St. Stephen’s Cathedral

St. Stephen’s Cathedral (actually the cathedral and metropolitan church of St. Stephen and all saints ) on Vienna’s Stephansplatz (Inner City district ) has been a cathedral church (seat of a cathedral chapter) since 1365, a cathedral (bishop’s seat) since 1469/1479, and the Archbishop of Vienna’s metropolitan church since 1723.The Roman Catholic Cathedral, or Steffl as the Viennese name it, is a landmark in Vienna and is frequently referred to be the Austrian national shrine.It takes its name from Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr.All Saints’ Day is the second patron saint.

The structure is 109 meters in length and 72 meters in width.The cathedral is one of Austria’s most prominent Gothic structures.Parts of the late Romanesque precursor structure from 1230/40 to 1263 have been retained and constitute the west facade, flanked by the two 65-meter-high heathen towers.St. Stephen’s Cathedral features four towers in total: the south tower is the tallest at 136.4 meters, while the north tower was never finished and stands at just 68 meters.No church could be erected taller than the south tower of St. Stephen’s Cathedral in old Austria-Hungary.The Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Linz, for example, was erected two meters lower.

The south tower is a modern architectural gem; despite its impressive height, the base is just four meters deep.When built, the tower was Europe’s highest free-standing building for more than 50 years.The south tower has 13 bells, eleven of which are the principal bells of St. Stephen’s Cathedral.Since 1957, the Pummerin, Europe’s third biggest free-swinging church bell, has been housed in the north tower beneath a Renaissance dome.

The St. Stephen’s Cathedral, a landmark in Vienna, has appeared in films, video games, and television shows. The Third Man and Burnout 3 are two examples. The cathedral is also portrayed on Austrian 10 cent euro coins and the Manner-Schnitten wafer treat packaging. The Archdiocese of Vienna granted the Manner firm permission to use the cathedral as its logo in exchange for financing the salary of one stonemason working on cathedral repairs.

History

By the middle of the 12th century, Vienna had become an important center of German civilization, and the town’s religious demands were no longer being supplied by the four existing buildings, including only one parish church. In 1137, Bishop Reginmar of Passau and Margrave Leopold IV signed the Treaty of Mautern, which for the first time referred to Vienna as a civitas and handed St. Peter’s Church to the Diocese of Passau. The contract also granted Margrave Leopold IV large expanses of property beyond the city walls, with the significant exception of the territory reserved for the new parish church, which would later become St. Stephen’s Cathedral. Although previously thought to be built in an open field outside the city walls, the new parish church was likely built on an Ancient Roman cemetery; excavations for a heating system in 2000 revealed graves 2.5 metres (8.2 ft) below the surface, which were carbon-dated to the 4th century. This discovery shows that an even earlier ecclesiastical structure on this site before St. Rupert’s Church, Vienna’s oldest church.

The half completed Romanesque church was formally consecrated to Saint Stephen in 1147 in the presence of Conrad III of Germany, Bishop Otto of Freising, and other German lords who were ready to embark on the Second Crusade. Although the initial structure was finished in 1160, extensive renovation and extension did not begin until 1511, and maintenance and restoration operations continue to this day. From 1230 to 1245, the original Romanesque construction was expanded westward, giving rise to the current west wall and Romanesque towers. A massive fire destroyed much of the original construction in 1258, and a bigger replacement edifice, still Romanesque in style and utilizing the two towers, was built over the ruins of the previous church and dedicated on April 23, 1263. Every year on the anniversary of this second consecration, the Pummerin bell is rung for three minutes in the evening.

In 1304, King Albert I directed the construction of a Gothic three-nave choir east of the cathedral, broad enough to reach the points of the previous transepts. Work on the Albertine choir proceeded under his son Duke Albert II, who consecrated it in 1340 on the 77th anniversary of the previous dedication. The main nave is primarily devoted to St. Stephen and All Saints, while the north and south naves are respectively dedicated to St. Mary and the Apostles.Duke Rudolf IV, Albert II’s son, increased the choir once again to strengthen Vienna’s ecclesiastical clout. Rudolf IV laid the cornerstone for a westward Gothic enlargement of the Albertine choir near the existing south tower on April 7, 1359. This enlargement would eventually encircle the whole old church, and in 1430, the structure of the old church was dismantled from within while construction on the new cathedral advanced. The south tower was finished in 1433, while the nave vaulting was done between 1446 and 1474. The foundation for the north tower was erected in 1450, and building began under master Lorenz Spenning, but it was abandoned when main work on the cathedral was halted in 1511.

Rudolf IV ignored St. Stephen’s position as a mere parish church in 1365, only six years after commencing the Gothic addition of the Albertine choir, and appointed a chapter of canons befitting a major cathedral. This was only the first step in fulfilling Vienna’s long-held goal for its own diocese; in 1469, Emperor Frederick III persuaded Pope Paul II to award Vienna its own bishop, who would be selected by the emperor. The Diocese of Vienna was canonically formed on 18 January 1469, despite long-standing opposition from the Bishops of Passau, who did not want to relinquish authority of the territory. St. Stephen’s Cathedral served as its mother church. During the reign of Karl VI, Pope Innocent XIII raised the see to the rank of archbishop.

During World War II, Wehrmacht Captain Gerhard Klinkicht defied instructions from the city commandant, “Sepp” Dietrich, to “fire a hundred shells and reduce it to rubble” and spared the cathedral from purposeful destruction at the hands of fleeing German soldiers. As Soviet Army soldiers stormed the city on April 12, 1945, civilian looters set fire to adjacent stores. The fire was blown to the cathedral by the winds, where it badly damaged the roof, forcing it to fall. Fortunately, protective brick shells erected around the pulpit, Frederick III’s grave, and other valuables kept the most important artworks from being damaged. However, the 1487 Rollinger choir stalls could not be rescued. Reconstruction began soon following the war, with a partial reopening on December 12, 1948, and a complete reopening on April 23, 1952.

Exterior

The church was dedicated to St. Stephen, who was also the patron of the bishop’s cathedral in Passau, and was therefore oriented toward the dawn on his feast day, December 26th, as it stood in the year that construction began. The cathedral is 107 metres (351 feet) long, 40 metres (130 feet) broad, and 136 metres (446 feet) tall at its tallest point. Soot and other kinds of air pollution accumulated on the church throughout the years, turning it black, although recent restoration work have restored part of the building’s original white.

Towers

St. Stephen’s Cathedral’s great south tower, standing at 136 meters (446 feet) tall and lovingly referred to by the city’s people as “Steffl” (a diminutive version of “Stephen”), is the cathedral’s tallest point and a dominating element of the Vienna skyline. It took 65 years to build, from 1368 to 1433. It served as the main observation and command post for the defense of the walled city during the Siege of Vienna in 1529 and again during the Battle of Vienna in 1683, and it even contains an apartment for the watchmen who, until 1955, manned the tower at night and rang the bells if a fire was spotted in the city. The double-eagle imperial insignia with the Habsburg-Lorraine coat of arms on its chest, surmounted by a double-armed apostolic cross, refers to Apostolic Majesty, the imperial style of Hungary’s rulers. This insignia replaces the previously used crescent and six-pointed star. The original symbol, as well as a few of later versions, are now on display in the Vienna City Museum.

The north tower was meant to replicate the south tower, but the design proved overly ambitious given that the Gothic cathedral era was coming to a close, and building was suspended in 1511. The tower-stump was expanded in 1578 with a Renaissance cap, dubbed the “water tower top” by the Viennese. The tower is presently 68 meters (223 feet) tall, or nearly half the height of the south tower.

The Giant’s Door, or Riesentor, is the main entrance to the church, possibly referring to the mammoth thighbone that hung over it for decades after being discovered in 1443 while digging the foundations for the north tower, or else to the funnel shape of the door, from the Middle High German word risen, meaning’sink or ‘fall’. The tympanum above the Giant’s Door portrays Christ Pantocrator flanked by two winged angels, while the two Roman Towers, or Heidentürme, on the left and right stand around 65 metres (213 ft) tall. The towers got their name from the fact that they were created from the ruins of earlier constructions built by the Romans (German Heiden, which means heathens or pagans) during their control of the region. The Heidentürme, which is square at the base and octagonal above the roofline, once contained bells; those in the south tower were lost during WWII, while the north tower remains an operable bell tower. The Roman Towers and the Giant’s Door are the church’s oldest structures.

Roof

St. Stephen’s Cathedral’s crowning splendor is its ornately patterned, highly colored roof, which is 111 metres (364 feet) long and covered with 230,000 glazed tiles. The tiles above the choir on the south side of the building create a mosaic of the double-headed eagle, which represents the empire controlled from Vienna by the Habsburg family. The coats of arms of the City of Vienna and the Republic of Austria are portrayed on the north side. In 1945, a fire sparked by World War II damage to surrounding structures leaped to the cathedral’s north tower, destroying the timber roof framework. Replacing the original bracing for such a massive roof (it rises 38 meters above the floor) would have been prohibitively expensive, thus nearly 600 metric tons of steel bracing were utilized instead. Because the roof is so steep, it is properly cleansed by rain alone and is rarely covered by snow.

Bells

When composer Ludwig van Beethoven witnessed birds flying out of the bell tower as a result of the bells tolling but couldn’t hear the bells, he realized he was completely deaf.St. Stephen’s Cathedral contains a total of 22 bells. The biggest, which hangs on the north tower, is formally named for St. Mary but is more often known as Pummerin (“Boomer”). It is the biggest swinging bell in Austria, weighing 20,130 kilograms (44,380 lb), and the second-largest in Europe after the 23,500 kilos (51,800 lb) Peter in Cologne Cathedral. It was recast (partly from its original metal) in 1951 after tumbling onto the floor when its wooden cradle burnt during the 1945 fire. It was originally manufactured in 1711 from cannons taken from Muslim invaders. Upper Austria donated the new bell, which has a diameter of 3.14 meters (10.3 feet). It only sounds on a few rare occasions throughout the year, notably the start of the new year. This tower also houses two (previously three) obsolete bells: Kleine Glocke (“small bell”) (62 kilograms (137 lb)) cast circa 1280; Speisglocke (“dinner bell”) (240 kilograms (530 lb)) cast in 1746; and Zügenglocke (“processions bell”) (65 kilograms (143 lb)) cast in 1830. The Kleine Glocke, on the other hand, was refurbished at the Grassmayr foundry in Innsbruck in 2017 and rehung in the North Roman Tower.

In the towering south tower, a peal of eleven electrically driven bells, cast in 1960, hangs. They are used during Masses at the cathedral as replacements for other ancient bells lost in the 1945 fire: four are used for an ordinary Mass, ten for a major holiday Mass, and the eleventh and largest is added when the Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna himself is present. St. Stephen (5,700 kilograms (12,600 lb) is the largest, followed by St. Leopold (2,300 kilograms (5,100 lb)); St. Christopher (1,350 kilograms (2,980 lb)); St. Leonhard (950 kilograms (2,090 lb)); St. Josef (700 kilograms (1,500 lb)); St. Peter Canisius (400 kilograms (880 lb)); St. Pius The Primglocke (recast in 1772), which rings on the quarter hour, and the Uhrschälle (cast in 1449), which rings on the hour, are also housed on this topmost tower.

Six bells, four of which were cast in 1772, ring for evening prayers and toll for funerals in the north Roman Tower. They are cathedral working bells, and their names typically refer to their original functions:Feuerin (“fire alarm” but now used as a call to evening prayers) cast in 1879; Kantnerin (calling the cantors (musicians) to Mass); Feringerin (used for High Mass on Sundays); Bieringerin (“beer ringer” for last call at taverns); Poor Souls (the funeral bell); Churpötsch (donated by the local curia in honour of the Maria Pötsch icon in the cathedral), and Kleine Glocke (cast in 1280 and is the oldest bell in the cathedral).

The bells that hung in the south Roman Tower were destroyed in a fire in 1945.

Fixtures on the outside walls

Major cities had their own set of standards during the Middle Ages, and the public availability of these standards permitted visiting merchants to conform with local restrictions. The official Viennese ell length standards for measuring various types of fabric sold are embedded in the cathedral wall to the left of the main entrance. The linen ell (89.6 centimetres (35.3 in)) and drapery ell (77.6 centimetres (30.6 in)) length standards are made up of two iron bars. According to Franz Twaroch, the linen ell to drapery ell ratio is exactly 3/2. The Canon Testarello della Massa mentions the Viennese ells for the first time in his book Beschreibung einer ansehnlichen und berühmten St. Stephans-Domkirchen in 1685.

A memorial tablet (at position SJC on the Plan below) details Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s link with the cathedral, particularly the fact that he was hired as an adjunct music director here just before his death. When he resided in the “Figaro House,” this was his parish church; he was married here, two of his children were baptized here, and his funeral was performed in the Chapel of the Cross (at site PES) inside.

The Capistran Chancel, adjacent to the catacomb entrance, has the pulpit (now outside at position SJC) from which St. John Capistrano and Hungarian commander John Hunyadi preached a crusade to oppose Muslim assaults of Christian Europe in 1456. (See also: Siege of Belgrade). The 18th century Baroque statue depicts a Franciscan monk treading on a beaten Turk under an elaborate sunburst. This was the principal pulpit within the cathedral until it was replaced in 1515 by Niclaes Gerhaert van Leyden’s pulpit.

A Christ figure (at site CT) is lovingly known as “Christ with a toothache” among the Viennese. There are several memorials from when the area outside the cathedral was a cemetery, as well as a recently repaired 15th-century sundial on a flying buttress, at the southwest corner (position S).

Interior

Altars

There are 18 altars in the main portion of the cathedral, with additional in the numerous chapels. The most well-known are the High Altar (HA) and the Wiener Neustadt Altar (German: Wiener Neustädter Altar) (WNA).

The distant High Altar, created over seven years from 1641 to 1647 as part of the cathedral’s first baroque restoration, is the first object of interest for each visitor. Tobias Pock designed the altar under the auspices of Vienna’s Bishop Philipp Friedrich Graf Breuner, using marble from Poland, Styria, and Tyrol. The High Altar depicts the stoning of St. Stephen, patron of the cathedral. It is framed by images of patron saints from the surrounding districts – Saints Leopold, Florian, Sebastian, and Rochus – and topped with a statue of St. Mary that pulls the beholder’s attention to a view of heaven where Christ awaits the ascension of Stephen (the first martyr) from below.

Emperor Frederick III, whose grave is located in the other direction, ordered the Wiener Neustädter Altar at the head of the north nave in 1447. His renowned A.E.I.O.U. gadget may be seen on the predella. It was commissioned by Frederick for the Cistercian Viktring Abbey (near Klagenfurt), where it stayed until the abbey’s closure in 1786 as part of Emperor Joseph II’s anti-clerical measures. It was subsequently transferred to the Cistercian abbey of St. Bernard of Clairvaux (established by Emperor Frederick III) at Wiener Neustadt before being sold to St. Stephen’s Cathedral in 1885 when the Wiener Neustadt monastery closed after merging with Heiligenkreuz Abbey.

The Wiener Neustädter Altar is made up of two triptychs, the higher of which is four times taller than the lower. The Gothic grate of the ancient reliquary depot above the altar is exposed when the lower panels are uncovered. During the week, the four panels are closed and reveal a drab painted scene with 72 saints. On Sundays, the panels containing gilded wooden figurines portraying episodes in the life of the Virgin Mary are opened. Restoration began in 1985, on its 100th anniversary, and took 20 years, 10 art restorers, 40,000 man-hours, and €1.3 million to finish, owing to its vast surface area of 100 square metres (1,100 sq ft).

Máriapócs Icon

The Maria Pötsch Icon (MP) depicts St. Mary with the child Jesus in Byzantine style. The icon was named after the Hungarian Byzantine Catholic shrine of Máriapócs (pronounced Poach), from where it was sent to Vienna. The image depicts the Virgin Mary pointing to the infant (symbolizing “He is the way”) and the kid clutching a three-stemmed rose (symbolizing the Holy Trinity) and wearing a prophetic cross around his neck. László Csigri commissioned the 50 x 70 cm icon from painter István Papp in 1676 following his release as a prisoner of war from the Turks who were conquering Hungary at the time. Csigri was unable to pay the 6-forint charge, thus the icon was purchased by Lrinc Hurta, who presented it to the Pócs church.

Following allegations of two miraculous happenings in 1696, including the mother in the image purportedly crying actual tears, Emperor Leopold I had it transferred to St. Stephen’s Cathedral, where it would be secure from the Muslim forces who still dominated part of Hungary. Empress Eleonora Magdalena commissioned the splendid Rosa Mystica oklad and framework (now one of several) for it upon its arrival in 1697, and the Emperor personally ordered the icon placed near the High Altar in the front of the church, where it stood prominently from 1697 until 1945. Since then, it has been housed in a new structure, above an altar beneath a medieval stone baldachin near the nave’s southwest corner, where the numerous lit lights attest to the magnitude of its adoration, particularly among Hungarians. The image hasn’t been seen crying since its arrival, but other miracles and answered prayers have been credited to it, notably Prince Eugene of Savoy’s victory against the Turks at Zenta a few weeks after the icon was installed in the Stephansdom.

The people of Pócs wanted their holy miracle-working painting restored, but the emperor instead sent them a replica. Since then, the copy has been said to cry actual tears and perform miracles, therefore the village’s name was changed from Pócs to Máriapócs, and it has become a significant pilgrimage site.

Pulpit

The stone pulpit is a late Gothic sculptural masterpiece. Long credited to Anton Pilgram, Niclaes Gerhaert van Leyden is now regarded to be the carver. To allow attendees to hear the local language sermon better in the days before microphones and loudspeakers, the pulpit is located in the nave rather than the chancel at the front of the church.

The pulpit’s sides protrude like stylised flowers from the stem that supports it. Relief portraits of the four first Doctors of the Church (St. Augustine of Hippo, St. Ambrose, St. Gregory the Great, and St. Jerome) are depicted on those Gothic petals, each in one of four temperaments and phases of life. The railing of the stairs that curves around the pillar from ground level to the pulpit is decorated with magnificent designs of toads and lizards biting each other, symbolizing the battle of good vs evil. A stone dog guards the preacher at the top of the steps against intruders.

One of the cathedral’s most popular emblems is a stone self-portrait of an unknown sculptor gawking (German: gucken) out of a window (German: fenster), and hence commonly known as the Fenstergucker. The chisel in the subject’s hand, as well as the stonemason’s signature mark on the shield above the window, raised the possibility that it was a self-portrait of the sculptor.

Chapels

There are several formal chapels in St. Stephen’s Cathedral:

St. Katherine’s Chapel, in the base of the south tower, is the baptismal chapel. The 14-sided baptismal font was completed in 1481, and its cover was formerly the soundboard above the famed pulpit in the main church. Its marble base shows the four Evangelists, while the niches of the basin feature the twelve apostles, Christ and St. Stephan.
St. Barbara’s Chapel, in the base of the north tower, is used for meditation and prayer.
St. Eligius’s Chapel, in the southeast corner, is open for prayer. The altar is dedicated to St. Valentine whose body (one of three, held by various churches) is in another chapel, upstairs.
St. Bartholomew’s Chapel, above St. Eligius’ Chapel, has recently been restored.
The Chapel of the Cross (PES), in the northeast corner, holds the burial place of Prince Eugene of Savoy in the vault containing 3 coffins and a heart urn, under a massive stone slab with iron rings. The funeral of Mozart occurred here on 6 December 1791. The beard on the crucified Christ above the altar is of real hair. The chapel is not open to the public.
St. Valentine’s Chapel, above the Chapel of the Cross, is the current depository of the hundreds of relics belonging to the Stephansdom, including a piece of the tablecloth from the Last Supper. A large chest holds the bones of St. Valentine that were moved here about a century ago, from what is now the Chapter House to the south of the High Altar.

Tombs, catacombs, and crypts

Since its inception, the cathedral has been surrounded by graves going back to Roman times, which have housed both notables and commoners. It has always been a privilege to be buried within a church, close to the tangible presence of the saints whose relics are kept there. Those who were less honored were buried close to but outside the church.

Inside the cathedral, in the Chapel of The Cross (northwest corner of the cathedral), are the tombs of Prince Eugene of Savoy (PES), commander of the Imperial forces during the War of the Spanish Succession, and of Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor (Fr3), under whose reign the Diocese of Vienna was canonically erected on 18 January 1469, in the Apostles’ Choir (southeast corner of the cathedral).

Emperor Frederick’s mausoleum took 45 years to build, beginning 25 years before his death. The imposing sarcophagus is crafted from the Adnet quarry’s extraordinarily thick red marble-like stone. The tomb lid, carved by Niclaes Gerhaert van Leyden, depicts Emperor Frederick in coronation attire, surrounded by the coats of arms of all of his dominions. The tomb’s body has 240 sculptures and is a work of medieval sculptural art.

When the charnel house and eight cemeteries next to the cathedral’s side and back walls were closed owing to a bubonic plague outbreak in 1735, the bones within them were relocated to the catacombs under the church. graves in the catacombs continued until 1783, when a new legislation prohibited most graves within the city. The catacombs (which may be visited) contain the bones of almost 11,000 people.

The Bishops, Provosts, and Ducal crypts are also housed in the cathedral’s basement. Cardinal Franz König, 98, was the most recent interment in the Bishop’s crypt, which was constructed in 1952 beneath the south choir.Cathedral provosts are buried in another chamber. Other cathedral chapter members are now buried in a separate portion of the Zentralfriedhof.

The Ducal Crypt, located beneath the chancel, houses 78 bronze urns containing the corpses, hearts, or viscera of 72 Habsburg dynasties. Duke Rudolf IV had the mausoleum for his bones created in the new church he commissioned before his death in 1365. The little rectangular room was overcrowded by 1754, with 12 sarcophagi and 39 urns, so an oval chamber was constructed at the east end of the rectangular one. The two chambers were refurbished and their furnishings changed in 1956. The sarcophagi of Duke Rudolf IV and his wife were put on a pedestal, and the 62 urns carrying organs were relocated from the new chamber’s two rows of shelves to cabinets in the older one.

Organs

St Stephen’s Cathedral has a long history with organs. The first reference of an organ occurs in 1334. Following the 1945 fire, Michael Kauffmann completed a huge electric action pipe organ with 125 stops and four manuals in 1960, using public donations.The choir organ was refurbished in 1991 by the Austrian manufacturer Rieger. It has 56 voices and 4 manuals and is a mechanical organ.

The Kauffmann organ at the west end was only in service for around 35 years until it was retired. In 2017-2020, the Austrian business Rieger reconstructed the west end (Riesenorgel) organ utilizing the 1960 façade and some original pipework, resulting in a 5-manual, 130-stop organ.The choir organ has its own console, however there is an additional console, built 2017-2020, with 5 manuals and 185 stops, from which the Riesenorgel and choir organ may be played simultaneously.The Cathedral includes three lesser instruments in addition to the Riesenorgel and choir organ.

Vienna, Austria