St-Dominique (Vieux-Thann)
Saint-Dominique (Eng .: Saint Dominic ) is a Roman Catholic church in the Alsatian municipality of Vieux-Thann in the Haut-Rhin department of the Grand Est region . Vieux-Thann belongs to the Arrondissement Thann-Guebwiller and the Communauté de communes Thann-Cernay . Since 2003 there has been a community partnership with the town of Rammersweier , a district of Offenburg (Baden-Württemberg). The church stands as a monument historique under monument protection .
Building history
The church of Vieux-Thann, founded in 991 by the then Bishop of Strasbourg , is one of the oldest Marian churches in Alsace. She became known for the medieval pilgrimages to Mary , including the guilds of minstrels , linen weavers and winegrowers . The place belonged to the rule Thann. The church was Thann's mother church until 1389 .
From the church building of the 12th and 13th centuries, the basement of the church tower, which was used as a choir tower at the time, and the Michael chapel next to it have been preserved. In 1289 a beguinage was built next to the church . In 1441 the monastery of the beguines came to the regulated nuns of St. Augustine and was taken over by the Dominican Sisters in 1534 , who stayed there until the French Revolution.
After English troops had badly damaged the church in the Hundred Years War in 1376 , the nave was rebuilt in Gothic style by 1399 . The late Gothic choir dates from the first quarter of the 15th century. In 1444 the church was destroyed again by the Armagnaks in a fire and again in 1468 by the Swiss. The subsequent reconstruction by the master builder of the Thanner collegiate church, Jörg Kaltenbrunner , took around 20 years . After further destruction by the Sundgau farmers (1525), his successor Remigius Faesch made changes and further decorated the church.
From 1769, the architect Jean-Baptiste Chassain initiated changes in line with the style of the time: The Gothic pointed arched windows of the nave were replaced by window openings with segmented arches and the access from the nave to the Michael's chapel was closed.
At the beginning of the 19th century, the larger buildings of the Dominican convent were demolished. In addition, the bell tower on the roof of the nave was demolished and replaced with a bell gable . In 1823 the previous Notre Dame church was consecrated to Saint Dominic as a reminder of the Dominican Sisters; since then she has been called Église Saint-Dominique. The church, which was badly damaged in World War I, had to be restored between 1919 and 1925. On the occasion of the renovation work after 1945, the bell gable was demolished and only a small gable was left.
architecture
The choir tower, which rests on foundations from the 12th century, ends with a pointed helmet . Below the clock tower sits a polygonal bay window in the south . The top floor is set back slightly; the resulting gallery is of a tracery - balustrade surround.
The single-aisled flat-roofed hall church was built from red sandstone . A vaulted two-bay choir with a five-sided apse adjoins the nave with segmented arched windows . The buttresses of the choir have double canopies for statues . In between there are ogival tracery windows. In a pinnacle known Buttress Madonna is from the 15th century.
The keystone of the choir vault contains a depiction of the coronation of Mary . The tower yoke is dated 1511; the vault stone shows the coat of arms of front Austria . Despite many changes and alterations, the Gothic style was retained inside, while on the exterior it is only visible in the choir area. The rood screen installed by Remigius Faesch in 1516 was demolished in 1769 and partially reused as a substructure for the west gallery.
There is a simple pointed arched entrance portal on the west gable side. A large window with a pointed arch sits above the sloping protective roof. All other windows of the ship are made with segmental arches. A small gable rider with a bell crowns the gable front.
West gable side with portal
Mary with child on the northeast buttress (15th century)
Gargoyles under the tower's tracery gallery
Furnishing
In 1990, during restoration work on the south wall of the choir tower, the remains of a mural from around 1320 were discovered: It is a liturgical calendar arranged in a circle (3.20 m diameter), of which no comparable examples are known to date. In six concentric rings, which close around an angel in the middle, are shown (starting from the inside): the typical works for each month in pictures, the days of a month (in numbers), pictures of the most important name cartridge of a month, letters as Identifiers for each day of the week, images of the most important saints of the month, names of these saints. The circle is surrounded by a square; in the four corners were images of the four evangelists , of whom only St. Matthew can be recognized.
Two stained glass windows from the middle of the 15th century have also been preserved in the church, namely the central choir window with the Passion of Christ and the coats of arms of Austria, the Counts of Pfirt (now Ferrette ) and of Burgundy, as well as the window to the left of the Holy grave on the north side with scenes from the life of Mary . This window, marked 1466, which is associated with the glass painter Peter Hemmel von Andlau (around 1420 in Andlau to 1506 in Strasbourg ), is one of the most elaborate glass windows in Alsace. It shows from bottom left to top right: The two donors Jean Müller with St. Stephanus and Nicolas Wolfach with St. Jerome ; The Birth of the Virgin Mary and the Annunciation with the Root Jesse underneath; Birth of Jesus and adoration of the kings ; Death of Mary and coronation of Mary ; two angels with censer .
One of the most important works of sacred art in Alsace is the late Gothic Holy Sepulcher around 1490 on the north wall of the church. Under an elaborate canopy architecture, three groups of people are depicted: in the middle, the body of Jesus Christ with the wounds suffered from the Passion (mid-15th century); behind it stand three holy women with the ointment vessels, in their midst Mary Magdalene , flanked by two angels on the head and feet of Jesus (around 1480–90); crouching in the base zone two soldiers with weapons and helmet facing a viewer and the other in back view (to 1480-90). In the vault of the canopy originally different heraldic shields were installed, of which the arms of the city Thann (fir with Austrian shield ) and the coat of arms of Emperor (HRR) Maximilian I (Eagle with the insignia of Austria and Burgundy) not yet received are (circa 1490 ).
The Madonna and Child on the north-eastern buttress outside (“La Vierge du Contrefort”) as well as the late Gothic tabernacle in the choir and two Vespers in the nave date from the 15th century . The side altars and the pulpit from stucco marble were created in 1772 by Jean-Baptiste Chaissain.
The organ sits on a wooden gallery supported by the church's former rood screen . A first organ is documented for at least 1711. In 1729 Andreas Silbermann created a new instrument, which was lost in the turmoil of the French Revolution. In the 19th century an organ is mentioned several times, but it is not known by whom it was created. Martin Rinckenbach and his son Joseph then built a new organ for the church in 1899. In 1929 Joseph Rinckenbach renewed the instrument while keeping the old prospectus after the organ was damaged in the First World War. The organ was overhauled and changed several times in the 20th century. In 2005 the organ was last overhauled by Hubert Brayé.
literature
- Walter Hotz : Handbook of the art monuments in Alsace and Lorraine . Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 3 1976, p. 7 (under "Alt-Thann").
- Florens Deuchler / Jean Wirth: Alsace - art monuments and museums . Reclam, Stuttgart 1980, p. 281.
- Dominique Toursel-Harster, Jean-Pierre Beck, Guy Bronner: Alsace. Dictionnaire des monuments historiques . La Nuée Bleue, Strasbourg 1995, pp. 608f.
- Monique Fuchs: Le saint sépulcre de Vieux-Thann . In: Art + Architecture in Switzerland, Volume 47 (1996), Issue 2: The Art of the Habsburgs = L'art des Habsbourg, pp. 181–188.
Web links
- Illustrations of the liturgical calendar
- Images of the Marian Window from 1466
- Illustrations of the holy tomb
- Pictures from the interior of the church
- Église Saint-Dominique de Vieux-Thann (French)
- Views of Vieux-Thann
Individual evidence
- ↑ Entry no. PA00085727 in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)
- ↑ http://www.lavieb-aile.com/2016/06/la-peinture-murale-du-calendrier-liturgique-de-l-eglise-de-vieux-thann-haut-rhin.html .
- ↑ http://www.lavieb-aile.com/2016/06/le-vitrail-de-la-vigne-de-jesse-et-la-vie-de-marie-a-vieux-thann-haut-rhin .html .
- ^ Monique Fuchs: Le saint sépulcre de Vieux-Thann; in: Art + Architecture in Switzerland, Volume 47 (1996), Issue 2: The Art of the Habsburgs = L'art des Habsbourg, pp. 181–188.
- ↑ History of the organ of St. Dominic ( Memento of the original from March 7, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , A la découverte de l'Orgue, Orgues d'Alsace, accessed November 12, 2016
Coordinates: 47 ° 48 ′ 27.7 ″ N , 7 ° 7 ′ 29.5 ″ E