Since we have three Marian feasts this week, Immaculate Conception, Our Lady of Loreto (today), and Our Lady of Guadalupe (Thursday), it’s a good time to finish up part of our ongoing series on the Romanesque basilicas of Cologne, Germany, with the last thing from Sankta Maria im Kapitol, the city’s principal Marian church. (See parts one and two of this same church from last month.) This is a wooden door which dates to the time of the building’s first construction, ca. 1060, and which has survived the vicissitudes of history in an astonishingly good condition, even preserving some of the original paint. It was first mounted into the north apse as an external door, facing the city, but has been moved more than once since then, and now stands at the back of the south aisle, with a gate in front of it for preservation purposes.
This makes for less-than-ideal photography, so the images available on Wikimedia Commons do not give us a complete overview of the iconographic program. The doors measure roughly 15’ 11” by 8’ 1½”; the narrative panels are framed by elaborate wooden tracery which is fitted around them to create the illusion that the doors are carved from a single piece. The figures are in unusually high relief, some of them even sticking out of their frames, although this makes them far more likely to get broken over time, and there are a number of figures missing wholly or in part. The iconographic program includes all the major events of the life of Christ, on the left side, from the Annunciation to the Baptism of Christ, and on the right, from Palm Sunday to Pentecost. Four scenes of the Temptation of Christ originally ran across the bottom of both panels; these are the most badly damaged.
On the left: the Annunciation and Visitation in the top panel, the appearance of the Angels to the shepherds and the birth of Christ in the second row. On the right: the triumphal entry of Christ into Jerusalem at the top, and the healing of the blind Man and the raising of Lazarus in the second row. (These last two follow the order of the liturgical readings of the fourth week of Lent, on Wednesday and Friday respectively.)
On the left: at top, the Magi before Herod, and their adoration of the Christ Child; below that, the Angel appears to Joseph in a dream, and the flight into Egypt: third row, the messengers speak to Herod, and Herod makes inquiry of the scribes.
In the upper band in this image, Above Herod sending out his soldiers, and the Massacre of the Innocents, and in lower, the Baptism of Christ.
This was the clearest picture available of the lowest panels on both sides, which depicted the Temptation of Christ in four scenes, now very damaged.
As has happened with many medieval doors, the pieces of this one have been rearranged, so in the middle of this photograph, we see Jesus and the disciples in the garden during the Passion on the left, but the calling of Ss Peter and Andrew on the right, and below them, the Last Supper.
Beneath the Last Supper on the right are the Crucifixion (above) and the woman at the empty tomb (below), and on the left side, the Ascension in two parts, Christ ascending above, and the Apostles looking at Him from below.
Below them Pentecost, with what appears to be Christ symbolically represented in the midst of the Apostles.
