Moving and Münster

Nun on a bicycle in foggy Münster.

It's hard to believe we only have another week here before we begin our grand adventure on the road! We've pretty much stayed home since the Rhine tour, partly because we both have colds, partly because the weather isn't nice anymore, but mostly because we have so much to do. We need to get shipping, packing and travel planning and I have a lot of stuff to wrap up on the website before I say goodbye to my desktop computer. Sniff.

At least we have the car situation out of the way. We had long planned to do the Peugeot buy-back program, a really good deal based on some peculiarities of the French car tax system. It allows non-EU citizens to use a brand-new car with full insurance for 17 days or more, which they then sell to a French owner for a reduced price. But apparently we have been in the EU for so long that we are no longer considered foreign enough for this program and are disqualified!

Fortunately, we still managed to get a good deal through Auto Europe on some kind of economy-sized Peugeot or Renault for three months. We have to pick it up in France, so we (or maybe just David) will take the train to Strasbourg this Tuesday to get it. There's lots of good stuff to see there, but we probably won't stay since we have so much to do to get ready. Hopefully we'll catch it in late summer as part of our France tour.

Münster

And before it gets too overdue, I should post some pictures and memories from our trip to the fine city of Münster in Westphalia (NW Germany), which we did a couple days before the Rhine castles. It was predicted to be another beautiful sunny day, so although it was foggy as we left in the morning, we figured it would burn off (ever the Oregonian optimists). Well, it never did.

We were socked in by near-freezing fog all day, which was so very cold and far from ideal for pictures. It also prevented us from seeing any of the Westphalian landscape on the way there, which is said to be flat and green like the Netherlands. But we still saw lots of good stuff and the blue sky did make a brief appearance in the late afternoon before the fog settled in again for the evening.


Aerial view of Münster Cathedral on market day, which is every Wednesday and Saturday. (Picture from Google Earth.)

The cathedral and city of Münster were founded by a missionary-monk sent by Charlemagne to convert the Saxons in 793. The city name comes from that "monastic" settlement, and eventually became the general word in German (münster) and English (minster) for monastic missionary churches, such as Bern Münster and York Minster.


Münster Cathedral

The cathedral is very cool and has all kinds of unique bits. The first one is the Paradise Porch, which is chock-full of medieval sculptures.



In the center by the door are Christ and St. Paul (patron of the cathedral), and surrounding them are apostles taller than I am and tiny little figures keeping busy among vines. All of them date from 1225-35, just when Romanesque was starting to change over to Gothic.






Inside is a really unusual nave, with transepts at both ends and only two giant arches on either side instead of the usual six or so.


The lovely and spacious interior, with the biggest St. Christopher I've ever seen on the left. He was a legendary giant who carried the Christ Child across a river. He's always big when he appears in churches, but this was really something.


The two extra-wide bays of the nave.

But the main highlight of the interior is the astronomical clock, a beautiful creation made in 1540-43. It was made in Münster by a team of iron workers, clock makers, painters and sculptors. It tells the time, the date, the day of the week, the sign of the zodiac, the position of the planets, the phase of the moon, the saints' days, and the dates of Easter from 1540 to 2071! It's a seriously impressive combination of art and science.


Detail of the clock face.


Full view - the clock is at the top and the round calendar is at the bottom.


Running vertically on either side are boards painted with the gods/planets that rule the day; these change at midnight. The ruler of the first hour (labeled IN 1 HO REGIT) is shown on the bottom right; this is the ruler of the day after which the day is named. We visited on Wednesday, and indeed Mercury = the Germanic Wotan, the ruler of Wednesday.


The Virgin and Child at the top. At noon, the Three Magi emerge to pay homage to them, an appropriate choice for an astronomical clock since they followed a star. Below is a Latin inscription informing the viewer of the clock's features.


Spectators at the top including the painter himself, in the black beret and red coat. The other figures are probably his sons and assistants.


Among the saints seen here are Thome de aquino (Thomas Aquinas), whose feast was on 7 March and Gregi pape et doctoris (Pope Gregory the Great), whose feast was on 12 March. Both feast days have since been revised.

Lots and lots more photos are now up on Sacred Destinations - see the Münster Cathedral Photo Gallery.

Just off the cloisters of the cathedral is a new building housing the Treasury, which was very cool. It's also where we took the goofy elevator picture of ourselves, posted earlier. We lingered in there for quite awhile, enjoying the warmth and hoping the fog would go away. Some highlights:


Main floor of the Treasury.


An interesting "Coconut Reliquary" topped with a crystal lamb.


A very pretty crucifix made in Limoges, France.

Next stop was the Town Hall, just down a short street from the cathedral. It is important because it was here that the Peace of Westphalia was signed in 1648. It was bombed in the war, but fully rebuilt.




We had to pay a small admission but we had it all to ourselves and were able to take pictures. They also piped in a narrative in English over the speakers while we were in there!


This was a rather surprising sight, displayed in a corner. The piped-in guide said the history of these objects isn't known, but the shriveled hand is presumably from an errant scribe who wrote something he shouldn't.

Down a nice cobble-stone street from the Town Hall is the Lambertikirche, a pretty 14th-century Gothic church.






There's a gruesome detail here, too - these cages up on the tower displayed the bodies of John of Leiden and two other radical reformers who took over the city in 1542 and set up a theocracy, complete with polygamy and communal property. They were defeated two years later, executed, and displayed here. You can read all about it at Wikipedia.

We ended our long cold day in Münster by escaping indoors again, this time to the Westphalian Regional Museum just around the corner from the cathedral (not much walking is required in this city!). It's a nice modern building with artworks from medieval times to the present, including a large exhibition on a current modern artist. But we only had energy and interest for the Early Middle Ages section on the ground floor.

The good news is they let us take pictures, but the bad news is we had to sign a photography permit pledging we wouldn't use the photos for commercial purposes without permission. I fear that includes publication on my website, so I've written them an e-mail for permission - no response yet. In the meantime, I'm hoping I'm free to share just a few here on the blog.

There was some really good stuff in the "Mittelalter" section, including lots of miniature ivory reliefs, stained glass, manuscripts, murals, sculptures... We and the few other visitors were watched closely the entire time by attentive staff, presumably to make sure we didn't take out a hammer or spray paint at any point. I wondered if they'd been trained in slide tackles for such an event. But I digress. Here's a sample of medieval goodness from Westphalia.


My favorite exhibit - a beautiful set of wood-carved Zodiacs and Labors of the Months from a Westphalian convent. Follow the link for my newish article on this interesting theme in medieval art, which I've only recently discovered but have taken quite a liking to.


Detail of the above - wheat threshing in April, represented by the sign of Virgo. A friendly Leo the Lion just made it in the picture too.


This is my favorite Labor of the Month and appropriate for this time of year, too! This is the "labor" for February - taking a boot off and warming a foot by the fire.


Another example of February from a medieval window in Chartres Cathedral, France. This is courtesy of my cyber-friend Adrian Fletcher, who has photos of the whole Zodiac Window here.


Back to Germany, this is a fine window of a knight on display in the museum.


Closeup of a large wooden crucifix and an ivory panel of St. Mark, with very poor posture, writing his gospel.

By the time our sore feet emerged from the museum it was getting dark. We thought traffic might be bad at rush hour in the fog, so we looked around for a place to have dinner. Our route took us past this fine church with a huge tower (the Überwasserkirche), but we didn't go in.



We walked for several blocks in the cold fog, but all we came across was an expensive French restaurant and really cheap kebab joint. So we just went home, made a stop for snacks along the Autobahn, and traffic turned out to be just fine.