It is a bizarre sort of a church as seen to-day,[{130}] and must always have had much the same character; still it is of a style which gave birth to a new and distinct movement in cathedral building, and the authorities have declared that the three edifices founded by the Emperor Conrad, the cathedral of Speyer, the collegiate church of St. Guidon, and the monastery of Limburg, were the foundations of a new school of ecclesiastical architecture, and the envy of all the other provinces of the Empire.
The cathedral was consecrated under Bishop Eginhard, and immediately all church-building Europe went into raptures over it, its proportions and dimensions, its fine plan, its six spires, and the magnificently spacious arrangement of its transept and apside.
In 1159 the fabric suffered much from fire, but before a decade had passed it was restored in such a manner that the church again stood complete.
Another fire followed in 1189, and in 1450 yet another of still greater extent, and only the holy vessels, the reliquaries, and the altar ornaments were saved from the flames.
Bishop Reinhold, of Helmstadt, and the chapter, set about forthwith to rebuild the cathedral, and, while its ashes were still smouldering,[{131}] they took a vow to make it more beautiful than before.
The bishop wrote a letter to Pope Boniface VIII., on the occasion of his jubilee in the same year, and obtained a pontifical decree that all who gave financial help toward the erection of the new cathedral should be blessed with the same indulgence as those who visited the tombs of the apostles at Rome.
The bishop lost no time, and his agents went forth into all Germany to get funds to reërect the sepulchral church of the emperors. They were received favourably, and twenty-one thousand golden florins furnished Bishop Reinhold the means of carrying out his project.
After the wars of the sixteenth century, when Speyer was sacked, pillaged, and burned, the sturdy walls of the cathedral again fell, and only in the eighteenth century was it restored. For a long time, only the choir was rebuilt, the nave being neglected up to 1772, when Bishop August of Limburg undertook to restore the entire edifice, which, considering that he did it in the eighteenth century, he did comparatively well.
The choir and nave reflect, considerably, the spirit of the middle ages. The façade[{132}] alone indicates the false taste of the period in which it was restored.
In general the exterior decoration is simple and remarkable for its interest.