As I am only just returned from my birthday celebration in Zittau, I haven’t had an opportunity to prepare my usual blog but I thought blog readers might like to read this article, which I wrote some months ago, which explains one of the reasons why I have enjoyed my visits there.
Zittau’s Lenten Veils
From at least early medieval times it was the practice in many churches throughout European Christendom to screen off the choir and sanctuary from the congregation during the period of the Lenten fast. This was usually achieved by means of a Lenten Veil, a large linen sheet suspended from the rood screen. Behind the veil the priest and his lay assistants, and the choir where there was one, would perform the Mass. The congregation could hear the Mass being said or sung, in Latin of course, but they could not see what was taking place. Thus, visual – and perhaps spiritual – fasts were imposed upon the congregation in addition to the physical one that they were already enduring.
The first written evidence of this practice comes from England. In A.D.1004 Abbot Aelfric of Winchester wrote, ‘in quadragesima reliquiae et cruces occultantur et velamen inter sancta sanctorum et populum ponitur….’. I am not a Latin scholar but I believe that that translates as 'from the first Sunday in Lent, relics and crosses are concealed and we interpose a veil between the Holy Sanctuary and the congregation….’
These Lenten Veils were originally plain linen sheets but, as time went by many of them were decorated with pictures of a religious nature so that the laity could be instructed, and perhaps entertained, during the weeks of fasting.
Then came the Reformation. It isn’t difficult to imagine how this practice of screening off the choir and sanctuary and saying the Mass in Latin behind it, would have incensed the Protestant Reformers. ‘Mumbo-jumbo going on behind a curtain’, was probably one of the more polite ways in which it would have been described. Lenten Veils were torn down or dragged from where they were stored. Many were destroyed. Others were no doubt stolen for use as wall covering in stately homes and palaces.
Throughout Protestant Europe the Lenten Veil disappeared. In Catholic areas the Veils lingered longer, beginning to disappear from the seventeenth century onwards. In churches in some Alpine valleys in the Carinthia province of Austria, Lenten Veils are used to this day, and there are said to be signs of a revival of their use in other parts of Austria and Germany*.
Not all Lenten Veils were destroyed. In Upper Lusatia, in south-eastern Saxony, the Protestant Reformation took place quietly and peacefully. Catholic Churches became Lutheran without violence. This tradition of religious tolerance persisted over the centuries. In Upper Lusatia there are two Cistercian Convents in a predominantly Lutheran area that have continued uninterrupted since their foundation in the 13th Century. In the town of Bautzen is the ‘Petridom’, a church that has been used by both Catholics and Lutherans since the 16th Century*. This peaceful and tolerant tradition probably accounts for the fact that the small town of Zittau has not just one, but two, Lenten Veils or Fastentücher that are its most precious possessions.
Zittau is a town of about thirty thousand inhabitants just on the German side of the point at which the now unguarded, frontiers of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic coincide. It may not be ‘where east meets west’, but it undoubtedly is the town where Teuton meets Slav – nowadays in peace and friendship.
Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil dates from 1472. It is 8.20 metres high and 6.80 metres wide. Unique in Germany, it has painted on it 90 pictures illustrating Bible stories, 45 from the Old Testament and 45 from the New. They range from The Creation to The last Judgement. In historical importance it has been compared with the Bayeux Tapestry. It is certainly the town’s pride and joy, and has attracted visitors not only from every country in Europe, but from all over the world.
The Smaller Lenten Veil is 4.30 metres high and 3.40 metres wide. It dates from 1573, almost exactly a century later than the Great Veil. It is itself a quite remarkable artefact but has been to some extent eclipsed by the larger and more spectacular one. It has on it just one large and very striking picture of the crucifixion with an angel collecting in a goblet the blood from the wound in Christ’s side. Round its margins are symbols of Christ’s Passion – the crown of thorns and so on.
The Great Lenten Veil, like Zittau itself, has had a very chequered history. The town was once part of the Holy Roman Empire. Between 1158 and 1635 Zittau, then known as Zittavia, was within the Kingdom of Bohemia (the realm of the ‘Good King Wenceslas’ of the Christmas carol!). Later it became one of the principals of the semi-independent ‘six-city league’ of Upper Lusatia. The town was almost totally destroyed in the Seven Years War of the mid-eighteenth century. Later it was within Hitler’s ‘Third Reich’ and, in the divided Germany that followed World War II, it was part of Eastern Germany or the DDR. Now, of course, it is within the German Federal Republic and is Federal Germany’s most easterly town.
Thus, the Great Lenten Veil successfully survived nation change, several regime changes, the Protestant Reformation, the Seven Years War and two World Wars. It came nearest to its end in the aftermath of World War II.
Immediately after the cessation of hostilities it was realized that the huge artefact was missing from its home in Zittau’s town Museum. It was surely too large for its looting to have passed unnoticed. No one who had been in the town during the final months of the war knew what had happened to it. A few months later it was found - on the slopes of Mount Oybin, a small but spectacular mountain six or seven miles from the town. Some Russian soldiers had it in their possession. It was in four pieces, which were being used to line the walls of a sauna!
Those four pieces were rescued and stored until the reunification of Germany made it possible to launch a nation-wide appeal for the cost of repair and restoration. The appeal was successful. The historic Veil was lovingly and painstakingly repaired and restored by a specialist firm in Switzerland. Returned to its hometown, it was in 1999 installed as the single object within what is now Zittau’s church/museum of the Holy Cross. In what the Guinness Book of Records acknowledges to be biggest picture frame in the world it is displayed to the public in a controlled light and atmosphere that will ensure its continued preservation. In the ten years following its installation in the Church of the Holy Cross, it has had no less than 30,000 visitors a year – 300,000 altogether! Meanwhile Zittau’s smaller Lenten Veil is displayed in the Zittau Town Museum (formerly a Franciscan Monastery) where it had remained undisturbed throughout Word War II and its aftermath.
A mystery remained. When, how and why had a textile artefact 8.20 metres by 6.80 metres been transported from a museum in Zittau’s town centre to Mount Oybin, without anyone noticing or knowing?
This is where I play a tiny ‘walk-on’ part in the five and a half century old drama of the history of Zittau’s Great Lenten Veil. I spent the final eighteen months of World War II as a member of a ‘working group’ (Arbeitskommando) of other-rank British prisoners of war in Zittau.
Nearly sixty years later I made friends with a family in that small German town of which my memories were far from being wholly negative. In the course of an email correspondence I mentioned that one of the more unusual jobs I had had to do as a POW was to help transport some very large and heavy wooden cases containing ‘treasure’ from Zittau Town Museum to a ruined Monastery on the summit of Mount Oybin ‘for safety’. It had been late in February 1945, a week or so after the devastating air raids on Dresden by the RAF and the American Air Force. The thunder of gunfire from the east had been growing louder daily. It was obvious that the war would be over within a matter of weeks.
Mount Oybin. The ruined monastery (and a ruined castle) are hidden by the trees at the summit.
We had imagined that the ‘treasure’ in those heavy wooden cases had been gold or silver, but my correspondents immediately thought of the Great Lenten Veil. They consulted the scholarly Dr Volker Dudeck, then Direktor (Curator) of the Museum. He was in no doubt that the Veil had been among the contents of those cases. It was then – when the residents of Zittau had many more urgent problems on their minds – that it had been taken unnoticed from the museum to Mount Oybin.
It was only when I was in my late eighties, in 2007 and then again in 2008 and 2009, and I was able to revisit Zittau as a free man, that I realized quite how important that Lenten Veil was to the town. I met Dr Dudeck, by then retired from his directorship of the museum and devoting all his time to the preservation of the Great Lenten Veil and presenting it to the world. He became a personal friend. My son and grandson, who accompanied me on my first visit, and I, were given a VIP showing of the Veil in its permanent home. Every one of its 90 pictures was explained to us, in English! We were photographed and interviewed by the local press, which later carried a very positive front-page feature about the ‘rescuer of the Lenten Veil’.
On a subsequent visit I was welcomed by the Mayor of Zittau who presented me with a silver ring and pendant cross, symbolic of the town’s two Lenten Veils, and was invited as an honoured guest at an ecumenical ‘meditation’ on the Great Lenten Veil arranged by the Catholic, Evangelical Lutheran and Methodist Churches of the town. At the Meditation a long article of mine about my first visit, Return to Zittau’, translated into German as Rückkehr nach Zittau, was read to the congregation, to whom I was invited to ‘say a few words’ at the end. My German is very basic and I was glad that one of my German friends was able to act as an interpreter. Rückkehr nach Zittau has since been published as a well-produced illustrated booklet and is on sale in the ‘book and souvenir shop’ of the Museum/Church of the Holy Cross at 5 Euros, in aid of the Great Lenten Veil’s continued preservation.
Standing in the nave of the Church of the Holy Cross, with the Great Lenten Veil displayed in front of me it was impossible for me to avoid a warm feeling of pride at having played a part, albeit a tiny one, in the history of a unique artefact that has been a source of inspiration to Christians in this small town in Germany for some twenty generations.
*Last Saturday (21st May 2011), the final day of my visit to Zittau, my elder son drove us to the ancient town of Bautzin, closely linked to Zittau by both history and geography. There I was able to visit the Petridom which I found to be much more than a mere 'church'. It is, in fact, a large and magnificent cathedral, dominating the town centre and used and greatly valued by Roman Catholic and Lutherans alike. It was an example to us all and a welcome demonstration of the fact that all whom the Anglican Book of Common Prayer describes as those who profess and call themselves Christians (whether they belong to the Church of England, the Church of Rome, or any of the many dissenting churches) are all members of Christ's Holy Catholic (Universal) Church and are all equally precious to God.
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