Sankt Sebaldus

This was the first of three churches in our objectives for today. We visited this one first, because it was closest to the Kaiserburg.

Sankt Sebaldus, named for the city of Nuremberg's patron saint, is one of, perhaps the, oldest churches in Nuremberg. Originally built in the Thirteenth Century, it added more Gothic elements in a general sprucing up in the 1480s. The church contains relics of Saint Sebald, the English missionary who came to preach in the area. It was customary for emperors to pay their respects to the saint, stop and pray here, when they visited the Kaiserburg.

Now, the church is an Evangelical (for my American readers Lutheran) church. Nuremberg was a city with a lot of wealthy, well-read, merchants, and they pretty much came to their own conclusions on where they stood during the Reformation. Even though it was still an Imperial city-- they didn't much care. They had their rights and charters and to the Devil with an emperor telling them what to do in terms of religion.

As you can see, the Reformation in at least parts of Germany was very different from elsewhere. There are still many beautiful things in the church: statues, windows, altarpieces, and while not used in worship, they weren't destroyed. I'm looking at you-- Puritans in England and et cetera... While often Martin Luther himself is credited with saving the beauty of German churches (he opposed the wanton destruction of images), I have to imagine the good and thrifty Burgers who paid for the churches here didn't want to see their investment get trashed, even when they were the ones who supported the Reformation.

While I appreciated the High Baroque churches of southern Bavaria, especially the Asam Kirche, these are really more to my taste. They're darkish, heavy, filled with colorful stained glass and saturated altar pieces. The woodwork is also pretty amazing, something for which this region Franken/Franconia is known.

Additional fun fact: the composer Johann Pachelbel was the organist here 1695-1706. Imagine, coming to church on Sunday and he's playing the music.

Unfortunately, all of the church pictures, and some from around town, were taken not with our real camera, but with my less than wonderful phone. We had three batteries for the camera. We were sure we charged them fully. Well, they were all empty after the one in the camera ran out. NOT HAPPY.Læs mere