What secrets are kept by the plague columns of Europe - monuments of baroque architecture with a dark meaning

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

We are used to celebrating military victories pompously. But there are enemies that are common to all mankind and victory over them is much more important. Diseases. Epidemics that threatened humanity with complete extinction. For example, such as the plague. A very terrible disease that decimated most of the population of medieval Europe. We are fortunately unfamiliar with it, but when traveling across Europe, one can often pay attention to the unusual structures built in the city centers on the squares. These are the so-called Mariana columns (or pillars), skillfully carved from stone and luxuriously decorated with baroque stucco. Among the people, they received a more gloomy name - Plague Pillars.

The top of these columns is usually crowned with statues of saints, most often the Virgin Mary, hence the name "Mariana". The columns were decorated in the Baroque style, so they are now one of the most prominent features of Baroque architecture.

In those terrible times, when the population was subjected to mass extermination by wave-like outbreaks of deadly diseases, people desperately needed not only healing, but at least a respite from suffering. At such a time, people remembered God and offered fervent prayers. As the epidemic receded, wealthier cities erected large churches such as Santa Maria della Salute in Venice. Others built "victory columns," or pillars. The most famous of these structures is the Plague Column, or Pestsäule, in Vienna, Austria.

Located on the Danube River, Vienna was the main trade crossroads between east and west. The city was constantly filled with newcomers and, as a result, brought diseases. Since the 14th century, the inhabitants of Vienna have been subject to episodic outbreaks of the plague. Like any major trading city, Vienna had a mass of warehouses. Of course, various goods, including grain, were sometimes kept in warehouses for a long time. There were just countless hordes of other carriers of the plague - rats.

Vienna's sanitation at that time, to put it mildly, left much to be desired. There was no drainage and sewerage system in the city. Citizens threw all their waste into the river or simply into the street, where they turned into huge fetid heaps of garbage.

In fairness, it should be noted that living conditions throughout medieval Europe were terribly unsanitary, which is one of the reasons why the population was often mowed down by the plague. In 1679, this disease reached Vienna, even reaching the imperial residence of the Habsburgs. Like many epidemics, this disease was no exception, first of all it struck the impoverished neighborhoods, but soon spread to the more affluent population.

The scale of the epidemic was so terrifying that the Habsburg Emperor Leopold I fled the city. The courtiers of the monarch and his retinue were not completely immune to this disease. At least 76,000 people died of the plague in Vienna, which was two-thirds of the city's total population at the time.

The corpses were taken to the outskirts of the city, into large pits and burned there. There was no one willing to engage in such an occupation. People were very much afraid of contracting a terrible disease. The authorities were forced to involve prisoners sentenced to life in this work. There was a catastrophic shortage of doctors and healers. It got to the point that doctors were forcibly taken to hospitals and not released from there.

When the epidemic finally receded, the city officials promised to erect a Plague Column dedicated to the Holy Trinity. In the same year, a wooden column was unveiled, which depicted the Holy Trinity on a Corinthian column, along with nine sculpted angels. It was replaced by a stone column in 1687.

Such structures were common in many Austrian cities and towns during the second half of the 17th century. The pillars were usually erected from wood during the plague and were used as places where people flocked to prayer. If the disease receded, then the tree was replaced with a full-fledged stone sculpture. They were usually dedicated to the Trinity or the Virgin Mary.

These Plague Columns have become popular art forms. Many of them were designed by Italian and Austrian sculptors and architects - Ludovico Burnacini and Johann Bernhard Fischer von Erlach. Fischer was the author of the sculptures at the base of the Vienna Plague Column. Bernacini owns statues of angels under the Holy Trinity, as well as on the knees of Emperor Leopold.

Other European cities have also built their own Plague Columns. In Kosice, Slovakia, there is one dedicated to the end of the plague. There is a similar pillar in Kutnaya Hora, Czech Republic. They were built almost simultaneously. There was also a similar column in Prague. It was erected in 1650, but in 1918 it was demolished, as it was considered a symbol of the hated Habsburgs.

The era of these religious buildings ended with the most impressive column of the Holy Trinity in Olomouc, Czech Republic. This monument is so monumental and richly decorated that it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site as "one of the most exceptional examples of the apogee of the artistic expression of European Baroque."

These wonderful monuments of medieval architecture amaze us with their beauty. At the same time, I do not want to think about the real meaning of these structures at all. Read our article about the man who made a huge contribution to the fight against this terrible disease. how a simple pharmacist became a great prophet and other little-known facts from the life of Nostradamus.