The Speyer Cathedral Crypt: spectacular Romanesque style
The small city of Speyer is located in the south west of Germany, specifically in the region Rhineland-Palatinate and I had the opportunity to visit it in February 2024 (also because it is located at about 4 hours by car from Munich, the city where I live). In the beautiful city center of Speyer is located the Cathedral, which is the largest Romanesque church in the world and a very important religious building in the history of Romanesque architecture. The place has such an important value, that the Cathedral was listed in the UNESCO World Heritage List in 1981 and it is the second site in Germany that was inserted in the UNESCO List after the Aachen Cathedral (1978).
The origin of the Cathedral comes from the first years of the second millenium, at around 1030, when The Salian emperor Conrad II initiated the construction of the Romanesque cathedral. To add few more information about the emperors, The Salians were at that time the dynasty that ruled the Holy Roman Empire, specifically from 1024 to 1125, taking the lead of the Empire after the Ottonians (919–1024) and the Caroligians (800–918) of Karl der Große (Charlemagne in french). The goal of the emperor was to build one of the bigger churches at that time and when Conrad II died in 1039, was buried in the Cathedral that was still under construction. The erection of the church continued by his successor and son, Emperor Henry III. In 1061, under Emperor Henry IV, Conrad II ́s grandson, the cathedral was consecrated, but still it has further improvements and in 1106, when the Emperor Henry IV died, was completed. As introduced before, the Cathedral is today the largest Romanesque church in the world. Adding a few words about the Romanesque style, it is the architecture from the middle ages based on Roman architecture, with the arches and columns as the base of his structure.
The Romanesque Cathedral was affected by fires during history, especially in 1689, where part of the nave was destroyed as well as the fire heavily impacted the Cathedral. The burning was caused by the troops of Louis XIV that ravaged the Electoral Palatinate (the region that was inserted by Speyer at that time) during the The Nine Years War (prompted by the French King Louis XIV that claimed the western regions of the Holy Roman Empire). Luckily, the High Romanesque eastern section resisted the flames and was covered with a wall to allow the church to be in operation again until the nave was rebuilt in the middle of the 18th century. But this last version of the Cathedral, which had a baroque west building, lasted not long because in 1787 the French Revolution started and the crowd destroyed the altars and deeply affected the Cathedral. Due to this last hurt, the Cathedral was saved in 1806 by the Bishop Colmar of Mainz, which prevented the church from being used as a cave. After the Congress of Vienna, King Max I of Bayern commissioned a new restoration in 1817 and in the middle of the 19th century the Cathedral reaches the version that still has today with a western transept and with the neo-Romanesque style two front towers. The last restoration was performed in the 1950s, strengthening the Romanesque style and in order to preserve some parts of the Cathedral, like the floor, portals and roofs.
The Speyer Cathedral Crypt
The Crypt of Speyer Cathedral is a masterpiece of architecture from the Middle Ages and it transmits to the visitor the regality and power of its 1000 years of history. Furthermore, the Speyer Cathedral Crypt is the largest Romanesque hall crypt in the world and it´s extraordinary that it conserves the same appearance as when it was consecrated in 1041. The crypt has a total dimension of 35 meters, a length of 46 meters and what impresses are the vaults and columns, which are particularly high for a lower church, with the vaults that reach seven meters high. The crypt is divided into four rooms and the alternating colour of red and yellow sandstone of it´s arches together with a soft light, give to the crypt a special atmosphere while visiting it. The crypt is the oldest part of the Cathedral and was the first part constructed in the church and when the works for the Cathedral started, around 1030.
Was very interesting for me to discover that the etymology of the word “crypt” comes from the Greek word “kryptein” which means “something hidden”. But even more interesting, that the idea of building a crypt comes from the early Christian of the Roman Empire that used Catacombs as a subterranean cemetery but also as an early, always subterranean, Christian church. Later in the centuries, churches were built over some Catacombs, like St Peter’s in Rome that was constructed over the Apostle Peter’s tomb and indeed the early crypt was directed in order to pray close to the tomb of the saint.
The Speyer Cathedral crypt contains seven altars (one central and three on the left and right) because in the Middle Ages, mass was performed every day, with an estimated number of up to seventy clerics that worked in the Cathedral every day. In front of the central altar, there´s notable baptismal font that it is cut from the same stone and presents a square base with semi-circulars on each side; but even more importantly, it is considered the oldest Romanesque baptismal font north of the Alps. Underling the piece of art of the crypt, which it is anyway the focus of this article, two lions in Romanesque style of the 1100 are present in the crypt, found with an excavation outside of the church, as well as a floral relief, that comes probably with the older church that stands before the Cathedral.
On the southeast part of the central crypt, is located the burial place of the emperors and kings , which has a high historical importance for Germany (I’ll add some details at the end of the paragraph). However, before the burial, it is present the epitaph of Rudolf von Habsburg who died in 1291. I will not go much into details, because the goal of the article is to underline the Romanesque art of the crypt, anyway the epitaph has also a very real portrayal of the king, that show the face of Rudolf von Habsburg affected by the difficulties of leading a reign, which was unusual in the portrays of the Middle Ages. As I anticipated before, the importance of the Speyer Cathedral for Germany is that the dynasties of the royal and imperial were buried here. Not only the Salian, as the third Dynastic Kings of the Holy Roman Empire that constructed it, but for additional 200 years (300 years in total) the Speyer Cathedral was the burial place for the subsequent ruling dynasties of the Hohenstaufen, Habsburg and Nassau. For this reason, the Speyer Cathedral is the most important burial place in Germany. It is indeed comparable, even if it is not that famous at the international level, with other burial places like St Denis near Paris for French Kings, Escorial near Madrid for the Spanish kings or Westminster Abbey in London for the English kings.
Conclusions
The superior value of the Speyer Cathedral stays not only by the fact that it is the biggest Romanesque basilica in the world and the most important Romanesque church of the Holy Roman Empire, but it has also the biggest and fascinating crypt of the Romanesque style. The crypt, visiting it, is a spiritual journey in the art and architecture of the beginning of the High Middle Ages (from about the mid-11 century), when the Roman architecture and style was the reference (Gothic architecture started only in the mid-12th century to the 16th century). All in all, I add a last thought: important is also to remember that the Western Roman Empire fell in 476 a.d., with the last Emperor Romulus Augustulus, which is more than 500 year before the building of the Speyer Cathedral. However, the Byzantine Empire, which was descending from the East Roman Empire, was in decline but still in place in Constantinople and lasted until 1453, a bit less than four centuries after the Speyer Cathedral was consecrated in 1061. This shows in my view, how influential was the heritage of the Roman Empire in the Middle Ages and beyond it, with it´is patrimony still existing today.
