St.-Cosmas-und-Damian-Kirche, Lutheran church in Bockhorn, Germany.
St.-Cosmas-und-Damian-Kirche is a rectangular hall church begun in 1230, measuring 37.40 m east to west and 10.30 m north to south, with walls about 10 m high and 170 cm thick. Its outer face is hewn granite boulders, the inner layer brick, filled with stone rubble and shell limestone. The slate-covered saddle roof carries a closed ridge turret at the east end and a second turret above the 1649 west portal, whose clock bell hangs under a welsche Haube.
Construction of the church began in 1230 on a warft, a raised mound, using field boulders in the Friesian manner. A lightning strike started a fire in 1630; afterwards the congregation acquired an oak baptismal font, a gallery and a pulpit, and replaced the vaulted ceiling with a flat beam ceiling, painted in colour by 1776. The west portal was added in 1649.
The parish name comes from the twin brothers Cosmas and Damian, said to have healed the sick without payment. Inside, the oldest piece is a 13th-century baptismal font; a 1656 gravestone and an oak font acquired after the 1630 fire also survive. The oil painting Christ on the Cross by Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert, bought in Münster in 1817 for 100 gold talers, follows Rubens and van Dyck.
The church stands on a raised mound (Warft) in Bockhorn, with the west portal added in 1649 facing the entrance side. The north wall keeps its original window openings, while the other three walls were altered by later repairs and openings. The flat beam ceiling inside, painted in colour by 1776, is best seen from the gallery.
The organ, built by Christian Vater in 1721/1722, kept its original tuning because the lids of the Gedackt pipes were firmly soldered shut, allowing the pitch to be reconstructed in the 1982/1983 restoration by the Führer firm under Harald Vogel's advice.
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