XVIII
LIMBURG
The cathedral of Limburg-on-Lahn, not farther from the juncture of the Lahn and Rhine than is Frankfort-on-the-Main, may well be considered a Rhine cathedral.
The Lahn is by no means so powerful a stream as is the Main or the Neckar; nor is it either picturesque, or even important as a waterway.
It has this one virtue, however: it forms a setting to Limburg's many-spired cathedral that is truly grand.
Limburg played a great part in the middle ages, and its origin goes far back into antiquity. Under Drusus a castellum was erected here, which was destroyed by the Franks and the Alemanni.
The counts of the lower Lahn province were among the most powerful in all Germany. They gave their city the name of[{182}] Roemercastel, which name, to some extent, may be said to live up to to-day. Later the Franks called it Lintburc, from the little river Linther, which flows into the Lahn at this point.
The cathedral of Limburg is the most imposing and homogeneous of all the romano-ogival edifices of Germany.
Consecrated to St. George, this church dates from the latter years of the twelfth century and the early part of the thirteenth. It was erected by Count Henry of Nassau, and replaced two more ancient edifices on the same site.
Without a doubt it is a mediæval monument which stands supreme in its class, though its grandeur comes not so much from mere magnitude as it does from the general disposition of its plan, and the wonderful blending of the transition elements which, after all is said and done, in Germany, are not elsewhere very pronounced.