The church I attend in Vienna is fairly small, but we have a great variety of people who go there, and because of the small size, we are able to really enjoy some of the talents of the members. One of these unique activities are tours led by one of our members who is from Vienna, generally to other historical churches or other buildings of significance around the city. He does amazing preparation for these tours and offers them once every 6 weeks or so as his schedule allows. Because of my own travel and school schedule last semester, I never made it on one of the tours, but last Sunday I could spare a few hours and I'm so glad I did!
This tour was to Ruprechtskirche (St. Rupert's Church) which I had actually visited last spring as part of the Lange Nacht der Kirchen. This church is generally recognized as the oldest in Vienna (about 740 AD, although portions have been added on and rebuilt several times since then), but there is some discussion based on some other foundation markings and graves at both Peterskirche and Stephansdom as to whether those may predate Ruprechtskirche, but regardless...it's really old.
Our group listening intently to our knowledgeable guide.
Statue of St. Rupert from 1837
The stain glass windows on the inside of the church are mostly new (early 1990s)
However these three windows are older than the ones on the side, and the middle one is recognized as the oldest stain glass window in Vienna, dating to about 1300.
Wooden sculpture of St. Rupert from about 1370
Baptismal font from about 1500. You can also see part of our guide's handiwork...as an activity to allow us to explore the space, he had made index cards with pictures of items on one side and dates on the other and asked us to go lay them out around the church next to the corresponding item. Then as we traveled as a group around to the different sites, we had our own homemade plaques of information there.
"Stars and eyes, fire and habitation, water and words, breeze and breath, rain and tears, all praise the Lord"
And finally...bones of a martyr...which sort of grossed me out to a point that I wasn't listening as carefully where they came from or why they're there. This part of the church is really dim...I lightened the photo a bit on my own...but I was standing there for a while just trying to figure out what exactly I was seeing...and yes, it's an actual body in various states of decomposing clothes.
One of the things I really love about Vienna and am trying to consciously expose myself to, is the wide range of history in this city. The remnants of Roman civilization that pop up next to grand imperial structures around the corner from new very modern buildings are amazing to me. I actually downloaded another walking tour from my mom's library back home, which is all about the medieval city of Vienna. Hopefully I'll have a chance to do that soon...and I'll also try to post some more fun things and less straight history lessons too!
No comments:
Post a Comment