Golden Madonna of Essen - Liturgical Significance, Past and Present

Liturgical Significance, Past and Present

The Golden Madonna has always held a special place in the liturgy of Essen Abbey. From her creation she seems to have been normally kept in the Treasury, and only brought out for major feast-days and other special occasions. She was paraded in all major processions, and the altar dedicated to Mary in the cathedral was the place where deeds of donation to the religious community were received and deposited, thus putting them under the symbolic custody of the Virgin. It is however uncertain whether it was in fact the Golden Madonna who presided over these deeds, since the abbey inventories list two other Mary figures besides the golden one.

The most important procession took place on the day of the Purification of the Virgin 40 days after Christmas. In a steady ritual, the treasuress handed over the sculpture to the youngest canon of the parish on the eve of the procession, who then concealed it under his cloak and brought it to St. Gertrude’s church in the City of Essen, today known as the “Market church” (Marktkirche). On the following morning the statue was veiled and carried in a solemn procession back to the cathedral, where it was laid down on the steyn, the "stone" where offerings to the abbey were usually placed. There she was ceremonially unveiled and crowned with Otto’s child crown. The crowned Madonna was then carried back into the minster under the eyes of the congregation, just as Mary had been welcomed by the people of the Heavenly Jerusalem upon her arrival there according to the scripture. The Purification processions ceased in 1561 when the Protestant Reformation reached the city of Essen - — though not the abbey - and the parish of St. Gertrude was converted to the Lutheran faith. The medieval tradition of the coronation of Mary was revived in 1978 by Essen’s first bishop Cardinal Franz Hengsbach but had to be stopped in 2000 due to the restorer's concerns.

Another procession in which the Madonna was shown took place every year on the Monday preceding Ascension Day. On this day the nuns, canons and scholars of the abbey and its daughter house in nearby Rellinghausen held a formal meeting with the monks of Werden Abbey and took the Golden Madonna along. The two processions met about halfway between the two monasteries at a chapel dedicated to Saint Mark in what is today the neighbourhood of Essen-Bredeney. A memorial cross commemorates the place of these meetings today.

When the Diocese of Essen (the so-called Ruhrbistum) was established in 1959, Mary was elected as its patron saint, and thus came to be a symbol for the whole Ruhr area. The first bishop of Essen, Cardinal Franz Hengsbach, decided to make the statue accessible to the public. Since 1959 the Madonna has been on display in a climate-controlled high-security showcase in the northern side chapel of the cathedral.