The Church of St. Similien is an ancient church in Nantes. After the death of Bishop Similien in 310 AD, his successor, Eumilius, erected over his grave a votive chapel. One hundred years later, the bishop Leo, a Greek (444-458) built a real church to the site. In 848 AD, Nantes was vandalized during the Norman invasions. In 958 the restoration of the building began and was completed towards 1172 by the Duke Geoffroy II.
Following the siege of Nantes by Louis XI in 1487, Bishop Peter of Chaffault, repaired and enlarged the basilica Building it in the form of a Latin cross. The apse is Merovingian but the nave was extended towards the west, and flanked by two crosses.
During the French revolution, the church was closed to worship in 1793 and reopened after the Concordat of 1802. In 1824, the Millennium old building was destroyed and a church with three naves replaced it. The façade and portico were completed in 1835.
Fifteen years later, in 1850, the parish priest and the Church Council were considering the construction of a new church. In 1869, an architect, Eugene Boismen was appointed. The plans he offers were a Gothic building, inspired by those of the first half of the thirteenth century. The north-west facing building will include three naves, two ambulatory, bedside with a chapel which will be placed Our Lady of Mercy. The nave of five bays and end with a facade with two arrows. Permission to build the new church in 1872 is given. The Bishop Félix Fournier blessed the first stone of the new sanctuary on 5 October 1873. The work was completed in 1894 but as early as 1880, the vaults of the apse, the choir and transept were completed.
References:The Pilgrimage Church of Wies (Wieskirche) is an oval rococo church, designed in the late 1740s by Dominikus Zimmermann. It is located in the foothills of the Alps in the municipality of Steingaden.
The sanctuary of Wies is a pilgrimage church extraordinarily well-preserved in the beautiful setting of an Alpine valley, and is a perfect masterpiece of Rococo art and creative genius, as well as an exceptional testimony to a civilization that has disappeared.
The hamlet of Wies, in 1738, is said to have been the setting of a miracle in which tears were seen on a simple wooden figure of Christ mounted on a column that was no longer venerated by the Premonstratensian monks of the Abbey. A wooden chapel constructed in the fields housed the miraculous statue for some time. However, pilgrims from Germany, Austria, Bohemia, and even Italy became so numerous that the Abbot of the Premonstratensians of Steingaden decided to construct a splendid sanctuary.