As to the period of the erection of this spire, it is supposed to have been about the middle, or latter end, of the fifteenth century. It has certainly much in common with the highly ornamental Gothic style of building in our own country, about the reign of Henry VI. The colored glazed tiles of the roof of the church are very disagreeable and unharmonizing. These colors are chiefly green, red, and blue. Indeed the whole roof is exceedingly heavy and tasteless.
I will now conduct you to the interior. On entering, from the southeast door, you observe, to the left, a small piece of white marble—which every one touches, with the finger or thumb charged with holy water, on entering or leaving the cathedral. Such have been the countless thousands of times that this piece of marble has been so touched, that, purely, from such friction, it has been worn nearly half an inch below the general surrounding surface. I have great doubts, however, if this mysterious piece of masonry be as old as the walls of the church (which may be of the fourteenth century), which they pretend to say it is.
The first view of the interior of this cathedral, seen even at the most favorable moment—which is from about three till five o'clock—is far from prepossessing. Indeed, after what I had seen at Rouen, Paris, Strassburg, Ulm, and Munich, it was a palpable disappointment. In the first place, there seems to be no grand leading feature of simplicity; add to which, darkness reigns everywhere. You look up, and discern no roof—not so much from its extreme height, as from the absolute want of windows. Everything not only looks dreary, but is dingy and black—from the mere dirt and dust which seem to have covered the great pillars of the nave—and especially the figures and ornaments upon it—for the last four centuries. This is the more to be regretted, as the larger pillars are highly ornamented; having human figures, of the size of life, beneath sharply pointed canopies, running up the shafts. The extreme length of the cathedral is 342 feet of Vienna measurement. The extreme width, between the tower and its opposite extremity—or the transepts—is 222 feet.
There are comparatively few chapels; only four—but many Bethstühle or Prie-Dieus. Of the former, the chapels of Savoy and St. Eloy are the chief; but the large sacristy is more extensive than either. On my first entrance, while attentively examining the choir, I noticed—what was really a very provoking, but probably not a very uncommon sight—a maid servant deliberately using a long broom in sweeping the pavement of the high altar, at the moment when several very respectable people, of both sexes, were kneeling upon the steps, occupied in prayer. But the devotion of the people is incessant—all the day long—and in all parts of the cathedral.
Meanwhile, service is going on in all parts of the cathedral. They are singing here; they are praying there; and they are preaching in a third place. But during the whole time, I never heard one single note of the organ. I remember only the other Sunday morning—walking out beneath one of the brightest blue skies that ever shone upon man—and entering the cathedral about nine o'clock. A preacher was in the principal pulpit; while a tolerably numerous congregation was gathered around him. He preached, of course, in the German language, and used much action. As he became more and more animated, he necessarily became warmer, and pulled off a black cap—which, till then, he had kept upon his head; the zeal and piety of the congregation at the same time seeming to increase with the accelerated motions of the preacher.
In other more retired parts, solitary devotees were seen—silent, and absorbed in prayer. Among these, I shall not easily forget the head and the physiognomical expression of one old man—who, having been supported by crutches, which lay by the side of him—appeared to have come for the last time to offer his orisons to heaven. The light shone full upon his bald head and elevated countenance; which latter indicated a genuineness of piety, and benevolence of disposition, not to be soured, even by the most bitter of worldly disappointments! It seemed as if the old man were taking leave of this life, in full confidence of the rewards which await the righteous beyond the grave.
So much for the living. A word or two now for the dead. Of course this letter alludes to the monuments of the more distinguished characters once resident in and near the metropolis. Among these, doubtless the most elaborate is that of the Emperor Frederick III.—in the florid Gothic style, surmounted by a tablet, filled with coat-armor, or heraldic shields. Some of the mural monuments are very curious, and among them are several of the early part of the sixteenth century—which represent the chins and even mouths of females, entirely covered by drapery; such as is even now to be seen and such as we saw on descending from the Vosges. But among these monuments—both for absolute and relative antiquity—none will appear to the curious eye of an antiquary so precious as that of the head of the architect of the cathedral, whose name was Pilgram.
From "A Bibliographical, Antiquarian and Picturesque Tour," published in 1821.