Church of Saint James

OH NO! Another church? Is she ever going to get tired of going into them and babbling on about them? Well, no, no I am not. Beautiful churches are among the highest things on my list for why I traveled to Europe. It wasn't just for the food and the Alps. So get ready.

Our first attempt to go into Sankt Jakob didn't work out. They were having a concert for local school kids. In fact, we walked in through the gates with them just after we arrived. But second time was a charm.

This church is known for a few things. One, it's an official stop on the pilgrimage route to Compestela, another part of the Saint James Way. Two, it has a beautiful Tilman Reimenscheider carved altar piece. Three, said altar piece holds a relic of the Holy Blood. Even though Sankt Jakob has been a Lutheran church for a very long time, these things are still there, though the altar piece and relic are up in the western gallery.

Built between 1311-1484, it's a lot less Gothic-y than it could be. I blame the Lutherans for that. While they weren't, in general, deranged image destroyers, they did skimp on the decor in a lot of churches. I mean, Rothenburg obviously wasn't Nuremberg, where the burgers who paid for the church interiors wouldn't allow changes. It was a nice church. The altarpiece is beautiful, and there was nice stained glass. The relic of the True Blood, well you can't see much of it, but it was interesting none-the-less. We Orthodox sometimes mock the Catholics for being "too filioque", too concerned with things of the body, mortification of the flesh, relics, and the like. But COME ON, let's be honest. They stole most of the relics when they sacked Constantinople so we really like them too. We're just salty because they have them now, and we don't.

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