Church of St. John (Schaffhausen)

In the history of the construction of the Church of St. John, 6 stages are conditionally distinguished:

1. The oldest building on the site of the modern church, which then had dimensions of 17 by 6 meters, dates back to the turn of the X - XI centuries . Its floor, covered with a simple mortar, lay in comparison with today's level at a depth of more than three meters, and against the walls were narrow stone benches.
2. The growth of the urban population, due to the founding of the monastery and the right to mint coins, in the second half of the 11th century led to the demolition of the first church and the construction of a more spacious church, whose length had already reached 33 meters. Around 1100, the church building was somewhat expanded to the west, and from the southeast to the choir a two-story chapel was added, which served for the funeral and burial of the dead.
3. XII century : a lateral nave was added on the south side, the floors were tiled with sandstone , the apse was rebuilt to continue the choir, a tower and a sacristy were built .
4. Damage due to the fire, as well as the fact that due to the ongoing burial around the church, its floor was 2 meters lower than the level of the cemetery surrounding it, at the end of the 14th century necessitated the construction of a new building, erected as a three-nave Gothic basilica , shifted by several meters by north. Construction was completed around 1420 with the erection of a new tower equipped with bells and a site for city guards.
5. Since there was clearly not enough natural light in the church, in turn, it was demolished, and in 1466 - 1472 a new one was erected, the central nave of which received its own windows, the length was increased by another 8 meters, and the tower received a gabled roof.
6. With the construction of two extreme lateral naves in 1515-1517, the Church of St. John acquired its present appearance from the outside.

In 1261, the church in Schaffhausen was consecrated in honor of John the Baptist and John the Theologian , and in 1529 , when the Reformation was carried out in Schaffhausen after Zurich , Bern and Basel , the Church of St. John became state property and became now the parish . Since 1831, property rights belong to the urban community.

In 1990, after completion of restoration work, which lasted 7 consecutive years and cost 12 million francs ^[3] , the church of St. John was consecrated, and now, thanks to its acoustics and capacity, in addition to Sunday and festive services, organ concerts and orchestral music ^{[4] [5]} , festivals dedicated to the work of Bach ^[6] .

The church building as a whole is a five-nave basilica, the main part of which has the shape of a convex quadrangle in which all sides have different lengths and not a single angle is right ^[7] . By its maximum width - 34 meters - it is in third place in all of Switzerland ^[1] , but its external appearance - as the famous Swiss cultural historian Johann Rudolf Rahn ( German Johann Rudolf Rahn ) once noted - resembles a rather huge village church. There are no decorations on the whitewashed walls, with the exception of images of the Virgin Mary and the Apostle John, discovered during restoration in a niche near the sacristy and dating back to the beginning of the 16th century ^[8] , as well as a sundial.

In the tower, adjacent to the choir from the north and having a height of 68 meters, there are 4 bells, the oldest of which dates back to 1464 ^[9] . The tower clock with a red-black dial and gilded hands is installed on all four sides of its third floor.

The Reformation that prevailed in Schaffhausen had a decisive influence on the modern interior of the Church of St. John: its supporters “liberated” the church from organ, paintings and altars alien to their religious perception, painted wall murals , walled up niches with sculptures (for example, we managed to restore the tower to open the figure of the Virgin Mary with the child Jesus, apparently, relating to the XIV century ^[10] ), burial in the church cemetery was forbidden, converting it into a commercial area. In just three years, the church lost all kinds of decorations: “Trinkets and trinkets were gone, only the Word was there in its strength” ^[3] .

Numerous works on updating and restoration of the church, begun already in the middle of the XVI century, made their changes to the initial plan of medieval architects: emporiums and lecture halls were removed, doors and windows, chairs and flooring in the choir were replaced, lighting and heating systems were installed. During the recent restoration works, among other things, a hydraulic concert stage and new seating areas for 1040 people were installed ^[3] .

Inside the church you can get through any of its five entrances, four of which - on the south and north sides of the building - are made in the form of portals . If you use the northeast entrance to the church, then clockwise you can follow through the following parts ^[9] :

• the Täuberkapelle Chapel , located in the extreme northern nave and named after the family on whose donations it was built. In its former altar niche is a restored fresco with a biblical scene of the detention of Jesus Christ .
• chapel of St. Michael , forming the first floor of the church tower. It contains a cup-shaped font , a series of frescoes telling about the life of the Virgin, and a copy from the icon of Andrei Rublev “The Holy Trinity ”.
• the left shoulder of the choir with a fresco by Anthony the Great of the late 14th century in an altar niche and a carved pulpit , established in 1882 .
• the choir, the eastern side of which has the shape of an octagon and is decorated with neo-Gothic stained glass windows , and also exhibited in 2014 at the site of the lost sculptures by a cycle of 8 works by the modern artist and sculptor Ludwig Stocker ( German Ludwig Stocker ), depicting key biblical scenes and personalities ^[11] .
• two rooms adjacent to the choir from the south and formerly served as the sacristy and ossuary . The vaults of the first of them are crowned with the figure of an eagle as a symbol of John the Evangelist , emblems and masks at the ends of consoles .
• the Löwenkapelle chapel, built with the money used by the killer in 1515 to pay for the death of Beat Löw , who came from a well-known urban family. Her vaults are decorated with images of God the Father , the Virgin Mary, angels, saints and the coat of arms with a lion.

On the wall to the left of the organ is a Late Gothic fresco, made in about 1500 and depicting the Way of the Cross of Jesus Christ . Of the few interior details added already in the post-Reformation time, we can note the reliefs on the ceiling of the central nave with the figure of the Apostle John on the island of Patmos and above the entrance to the choir with the cantonal emblem and the saying “God is our hope” ( Latin Deus spes nostra est ).

The first organ, mentioned as far back as the 15th century , was removed from the Church of St. John during the Reformation, which declared this musical instrument “ papal cithara and semantics for anti-Christian Roman worship” ^[12] , and to top it off, the organ pipes were melted into jugs for wine ^{[ 3]} . Only in 1879, the Swiss master Johann Nepomuk Kuhn ( German: Johann Nepomuk Kuhn ) installed a new organ on Western empores, which in 1990 was replaced by a mechanical instrument, three manuals and 66 registers made mainly from the material of its predecessor, while the hull was shifted almost three meters back ^[12] . Not only famous musicians and conductors appreciate the excellent acoustics of the church premises, but also listeners (such as Albert Schweitzer ) note the soft and clear sound of the church organ ^[3] .

• Cornelia Stäheli, Kurt Bänteli, Hans Lieb Die Stadtkirche Sankt Johann in Schaffhausen. (Schweizerische Kunstführer, Nr. 548) - Gesellschaft für Schweizerische Kunstgeschichte, Bern, 1994.