Address: Estonia, Tallinn, st. Pyhavaimu
Foundation date: XIII century
Coordinates: 59 ° 26'17.0 "N 24 ° 44'44.5" E
Content:
Short description
Opposite the building of the Great Guild, next to the town hall, stands the Gothic Church of the Holy Spirit (Pyhavaimu).
The only adornments of its austere ascetic facade are an octahedral spire and an ancient multi-colored clock at the entrance, which regularly counts every hour since 1684 to this day. The construction of the temple began in the 13th century, when a small chapel (9.2 X 7.2 meters) was erected at the almshouse of the Holy Spirit, now making up the altar table... In the 15th century, the chapel was transformed into a choir, adding a longitudinal two-aisled room to it. Shortly before the Reformation (1524), the northern nave, intended for city parishioners, and the southern nave, which was a prayer house for the almshouse, were divided by a grating.
View of the church from the building of the Great Guild
In the 1630s, the building acquired a late Renaissance-style turret shako and a stepped gable. Currently, the Church of the Holy Spirit belongs to the Lutheran community and occupies an important place in the history of Estonia. The conquest of Estonian lands by the Germans and Danes for a long time hindered the development of the national Estonian culture.
It was within the walls of Pyhavaimu that the clergyman Georg Müller read the first sermons in Estonian. Pastors Simon Vanrath and Johann Coell, who preached in the Church of the Holy Spirit, published in 1535 the first catechism in Estonian, containing the main provisions of the Lutheran doctrine.
View of the entrance to the church and the old clock
In 1563 - 1600, Balthazar Russov conducted services in this church, who wrote the Chronicles of the Province of Livonia, where he described in detail the events of the Livonian War.
Interior of the Church of the Holy Spirit
The main pride of the temple interiors is the multi-winged wooden altar made by the German master Bernt Notke in 1483 in the Gothic style... The altar miraculously survived the night of September 14, 1524, when supporters of the Reformation plundered the Pyhavaimu church.
Church interior
A Gothic bell (1433) is installed on the tower of the temple, which to this day summons the people to the service, as if pronouncing the words engraved on it: “I beat for all equally accurately, both the servant and the servant, both the master and the mistress - and no one can blame me for this. " The windows of the Pyhavaimu Church are decorated with stained glass windows, and there are Renaissance and Baroque chandeliers on the ceiling. The oldest "hanging" pulpit in Tallinn dating from 1597 and the wooden carvings of the choir benches also deserve special attention.
