New archives, new cities: the academic tourist

Domplatz, Speyer

I'm approaching the halfway point of my time here (eek!) and am busily reconnoitering regional archives in order to make my midterm report for the Fulbright commission sound as impressive as possible. This week, this mission took me to the city of Speyer. Speyer flourished under imperial patronage in the eleventh and twelfth centuries; remarkably, enough of the old town survives that streets, neighborhoods, and monastic precincts from that period are still marked with plaques. At least so far, the charm of being able to trace via street names the medieval layout of weavers and tailors, butchers and bakers, has not palled for me. Speyer's medieval Jewish neighborhood, unusually large and central, also retains its outlines; I'd hoped to visit some of the archaeological remains too, but the city map I picked up during the archive's lunch break turned out not to be quite up to date with its "winter hours" listings. Walking back to the archive, I found myself in the Salzgasse where the leper hospital owned property in the fifteenth century. The narrow street was only about two blocks long, so I could guess: did the lepers own their house where the wine bar stands? The Thai restaurant? The hideous concrete municipal buildings?


I may yet go back to Speyer to look at medieval council minutes, but yesterday I was specifically tracking down the account book of St. Nicholas, the city's leper hospital. In accordance with the guidelines posted on the archive's website, I wrote ahead stating my credentials and purpose, which had an unexpected result. After a longer-than-expected walk from the train station (are Google Maps walking times calculated based on hiking-stick-swinging enthusiasts?) I finally found the entrance to the municipal building which I sought, in a courtyard set back from the street. I stated my business in the information office as directed, and was ushered across to the archives: a warm room crowded with tables and bookshelves and vitrines full of informative literature. "Hello," I said as I removed my hat, "I…" "You're the lady with the leper house!" said the woman behind the desk. I was filled with delight at being thus enthusiastically greeted (as well as with an irresponsible desire to identify myself this way whenever possible.) Shortly after I'd filled out paperwork and the woman of the desk had settled me in with the account book, the archive director came over to greet me and see if I needed anything else (an unusual solicitude! Either January is a slow season, or the Speyerer are specially friendly.) He informed me that the archive would be unexpectedly closing at noon, as an employee had called in sick… but that I was welcome to stay through the afternoon if I needed to. I thanked him profusely, and did indeed spend several afternoon hours finishing my work, after which, I turned tourist.

This chapel was built in the sixteenth century, but now sits unused in a moss-grown churchyard… anyone need a setting for a Gothic short story?

 Believe it or not, everything in this picture is wood, painted and carved. It's a Protestant church (the Church of the Holy Trinity) but was specially open today. I asked the parishioner doing observation duty about the architectural design, which struck me as unusual, and he was soon launched and away. The style of the double-balcony had a vogue in the region in the late seventeenth century, but the examples in Worms and Frankfurt were both destroyed by bombs in WWII. Speyer has one because, exiled in a late-seventeenth-century war of succession, they were taken in by Frankfurt; returning to rebuild their city, the burghers built this church emulating Frankfurt's Katherinenkirche. I was fascinated by it: the painted panels on the balconies feature not only biblical stories from the creation onwards (typologically arranged, with the Old Testament on the upper balcony and the New on the lower) but rhyming and sometimes moralizing explications of each panel. The nice man of the parish waxed enthusiastic about the acoustics, too: "You're not from the area? Oh, that's a shame… we have a Bach concert next week, and with all this wood--even those carved angels are painted wood--the acoustics are wonderful. Much better than the cathedral, really: there you get an echo of twelve seconds!"

 The echo of twelve seconds results from Speyer's cathedral being the largest, as well as the oldest, surviving Romanesque church in Europe. I suspect this may be due not only to the cathedral's imperial patronage, but the emperor's unusual idea to have the roof made of stone instead of wood. Its towers were turned baroque, and then turned back by the nineteenth century restoration movement, but mostly, it has just endured. As the photo on the left makes clear, it's rather too large to photograph impressively, at least without an impressive camera. The enormous basin in the foreground marks the border of the cathedral immunity! The Latin text on the rim indicates as much; whenever the bishop entered the city in procession, he would be ceremonially given a drink of wine from this basin by the burghers; and at any time, those who fled for legal protection were safe as soon as they reached the bowl. I found occasion to wish that more cathedrals had giant wine bowls to mark their legal boundaries. Because… well, why not?






















These photos don't really do the interior of the cathedral justice, but they do, I hope, give some sense of its vastness. There are not only large chapels where the tombs of emperors and the relics of saints are located, but more modest chapels built into the walls. And the width of the wall alone holds a chapel large enough for three worshipers side by side. I couldn't climb the tower, as that was closed for the winter; that may have to be paired with a visit to the medieval council minutes.