ABBEY OF ST GALLEN LIBRARY
Baroque Cathedral and Library Hall of Switzerland
The monastery
of St. Gallen was the heart of the northeast Switzerland city in the
Steinach valley near Lake Constance. In the year 612, an
Irish monk name Gallus, while on a preaching pilgrimage through Europe
stumbled on a stone and dropped to a knee at the edge of the Steinach
River. He spotted a hungry bear eyeing him. He gave the bear some of
his meager bread, perhaps a bribe so as not to eat him, but purportedly
an offering to help him build a shelter. After Gallus' death, the spot
grew in importance as a place of worship and a Benedictine monastery
was founded in 747 by St Otmar and named for Gallus. The Abbey of St
Gallen and its monastery grew in stature and wealth, becoming a religious
principality, ruled by Prince-Bishops. The Abbey Cathedral at St Gallen
survived both the reformation and French Revolution, but under the
influence of Napoleon in 1805, when the Canton of St Gallen was established,
both
the monastery and its political rule were dissolved. Several of the
buildings of the former monastery now house municipal offices, but
the Cathedral
and its great Library remain, so impressive as to be named a UNESCO
World Heritage site.
St. Gallen Cathedral
Many
great churches in Switzerland are notoriously plain and simple in decoration,
an effect of the severe Protestant reformation in the
country, but the Cathedral at St Gallen, built between 1755 and 1766,
one of the last of its era, shines as a fascinating example of late Baroque with the reconstruction design by Austrian architect Johann Michael Beer (see Baroque Chapel Bregenz).
The high nave is opulently painted and adorned with elaborate stucco
relief created by artists from southern Germany (see Baroque
Churches of Munich). The rich painting of the dome portrays Paradise and the eight
Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Ten
relief works on the back walls depict scenes from the life of St Benedict.
The statues of the Gallic
Bishop Desiderius and the Roman Soldier Mauritius represent relics Gallus
is said to have brought to the site. The tomb of St Gallus, containing
a piece of his skull, is in the east crypt, while the west crypt houses
the tombs of St Otmar and three Bishops of St Gallen. Look for the seated
figure of St Gallus, always seen holding his bear, and along the edge
of the ornate plasterwork of the dome painting, check out the feet which
protrude into space intended to give the work a 3 dimensional impression.
St Gallen Abbey Library
Even
more ornate in style and of perhaps more historical importance is the
Abbey Library,
one of the oldest and most stunningly beautiful
in the world. Located in the west wing of the former monastery, the library
was built between 1758 and 1767 at the direction of the Prince Abbot
Coelestin von Staudach to house the already priceless collection of illuminated
manuscripts from the early and later middle ages. In addition to the
Carolingian, Irish and Ottonian
religious manuscripts are documents from the Renaissance and later from
the history of arts, music, literature
and medicine. Containing 150,000 volumes the library at St Gallen Abbey
(Stiftsbibliothek) still serves as a scientific and religious research
center, but for tourists the main attraction of the library is its elaborate,
richly molded main room, one of the most beautiful rococo interiors in
Switzerland and perhaps the world.
The ceiling frescos depict the first
four Holy Roman Ecumenical Councils of Nicea, Constantinople. Ephesus
and Chalcedon. Energetically
painted figures in the side lunettes portray the early church fathers,
and portraits of the two abbots responsible
for constructing the library hover on the walls, amidst twenty cherubs
representing art and knowledge.
An inscription in Greek over the entrance
reads “Medicine of the Soul”. Aside from the jaw-dropping
ornateness of the Baroque design, a couple of curious attractions in
the library are an Egyptian mummy, a priest’s daughter from the
7th Century
B.C., in her wooden sarcophagus, donated to the library in the 1800s
and a giant astronomical globe, reconstructed from an earlier
one (at a cost of over a million francs). Manuscripts on display change
from time to time, among them an original of the legends of the Nibelungen
(see Worms Cathedral) from which Richard Wagner imagined his operas and
J.R.R. Tolkien his ring fantasies. Check out the wooden panels where
the books
on the
shelves
are listed in a unique organizational file predating the Dewey Decimal
system by a few hundred years.
Lapidarium
Underneath the library is a basement space called the Lapidarium, with
a collection of stone columns from the Roman period of the early days
of the monastery in the Carolingian period from 830 A.D. The unique capitals
are striking examples of the style and among them is a depiction of St
Wiborada, the first woman canonized by the Catholic Church, who saved
the monks and the treasures of the monastery from marauding Hungarians
in 926 by foreseeing the invasion in a vision. She hid in a cell of the
church of St Magnus convent until the raiders broke in and split her
skull with a halberd, which she is always depicted with, representing
the means of her martyrdom. You can still visit her cell with a barred
window she could peer out of in that church across town.
Visiting St Gallen Abbey
The St Gallen Abbey Library is open 10-5pm - Monday to Saturday and 10-4pm on Sundays with special opening times on public holidays. Admission to the library is 10 Swiss Francs for adults and 7 francs for kids and students and includes the Lapidarium. The St Gallen Cathedral is free to enter and open from 8am to 6pm everyday except during church services and when confessions are being heard. © Bargain Travel Europe
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St
Gallen Library
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SEE ALSO:
GLACIER
GARDEN OF LUCERNE
GROSSMUNSTER
CATHEDRAL
THURBO RAIL LAKE CONSTANCE
ABBEY
OF ST MAURICE TREASURES & MARTYRS
