Tuesday, October 3rd 1854 ~ Bonn, Germany

Left: Cologne Cathedral under construction in 1856. Right: in 1912, after its completion in 1880.

Hotel Bellevue ~ I date at Bonn because I write from there this evening but the whole day has been spent at Cologne. Mary was quite unwell this morning. She had headache and was obliged to remain at the hotel while we were sightseeing. We started early and first directed our steps to the great Cathedral “Domkirche.” It is still unfinished and was begun in the 11th century. At present the work is being prosecuted with vigor and will probably be concluded in a half century more. This is a great gothic structure and when completed will be the largest of its style in the world. It has two towers, one on either side of the nave, that will be 500 feet high. It contains of course many wonderful relics (what Rhemish or Belgian cathedral does not!). Among them are a “lock of the hair of the Virgin” and the “skulls of the three Kings of Cologne,” the wise men or Magi, who first came to adore the infant Christ. The vast proportions of the outside of this cathedral impressed us much. We gazed at its proportions a long while. From one of its towers springs quite a good sized tree, taken root on a deposit of ages. We now went to the Ursuline Chapel, whose walls are filled with the bones of the eleven thousand sainted virgins who were massacred here by the Huns in the 3rd century. I have given their history under date of Sept. 29th. In the sacristy their bones are arranged in glass cases which extend from the floor to the ceiling and perfectly line the room. We were shown the skull of St. Ursula with her name embroidered upon a band of crimson velvet which encircles it, covering up the lower jaw and thus taking from the face that repulsive expression common to this object. Very many of the other skulls were similarly adorned. The question presented itself to us, how they came to know these skulls one from another, after they had been in a confused heap for ages. In this same place they pointed out to us one of the “alabaster wine pots used by our Lord at [Cans] of Galilee. It was broken and looked old. From here we visited another church where there is a splendid painting of Rubens. It was presented by him to the church, the one in which he was baptized. The subject is the crucifixion of St. Peter. His executioners are affixing his ponderous body to the cross head downwards and driving the nails. His face is calm, but each mussel of the body betrays his suffering. He is represented as in high health, but an old man with gray hair. This picture impresses us more than any we have ever seen and now we feel as if we never should see its like again. We saw the house in which Ruben was born and Mary de Médicis died. The church which has Rubens painting still preserves the font in which he was baptized. It has the tomb of a child of an English king in the 3rd century, a monument much defaced.