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Founded: 1270Category: Religious sites in France
Historical period: Late Capetians (France)
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Église Saint-Maurice (Church of Saint Maurice) is the medieval parish church of the small town of Soultz. The church is noteworthy for its refined and light Gothic design, and for the works of art it contains, including a Renaissance pulpit and a 1750 Silbermann pipe organ.
The work on the church was begun in 1270, at the site of a previous Romanesque church from the 11th century, of which some remains have been uncovered by 1990s archaeologists. The transept was finished before 1310 and the nave around 1340, but the overall construction was only completed in 1489 with the addition of a bay at the western end, because the church had been found too small for the town's population at that time. The top of the spire was added in 1611.
The height of the crossing tower is 66 metres, including the sun-shaped weather vane on top of the cross. The church's floor plan is in the shape of a Latin cross, with a central nave and two aisles.
The church lost much of its original furniture during the French Revolution. Today, it contains 14th- and 15th-century frescos and an elaborate wooden pulpit from around 1616.
On the outside, the southern portal has retained its tympanum from around 1320, representing Saint Maurice on horseback and the Adoration of the Magi.
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.