Stiftskirche Beutelsbach, Lutheran church in Weinstadt, Germany
Stiftskirche Beutelsbach stands at Marktplatz 8 in the Beutelsbach district of Weinstadt. The late Gothic west-tower church has a single-nave nave and a choir with tracery windows and a net-ribbed vault. A square tower of light gray and tan stone blocks with a steep green roof adjoins a lower round structure of rough tan stone with a conical tiled roof and an open archway.
A predecessor church, St. Leodegar, was first documented in 1080 and served as the burial place of the House of Württemberg. Around 1226–1265 Ulrich I enlarged the associated canons' foundation. After damage in the 1311–1312 imperial war, the foundation and burial site were moved to Stuttgart under Eberhard I, completed by 1321. The present church was begun in 1476 and finished in 1522.
The church is the parish church of Beutelsbach within the Schorndorf deanery of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Württemberg. Its name recalls the canons' chapter founded after the 1080 first mention of the predecessor church of St. Leodegar. Inside, look for the twelve panel paintings of the Passion of Christ from around 1600 on the gallery.
The church stands at Marktplatz 8 in the Beutelsbach district of Weinstadt. Visitors enter through the late-Gothic west tower; the choir with its net-ribbed vault lies to the east. Remnants of the fortified churchyard and a gate tower dated 1505 stand nearby. The building reopened on 12 September 2021 after a five-year general renovation.
The wrought-iron altar grille with flower-finial corners is a rare form found almost only in the Württemberg Remstal and the area between Schönbuch and the Alb plateau. Such "altar arbours" have no pre-Reformation models and no parallels in later Catholic building; their meaning is still being researched.
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