Belvedere, Vienna & the Hapsburgs & Eastern Austrian Marian Pilgrimage Churches
The Belvedere was the Imperial Residence of the Hapsburg family in Vienna. The summer residence was Schönbrunn on the then outskirts of the city. In comparison to Versailles, San Souci, and other major royal and imperial palaces, the main building appears tame, but it was from here that the Hapsburgs ruled and controlled much of Europe. The old Austrian adage, “Tu Felix Austriae Nube” (You Happy Austria Marry) was the foundation for their incredibly long family reign. Maria Theresia was the daughter of Charles IV and was perhaps one of the most influential women in history. She and her husband Franz Stephan of Lothringen had a very happy marriage (even though he still kept mistresses on the side, as was common practice at the time) and produced sixteen children, who were married off to increase Hapsburg influence in various European courts, not the least of which was the 14 year old Maria Antoinette who was sent to France to marry a rather incompetent young man who later became Louis XVI.
The building is now a museum and the gardens are open to the public. Photography wasn’t allowed so I can’t show you a picture of it, but there was one painting in the permanent collection that especially struck me. It was from 1610 by the Master of the Krainberger Altar and has an executioner dressed similar to that of a Pierrot with his right hand on a lever that manipulates the blade on a thigh–high ‘guillotine’ while his left hand points to the ground and the chopped off head. This painting is a good 180 years before Mr. Guillotin developed his instrument for the French Revolution. He was obviously “perfecting” an instrument that had been around for awhile and many of our history books stating that he “developed” the instrument are incorrect.
There was also a Youtube video that was playing on a small screen that may be of interest to the Art History students. It was called “Venus in Furs” created in 2003 by Peter Weibel and lasts 4.30 minutes. It is a silent video, so no one will have any problem with the language. It is a very wonderful collage of Venus/Aphrodite/beautiful women through time and the changing nature of our interpretation of “beauty.”
The gardens of the Belvedere are amazing. They have clearer lines than those in Versailles and a more unified theme. As the site is on a slight slope the main residence is at the top, meaning heaven, whereas the earlier people’s entrance to the site is at the bottom. The gardens are on three levels with fountains cascading in the center from one level to another. Each of the fountains has an allegorical message and while it appears that one can go straight up from the lowest level to the main residence, one can’t. This is the journey to heaven and there are detours that must be made; it’s not a straight pathto get there. One of the other differences in this garden vs. many of the others is in the statuary gracing the site. There are primarily female figures, muses, goddesses, female-faced sphinxes and griffons etc. rather than the predominately male figures of the other European courts.
Maria Theresia lived during the High Barock and Rococo periods (1717-1780) and this transition can been seen in the decorations on the ceilings and walls of the Belvedere, but also in the Austrian Rococo that spread to France with Marie Antoinette and even to Venice through Empress Elisabeth (Sissi) in the late 19th C. Their personal rooms in their respective palaces emphasize a lightness with sky blues and pinks and pastels coupled with traces of gold in flowing movements throughout the designs. It is also the style used for some of the more famous Marian pilgrimage churches in Austria.
Maria Theresia was an avid Catholic. Her animosity towards the Prussian Frederick II was as much against his Protestantism as it was about his invasion of the Hapsburg territories in Silesia. She did her best to exile all Protestants from Austria and wasn’t fond of Jews either. The religious changes that occurred during her reign happened when she was co-ruling with her son, Josef II, who was the more “enlightened” of the two “Enlightened Monarchs.” Instead, Maria Theresia supported the Catholic Church and wanted to make the Church accessible to all her subjects. The Virgin Mary was her personal patron and she publically financed the restoration of a number of Marian pilgrimage churches throughout Austria. The two I was able to visit were Maria Trost outside of Graz, and the main Marian pilgrimage site in Austria and Hungary (Maria Theresia was also the Queen of Hungary) in Maria Zell. Both churches are amazing and in the picture gallery on this site you can see images from them.
( Notes from the Maria Trost Pamphlets are in a separate file on this site as they are taken directly from the Pamphlets one can buy at the Basilica. The story of Maria Zell is as much a part of the Hapsburg heritage as the Belvedere is so I am including the notes from a variety of pamphlets and sheets available in the hotel and at the Basilica here.)
Maria Zell is “Magna Mater Austraiae” (The great mother of Austria – and of the Slavic peoples). She is a 12th C carved limewood statue that was brought to the site by a monk Magnus. She is clothed in magnificent robes most of the year. Only on Sept. 8th, the day the birth of the Virgin Maria is celebrated in the Catholic calendar and on Dec. 21st the traditional date for the founding of Maria Zell is the figure seen without her vestments. The legend is as follows (trans. from a sheet from the hotel):
Hotel Magnus “Legend of Mariazell”
Not far from Maria Zell on a high raged cliff is a small church on the Sigmundsberg, that is locally called simply “the origin”. There is a centuries old belief that the Mercy village of Mariazell thanks its inception to this small mountain chapel.
In the year 1157 the Abbot of St. Lambrecht Monastery set about to win the people of northern Styria to the Christian faith. He sent out one of his most courageous monks into the wild woody border region with only his servant and a horse. He took no personal belongings other than a wooden carved statue of Maria that he was very fond of.
Magnus, which was the name of the Monk, followed the dictates of his Abbot and went into the unknown northern regions through thick fields and deep woods, as there were not yet any paths in the area. For days they didn’t meet another soul, and the faithful Priest began to get worried as the food rations that the young servant had brought were almost gone.
Finally one evening the Monk saw a light in the distance and he happily showed it to his companion who was leading the horse. After an exhausting climb up a steep stony path, the two made it to a half desolate and ruined castle where a robber baron lived. The good Monk trusted the robber’s friendly greeting and was thankful to be in peace and safety after such a long journey. Nevertheless he didn’t let the statue of Maria, that he had wrapped in his coat, out of his sight and most of the time he kept a protective hand on it. The robber baron noticed this and thought that the monk must have a very special treasure hidden in the cloth. He devised a plan to kill the two strange pilgrims. With this in mind, he went to the closet and took out a sharp newly “geschliffenen” dagger and threaten the Monk to “Give me your Treasure without any complaints or you will die!”
Magnus now understood in who’s hands he had landed! But he composed himself quickly and looked fearlessly into the baron’s eyes while he unfurled the coat and held the statue towards the robber. The thief cried with dismay and yet also with soft respect, “Maria!”
And then it was silent for awhile in the terrible castle halls. Finally the Robberbaron said, “I see who you are and what you want to do in our region. You are under my peace and protection and I won’t do you any harm. But leave the castle immediately so that my knights do not find you here with me.”
Magnus and his servant were all too happy to follow this direction. Quickly they climbed back down the mountain to look for their horse that they had left tied to a tree half way up. They wanted to spend the night there, so they arranged some soft moss and fell asleep as soon as they lay down. But soon after midnight, the Monk heard a lovely woman’s voice, begging him, “Magnus, get up – quickly!”
He awoke and raise his eyes to see who had called him. There before him floated Maria with the child in her arms, sitting on a crescent moon and encircled by small angels. The Madonna was so beautiful that Magnus could only look at her and forgot everything else around him. Maria, however, insisted: “Quick, quick, take my image and go!” With these words she disappeared over the wooded peak. The Monk woke his companion, and as morning was beginning to dawn, they rapidly made it to the bottom of the castle mountain.
Here, though, was were the robber knights of the baron had their cave and as one of the noticed the two pilgrims, he called the other thieves from their sleep and soon they were all following the fleeing Magnus. He had a good head start, but to his horror, all of a sudden there was a huge rock face in front of him and no way to get around it! Out of sheer desperation the Monk help the statute of Maria up high and prayed with all his might.
There was a creaking and groaning through the stone and a small opening appeared – just wide enough that Magnus could get through! From there he and his companion arrived in a broad valley that was surrounded by green forested hills/mountains. They were greeted with friendly amazement by the many wood cutters who lived there. Magnus felt so at home in their company that he decided to stay in this region. At his wish the people of the valley built him a small wooden cell, in which he placed the miracle working statue of Maria on a tree stump. This was the birthday of the Mercy village “Maria in der Zelle” or abbreviated, Mariazell.
There are two other events that feature in the legend of the site, the first deals with the healing of Margrave Heinrich from Moravia. Who along with his wife made a thanksgiving pilgrimage to Mariazell. The second was from King Ludwig the Great of Hungary. He had dream/vision of seeing the image of Maria on his chest the night before a fight against hordes of unbelievers, as he won the battle, this became the third leg of the Mariazell legend. (“In the name of the Mother of God he defeated an opposing army of knights in 1365 and donated the valuable picture of the Madonna at the treasury altar.”) So the three legs are: 1) Magnus, 2) Margrave Heinrich 3) King Ludwig. This supposedly started pilgrimage tradition and made Mariazell a special place not just for Austrians, but for Hungarians and other Slavic peoples. Mention of the site has been in documents since the early 14th C. In 1330, the Archbishop of Salzburg, Friedrich, sent out a testament that records Mariazell as place that was often visited by pilgrims.
The original church underwent a number of iterations. The site of the original “Zell” (Monk’s cell) became the place of the altar in the earlier churches and the statue was placed there. This is known as the “Mercy Chapel.” Maria Theresia and her husband sponsored an elaborate gate and ornamentation for the Chapel and their names are inscribed at the foot of the altar. Their sponsorship came after that of her father who commissioned the High Altar of the newly restructured now Baroque church which was done by the Austrian Baroque architect Bernard Fischer von Erlach (1692-1704). The “Mercy Chapel” is about ¾ of the way down the nave of the current Basilica. At the end is the early 17th C High Altar. The marble for the altar came from five countries from across the empire. According to the church brochure:
The tabernacle, in the form of a silver globe and encircled by a serpent, the symbol of sin, floats over the celebratory altar, sculpted from a single block of stone. Above the tabernacle rises the over-dimensional crucifixion scene with God the Father and Christ, made in silver by the Viennese goldsmith Johann Kanischbauer according to a model by Lorenzo Mattieli. It was donated by Emperor Charles VI in 1722. The statues of Maria, the disciple John, and the adoring angels do not originate from the same period because in 1806 the silver required to make them had to be sacrificed in order to finance the French Wars and so, instead, silver plated wooden statues took their place.
The globe has the function of a tabernacle and forms a symbolic unit with Emperor Charles VI’s “lamp of ethereal light.” The painted serpent can be given various religious interpretations, ranging from original sin, to the lifting of the serpent on the cross, and finally to the recreation of life through Christ’s redemptive works.
…. The events taking place around the cross are placed in a cosmic context and extend beyond the score of the human world. This depicts a relationship between Judeo-Christian and Gentile-Christianity with the union manifested as the new family of God. A new relationship between God and humanity, and between humans themselves, is thereby created. The union of the love of the triune God (the dove as a symbol of the Holy ghost soaring above the high altar) offers humanity the chance for a new life. The Mariazell high altar in the form of a triumphal arch thus becomes a depiction of a gateway to life for humanity – a gate for the passage of death into life.
The message is not unlike the allegorical structure of the Belvedere gardens. Hapsburg, and now State support, of the pilgrimage site has been on-going. It is a living tradition. Royal and imperial residences become museums, but Temples & Churches remain places of worship - at least in Austria.
