Monastery of St. Salvator

The foundation of the Benedictine monastery in Fulda can be dated to the year 744. According to this, the monastery was built by the later first abbot, named Sturmi, by order of Boniface. Excavations carried out in the course of the last century revealed remains of such a church building, as well as several secular buildings, which may themselves have been part of the monastery complex. When Boniface died, Sturmi was able to impose that very monastery as the place of his burial. As early as 791, a new church building was begun under Abbot Baugulf, who handed over the planning and management to the monk Ratger, who gave the name to the building. This new nave is said to be approximately the same size as today’s cathedral. In addition, Ratger had a west transept built. This intensive building program was continued under abbot Eigil. He had an east and a west crypt added to the monastery church. In the cemetery, the Chapel of St. Michael was built, the crypt of which is still preserved today. This construction work on this important monastic complex was finally to reach its first conclusion under the abbot Hrabanus Maurus during the 9th century. Under his tenure, the monastery experienced its great heyday and became the training ground for many famous clerics, such as Otfried of Weißenburg, Walafried Strabo or Luppus of Ferrières.

A number of important Old High German texts were also passed down through the teaching and copying activities in Fulda, such as the famous „Hildebrandslied“. In the course of the 10th century, renewed building measures took place, which underlined Fulda’s status as an imperial abbey. A royal chapel was added to the monastery complex, along with a representative building for the king as well as residential facilities. As a result, the entire monastery complex was now symmetrical. In the centre was the church with the tomb of the founder, to the west was the clerical-monastic area, and to the east the secular-royal area.

Eventually, in the course of the formation of the abbot’s sovereignty, the old monastery church increasingly lost its original function. At the beginning of the 14th century, the abbot, as a prince-abbot, moved his seat outside the monastery, so that the latter had to experience a decline already in the late Middle Ages. Finally, at the beginning of the 18th century, a new collegiate church was built. This new building also marked the beginning of a transformation of the townscape of Fulda, which until 1700 was still predominantly characterized by medieval structures. This townscape now increasingly changed with new building projects that brought Baroque architecture to Fulda. This baroque transformation took over in large parts the ground plan dispositions of the existing buildings from medieval times and redesigned the facades. This can also be observed with the Fulda collegiate church, as it stands on the site of the Ratger Basilica, which was largely demolished in the process. The plans of the new church were drawn up in 1700 by one of the greatest German Baroque architects, Johann Dientzenhofer, who was commissioned by the prince-abbot Adalbert von Schleifras for the new building on the recommendation of the Pope after Dientzenhofer’s study trip to Rome in 1699. The deliberate similarity of the church’s internal arrangement to that of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome is testimony to Dientzenhofer’s visit. In 1707 the shell was completed. The roof was finished in 1708 and the interior in 1712. The new abbey church was dedicated on 15 August 1712. The dedication tablet placed on the facade by von Schleifras gives the dedication as Christus Salvator.

FLORIAN HARTMANN