Susan's Adventures: Oct 8, 2013

Tuesday, October 8, 2013

Well, I must say that I LOVE Zurich’s Tram system. It is so logical and works so well with informing you of the next stops and the connections you can make there. You could go anywhere using them. I can’t believe that there is a single car here because there really is no need.

We took the tram into town and had a nice breakfast then walked down to the waterfront. We’d thought about taking a ferry somewhere—Ray loves anything that will get him on the water—but it was so foggy, we wouldn’t have been able to see anything anyway. So we walked back up to the cathedrals. First we saw the gardens of the Fraumunster with the pretty drawings on the walls that look like they are done with watercolors or chalk—I’m not really sure how they do it, but it’s very pretty. The inside of the church is very simple and had beautiful modern stained glass. One I especially liked had the Madonna with the prettiest face. No photography was allowed, so I hope I can find a photo of it online. I suspected that it was by Chagall and now I find out that I was correct! It was gorgeous.

Of all the church spires that pierce Zürich’s skyline, the slender, blue spire of Fraumünster (Minster of Our Lady) is the most graceful. A Benedictine convent was founded on this site in 853 by Emperor Ludwig (Louis the German), the grandson of Charlemagne. Even before that, there was already a convent on the site.

The convent was closed at the Reformation (which was led from the Grossmünster across the river). On November 30, 1524, the last abbess (Katharina von Zimmern) converted to Protestantism and donated the church and abbey to the city of Zürich. In the following centuries, the Fraumünster was used as a place of worship by Veltliner and Huguenot refugees and later the Russian Orthodox Church. Between 1833 and 1844 it hosted by Catholic and Protestant services. The Fraumünster was extensively renovated in the 20th century, including the addition of masterful stained glass windows by an 80-year-old Marc Chagall.

Best seen in bright morning light, the windows are 10 meters high and each has its own color theme. Chagall may have used the colors symbolically, with blue and green representing the earth and red and yellow representing the heavens.

The window I loved the best was in the center and is the green "Christ" window, the largest of all. It begins with a Tree of Jesse (family tree of Jesus) at the bottom. In medieval art, the tree usually sprouts from Jesse's loins; here he stands next to it. At the top of the tree is the Virgin and Child. A jumble of events from Jesus' life in the middle lead to the magnificent scene at the top, which masterfully combines Crucifixion with Ascension. Christ's arms are outstretched as at the Crucifixion, but there is virtually no trace of the cross and he seems to float effortlessly upwards inside a great bubble.

After we visited the Fraumunster, we crossed the bridge to the Grossmunster.

Zürich's Grossmünster is a 12th-century Romanesque ex-cathedral with a fascinating history of Catholic saints and Protestant preaching. According to legend, the Grossmünster was founded by Charlemagne after his horse stopped over the graves of three early Christian martyrs. In the 3rd century, Felix and Regula were members of an all-Christian Roman legion that was to be executed en masse in southwest Switzerland. They fled with their servant Exuperantius and got as far as Zürich before being tried and executed in 286 AD. According to tradition, the governor plunged the three saints into boiling oil and forced them to drink molten lead. The trio still refused to renounce their faith and so were finally beheaded. The nearby Wasserkirche stands on the site of their execution.

Impressively, the martyrs still had enough energy to pick up their heads and climb to the top of a hill, where they dug their own graves and buried themselves. (This impressive feat is more common than you might think - St. Denis in Paris and St. Miniatus in Florence also carried their heads to a hilltop resting place.)

It was on this site that construction of the Grossmünster began in 1090, and most of it was completed by 1230. It was dedicated to the martyrs Felix, Regula, and Exuperantius, the patron saints of Zürich. From the 13th century, images of the saints carrying their heads were used in official seals of the city and on coins (they still appear on the seal of Zürich).

On the saints' feast day (September 11), their relics were carried in procession between the Grossmünster and the Fraumünster, and the two churches vied for possession of the relics. The remains of the martyrs made Zürich the most important pilgrimage site in the area. The relics are now divided between a church in Andermatt and the new Church of St. Felix and Regula in Zürich.

The cathedral reached perhaps even greater prominence through a man who had no use for saints or relics - Huldrych Zwingli (1484-1531), a contemporary of Luther and one of the great leaders of the Reformation. Preaching for 12 years from Grossmünster's pulpit, Zwingli called for religious freedom, encouraged priests to get married (as he had done), attacked idolatry and denounced the Mass. In 1524, he ordered all altar paintings and church treasures removed from the church. Under Zwingli, the small town of Zürich became a major religious center that attracted students and theologians from near and far. By 1529, the Swiss cities of Bern, Basel and St. Gallen had all adopted the Reformation.

In 1531, Zwingli was killed during a war between Catholics and Protestants at Kappel. Unlike the founding figures of the cathedral, he left no relics: his body was quartered and then burnt with dung. The site of Zwingli's death is marked with the inscription: "They may kill the body but not the soul." The leadership of the Reformation in Switzerland soon passed to John Calvin in Geneva.

After a fire in 1763, the spires and tops of the Grossmünster's towers were destroyed. They were reconstructed with the Gothic-style sections that can be seen today. The fire also provided an excuse to fully embellish the interior with Baroque decoration, but it was restored to its original Romanesque appearance in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Ray climbed the tower here while I sat quietly and listened to the amazing organ and visited the crypt. The entrance doors to the church were amazing.

Then we took the Tram #11 south and stayed on while it turned north and went back to our original station. We bought goodies at the Coop store and spent the rainy afternoon readying for our trip home. We went to dinner at the little Italian restaurant nearby.

Up at 5am tomorrow for the 5:55 shuttle to the airport. Aarrgghh. But we are so glad to be going home where we can get back into our routine and have scrambled eggs for breakfast and eat at The Dutch Cupboard and Blue Ridge Pizza and Sol y Luna. I miss home.

Ibis left what I thought was chocolate on my pillow last night. But when I opened it, it was white, so I thought "white chocolate?", so I bit into it and it turned out to be a minty chalky thing. Another "soapboat" experience for me.