Church News

Stephen the first saint was tried for blasphemy against Moses and God.  He was stoned to death in 34 by a mob encouraged by  St. Paul.

Stephen's final speech was presented as accusing the Jews of persecuting prophets who spoke out against their sins:

Which one of the Prophets did your fathers not persecute, and they killed the ones who prophesied the coming of the Just One  of whom now, too, you have become betrayers and murderers.

The Roman Empire began its rule of Vienna in 15 B.C. and  soon established a well watched border on the shores of the Danube, building a chain of forts. The stone benches facing the west side of the cathedral were the roman wall of the fort Vindobona.  At Vindebona a legion of 6000 men was based. The area of the dome was a Roman burial ground and it is possible that a Roman temple existed there as well. One stone from the past at the right side of the portal is a gravestone from the 3^rd century of a soldier of the tenth legion based in Vienna.  Excavations in 2000 revealed graves 2.5 meters below the surface  which were carbon-dated to the 4^th century.

Founded in 1137 the partially-constructed Romanesque church was solemnly dedicated in 1147 to St. Stephen in front of nobles who were about to embark on the Second Crusade. At the beginning of the city St. Stephen was situated outside the settlement and the area was used as a cemetery. Although the first structure was completed in 1160 a great fire destroyed much of the original building and a larger replacement structure reusing the two towers, was constructed over the ruins of the old church and consecrated on 23 April 1263.

The church was dedicated to St. Stephen and  was oriented toward the sunrise on his feast day of 26 December, as the position stood in the year that construction began. Built of limestone, its construction lasted 65 years, from 1368 to 1433. The first organ is mentioned in 1334. At its pulpit St. John Capistrano preached a crusade in 1454 to hold back Muslim invasions of Europe.

Vienna was besieged twice in history by Turkish troops, in 1529 and 1683. 

During these battles the tower served as the main observation and command post for the defence of the walled city and it even contains an apartment for the watchmen who until 1955, manned the tower at night and rang the bells if a fire was spotted in the city.  At the top of the tower there was a crescent and a star until 1687.

An 18^th century Baroque statue shows St. Francis under an extravagant sunburst trampling a Turk.   

After two miraculous incidents in 1696 with a madonna and child picture and the mother in the picture shedding real tears, Emperor Leopold I ordered it brought to the Cathedral, where it would be safe from the Muslim armies that still controlled much of Hungary.   The pictures owneres of Pócs wanted their holy miracle-working painting returned but the emperor sent them a copy instead. Since then, the copy has been reported to weep real tears and work miracles.

At the tip of the tower stands the double-eagle imperial emblem with the Habsburg-Lorraine coat of arms on its chest surmounted by a double-armed apostolic cross which refers to  the imperial style of kings of Hungary.  The richly coloured roof is covered by 230,000 glazed tiles. On the south side of the building the tiles form a mosaic of the double-headed eagle from the empire ruled from Vienna by the Habsburg family.

The main entrance to the church is named the Giant's Door referring to the thighbone of a mastodon that hung over it for decades after being unearthed in 1443 while digging at the foundations.

The largest bell hangs in the north tower at 44,380 pounds. It is the largest in Austria and the second largest swinging bell in Europe.  It was cast in 1711 from cannons captured from the Muslim invaders.   Ludwig van Beethoven discovered the totality of his deafness when he saw birds flying out of the bell tower as a result of the bells' tolling but could not hear the bells.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart had been appointed an adjunct music director there shortly before his death  and this was his parish church during the writing of Figaro.   Wolfgang was buried in an unmarked pauper's grave under burial laws decreed in 1784 that all — rich or poor — were required to be buried unembalmed and without coffins in communal graves. These laws were still in effect when Mozart died in 1791 and he was married there, two of his children were baptised there, and his funeral was held in the Chapel of the Cross.

In 1735, Vienna experienced an outbreak of the bubonic plague. In an effort to keep the Black Death at bay, the numerous cemeteries surrounding the Stephensdom and the charnel house (a building for storing stacked bones) were emptied, and thousands of bones and rotting corpses were thrown down into the pits dug in the floor of the crypt. The downside to this arrangement was that the smell of the catacombs would occasionally waft up into the church and make religious services seem longer than usual.

To combat the unfortunate smell, as well as make room for more bodies, a few unlucky prisoners were lowered into the pits where they were forced to scrub the rotting flesh off the plague-ridden and disordered bodies, snapping and breaking the skeletons down to individual bones, and stacking them into neatly ordered rows, skulls on top.

The Ducal Crypt located under the chancel holds 78 bronze containers with the bodies, hearts, or viscera of 72 members of the Habsburg family.   Over 60 jars of imperial intestines rest in the ducal crypt including one containing Hapsburg Queen Maria Teresa'­s sovereign stomach. Perhaps these vehicles of disgestion were kept to preserve forever any evidence of poisoning.  Recently one of the seals on the jar broke, leaking 200 year-old visceral fluid onto the floor. The stink was so awful that it took a day or two before someone was willing to address the situation.

The construction of the Kaiser's tomb spanned over 45 years, starting 25 years before the emperor's death.  The body of the tomb has 240 statues and is a glory of medieval sculptural art.

During World War II, St. Stephen's Cathedral was saved from destruction by retreating German forces when Captain Gerhard Klinkicht disregarded orders from the city commandant to "fire a hundred shells and leave it in just debris and ashes."