Catholic church in Mannheim, Baden-Württemberg, Germany
Mannheim Jesuit ChurchJesuit church, and National Theatre 1900High AltarHigh altar in Silver and BronzeOrgan, entranceFloorplan
The Mannheim Jesuit Church is a Catholic church of historic and artistic importance in Mannheim, Germany. Church construction was begun in 1733 and completed in 1760. It was consecrated to St. Ignatius of Loyola and St. Francis Xavier. During the Second World War, the church suffered severe damage from air attacks; after the war it was rebuilt in its historical style using original parts.
The church displays many Baroque features in its exterior and interior. The exterior includes a twin towered facade, statues of the four cardinal virtues, and a 75 m high dome. The interior includes marble pilasters, a dome decorated with scenes from the life of the order's founder, and several organs. The most important sculpture is the 1747 "Crowned Silver Madonna." The Mannheim Baroque bell was cast in 1754, and recast in 1956 into five bells. In 1975 another two bells were cast. The bells are now distributed between the exterior two towers.
Features of the exterior are the twin towered facade of red sandstone, the statues of the four cardinal virtues, the Pheme, by Baroque sculptor Paul Egell, which adorns the 75m-high dome.
The marblepilastered interior is in a late Baroque-early classical style. Egid Quirin Asam from Munich was instructed to decorate the church. He decorated the dome with scenes from the life of the order's founder, St. Ignatius of Loyola, while the nave had an over 400 square metre fresco whose content referred to the subject of the high altar, namely the Mission of St. Francis Xavier to India.
On the occasion of city's 300th anniversary in 1906 the church was extensively renovated. The two statues of the founders of the Jesuit order in the lobby are by the sculptor Thomas Buscher. During the Second World War, the church suffered severe damage from British and American air attacks, especially the choir and the dome. After the war it was decided to rebuild the church in its historical style with the use of original parts in the reconstruction of the approximately 20 metres high marble altar of Peter Anton von Verschaffelt, and the electoral pews.
Furniture
Even today, this church is still very rich in Baroque art. It still has the six side altars and font by Verschaffelt. In the crossing beneath the dome there are four frescoes representing the continents by the Mannheim Baroque painter Philip Jerome Brinckmann. The confessionals were reconstructed like the electoral pews. The most important sculpture is the 1747 "Crowned Silver Madonna" of Augsburg silversmith, Joseph Ignaz Saler. The destroyed frescoes by Egid Quirin Asam were not restored. Today's pulpit was only placed here after the war. It was created in 1753 and originally came from the Carmelite convent in Heidelberg. In the lobby there are very richly ornamented wrought iron gates made by the Mannheim master locksmith Philip Reinhard Sieber in 1755 and two monuments of the church from 1906.
The main organ case in the west gallery is built according to a design of the elector’s court sculptor Paul Egell. It survived the bombing and the small damage it suffered was repaired in 1952. In 1965 an instrument from the workshop of Johannes Klais of Bonn was installed. In 2004 this was optimized acoustically. The four manual organ has 62 registers. In the left side gallery is the choir organ. The case is by an anonymous artist. It was constructed for the Catholic Church in Fuerth in Odenwald in 1751/52. In 1961 it was transferred to Mannheim and contains 16 registers from the case of the post-war Egell organ. The instrument is now technically unreliable and will be replaced by a new one.
To take into account the current requirements of the liturgy the high altar was reconstructed and the choir redesigned. Klaus Ringwald created an altar of silver and bronze, with a new design of the sanctuary and four very large candlesticks. In the new marble floor of the nave a memorial plate with the names of the Jesuits buried in the crypt together with the name of the longtime rector and the Mannheim honorary citizen Fr. Joseph Bauer.
Bells
The largest Mannheim Baroque bell, cast 1754 by Johann Michael Steiger, was recast in 1956 by Frederick William Schilling into five bells and in 1975 the Heidelberg Bell Foundry cast another two bells. The eight bells are distributed between both towers; the two largest hang in the North West tower, the other bells in the south-west tower.
No.
Year
Foundry
Diameter (mm)
Weight (kg)
Nominal Tone
1
1956
F. W. Schilling
2023
4 935
g°
2
1956
F. W. Schilling
1671
2 772
b°
3
1956
F. W. Schilling
1477
1 921
c′
4
1754
J. M. Steiger
1275
1 400
es′
5
1956
F. W. Schilling
1094
857
f′
6
1956
F. W. Schilling
1006
700
g′
7
1975
Heidelberger Glockengießerei
892
511
b′
8
1975
Heidelberger Glockengießerei
790
362
c″
Notable clergy
In the Jesuit Church and the separate parish, inter alia, the following priests have worked:
Cosmas Damian Asam was a German painter and architect during the late Baroque period. Born in Benediktbeuern, he lived in Rome from 1711 to 1713 to study at the Accademia di San Luca with Carlo Maratta. In 1713, Asam won the Academy's first prize for his drawing of Miracle of Saint Pio. In Germany, he worked with his brother Egid Quirin, a sculptor and stucco worker, on building and decorating entirely new churches or redesigning churches in the Baroque style. Their joint projects are often attributed to the "Asam Brothers". Cosmas Damian died in Munich.
The Church of St. Ignatius of Loyola at Campus Martius is a Latin Catholic titular church, of deaconry rank, dedicated to Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Society of Jesus, located in Rome, Italy. Built in Baroque style between 1626 and 1650, the church functioned originally as the chapel of the adjacent Roman College, which moved in 1584 to a new larger building and was renamed the Pontifical Gregorian University. It is one of the great 17th century preaching churches built by Counter-Reformation orders in the Centro Storico.
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St. Johann Nepomuk, better known as the Asam Church, is a Baroque church in Munich, southern Germany. It was built from 1733 to 1746 by a pair of brothers, sculptor Egid Quirin Asam and painter Cosmas Damian Asam, as their private church. It is considered to be one of the most important buildings of the southern German Late Baroque.
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Egid Quirin Asam was a German plasterer, sculptor, architect, and painter. He was active during the Late Baroque and Rococo periods.
The Asam brothers were sculptors, painters, and architects, who worked mostly together and in southern Germany. They are among the most important representatives of the German late Baroque.
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The church of Santa Maria Assunta, known as I Gesuiti, is a religious building in Venice, Italy. It is located in the sestiere of Cannaregio, in Campo dei Gesuiti, not far from the Fondamenta Nuove.
San Bartolomeo is a Baroque church in Modena.
Johann Paul Egell was a German sculptor and plasterer.
Innsbruck Cathedral, also known as the Cathedral of St. James, is an eighteenth-century Baroque cathedral of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Innsbruck in the city of Innsbruck, Austria, dedicated to the apostle Saint James, son of Zebedee. Based on designs by the architect Johann Jakob Herkomer, the cathedral was built between 1717 and 1724 on the site of a twelfth-century Romanesque church. The interior is enclosed by three domed vaults spanning the nave, and a dome with lantern above the chancel. With its lavish Baroque interior, executed in part by the Asam brothers, St. James is considered among the most important Baroque buildings in the Tyrol.
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The Old Cathedral, also called the Church of Ignatius or the Jesuit Church, is a church in Linz, Austria. It was built between 1669 and 1683 in Baroque style. From 1785 to 1909 it served as cathedral of the Diocese of Linz.
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St. Sebastian is the oldest Catholic parish church in the city of Mannheim and one of the three churches of the Mannheim city pastoral unit in the city center. In Electoral Palatine times it was used by the Elector as a court church and received a magnificent interior by artists such as Bibiena, Verschaffelt and Egell. The furnishings were impaired by remodeling in the 19th century and damaged during World War II. Together with the Old Town Hall, St. Sebastian's Church forms a Baroque double building erected at the beginning of the 18th century, which is the oldest preserved structure in the city.
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