Monastery of St. Michael (Heidelberg)

The Michael monastery on the Holy Mountain Heidelberg was founded as a branch monastery of Lorsch Abbey in the 9th century on the site of an ancient place of worship. From discontinued in the 16th century foundation system remains are preserved.

History

Vorläuferbauten existed during the era of the Celts. The area forms the highest point within a double ring wall on the Holy Mountain. Undetectable is a Roman place of worship under the basilica ruin that is assigned to the " Mercurius Cimbrianus " according to a found consecration stone. The floor plan of a Roman temple with an apse in the north is marked with stone slabs in the floor of the nave.

As early as the 7th century, the place of worship was used christian, occupied by burials from the Merovingian time. Abbot of Lorsch Thiotroch Benedictine monastery, the church was over and are built on it. Although a monastery is in the Lorsch Codex for the year 870 mentions, but that is archaeologically undetectable and may provide a back-projection of the later monastic foundation dar.

It was only in 1023 was the monastery of St Michael and the Michael Basilica of Abbot Reginbald, who later became Bishop of Speyer, rebuilt using the Carolingian components. In 1070 Abbot Friedrich von Hirsau was buried in the monastery ( grave stone in the crypt of the basilica). Thus, the monastery became a place of pilgrimage (not canonized ).

In 1094 was founded by St. Michael on the southern tip Stephan the monastery. Legacies of fallen participants in the First Crusade (1096-1099) funded this building.

With the acquisition of the Lorsch monastery by the archbishop of Mainz in 1226 ended the Benedictines time. After a brief interlude of the Cistercians settled Premonstratensian from the Monastery of All Saints in the Black Forest in the two monasteries.

Archeology are burn marks, dates from the time of the confrontation with the Electoral Palatinate Electoral Mainz, detectable with subsequent reconstruction. 1503 of the collapse of the bell tower of the Basilica Michael is witnessed to have found in the three religious in the bedroom death. The task of the monastery must have happened in the aftermath, since 1537 the monastery was considered abandoned.

In the context of secularization, the ruins of Heidelberg University has been transferred, the Senate decided in 1589 to demolish the monasteries and the stones to sell to counteract the Einsiedlung of "rabble " in the ruins. How Merian's engraving shows from 1645, this decision was probably implemented only to a limited extent. The current state of ruin is due to the umwohnenden farmers particularly from glove home who used the ruins as a quarry.