From the outside, Basel’s Predigerkirche—the Preacher’s Church—doesn’t look particularly special. Like many others in Switzerland, it sports a stucco exterior punctuated with stonework around the windows that even gives it a bit of a modern look. But it’s a fooler.
Squeezed between the University Hospital and a small park with the unlikely name of Totentanz—Dance of Death—it gives little hint from the outside that it is one of the city’s oldest, and a church that has served many purposes, from hosting a Vatican Council to storing fruit and salt.
A sign outside proclaims that it is celebrating its 750th year, but even that’s not the whole story: it marks the year, 1269, when the Dominican leader Albertus Magnus stopped by to rededicate it after it was extended and ‘Gothicized’ for a growing Dominican monastery that surrounded it. The church was actually built 35 years earlier.
The Dominican order is known for preaching; hence the name. And the renovation made it one of the first Gothic churches on the upper Rhine. In the years since, its fortunes have waxed and waned; in the 19th century it nearly came to a bad end when the last of the monastery buildings were removed for new construction; only a religious schism in 1870 saved it.
The church today is home to a congregation of the Christian Catholic Church, part of a group of churches that split from Rome in 1870 over a Vatican Council declaration that the Pope was infallible in matters of faith and morals. Many, especially in Germany and Switzerland, formed new churches and referred to themselves as ‘Old Catholics,’ or in Switzerland, Christian Catholics. Today, the church is still estranged from the Pope, but has ties with both Anglican and Orthodox churches.
In Basel, they were able to acquire the old building and restore it not just to use, but beauty. The congregation is quire active today; each time I visited the building there was activity, and its signboards offered a variety of programs for members and children.
The artwork within also spans a long history; there’s plenty of contemporary work in the lightly-decorated church, but there are also the remains of 14th-century frescoes of Mary, John the Baptist and Vincent Ferrer. They were painted after the church was badly damaged in Basel’s 1356 earthquake. Early in the Reformation, when ‘idols’ were being destroyed in many churches, the frescoes survived, likely by being painted over.
From 1431 to 1449, the church was at the center of a power struggle in the Catholic Church between the Pope who called the Council of Basel and rebel bishops who eventually declared the Pope deposed and elected a new one; the Pope, meanwhile, excommunicated the Council members.
The wall that divided French Protestants from a storehouse full of fruit and salt after 1614.
After 1614, when the Dominican monastery was dissolved, the church was divided in two at the choir screen. The larger nave, where ordinary folk had stood while their betters prayed in the inner part of the church, became the home of a French-speaking Reformed congregation, while the choir fell into disuse. After 1684, it was used to store fruit and salt.
Since the current congregation moved in 1876 after a major renovation, it’s continued to make changes, including adding three more organs to the original main organ.
The tall tower was a later addition, in the 15th century. On two faces of it, an image of Jesus looks out; a smaller copy is on the street wall (above)
The small park facing the church was once part of the cemetery maintained by the Dominicans; a long stretch of its wall was painted with narrative scenes that emphasized that no matter how rich or joyous life might seem, it always ends in death; the entire scene, called The Dance of Death, or Totentanz left its name there, although the images themselves, after several restorations, were removed around 1805. Only copies made before that by artists remain.
But the name has lingered on. The shops facing the park have addresses on Dance of Death, as did the church for many years. The tram and bus stops at the park used to bear the name as well, but eventually were changed to Predigerkirche, and then to Universitätspital, after the University Hospital that stands behind the church, on the former monastery site.
Nothing wrong with a church that’s lived a straight-line life, built to be the Cathedral of Whatever and still the Cathedral of Whatever, whether now Catholic or Protestant. In a way, churches like this, that have lived eventful and even perilous lives, are more interesting, especially when less-known.
But not everyone would agree: a visitor last summer left this review on TripAdvisor: Nice old church: This church is near the river. It appears to be quite old. It’s not as big as the giant one but it’s still really nice. It only takes 20 minutes to look at and I was always near the river anyway and I enjoyed it.
