Church of St Mary, seen from the top of the Town Hall Tower, Gdansk
In the tourist brochure it says that Gdansk’s St Mary’s church, the Marienkirche, is the biggest red brick church in Europe & one of the biggest in the world. But whatever its size and proportions, for me its greatest treasure is its gorgeous astronomical clock. It’s made of wood, created between 1464–1470 by Hans Düringer. I’m always happy to see visual references to the Zodiac in churches, from those days when they were not afraid of such things, when the church embraced the Zodiac, the celestial groupings of the stars and constellations and the symbols (Ram, Bull, Twins etc) that were given to each of the signs. Two other examples I’ve seen (and I’m sure there are many) are the stained glass windows in Chartres cathedral of all the Zodiac signs, and in Rome, the marble depictions of the signs on the floor of the Basilica di Santa Maria degli angeli (photos of some of them in an earlier post here).
So in this biggest church, we also have the tallest wooden astronomical clock. These deliciously chunky symbols form a circle and the sun is shown in its sign, Cancer at the time I saw it, and the Moon can be seen in Scorpio. The first day I went into the church (The first photo taken the day before the other ones) I only had a few minutes as tourists were being ushered out because a service was about to take place. Just time to admire the clock and take one photo.
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| Day 1, late afternoon |
The next day, before taking the train south, I went in again and sat for a while enjoying the peace and silence.
Travel, crowded airports, bustling city streets and noisy traffic are not what I’ve been used to, these past two years. I’ve become accustomed to the peace of the countryside, the sounds of nature, of birdsong, the rustle of wind in leaves. Sudden exposure to busy airports was quite a culture shock. And I had to negotiate the busier parts of Gdansk, in front of the train station, where buses and trams constantly arrive and depart, to book a train ticket south. The old city centre of Gdansk is fortunately pedestrianised, but these streets, apart from in the early morning, are thronged with tourists. So, to sit in this church with its white-painted walls and ceiling so high it disappeared almost into space, brought a welcome calm.
I got up to go, and noticed that several people had gathered around the clock, some of them sitting on wooden chairs in front of it as if waiting for a performance. Since something was clearly about to happen, I waited too. And as the clock struck noon, two small doors opened at the top, music played, and from just above the clock face, a line of wooden figures (who I guessed were the apostles) emerged from one side, moved slowly in a semi-circle and disappeared into the interior on the other side.
Ah, but there was a late-comer – a final figure trailing behind the others, followed them. This one was hard to make out but then I noticed he was carrying a long-handled scythe – the Grim Reaper!
Apparently this happens every day at noon – which the people seated on the wooden chairs obviously knew – but I had only been there by a lucky chance. Though the photo from day one is not so clear because of the light and shade, still, you can make out the Sun at the top, in Cancer, and the position of the Moon at the bottom, in Scorpio. And on day two, you can see that the Moon has moved a little, and is now near the end of Scorpio.
Wonderful to think that the elegant craftsmanship of the clockmaker, made so many centuries ago, (though restored after partial destruction in World War II) still delights people today. Best of all for me, that these homely symbols of Zodiac signs, depictions of the star clusters above us, and celestial time, still have a place, linking star time with earthly, Chronos time, and embedded in the fabric of this enormous and ancient church.
And the last figure in the procession, carrying the scythe, is often used to depict Saturn, which, at the time the clock was made, was the last known planet of the solar system. And now we see Saturn as not so much the total ending of life or even the last of the planets orbiting the Sun, but more as a bridge or gateway between inner planets and outer ones, and, like the nigredo in the alchemical process, the ending of a certain form (like a chrysalis). This can appear dead and lifeless from the outside, but inside, a magical transformation is occurring. So that seeming death holds the seeds of renewal and transformation, which we see in the miraculous emergence of the butterfly.
Such were my thoughts as I watched the movement of the scythe-bearing figure that followed the apostles at a distance. Memento mori was such a familiar trope of the Middle Ages but at least, though he puts in an appearance every day at noon, he never catches up with the apostles!
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