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Charlemagne and the First Archbishop of Cologne: A Thirteenth-Century Wall Painting at St. Gereon

In 1942 a fire swept through the interior of the church of St. Gereon in Cologne.l Most severely damaged was the decagonal nave of the church, a four-storied structure with eight lateral chapels on the ground floor (Fig. 1). The fire destroyed the sparse remains here of the wall painting which dated from the period shortly after the decagon's construction between around 1219 and 1227, the year its vault was documented to have been completed.2 However, the conflagration also brought to light two previously unknown fragments of thirteenth-century wall painting.3 It is the intention of this paper to examine one of these fragments, which is preserved only as the preliminary drawing for a wall painting, in order to establish the very interesting and unusual subject of the mural (Fig. 2). The extant part of the mural, which is located on the eastern wall in the first chapel to the south or right of the church's west entrance, corresponds roughly to the upper half of a round-arched retable, which had been added to the chapel during the seventeenth century when the church was extensively redecorated.4 The scene, which is cut off at the top and on the right side, clearly portrays a Mass. A lighted lamp hangs above the altar, on which a candlestick with burning taper is placed. The partial forms of two figures have been preserved: the celebrant, who holds the chalice and stands to the right of the altar; and to the left, a single Elgure dressed in long robes and equipped with an object whose shape resembles the horns or trumpets found most commonly during the Middle Ages in representations of the Last Judgment or in scenes involved with the hunt.5 Furthermore, this figure bends forward and cups a round object in his hands, which are extended over the altar surface toward the celebrant. The scene seems to illustrate the story of Charlemagne's meeting with a priest named Hildebold (?L818), a man whose piety and humility were said to have so impressed the Emperor that Charlemagne had him made bishop of Cologne. Hildebold later became Cologne's first archbishop and was reportedly buried in this chapel at St. Gereon.6 In the preserved wall painting, Charlemagne, dressed as a hunter, offers a coin at the altar at which Hildebold celebrates Mass. The story represented in the mural makes its first appearance in the twelfth century.7 However, the specific elements of the St. Gereon wall painting correspond most closely to a later version of the legend, as for example it is given in a Lower Rhenish chronicle of the fifteenth century, entitled Die cronica van der hilliger stat van Coellen printed in 1499 by Johann Koelhoff.8 According to the Koelhoff FIGURE 1. Interior of the Church of St. Gereon Cologne prior to 1942; view towards the west.