Networks of Patronage: The Civic Building Projects at St. S

The municipal large-scale civil building projects, St. Stephen and St. Michael, were the central locations of the city and were interrelated in terms of building and church operations. As parish churches, they were of great importance in the life of every person and, in contrast to the monasteries, were freely accessible to all social groups of the most diverse gender - clerical dignitaries, royal families, craftsmen, merchants, citizens, brotherhoods, etc. They provided the ideal framework for building donations and for donations of sculptures and cult objects. Spiritual and secular people as well as their families immortalized themselves with their investments in the churches under construction. The aim of this research project is to reconstruct, collate and compare the diverse furnishing concepts and donor ambitions of the different individuals, groups and institutions in the parish churches of the city. The project looks at the medieval parish church system of the city in terms of its mediality. The interactions are considered as well as the period in which church furnishings have emerged. It pertains to the importance of the spatial structure, the content-related development of the foundation objects and an in-depth presentation of the donor culture on the civic building projects of the city of Vienna. Were there similarities in the architectural concept, in the internal spatial structure or in the cult objects? Are there any interrelationships in the liturgy during a church year? And how did this network of patronage, which is made up of all the people involved in the foundation process, spread over the two major civil building projects?