Altarpracht in Regensburg: die Paramente und das wiederentdeckte Schatzbuch von St. Emmeran, 17. bis 20. Jahrhundert

Abstract

"The Reichsstift of St. Emmeram in Regensburg was one of the Holy Roman Empire's most ancient and most venerable institutions. Distinguished with a new church in the late eight century, it embodied the opening of a new chapter in the cultural history of Europe. There, for more than a thousand years, Benedictine monks immersed in work and prayer watched over the tomb of the Early Christian martyr Emmeram (d. ca. 652), the itinerant Frankish bishop born in Poitiers who gave the abbey its name. The treasury of the former Stiftskirche of St. Emmeram today contains an array of liturgical textiles that were donated by wealthy patrons from the seventeenth century onwards. The findings of the research into these paraments, which also entailed the study of numerous written documents, illustrate the pomp and spectacle of the liturgical ceremonies conducted under the prince-abbots prior to 1812 as well as how the cult changed over the two centuries that followed. Published here for the first time together with one of southern Germany's most important textile collections is an art-historical appraisal of the Schatzbuch of St. Emmeram. This magnificent catalogue, created in the mid-eighteenth century, provides rare and valuable testimony, recorded in the medium of drawing, to a church treasury that disappeared with the Old Order"--Provided by publisher.