The Cathedrals and Churches of the Rhine Part 16

This beautiful chapel was built as a memorial to the child Werner, whose body was fabled to have been thrown by the Jews, his supposed murderers, into the Rhine at Oberwesel. Instead of floating down-stream with the current, it went up-stream as far as Bacharach, where it was recovered.

There is at Bacharach a twelfth-century church in the Byzantine style, which is now a Protestant temple. It is an incongruous affair in spite of the fact that the style is fairly pure of its kind, so far as the body of the church is concerned. Surmounting it is a needle-like spire which rises above the crenelated battlement of its tower in a most fantastic manner.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

The city walls have great ornamental and picturesque qualities, and were, in former days, defended by twelve towers of imposing strength.

The evolution of the name of Bacharach is decidedly non-Christian. It is frankly pagan, being descended from _Bacchi ara_,--the altar of Bacchus,--which was the name originally given to a rock in the midst of the river, which, in varying seasons, is sometimes covered by the flood, and again quite dry. When its surface appears to the light of day, the vineyard owner hails it as a sign of good vintage.

In proof of the quality of the wines of Bacharach, it is said that Pope Pius II. used every year to have a great tun of it brought to Rome for his special use, and that the Emperor Wenceslas granted their freedom to the citizens of Nuremberg in return for four tuns of the wine of Bacharach. To-day Bacharach is, with Cologne, the great wine centre of the Rhine valley.

Asmanhausen, a few miles up the river, is the central mart for the red wines of the Rhine. Near Asmanhausen is Ehrenfels, where the Archbishops of Mayence had a chateau in the thirteenth century. The chateau is still there, but it is nothing more than a magnificent ruin.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Bishop Hatto's Mouse Tower_]

Opposite Ehrenfels is Bingen, with its Mauseturm. The chief sentimental memory of Bingen is unquestionably the legend of Bishop Hatto and his "Mouse Tower on the Rhine."

The legend of Hatto, versified by Southey, has stamped the memory of the Mouse Tower and its a.s.sociations so indelibly upon the mind that it overshadows in interest all else in the vicinity.

"'Tis the safest place in Germany; The walls are high, and the sh.o.r.es are steep, And the stream is strong and the water deep."

How the rats came and--

"...whetted their teeth against the stones And how they picked the Bishop's bones"--

is an old story with which children have been regaled for generations past.

The great white "Mouse Tower" stands to-day on its tiny island in the middle of the waters of the Rhine, between Bingen and Ehrenfels, to perpetuate the story, while its ruined walls look down, as they always have, on the steady flow of the Rhine water, making its way from the place of its birth in the Canton of Grisons to the cold waters of the German ocean off the coast of Holland.

_Rudesheim_

Rudesheim, but a small town of less than three thousand inhabitants, is noted for its wines and its ruins. Its church, though a fifteenth-century edifice of more than ordinary beauty,--if we except its nondescript spire,--comes decidedly last in the city's list of attractions.

The remains of the four chateaux in the neighbourhood are the chief object of the casual tourist.

The town is the centre of a vineyard, the grapes being grown in great profusion near it. The favourable nature of the locality for grape-growing was discovered, it is said, by Charlemagne, who, remarking the rapid disappearance of the snow on the slopes about Rudesheim, declared his belief that fine wine might be grown there. Sending to France for some plants, they were placed in the earth, and have ever since yielded a grape worthy of their parentage, a grape still called Orleans.

From this town the tourist may make a pleasant excursion to the Niederwald,--having first given his attention to the history of Rudesheim, once the seat of an imperial court held in the Nieder Burg,--and scan its four ancient castles. Of these, one belonged for a time to Prince Metternich, who, however, sold it to Count Ingelheim, its present possessor; another is picturesquely posted at the upper part of the town, and still retains some curious relics of the Bromser family, its old possessors. A tradition still exists, telling how Hans Bromser, being taken captive in Jerusalem, made a vow to Heaven that if released he would dedicate his only daughter to the service of the Church.

Gaining his liberty soon afterward, he returned to the Rhine to find the child he had left when he started for the Crusades grown to womanhood; and he learned also that, secure of her father's sanction, she had betrothed herself to a youthful knight. Love and duty well-nigh rent the maiden's heart in twain, till love conquered, and she begged her stern parent to relent. This he refused to do, and threatened her with a father's curse should she marry.

Despairing, she threw herself into the Rhine, and her body floated down-stream as far as Bishop Hatto's Mouse Tower, at Bingen. This gave rise to another legend, that when the surface of the waters is troubled it is caused by the uneasy spirit of Bromser's daughter, wrestling with the dreadful fate to which she was driven.

[Ill.u.s.tration]

XVIII

LIMBURG

The cathedral of Limburg-on-Lahn, not farther from the juncture of the Lahn and Rhine than is Frankfort-on-the-Main, may well be considered a Rhine cathedral.

The Lahn is by no means so powerful a stream as is the Main or the Neckar; nor is it either picturesque, or even important as a waterway.

It has this one virtue, however: it forms a setting to Limburg's many-spired cathedral that is truly grand.

Limburg played a great part in the middle ages, and its origin goes far back into antiquity. Under Drusus a _castellum_ was erected here, which was destroyed by the Franks and the Alemanni.

The counts of the lower Lahn province were among the most powerful in all Germany. They gave their city the name of Roemercastel, which name, to some extent, may be said to live up to to-day. Later the Franks called it Lintburc, from the little river Linther, which flows into the Lahn at this point.

The cathedral of Limburg is the most imposing and h.o.m.ogeneous of all the _romano-ogival_ edifices of Germany.

Consecrated to St. George, this church dates from the latter years of the twelfth century and the early part of the thirteenth. It was erected by Count Henry of Na.s.sau, and replaced two more ancient edifices on the same site.

Without a doubt it is a mediaeval monument which stands supreme in its cla.s.s, though its grandeur comes not so much from mere magnitude as it does from the general disposition of its plan, and the wonderful blending of the transition elements which, after all is said and done, in Germany, are not elsewhere very p.r.o.nounced.

The seven spires and towers of this cathedral form a wonderful grouping and make a sky-line more broken than that of any other great church in all Europe.

There is a certain symmetry about this outline, but it is not pyramidal, after the manner of the cathedral at Bonn. In short, it is reminiscent only of itself.

[Ill.u.s.tration: LIMBURG CATHEDRAL]

On the west are a pair of ma.s.sive towers with conical caps, which give a facade at once remarkable and distinguished.

Flanking the north transept are two smaller towers, and the same arrangement is found just opposite on the south.

Above rises the great central octagon, surmounted in turn by a dwindling octagonal spire, not beautiful in itself with its steeply inclined slate or lead roofing, but which, under all atmospheric conditions, lends a harmony to and is a key-note of the whole structure which is wonderfully effective.

The interior plan is conventional and simple enough, consisting of the usual three naves, with an easterly apse, surrounded by an ambulatory and flanking chapel.

Within, as well as from the outside, the effect is one of an ampleness which is not borne out by the actual dimensions, which fact, of course, shows most able design and execution.

The elevation of the nave, choir, and transepts is divided into four ranges of openings, such as are seen at Soissons in the Isle of France, and, in a less complete form, in Notre Dame at Paris.

This has always been a daring procedure, but in this case it has been carried out with success, and gives the desired effect,--that of ampleness and height.

In the clerestory windows are found the rounded arches which mark the link which binds the Gothic arches elsewhere in the fabric with the earlier Romanesque style.

The vaulting is of the Gothic order throughout, with gracefully proportioned shafts and full-flowered capitals.

All this preserves the simple elements of early Gothic in so impressive a way that the observer will quite overlook, or at least make allowance for, the row of round-headed windows aloft.

The triforium gallery is a charming feature, and has seldom been found so highly developed outside of an early Gothic church. In general the feature is French, and this is perhaps the only example outside France which is so reminiscent of that variety frequently to be met with in the cathedrals of the Isle of France.

The triforium is pierced through to the nave by a series of double narrow arches enclosed within a larger broad-framed arch, while in the transepts and choir the desired effect is accomplished by tripled arches with the same general scheme of arrangement.