St. Chrischona in Bettingen
28 March 2022
The St. Chrischona church on the Dinkelsberg (522 m) near the municipality of Bettingen (Canton of Basel-Stadt) is dedicated to St. Chrischona. The nearby village of Bettingen is one of three communities in this small canton. The two other municipalities are Basel and Riehen.
Bettingen was originally an Alemannic village. Successive Lords owned the town before it was sold to Basel in 1513. The main reason was the commercially attractive pilgrimage church Chrischona. Basel bought Riehen in 1522.
Until the arrival of the national states after 1815, the Rhine was not a natural border. Many abbeys, dioceses, princes, dukes, counts and other political units owned estates in the Swiss Confederation and vice versa.
The nearby 250-metre television tower offers a fantastic view of the Black Forest, the Vosges, the Jura and the Alps.
Bettingen was the border town with the Grand Duchy of Baden (1806-1918), the Republic of Baden (1918-1933), the Third Reich (1933-1945) and is it nowadays with the German State of Baden-Württemberg.
The Church
According to the Legenda Aurea, Chrischona and her two sisters survived Ursula’s journey with 11,000 virgins to Cologne.
Chrischona is said to have died on the spot of the church. Her remains were buried in this church in 1506. The first church was built in the seventh century. The current (Gothic and Renaissance) church dates from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries and remained a pilgrimage place until the Reformation.
After the Reformation, the church fell into disrepair and was renovated in the nineteenth century. Nowadays, it is part of the Chrischona campus.
The church is located at the highest point of the canton and offers a beautiful view of the Rhine, Basel, the Alps, the Jura, and the southern foothills of the Black Forest.
(Source and further information: www.chrischona-campus.ch)
Chrischona