The Dome Church (Toomkirik in Estonian) is more
formally known as St Mary's Episcopal Dome Church (Tallinna Puha
Neitsi Maarja Piiskoplik Toomkirik). It is the mother church of the
country's official Estonian Evangelical Lutheran Church body. The
invading Danes probably built the original, temporary wooden, church
on the spot on Toompea Hill shortly after their conquest of North
Estonia in 1219. There were already some Christianised elements in
the country before that date, but their church organisation is
entirely unknown.
The Danes were expelled in 1227 when the knightly
Order of the Brothers of the Sword expanded their control from
central Estonia, and Dominican Order monks started construction of a
stone church in Toompea in 1229. The first written mention of the
cathedral itself dates from 1233, when a battle took place between
the Order and pro-Papal vassals who wanted to create an
ecclesiastical state. The bodies of defeated pro-Papal knights were
piled at the alter after the battle spread inside the church.
King Valdemar reacquired North Estonia for
Denmark in 1238. He appointed the bishopric of Tallinn to the Dome
Church in 1240, subordinated to the archdiocese of Lund in Sweden.
The cathedral chapter was established, while the cathedral itself
was consecrated in the name of St Mary the Virgin. By 1319 at the
latest a school had also been established at the church, although
the building looked very different from its modern appearance which
is mostly eighteenth century.
Reconstruction of the modest, single-nave church
began at the start of the fourteenth century, turning it into a
three-nave building over the course of a century of work. Lutheran
reform entered the churches of the Old Town, below the hill, by
1524, but Catholic services continued to be held in the Dome Church
until 1561, when Sweden gained control of Tallinn. A library was
established in 1641 while a donation from Queen Christina of Sweden
in 1651 allowed a copper roof to be added.
A massive fire in Toompea in 1433 destroyed
almost everything in its path. Rebuilding work included chapels on
the south side, St George's Chapel on the north side and a chapel at
the north-eastern corner of the main rectangle which no longer
exists. The cathedral remained without the high tower which was so
typical of regional churches, so a small tower was added in the
corner of the chancel and the south aisle. The lower part survives
to this day. An even more devastating fire struck the church on 6
June 1684.
This time only the church walls
survived - even the library was lost. King Charles XI held a
nationwide collection in Sweden to help restore the cathedral within
just two years. The chapel began to be used as a burial place for
important personages, but the Great Northern War delayed the
building of the tower, which happened in 1778-1779 under the Russian
Empire. Baroque remodelling was carried out on the interior of the
cathedral, and it is mostly this version which survives today.
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