Kirche St. Michael

Beschreibung

The first parish church of Piesport, which according to a church register from around 1350 had the rank of a "matrix ecclesia" (mother church), was located on the hillside above the village on the left bank of the Moselle, where it had replaced the pagan place of worship of Mercurius Bigontius. 
Today, only a small "chapel house" ("Michelskirch") in the vineyards reminds us of it, as the surrounding terrain has changed its appearance considerably due to land consolidation in the 1990s. This church had the patronage of St Michael, which was transferred to the parish church when it was rebuilt in 1776. The old mountain church, first mentioned in 1295, lost its status in the following centuries for practical reasons to the church "zu den 12 Aposteln" ("to the 12 Apostles") near the churchyard. 
Its patron saint was later replaced by the patron saint of the plague, Sebastian (today the Sebastianus Chapel near the parish centre). In a visitation record from 1569, it is named as the main church. In 1609, baptism was still administered in the old church and services were held on high holidays. 

In the mid-18th century, it was said to be in a dilapidated state. The current building, situated on the Moselle, was erected in 1776/77: the parish financed the tower and the sacristy, Mettlach Abbey the nave and the Trier Cathedral Chapter the choir. The church building is dominated by the 52.50 metre high tower, to the right of which a neo-Gothic open hall with a canopy roof was added around 1850. The portal pillars in front of the entrance (around 1780), whose depictions of angels symbolise faith and love, come from Klausen. The interior of the church is dominated by the 3 monumental ceiling paintings ("Piesport Sky"), which were painted by Johann Peter Weber from Trier in 1778. 

Above the chancel is the Assumption of Mary with the open sarcophagus and the 12 apostles, in the centre the fall of the angels by the archangel Michael and, towards the entrance, the missionary sermon of St. Francis Xavier (in the bottom right corner is a self-portrait of the painter at the feet of his wife in a blue dress, who is holding a sign with her left hand with the inscription: J. P. Weber invenit et pinxit ("has conceived and painted"), Paulus Miller Architectus 1778). Above the high altar is a large 18th century oil painting set into the wall, also by J. P. Weber. It depicts a child with his guardian angel, at the top the Mother of God blessing the group, at the bottom left the devil with a discarded mask and a torch with which he is trying to set fire to the globe. The three wooden altars and the pulpit date from the time of construction, as does the inlaid communion bench. The three-arched rococo-style organ loft was only installed in the church in the middle of the 19th century.  

The church has five bells, which were consecrated on 25 January 2004 in a vespers service by Canon Nikolaus Föhr and Dean Werner Mathieu.
The casting of the smallest bell took place on 30 August 2003 in Piesport itself and was carried out by Hermann-Josef Schmitt from Brockscheid. The former four steel bells from 1950 now ring in the pilgrimage church in Servanitza/Ukraine. One of the images on the two-tonne St. Michael bell is a bundle of carrots, a small reference to the nickname of the people of Piesport - "Mortepänz" (carrot bellies). 
The "Piesport Treasury" also displays relics that were attributed to the Mother of God in the Middle Ages: an ivory comb and two pieces of linen cloth - Mary's veil.
They were kept in the former Benedictine Abbey of St. Maximin in Trier until secularisation. For a long time, Piesport retained its centuries-old pre-eminence as the seat of a regional chapter in the pastoral structure of the old archbishopric of Trier (later the seat of the deanery), whose chapter comprised only 7 parishes around 1075 and as many as 44 parishes in the Moselle-Eifel-Hunsrück region in 1794.