SPÄTBAROCK IN SÜDDEUTSCHLAND VII: VIERZEHNHEILIGEN
The Basilica of Vierzehnheiligen marks the place where the so-called Fourteen Holy Helpers, or intercessor saints, appeared in a vision to a shepherd in 1445. Travel to the site, which was located on the grounds of the Cistercian Kloster Langheim, and under the jurisdiction of the Prince-Bishop of Bamberg, was recognized by the church as an official pilgrimage in the 16th century.
In 1735, the abbot of Langheim obtained the permission from the Prince-Bishop to build a new pilgrimage church, the previous one having been destroyed during the Thirty Years War. To design the church, the Prince-Bishop chose Johann Balthazar Neumann, the most sought-after architect in central Europe at the time, over the candidate proposed by the abbot, Gottfried Heinrich Krohne. In 1743, construction, following Neumann’s plans, commenced.
Neumann was unable to oversee the building of the church, and in his absence, the abbot of Langheim appointed Krohne as overseer of the works. Without informing Neumann or the Prince-Bishop, the Abbot instructed Krohne to reduce the scale of the church with a view to lowering construction costs. Krohne, eager to make his own mark on the church, readily complied.
The deviation from plan was not well-considered, however: reducing the scale of the church meant that the site of the Gnadenaltar, an elaborate, free-standing altar which marked the actual location of the miraculous vision, would no longer be geographically correct if it were to remain in the crossing of the church, as Neumann had planned. This was a fatal flaw as the pilgrimage depended entirely on the miraculous cures effected at the site of the apparition, not in the vicinity of the apparition. As the site of the the apparition was geographically fixed, changing its place within the church required that the entire church be shifted around it. As the foundations of the church had been laid and the walls risen of the choir had reached 3 meters, shifting the entire church posed seemingly insuperable problems.
Once informed of the problem, the Prince-Bishop recalled Neumann, who quickly redrew his plans to resolve it. Neumann relocated the Gnadenaltar from the crossing to the nave and then re-oriented the church by flipping the groundplan, situating the choir in the west end of the building. Although this solution required no alteration or demolition of the portions already constructed, work slowed considerably. Neumann died in 1753 and the capstone of the façade was placed only in 1772.
Today over 500,000 visitors a year make the pilgrimage to Vierzehnheiligen.
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