FIf one were to walk through the southern Black Forest inexperienced, one would still be surprised today by the sight of the suddenly in front of a towering monastery of St. Blasien. A giant baroque monastery rises like a UFO in the middle of deep forests, and within this Escorial of the Black Forest the second largest dome north of the Alps rises above the castle-like complex. The most important abbot of this “Black Forest Vatican on the green meadow” was Martin Gerbert, who after a devastating fire from 1768 had it rebuilt larger and more beautiful than before, and in the thirty years of his aegis he also replaced the considerable book inventory that was also burned one of the most important research libraries of the eighteenth century. Gerbert, who was born in 1720, is now – if at all – known only as the founder of the Rothaus brewery with the beer “Tannenzäpfle”, which, like almost all of the monastery’s property, was nationalized in 1806.
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Pfundig: The Adelheid Cross from the treasure of St. Blasien, which was created in the late eleventh century and redesigned several times, is the largest gemed cross of the Middle Ages with a total of 176 precious stones.
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Image: Gerfried Sitar
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Educational treasure in the deep forest
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When one speaks of monasteries as treasure chambers of the spirit and custodians as well as conveyors of knowledge, the mediaeval monastery libraries are almost always meant with their book treasures, some of which are still ancient. In the late eighteenth century hardly anyone thought of abbots as contributors to the Enlightenment. But Gerbert was aware that the Church would not be able to continue without reform and above all the absolute prioritization of good education and that he was able to replace the 26,000 books lost in the fire of 1768 with almost 30,000 by means of an extensive correspondence network across Europe , is almost unknown. This immense “Treasure of the Monks” from St. Blasien, to which an exhibition in the Freiburg Augustinian Museum and an above-average informative catalog book are dedicated (“The Treasure of the Monks. Life and Research in the Monastery of St. Blasien,” 29.80 euros; Hopefully the show that will open soon can be seen until September 19), is no longer on site since the secularization, but in Sankt Paul in Carinthia’s Lavant Valley.
Nevertheless, Freiburg’s municipal museums are the logical place for the exhibition, as a number of parts of the treasure got stuck in the vicinity of the city during the forced move in 1806 and the historical museum in the former Augustinian monastery is the largest cultural and historical gathering point for the Black Forest.
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And that was just the box around a book: probably around 1260/70 in Strasbourg, the medieval goldsmith chiselled a magnificent church building in miniature for a holy script.
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Image: Archbishop’s Office Freiburg
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The three main art-historical treasures shown there alone are worth every journey: With the Adelheid Cross, which was probably donated to the monastery in 1083, the largest medieval gem cross with the largest wooden particles of the cross of Christ can be seen. The Gothic book case made of gold, made in Strasbourg around 1260, mirrors in miniature a complete church facade of the time with all its sculptural decorations – this “only” as the outer protective cover of a book. The particularly splendid ivory relief of the Ascension from 870 of the Carolingian court school in Reims only adorns the lid of the equally preciously illuminated Reichenau sacramentary below. But one would never expect to stand in front of a showcase with three books almost 1,600 years old: Purchased by Abbot Gerbert, there are two copies of the Old Testament from the fifth century, which are among the oldest in the world. Next to it is an inconspicuous booklet with blue-colored parchment pages open. It is the most fully preserved version of Pliny’s ancient natural history, also from the fifth century. The Roman manuscript lies under a Jerome commentary on the Book of Kohelet, a palimpsest that was rewritten in the Middle Ages because of the preciousness of the parchment, but could be made visible again in 1853 by coloring with a chemical, although the pages turned irreparably blue.
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