Focus on Bernward Column and explain the Original location and history.
The Bernward Column was made for St. Michael's Church, Hildesheim, the foundation and final resting place of Bishop Bernward. It initially stood in the east choir, behind the altar, with a triumphal cross. This location under the triumphal arch was proposed by Gallistl using literary sources and confirmed in 2006 by excavations. In addition, in front of the altar stood a column of eastern Mediterranean marble covered in copper. According to later sources, it was a gift from Emperor Otto III to Bernward.
The altar was equated with the offering table in the forehall of the Temple of Solomon, which also stood between two columns (Boaz and Jachin). A large wheel chandelier, which was also meant to have been a gift from Otto III to Bernward, hung above the Bernward Column until 1662, with a porphyry jug in the centre that was claimed to derive from the Wedding at Cana. This arrangement of a column topped with a cross, an altar and a wheel chandelier was modelled on the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which was also equated with the forehall of the Temple of Solomon. Furthermore, the distance of roughly 42 metres (138 ft) between the original location of the column and the grave of Bernward in the west crypt of St. Michael's matched the distance between the Rotunda of the Resurrection and Golgotha in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, according to the reports of pilgrims.In 1544, during the chaos of the Reformation in Hildesheim, the cross on top of the column was removed by iconoclasts. It was melted down and recast as a cannon, suggesting that it was of considerable size. After the demolition of the east choir of St. Michael's in 1650 and the resulting collapse of the east crossing, the column's capital, which "weighed about a hundred pounds", was also melted down and replaced by a wooden capital of identical shape and size, meant to hide the replacement. An engraving by Johann Ludwig Brandes (1730) indicates that it was decorated with figures. Since figural capitals of this kind are otherwise only attested from the twelfth century, it has been suggested that the capital that was melted down was not the Bernwardian original either, and that this original was replaced during the renovation of the cloister church in the second half of the twelfth century. The rest of the column was not melted down in the following years (despite its value as raw material) because of its ancient significance as a contact relic, since it was believed to have been made personally by St. Bernward.
In 1810, after the secularisation of the Catholic cloister (1803) and the abolition of the Protestant parish of St. Michael's (1810), the column was removed on the private initiative of diocese officials and installed in the north of the Domhof between the cathedral and the Bishop's house. In 1870 the Hildesheim sculptor Karl Küsthardt gave the column a new bronze capital, which was meant to imitate the wooden capital or an illustration of it and to indirectly preserve the appearance of the old bronze capital, which had supported an impost topped by a bronze crucifix. In 1893 it was moved into the cathedral.
On 30 September 2009 it was moved back to St. Michael's for the duration of the cathedral renovations, which lasted until August 2014.
Temple of Solomon wheel chandelier Church of the Holy Sepulchre crossing St. Michael's Church Otto III crucifix Wedding at Cana Reformation Emperor St. Michael's secularisation Karl Küsthardt Bernward St. Michael's Church, Hildesheim Hildesheim Golgotha triumphal cross bronze Domhof Resurrection capital Boaz and Jachin impost contact relic