In 896, Hatto III, archbishop of Mainz and the abbot of Reichenau monastery traveled to Rome during the time of Pope Formosus, and came upon relics of Saint George and brought them to his monastery in Lake Constance (Bodensee), and the monastery in Oberzell became the resting place of important relics of Saint George including […]
One of the earliest examples of the Carolingian architecture, if not the earliest, is the gatehouse for a former Benedictine abbey in Lorsch (between Worms and Darmstadt, Hesse) of ca.764 AD. It has come down to this day remarkably intact, belying its building in the mid-eighth century. Although it has been called Torhalle, the structure […]
Cologne had been settled in the Roman times, and it was made the provincial capital of Germania inferior in the first century AD. It was the seat of a bishop going back to the earliest Christian era, and Charlemagne elevated the position to that of archbishop during his reign. Cologne is also a veritable cradle […]
In 326 A.D. Constantine the Great traveled to the West after many years of residency in Constantinople to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of his reign as the first Christian Roman emperor. He stayed in Rome and started construction of the great St. Peter’s Basilica. He also traveled across the Alps to Trier (Augusta Treverorum, Trèves […]
Strategically situated as it is at the confluence of the Rhine and Main rivers, Mainz had already been settled in the Roman times, and it formed the northernmost frontier of the empire. Along with Speyer and Worms, Mainz is one of the three Imperial Cathedrals (Kaiser Dom) on the Upper Rhine, constructed under the patronage […]
The Abbey on Burgberg of Quedlinburg (pronounced Kvedlinbuerg) was founded in 936 by Otto I, Holy Roman Emperor, at the request of his mother Queen Mathilda (later canonized as Saint Mathilda) in honor of Mathilda’s late husband and Otto’s father, King Heinrich I (Henry the Fowler) for unmarried daughters of nobility. Until its secularization in […]
Gernrode is a small community in the Harz Mountains in Sachsen-Anhalt, recently amalgamated as a part of the municipality of Quedlinburg. In 959, Margrave Gero, who was one of the important advisers to Emperor Otto I, and who had his family root in Gernrode, made a vast donation to found a convent in memory of […]
In 1024 Conrad II (ca. 990~1039), the first Holy Roman Emperor of the Salian dynasty commissioned the construction of a cathedral which was intended to be the symbol of the imperial power over the papacy on the foundation of a former basilica. The work began sometime between 1027 and 1030 with the crypt and the […]
Charlemagne was crowned Roman Emperor on Christmas day, 800 in the old St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. He had ruled over Franks and Lombards from present-day France, and had planned to relocate the seat of his power further to east, closer to where he had been engaged in ongoing battles with the Saxons for three […]
Situated on the Michaelshugel at the western edge of the historic core of Hildesheim, St. Michael’s Church (Michaelskirche) was built between 1010 and 1031 as the abbey church of a Benedictine monastery. Bishop Bernward, a tutor and adviser to Otto III, founded the monastery, and is believed to have had a strong influence on the […]
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