St. Matthias Abbey

St. Matthias‘ Abbey is a monastery in Trier (Treveris), Rhineland-Palatinate. The abbey has its roots in the mid-5th century, when it was built by Cyrillus, the bishop of Trier, to honor the founders of the archdiocese of Trier, Eucharius and Valerius. That is why the monastery was originally called St. Eucharius‘ Abbey. The bones of Eucharius and Valerius are being preserved in the monastery‘s crypt since the 10th century, and the monks adopted the Rule of Saint Benedict around the year 977. In the early 12th century, a new church building was constructed in the romanesque style. During the demolition of the old church buildings, the supposed bones of the apostle Matthias were found and are being preserved in a sarcophagus within the crypt. In the year 1148 the unfinished church was concecrated by Pope Eugene III. and several cardinals. From there on, the abbey turned into an important site of pilgrimage since it contains the only tomb of an apostle north of the Alps, and the abbey became increasingly known as St. Matthias‘ Abbey.

Since then, the monastery underwent two major periods of construction: The first one was in the early to mid-13th century and saw the construction of the early gothic cloister and sacristry. The second phase was at the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. This time, the church‘s dome was being reworked and the building was extended by an apse. Some of the apse‘s original windows still exist today.

In the year 1783, the last abbot was deposed. During the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, the buildings of the abbey were requisitioned by the French Army in 1794, until they were secularized in 1802 and turned into private property. After World War I, the abbey was revived and reinaugurated in 1922.

The church serves the four functions of being a parish church, a conventual church for the Benedictine monks, a pilgrimage church, and a burial church for the bones of Eucharius and Valerius. To fulfill all these functions, it underwent a long series of transformations and modernizations, such as an extension of the crypt with new access ways, a modernized altar space, as well as new stable choir stalls for the monk‘s choir.

FORMAL ANALYSIS