There are a series of uninteresting tombs, and there is a high altar, gaudily rich with trappings, which would be a disgrace to a stage-carpenter.
There is little or no religious history connected with the city; but such devotional spirit as existed, and does exist to-day, ought to have left a better Christian memorial than that of the Unterpfaar.[{149}]
XIV
WORMS
This most ancient city was the Vormatia of the Romans. It was devastated by Attila, and reëstablished by Clovis. At the beginning of the seventh century Brunhilda founded the bishopric, and Dagobert established his royal residence here in the years following. Afterward Charlemagne himself made it a resting-place many times, and held many Parliaments here.
In the tenth century Worms became a free city of the Empire, and in 1122 a Concordat was entered into between Pope Calixtus II. and the emperor, Henry V., concerning the ecclesiastical affairs of the city.
It was in the cathedral of Worms that the famous Diet of 1521 was held, when Charles V. declared Luther a heretic, and banished him from the Empire, for which indignity Luther is said to have remarked: "There are at Worms as many devils as there are tiles on the roof of its cathedral."[{150}]
The city suffered much in the Thirty Years' War, and in 1689 was reduced to ashes by the armies of Louis XIV.
The cathedral of Worms was begun in 996 by Bishop Bouchard, and completed twenty years later by the Emperor Henry II. With its four fine towers and its two noble domes or cupolas, it ranks as one of the really great monuments of Christianity in Germany.
To-day, with its later additions, it is purely Romanesque, though built entirely after 1185, when Gothic was already making great strides elsewhere. Even here there is a decided ogival development to be noted in the vaulting of the nave.