial to his pet dachshund. There are a lot of different versions of the story, but at the core of it is that the dachshund somehow saved his life. We'll let that cathedral story from the early 20th century tell itself.
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[music]
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But master builder Brun's rescue by his dachshund [music] is not the only animal story that Vor's Cathedral has to Well, the other one [music] leads straight back to the middle ages showing an ape delousing the medieval master builder. The scene is a thousand years old and it is the only known depiction of a romanesque architect.
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There are plenty of stories of emperors and bishops and the battles of the powerful. But the romanesque cathedral builders are hidden in the shadows of history. They are the ones whose spirit and hands made all these structures that we admire today. Their rivalry to create churches that were ever lovelier, larger, godlier. How exciting it must have been.
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A contest over the wealth of forms, over the many possibilities of hewing ever new things out of sandstone.
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It was a contest of the imagination that never came to an end. That's human nature. What was yesterday shall be different tomorrow.
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The rigor of Romanesque building began to wear down. The idea of thick walls like fortresses of God jutting toward heaven, structures of imposing solidity and architectural defiance, was soon to give way to a new, more expansive style. The Gothic, devoted to a different ideal, light. Oh,
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heat. [music]
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