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View of Bamberg Cathedral Nave https://www.flickr.com/photos/cit_thmc/22707161028
The interior of Bamberg Cathedral transports the visitor into god's home in Germany. Although not as flamboyant or vertical as cathedrals in France, Bamberg Cathedral has crisp lines, double choirs (double the fun), and interesting interior sculpture that will lead the visitor to reminisce upon times of valor and holy austerity.
The nave of the cathedral is about 85 feet high with a quadripartite vaulting system. The arcade has a blocky feel, since the piers are not carved into many thin columns as with some of the French cathedrals. The minimal clerestory and unadorned triforium is more in a Romanesque style. The interior has such a refined and simple appearance partially because the re-builders wanted to try and preserve what Henry's original cathedral might have looked like, an act of respect towards the founders.
Nave Vault Jew Painting.
Nina Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 184.
Nave Vault Jew Painting.
Nina Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2011), 184.
On the ceiling of the nave, some highly-stereotyped and offensive paintings of Jews still remain. Once again, these images are reflective of how Jews were viewed in the city during the time. They were included inside the cathedral, but they were depicted in a negative way, perhaps as a reminder to the Christians of what the true religion was, and what would happen if one did not follow it.
Choir Screen Sculpture (13th century) https://www.cambridge.org/core/books/the-gothic-screen/the-choir-screen-as-partition/6A94A176D584C73E4966876AE5ADC8CE
The eastern choir contains a series of 14 reliefs of prophets and apostles engaged in conversation. These sculptures were done by the earlier sculptural workshop, that was trained from the German Romanesque School, and we can see that they are less active than the portal sculptures, which were done by the masters from Reims, trained in the French Gothic. According to Egon Verheyen, these reliefs are still arranged according to their original positions, since they have the Romanesque style of decoration, which might have been inspired by the original shrine of Kunigunde from when she was canonized in 1201.
Reliefs from Saint-Sernin in Toulouse, France (1096) https://www.bluffton.edu/homepages/facstaff/sullivanm/france/toulouse/saintserinint/ambulatory.html
These reliefs from Saint-Sernin, although from an earlier century, can be compared to the choir reliefs from Bamberg. The uniformity of the drapery of both sculptures is similar, along with their more reserved stances.
Bailey McCulloch // Bibliography
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