The patron saint of the church was a deacon in Rome and died on August 10, around 258 under Emperor Valerian, the most famous Roman martyr.
Legend has it: As archdeacon of Rome, Laurentius was responsible for the administration of local church assets and their use for social purposes on behalf of the Pope. After the Roman Emperor Valerian had Pope Sixtus beheaded, Laurentius was ordered to hand over all the church's property within three days. Laurentius then distributed the assets to the members of the congregation, gathered together all the poor and sick and presented them to the emperor as the true wealth of the church. The emperor had Laurentius tortured several times for this and then executed in agony by grilling him on an iron grid.
According to tradition, his last words to the emperor were: "You poor man, this fire is a coolness to me, but it brings you eternal torment." The cult of St. Lawrence spread in Germany after Emperor Otto I's victory against the Hungarians at the Battle of Lechfeld near Augsburg on August 10, 955, St. Lawrence's Day.
The oldest part of the Romanesque church, the defense tower, is more than 800 years old. The most valuable piece of the Erwitte parish church is a so-called cross of mercy, dating from around 1200. The tympana (decorative surfaces in the arch field) above two of the three church portals, which are valuable in terms of art history, are remarkable. There is also the rare "Jacob's Ladder", which is widely known in art history circles and is unique in Germany.
Jacob's ladder or ladder to heaven is an ascent and descent between earth and heaven, which Jacob sees according to the biblical story. On it he sees angels ascending and descending, but at the top he sees the Lord himself, who introduces himself to him as the God of Abraham and Isaac and renews the promise of land and descendants.
On the two corner pillars of the eastern crossing pillars are flat reliefs of angels standing on a ladder. At the corners of the cube-shaped bases of the pillars are small figures which, according to Prof. Tümmler, represent the kings David, Solomon and Ezechias as well as the Queen of Saba. On the capital of the north column you can see the praying Empress Helena and her assistant Cyriacus. The capital of the south column shows two angels. The three pictorial zones of the columns come together to form a remarkable overall picture. From the kings of the Old Testament pointing to the future and the forerunner of Empress Helena, the columns and the angels, as mediators between man and God, symbolically establish a connection to Christ, who appears as the Triumphator after his death on the cross and resurrection - as the sculptures on the capitals suggest.
In November 1971, the church was struck by a serious fire in which the baroque spire with all the bells and the church roof fell victim to the flames. When the church was rebuilt, the spire was erected in its current visible Romanesque style. Drivers on the B 1 or the nearby highway will notice a stylistic similarity between the church tower and the cathedral buildings in Paderborn and Soest. The only bell that survived the fire found its place next to the church on the redesigned church square after restoration.
