Kemnade / Caminata / Caminacense / Keminatan / Kymenaden

"The church is a Romanesque pillar basilica with a high central aisle and lower side aisles. A transept runs from north to south, intersecting the raised sanctuary and apse. Several architectural modifications have been carried out over the centuries. However, the the general Romanesque character remains intact. Unfortunately, the west tower was destroyed during the Thirty Years' War. 20m of the building's original 54m length was also lost at this time. It was during the 19th century that a ridge turret was added to the church in order to house the bells. [...] some of the more beautiful items that can be found in this church: [...] A stone baptismal font, early Romanesque (style) or even pre-Christian." This stone font, which is illustrated in the same source, with the caption: "Der Taufstein kam 1964 aus der St. Johanniskapelle in Tuchtfeld in die Klosterkirche. Seine ursprüngliche Herkunft und sein Alter sind nicht bekannt. Da sich auf dem Stein keine typisch christlichen Symbole befinden, könnte er ein vorchristliches Kulturgefäß gewesen sein." The font consists of a roughly cylindrical basin with a hemispherical underbowl, and is raised on a modern support that consists of a short round stem and a wider plain plinth; the upper rim of the basin appears to have been broken and the smoothed off, affecting thus the carvings on the sides; the sides are divided horizontally by a band of chequered pattern, and vertically by thin piping; the 'cells' crated by these divisions do not match top-bottom, as there are more dvisions above the band than below; below the band the cells are, although there is an incised circle in one of them; the upper cells have a variety of motifs in them, some only partially visible due to the missing upper rim. The remaining motifs suggest that there was originally an arcade of wide arches, of which only the torsade columns have survived, the arch-heads lost in the damage to the upper area of the basin. There is a roll-moulding separating the sides of the basin from the plain underbowl. From what can be seen of the font at present, it can be said that the claimed antiquity to pre-Christian times [cf. supra] is much exaggerated; the font is more likely to be 12th-century or later. [NB: a later font of the 17th-century was moved from this monastery church to Hehlen, Holzminden county, in 1975]