The church of Saint-Héribet

The Church of St. Heribbert in Hallenberg in the Hochsauerland district is a Catholic parish church with origins dating back to the 13th century. Despite numerous fires, some of which caused considerable damage to the building, the church remains essentially in its original form.

In the 12th century, Deutz Abbey built a chapel dedicated to St. Heribert, the founder of the abbey, on his farm in Merklinghausen, east of the current town centre. This received parish rights in the 13th century. Towards the middle of the thirteenth century, this farm came into the possession of the Archbishop of Cologne, who built the city of Hallenberg as a border fortress against Hesse and Wittgenstein. The town chapel of St. Nicholas and Catherine, which was built shortly after the foundation of the town, became a parish church in the fourteenth century, when the parish rights and patronage of the church in Merklinghausen were transferred to it. Consequently, the right of patronage was also held by the abbot of Deutz, who still held it in 1800. At the end of the sixteenth century, at the time of the Counter-Reformation, the monastery had difficulty finding a pastor, so that sometimes the Knights of the Cross of Glindfeld sent one of their confreres to Hallenberg as a pastor.

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