Jesuit Church, Molsheim

The former Jesuit Church (Église des Jésuites) is the parish church Sainte-Trinité-et-Saint-Georges (Alsatian: Sànkt-Georg- und Dreifàltigkeitskirich) which is the main Roman Catholic sanctuary of Molsheim, France, and the principal 17th-century church building in the Rhine Valley.[1] The church was built between 1615 and 1617 by the German architect Christoph Wamser, and consecrated on 26 August 1618.[2] Molsheim's Jesuit church is considered one of the foremost examples of Gothic Survival architecture or, as it is called in German, Nachgotik (posterior Gothic). It is listed as a Monument historique since 1939 by the French Ministry of Culture.[3]

Jesuit Church, Molsheim
Église paroissiale Sainte-Trinité-et-Saint-Georges Église des Jésuites
Location	Molsheim
Country	France
Denomination	Roman Catholic
History
Founded	1614
Architecture
Heritage designation	Monument historique
Designated	1939
Architect(s)	Christoph Wamser
Style	Gothic Revival Baroque
Completed	1618
Specifications
Length	70 m (230 ft)
Nave width	25 m (82 ft)
Other dimensions	82.5 m (271 ft) (total length)
Spire height	45 m (148 ft)
Administration
Archdiocese	Strasbourg

Molsheim's Jesuit College was founded in 1580 and dissolved in 1765. It served as Alsace's main university between 1618 and 1704, preceding the Lutheran Strasbourg University in importance. The church's construction was funded by the bishop of Strasbourg, Archduke Leopold V of Austria, who made a donation on his name saint's day, 15 November 1614. Although a chapel inside is dedicated to Ignatius of Loyola, the church was dedicated from the start to the Holy Trinity (Heilige Dreifaltigkeit).[2][4] It became the parish church of Molsheim and was dedicated to Saint-George in 1791,[3] after the demolition of the city's former parish church, the previous Église Saint-Georges, on what is now the town's current market square (Place du marché).[5]

The church's dimensions are considerable, especially in relation to the small size of the town: The interior is 70 m (230 ft) long, and the nave is 25 m (82 ft) wide and 20 m (66 ft) high. The choir measuring 19.5 m (64 ft) by 11 m (36 ft), the spire 45 m (148 ft) high. The total length of the church, steeple and sacristy included, is 82 m (269 ft)[6][2][4]^[A]

Among the many features inside the richly ornate building, the Baroque Saint Ignatius' Chapel (1621–1630) in the north transept and the Rococo Our Lady's Chapel (1748) in the south transept stand out as the most visually striking. Another pride of the church are the 1781 pipe organ by Johann Andreas Silbermann and the monumental Late Gothic cross (1480), 4.5 m (15 ft) high and 2.5 m (8 ft 2 in) wide, from the former Carthusian monastery of the town.[4][7]

• 
  The nave looking towards the choir
• 
  The nave looking towards the pipe organ
• 
  Saint Ignatius chapel with baptismal font
• 
  Wooden Renaissance door
• 
  Coat of Arms of Leopold of Austria

References

1. Ville de Molsheim: Nos monuments (in French)
2. Jeffrey Chipps Smith (2002). Sensuous Worship: Jesuits and the Art of the Early Catholic Reformation in Germany. Princeton University Press. p. 121. ISBN 0-691-09072-6.
3. Base Mérimée: Église Sainte-Trinité, Saint-Georges, collège de Jésuites, Ministère français de la Culture. (in French)
4. "egliseGB". 19 February 2011. Archived from the original on 19 February 2011. Retrieved 21 July 2020.
5. Base Mérimée: Église paroissiale Saint-Georges, Ministère français de la Culture. (in French)
6. Oswald, Grégory (2015). L'église des Jésuites. Ville de Molsheim. p. 2.
7. The Silbermann organ Archived 5 October 2011 at the Wayback Machine (in French)

Notes

^A The numbers of 61.5 m (202 ft) (length), and 21.5 m (71 ft) (width), that are given since 1964 (author Médard Barth), and repeated in 2002 (Smith) and even 2015 (Oswald, page 5), are wrong. According to the floor plan with a scale of 2 cm (0.79 in) per 10 m (33 ft), the dimensions are decidedly higher.