TOOMKIRIK
Tallinn,
Estonia
The Toomkirik, or properly the
Cathedral Church of
St. Mary
the Virgin, is the oldest church in Tallinn and also in mainland
Estonia. It is
the only building on Toompea Hill which survived a fire in the 17th
Century.
There is no
clear date for founding of
the church, but it
was certainly here – probably in wood – when the Danes
invaded Tallinn in 1219.
In 1229 Dominicans arrived and started to build a stone church to
replace the
wooden one. But during a conflict in 1233 the monks were all killed and
a
letter asking for the church to be re-consecrated was sent to Rome that
year,
which is the first specific reference to the church in surviving
literature.
The Dominicans
had barely started their
church when they
were killed and it was not until 1240 that a single-aisled simple
church was
finished and ready for worship. From that time onwards it served as a
Cathedral
for the Roman Catholic population of Tallinn.
In the 1330s
an enlargement program was
begun which would
last around 100 years – this enlargement both in length and width
was completed
in the 1430s to more or less the same size and plan as today’s
church, although
it did not have a spire then.
In 1561 the
Cathedral became Lutheran
and it remains the
Lutheran Cathedral and Mother Church of Estonia to this day.
In 1684 almost
every building on
Toompea Hill was consumed
in a terrible fire. Only some of the Castle
walls and the stone structure of
the Toomkirik survived the conflagration. The damage to the interior
and roof
was terrible and the Cathedral was rebuilt, almost from scratch, using
the
existing plan.
As Estonia was
now Lutheran the
interiors of the Cathedral
were built with that form of worship in mind and so have a sparser,
more subtle
feel than the Catholic original would have. The spire was added between
1778
and 1779 and at this point the Toomkirik was essentially the same
building you
would see today.
The privations
of the Soviet period
don’t seem to have
unduly affected the Toomkirik and today it looks much as it did since
the 18th
Century.
Photo
- Andrew J. Müller
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Text copyright - Raving Loony Productions and Andrew J.
Müller
© Photos and Artwork - Andrew J. and Jacqui Müller
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2018
