We finally conclude this series on the twelve Romanesque basilicas of Cologne, Germany, with the church of St Pantaleon, which I have saved for last in order to end on an artistic high note, namely, its very beautiful and well-preserved rood screen. (All images from Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 unless otherwise noted.)
A church is mentioned on the site in a document dated to the year 866, but the current building was founded as a Benedictine monastery by St Bruno, archbishop of Cologne, the younger brother of the Holy Roman Emperor Otto the Great, in 955; the central nave dates to this period.
This is the oldest church anywhere in the west of Europe dedicated to Pantaleon, a Christian doctor martyred in the first years of the fourth century, during the persecution of Diocletian, at Nicomedia, a town about 65 miles to the east of Constantinople. St Bruno’s successor-but-one as archbishop, Gero, obtained his relics while on embassy to Byzantium in 971, during which he negotiated the marriage of Emperor Otto II with Theophanu, a niece of the Eastern Roman emperor John I Tzimiskes (969-76). When her husband died, Theophanu became regent of her son Otto III. She often visited Cologne, and the church’s westwork was built ca. 980 at her behest; in accordance with her own request, she was buried here when she died in 991. (Her modern sarcophagus is in the narthex of the westwork.)
Around 1160, the single-nave Ottonian church was expanded into its current form as a three-nave basilica. The late Gothic rood screen, which is by far the church’s most interesting feature today, was built at the beginning of the 16th century.
The high altar behind the rood screen.
The preaching pulpit, made in 1747
The monastery was dissolved during the French occupation of Cologne in 1794, and the building subsequently used as a stable. In 1815, when the area was taken by the Prussians, it became a protestant chapel for their garrison, and remained so until after World War I, when the Rhineland was demilitarized. The protestant community then moved into an abandoned Carthusian monastery, and St Pantaleon was restored to Catholic worship as a parish.
Like all the churches of Cologne, it was badly damaged during the many bombardments which the city underwent during World War II. However, the high altar and the rood screen were both spared, and the postwar restoration happily left them both in place, along with a beautiful preaching pulpit. A new flat ceiling was installed, the work of a local glass painter named Dieter Hartmann. The church is now under the pastoral care of the Opus Dei.
The 12th century reliquary shrine of a local Saint called Maurinus, of whom very little is known; he is believed to have been killed during the Viking invasions of the Rhineland in the early 880s, and is venerated as a martyr.
The counter-façade of the westwork seen from the nave.
The north side.
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