St-Jean-Baptiste (Sceaux)

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Parish Church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste

The Catholic parish church of Saint-Jean-Baptiste in Sceaux , a parish in the Hauts-de-Seine department in the French region of Île-de-France , dates back to a Romanesque chapel from the 12th century. The current church was largely built in the 16th century and rebuilt and expanded in the 18th and 19th centuries. The church still has stained glass windows from the Renaissance ; other windows were created by the glass painter Émile Hirsch at the end of the 19th century . In 1929 the church was added to the list of French architectural monuments as Monument historique .

history

There has been evidence of a chapel in Sceaux since the 12th century, which was dedicated to St. Mamas and belonged to the parish of Châtenay . The substructure of today's bell tower and two columns in the nave are still preserved from this building . In 1203, Bishop Odo von Sully made Sceaux a parish, and a new church was built on the site of the current church, consecrated to John the Baptist . The church was rebuilt several times in the following centuries.

After a fire in 1530, a new bell tower and a new choir were built , which were covered with a ribbed vault. The church was consecrated in 1543. At the beginning of the 18th century the pastor at that time had a new nave built with a yoke and vaulted with a barrel vault.

During the French Revolution , the church was closed to worship and repurposed as a temple of reason . The building was also used as a mayor's office, a saltpeter factory and a depot for sculptures from the Sceau park. In 1794 the church became the Tempel de l'être suprême ( Temple of the Supreme Being ) and finally reopened for worship in 1795.

In 1838 the west facade was redesigned, and in 1847 a new bell tower was built. In the middle of the 19th century, the architect Jean-Baptiste-Antoine Lassus added a new spire to the bell tower.

Leaded glass windows from the Renaissance

  • Window 3:
Renaissance window

The window consists of two lancets, which are divided into four scenes. The tracery depicts a blessing Christ with a crown of thorns on his head. The two upper panes are fragments of a Wurzel Jesse window. On the left pane you can see the year 1542 at the bottom, the two people shown cannot be identified. The two figures on the right disk are identified by name tags. They represent the biblical kings Ezechias and Solomon .

On the lower left disc John the Baptist is depicted with the Lamb of God , on the right disc Mary Magdalene holding the crown of thorns in her hand.

  • Prophet and the year 1542
  • Ezechias and Solomon
  • John the Baptist
  • Mary Magdalene
  • Window 4:
Renaissance window

The window is also divided into four large scenes. Holy women are depicted on two discs, one with a purse, the other with an ointment jar in her hand. A donor kneels in front of both women, one holding a cross, the other a stick in his hand. On the right disk under the figures there is an inscription with the indication of the year mil cinq cens neuf .

On the two lower disks, St. Lawrence of Rome is depicted on the left with his grate and on the right, St. Catherine with her attribute , the wheel. A bearded figure can be seen in the tracery, and the year 1542 is inscribed on the left.

  • Saints and donors
  • Saints and donors, with indication of the year mil cinq cens neuf
  • Saint Lawrence
  • Saint Catherine

Stained glass window by Émile Hirsch

Between 1874 and 1899, the glass painter Émile Hirsch created new windows. Most of the windows bear his signature.

literature

  • Louis Grodecki, Françoise Perrot, Jean Taralon (eds.): Les vitraux de Paris, de la région parisienne, de la Picardie et du Nord-Pas-de-Calais . (= Corpus Vitrearum Medii Aevi ). Récensement des vitraux anciens de la France. Volume 1, Éditions du Center National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris 1978, ISBN 2-222-02263-0 , p. 87.
  • Georges Poisson (ed.): Dictionnaire des Monuments d'Île-de-France . Editions Hervas, Paris 2001, ISBN 2-84334-002-0 , pp. 764-765.
  • Le Patrimoine des Communes des Hauts-de-Seine . Flohic Éditions, 2nd edition, Charenton-le-Pont 1993, ISBN 2-908958-95-3 , pp. 354-363.

Web links

Commons : Saint-Jean-Baptiste (Sceaux)  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Église Saint-Jean-Baptiste in the Base Mérimée of the French Ministry of Culture (French)

Coordinates: 48 ° 46 ′ 36.8 "  N , 2 ° 17 ′ 45.6"  E