Europe in These Times: Rome of the North
Trier, Germany, 12 November 2021
Opposite the apse, Trier Cathedral
The fog sits heavy in the Moselle valley, making the river unseeable from the hotel window just a hundred yards away. It stays that way the whole weekend, although just a few miles down the road, along the banks of the same river, in Trier, the mist is broken and pushed off into the distance, as if it is nature’s concession to the life of the town. Trier is often called the “Rome of the North” because of its large number of typical ruins from the time of that empire, including those of an amphitheater, baths, and—most visibly and uniquely—the fully intact and massive gate that once served as its entry point. This last is the Porta Nigra, dark and ominous at the end of a common pedestrian shopping street, a sentinel that still reminds the visitor that this was once a guarded place, where conquerors built and lived behind walls.
Walking through the gate and up the shopping street of the present-day city gives one much the opposite feeling, one of openness and commerce, reverie and vibrant social life. Turning left just a few blocks up this street, one finds the city’s cathedral, (the Cathedral of St. Peter), a large, typical, and even externally unimpressive structure that, despite being of only medium height, reaches far above all of the surrounding buildings. On the inside, too, the cathedral is consistent with what one finds throughout Germany: clean and plain stone down the center of the nave, all the decorative elements set into the side alcoves and the sanctuary apse. At the opposite end of the nave from the altar sits the most artistically impressive element of the structure, a domed choir enclosure overlooking a baptismal font, its ceiling bedecked with exquisitely carved white figures and scenes on a dark background.
St. Matthias sculpture, St. Matthias Abbey
The Cathedral at Trier, though, is not known primarily for its artistic or architectural features, but rather for its housing of artifacts of great religious value—among other objects, a Holy Tunic worn by Jesus Christ before the crucifixion and a Holy Nail, or nail of the true cross. The tunic lies within a circular table that stands in a space behind the altar, while the nail is set behind glass, along with its reliquary case, in the adjoining Cathedral Museum. Neither, it, must be said, creates a very spiritually moving experience. The tunic cannot even be seen—through a grate, at a distance of some ten to fifteen feet, one glimpses only the side of the table that (one is told) contains it. The nail, for its part, seems rather small for its historical purpose. That said, both are “traditionally held to be”, rather than officially (by the Church) proclaimed to be, authentic artifacts. One cannot be blamed for departing the Cathedral, then, without feeling quite inspired or impressed.
Wandering south along the Moselle from the Cathedral and its lively surroundings, one arrives to a more suburban setting and an even more inauspicious church, its plain white façade stained and flaking over an empty plaza of gray bricks. Inside this structure, the brothers of St. Matthias’ Abbey proceed methodically through midday prayers, causing the visitor to halt and stand respectfully upon entry. When the brothers conclude, the rest of the church can be viewed. It is, perhaps not surprisingly, an even plainer interior than that of the Cathedral down the road, save for one distinct feature that catches and holds the attention of the visitor: a stone carving of a recumbent man, dressed in robes and with eyes closed, arms crossed over the chest, one hand grasping a small axe so that its blade points outward near the side of the figure’s face. This is a statue of St. Matthias, the apostle chosen to replace Judas (according to the Oxford Dictionary of Saints, the axe is “the instrument of his martyrdom”).
A floor below, one enters the crypt where, directly underneath the sculpture, lies the sarcophagus in which a portion of the saint’s remains are held (the rest being in Padua or, according to other tradition, the country of Georgia). One may kneel and pray here in the crypt chapel, and, in the presence of the relics, consider the life of this replacement apostle, the one who took the place of a betrayer and went to his death to spread the word of Christ.
Of course, like the tunic and the nail, the contents of the reliquary here are accepted by the visitor as a matter of faith, “traditionally held to be” things that others claim lay elsewhere. Authenticity, though—especially when the verification of it lies beyond one’s capabilities—is only one component of such an experience as kneeling here. There are those who perhaps see in the cathedral’s tunic and its nail, as much as in St. Matthias’ crypt, objects of a value that lies not merely in the fact that they are what they are held to be, but in the fact that so many faithful have invested them with meaning over centuries. This is a fine and beautiful faith, of course, one to be celebrated and embraced, even when one lacks the emotional connection that others have found. At least today, though, St. Matthias’ Abbey church did indeed provide something different, and more: the opportunity to witness the midday prayers, the actual and consistent acts, the ways of life, that perpetuate and deepen the devotions shared by the visitors and the monks that live here alike.
Indeed, one is left to imagine that if the men of this latter group found out that the outside world had been destroyed, that they were the last people left on Earth, they would wake up the next day and go on just as they do now, with their appointed tasks and their schedule of prayers, with a life they know is worth living whether the contents of their basement reliquary, or the tunic and nail across the city, are genuine artifacts or not. Because at one point the man depicted by the sculpture on their church floor was in fact real. Because at one point there was a real tunic. Because at one point there were real nails.
