Karlskirche/Peterskirche

"Habsburg emperors' display of power was...inseparable from their reality" (Spielman, 103).

The Karlskirche is a perfect example of this, from walking out of the U-Bahn and seeing it in the distance to getting right up in front of it, it amazes you. It is a gorgeous church with a huge dome, and the church screams Baroque. The church was finished in 1739 after 20 years of construction, and the reasoning for this was that a few years before construction began, there was the bubonic plague which swept across Vienna, and Charles VI commissioned it for Saint Charles of Borromeo because he was the patron saint of plague victims. Upon entering the building you see two columns, one on each side, which resemble those of Trajan in Rome. So the architect was really bringing together different elements in order to make this place what it is today. The idea of multiple styles in use on this building fits in with the title of our program – At the crossroads of Europe. The dome and columns in front look very Roman, and they are meant to resemble that of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. On the inside of the church it is still very beautiful, but not quite as striking as the outside of it. There is a huge vaulted ceiling and a large fresco on the interior of the dome. The fresco shows Saint Charles Borromeo asking the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost to put an end to the plague in Vienna. So the purpose of the church was never lost, and it still functions as such today.

The importance of such churches cannot be overlooked, because after the Thirty Years War, money was tight. For rulers to show their power, they wanted people to physically see it and experience it, and churches became some of the most influential pieces of architecture at the time. It was a way of “representing their power, status and ideology” (Habsburger.net).

Making our way to the Peterskirche was not very hard, just a short walk past St. Stephen’s and there it was. On the outside it looked pretty normal, but the inside was really incredible. Our online reading was about the selling of relics and how that actually became like a business centuries ago. They would try and sell everything they could that Saints might have made contact with, or their actual body parts such as the hair, nails, and bones. It was a “flourishing trade,” however, the church, for obvious reasons was not the biggest fan of this, so the traders had to pretend that they were not selling relics in order to stay in business. Peterskirche was completed in 1733 after 30 or so years of construction. There are relics on display which shows how the Catholic’s view of the dead is positive and celebratory.