Bamberg Cathedral

 I visited Bamberg on Thursday 7th September. It is, or was, twinned with Bedford, UK. 

Bamberg, in the Upper Franconia part of Bavaria, was founded in the ninth century (it is first mentioned in 902) and first became important when Holy Roman Emperor Henry II and his wife Kunigunde negotiated with Pope John XVIII to make Bamberg a new diocese with its own cathedral, consecrated on 6th May 1012 (destroyed by fire in 1081 and rebuilt and reconsecrated by its Bishop Otto, later Saint Otto, in 1111). Henry and Kunigunde were buried there. 

Here is their tomb. They’re lying side by side. A ghost seems to be rising from the tomb but I think that’s a trick of the light. I hope. 

Kunigunde was quite a girl. One of the eleven children of Siegfried I of Luxembourg, she was a seventh-generation descendant from Charlemagne. Her marriage is often asserted to have been a ‘white’ marriage, ie unconsummated; it was certainly childless.

Her mother, Hedwig, may have been the daughter of a member of the House of Babenberg, the noble family after which Bamberg is named, so this may explain why Kunigunde took an interest in Bamberg.

She was accused of infamous conduct and to prove her innocence she walked across red-hot ploughshares, as shown in this side panel from her tomb.

Of course she was uninjured and this miracle led to her canonisation in 1200.

From 1245 until 1802, Bamberg was a Prince-Bishopric, that is, an autonomous state of the Holy Roman Empire ruled, both spiritually and temporally, by its Bishop. After 1803 it was part of Bavaria, becoming the state capital for a couple of years after the First World War when the state government retreated to Bamberg while Munich was in the hands of the communists. Adolf Hitler held a Nazi party conference in Bamberg is 1926.

The most famous object in the cathedral is the Bamberg Rider or Bamberg Horseman. 

This is the first life-size equestrian statue since classical antiquity. It’s also one of the earliest statues to show horseshoes. It dates from after 1225 but probably before 1237. No-one knows who he is. He is crowned, so some people suggest Henry II (but the horseman is shown without imperial regalia) and others King Stephen I of Hungary (975-1038, brother in law to Henry) and others Frederick II. Another theory is that he is one of the three wise men.