GERMAN CHURCH LINES
Agan, how do church paths! corpse roads relate chronologically and conceptually to death and ghost roads? And indeed, how do ghost roads and death roads relate to one another? Is (as we currently suspect) the former simply another version of the latter. but one keeping closer to the underlying principle involved? Or did one evolve from the other? Mixed in with these vexed questions are what ULRICH MAGIN calls "church lines" (see his article in TLH 116), which may possibly be a more sophisticated version of church paths. Study in his home country of Germany has caused Magin to perceive certain patterns in the placing - the 'sacred geography' or 'geomaney of churches, which seem to conform to particular periods of the German medieval era:
"The church lines evolved from the Ottonian (AD 900-1000) and Salian (AD 1000 -1100) practice of creating 'cathedral crosses' with churches set at cardinal points from the central cathedral. (The Pennick Lindenhof alignment in Zurich - TLH 109 - is one of these crosses, actually: Zurich is a Salian town). These lines were probably developed in Staufer times (AD 1200-1300) into multi-church 'Ieys', as at Worms (below) for example, and the pagan/Christian lines.
'My researches at Worms, Germany, reveal seven churches on a line only two miles long, with a third of that distance being followed by a road . The 'Iey' closes the cathedral at right angles, goes through both its gates (on ,he side of the nave), including the Emperor's gate, and of the remaining churches, the doors of five are on the line. This is a 'road Iey', perhaps 3-4 yards wide, the most exact alignment I know. This and the Zurich alignment, my Speyer line (TLH 110) - in keeping with Salian geomancy, and to which I can now add further points - or Brian Larkman's York 'corridor' (THL 100), are all medieval lines, not evolved ones.
"These church lines were not for the dead, but for holy spirit, enhancing the power of the cathedral (Frauenmunster in the case of Zurich). The Geisterwege may have come from this, but they may also older Germanic/Celtic tradition."