Hehe, fiorinda, I'm almost jealous of myself
But now for the Cistercian monastery of Fürstenfeld. It's not a monastery anymore, it was secularized in 1803, and today, it contains more than a dozen things, like a congress centre, a theatre, a hotel, a gallery, some workshops, a power plant, a museum, a college for police officers, a farmer's market, administration, and these are just the ones I remember. This monastery is really huge! Unfortunately, they don't do guided tours, but the town's museum (also in the former monastery) has a big exhibition on the monastery's history. Very interesting, and very bavarian...
The monastery was founded in elevenhundred something by the Bavarian sovereign who had gotten in touble for executing his wife who turned out to be innocent. He was then ordered by the church to found a Carthusian monastery, but when he couldn't find Carthusians for the job, he went Cistercian, for the strictness of their ways. For example, Cistercians claim that their monastery should depend on the works of their members, and not possession of land. Now I don't exactly know how or why, but the monastery was equipped with lots of land, and lived upon taxing that land... and that was right from the start in the 12th century. The monastery held a very close relationship to the sovereigns to come over the years, and got bigger and richer. I saw pictures of how it looked when it was a gothic monastery. It got destroyed a lot in the war of 1618-1648, and after that rebuilt as a baroque monastery. That is the part that I do not yet understand, but I have a book to munch through to understand how they could build something that rich and big out of a land that was totally devastated, with a severe 50% loss of population. Okay, they were broke after that, and stayed that way, piling up more and more debts until they were finally secularized and lots of their treasures sold, but the thing still looks like a palace, and served as one whenever the sovereign family stayed over.
Well, I never got the hang of baroque anyway.
But I must say, from all baroque churches I have seen, the church of this monastery (which is still a church today) is one of the most beautiful, bright and cheerful ones, full of cherubs fooling around everywhere.
Here, just to give you an impression, some random shots (not very good ones, but they give an idea)
It's even more beautiful in real life.
And we were instructed by our local hosts not to miss out on the bones:
Now while this is really a gorgeous place and all, there is something utterly utterly weird to it, which I had already noticed some weeks ago. You see, I am not a Catholic, I do not understand a thing about saints. But if you build this kind of place, and devote it to Mary, I'd expect her to have a real prominent place somewhere, and also, to have an impact on the whole church as such. I quite enjoy Madonna sculptures, especially gothic ones. For whatever reasons, I have developped a taste for gothic sculptures, and seeing a mother-child unity worshipped is also something I can appreciate.
And you wouldn't believe it, I found a lovely gothic Madonna in this Saint Mary's church.
She must have survived the destruction of the former gothic church. And you know what? I found the sight of her disgusting. Because this is the place she has in her own church:
That's right, she is seated under the boot of a statue of the founder's son, who counts as a founder too.
I mean, really, even without any religious feelings that could be hurt, it peeves me off. How can anyone build a Saint Mary's church in a monastery that was built as a penitence for the death of an innocent woman, and then place Mary beneath the feet of the founder figures? In the darkest corner? Why not be consequent and let her kiss the founder's ass? I don't get it. I really don't. I skimmed through some books on the church's art, and the only one that commented on this fact said that the position of Mary was "certainly not ideal". Yeah, so someone noticed it, but they didn't give an explanation other than that the light fall upon her well in that place.
Well, this is how much light fall upon her on a Tuesday afternoon:
None at all.
Maybe this means that she will be in full sunlight on a Sunday morning, but I doubt it.
To make the report complete, there is another gothic Mary in the church. Pretty well hidden, I had to consult a plan. Not accessible, behind a fence. But very nice.
So, if there are any questions of how much the monastery loved their founders even after 500 years, well, a lot more than the Saint they built their church for. As I said, the visit was kind of sobering. Yes, also fascinating, such a long history, so much great artwork, and some insight in monasterial economics. It was kind of hard to find out anything on the spriritual aspects, that wasn't part of the exhibition in the museum much. The monks were supposed to pray for the founder, and offer some public services, and mostly, gain some control over the strategically important trade routes that went through the town nearby. Really, I always end up talking about economics with this monastery. What can be generalized maybe is that the monastery served to concentrate - time, money (or debts), efforts, intentions, prayers. And they did it in a really impressive way.
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