Wall frescoes

Also cre­at­ed by C. D. Asam, albeit some­what lat­er (c. 1735), fur­ther wall paint­ings adorn the two cen­tral side bays: On thenorth side, the paint­ings brack­et the mar­ble pul­pit made by J. J. Kürschn­er in 1732, form­ing a coher­ent the­mat­ic com­po­si­tion: The pulpit’s sound­ing board is crowned by an impos­ing stuc­co stat­ue of the order’s founder, St. Bene­dict, admon­ish­ing the lis­ten­ers to be atten­tive to his words. On the left side of the pul­pit, those who heed his words (or those of the preach­er in the pul­pit) fol­low the path of virtue to Heav­en­ly Jerusalem, for­ti­fied by the grace of the Gospel which has been unlocked for them by the ser­mon. The suc­cess­ful con­ver­sion of those who had at first despised the word of God by St. Bene­dict and his order is depict­ed to the right of the pulpit.

The paint­ing in the south­ern bay, which suf­fered ear­ly in its his­to­ry from ris­ing damp, doc­u­ments the glob­al mis­sion of the Bene­dictines for the King­dom of God and the sal­va­tion of humankind. The his­tor­i­cal exam­ple which it depicts is Colum­bus’ sec­ond arrival in Amer­i­ca in 1493 with twelve Bene­dic­tine monks on board of the “San­ta Maria”. That this stal­wart ves­sel, which mas­tered all per­ils and hard­ships, is also meant to sym­bol­ize the Church is appar­ent from the sculpt­ed rocks on either side of Kürschner’s marble
confessional.