Today is the feast of Saint Cunibert, who served as bishop of Cologne in Germany for roughly four decades in the 7th century. Very little is known for certain of his life; he is said to have been educated at Metz in the court of the Frankish king Chlothar II (584-629), and to have been archdeacon of Trier before he was raised to the episcopacy in about 623. During his time as bishop of Cologne, he founded a church dedicated to Pope St Clement I, and was buried there when he died ca. 663; this church is now named for him, but still honors St Clement as a copatron. It was completely rebuilt in the 13th century, the last of the twelve great Romanesque basilicas which grace the city. We continue our ongoing series on these churches with the seventh post. (All images from this page of Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0 unless otherwise noted.)
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| Kudos to FAfromK for this particularly beautiful photograph of the Paschal moon of 2020 hanging over the basilica! |
The choir was completed in 1226, one year before construction of the city’s great cathedral began; the church was consecrated in 1247. Like all the major churches of Cologne, Sankt Kunibert was badly damaged during the Second World War; it was not completely restored until 1993, and much of the earlier interior decoration was lost in the process. Miraculously, a good part of the original stained-glass windows in the apse have managed to survived the church’s many vicissitudes, enough to merit a post of their own later on; these are some of the most important examples of that medium in all of the Rhineland.
The apse on the east side...
The central nave.
A closer view of the apse and main sanctuary.
Behind the main altar stands a triptych by the anonymous Master of the Legend of St George (1465-80), with the Transfiguration, Crucifixion and Resurrection. To either side of it are two 19th-century portable reliquary shrines. The one on the right contains the relics of St Cunibert, and the other, those of
two British priests, both named Ewald, who were martyred at a place now called Aplerbeck, roughly 50 miles to the northeast of Cologne, while serving as missionaries to the Saxons in Westphalia. Their bodies were brought to the original church of St Clement shortly after their death in 692 AD. Their feast was kept on October 3rd in several parts of Europe, and is still to this day on the Premonstratensian calendar, since St Norbert obtained some of their relics from the church in 1121, and brought them either to Prémontré itself, or Floreffe, the second house of his order to be founded.
The 13th century stained glass windows of the apse, with a Jesse tree in the middle, the legend of St Clement to the left, and of St Cunibert to the right.
The nave and counterfaçade seen from under the crossing.
A bronze-candlestick which survives from the 15th century is kept at the back of the church near the organ.
A 17th century statue of the original patron of the church, St Clement, towards the back of the church.
At the pillars of the crossing (where the rood screen would likely have been originally) are three colored stone statues of
the Angel Gabriel,
the Virgin Mary and God the Father at the Annunciation, donated by one of the canons of the church in 1439. (Both photos by Triptychon.)
A view of the right transept, with the statues of the Virgin and God the Father shown in the previous photo, and some more recent painting decoration to the left.
Directly underneath the crossing is a well-shaft that runs down quite far below the level of the church’s crypt, which is said to go back to the time of St Cunibert himself, and may even be much older. Traditionally, women would drink from this well if they were experiencing fertility problems, and a local saying has it that true natives of Cologne are baptized with its water. There is also a folk-tradition which says that at the bottom is the limbo where unbaptized children are cared for in a garden by the Mother of God Herself.
Reliquaries in the treasury.
One of the very few surviving pieces of original fresco work in the church. ca. 1260/70.The church’s baptismal font is of the same period.
An altarpiece of the Last Judgment from the mid-16th century.
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