De Krijtberg
De Krijtberg - actually Sint- Franciscus Xaveriuskerk - is a Roman Catholic church in the city center of Amsterdam. It was built in its present form in 1881 in neo-Gothic style, and is one of the oldest and most important branches of the Jesuit Order in the Netherlands.
History
1628 taught a native of Saint Omer Jesuit Pieter Lawrence ( 1588-1664 ) in a private house on the Singel a house chapel, in 1654 came together from a Catholic community. Since the Catholics to practice their religion in the Netherlands was not permitted at this time, the church was operating in secret and was not recognizable to the outside as such. Your community room, a typical Schuilkerk ( "hidden church "), which acquiesced in a discreet residential and merchant house was dedicated to St. Francis Xavier. His peculiar name De Crytberghen ( Dutch for The chalk cliffs) owed to the house the white cliffs of Dover: the former owner of the house, a seafaring entrepreneurs had operated boat connections to the English south coast and named his house after the end of his ships. The rear part of the church was on a small side street, the cat Steeg, accessible, connected the Singel with the underlying Herengracht.
The public authority remained the altered function and the ecclesiastical ownership of the house by no means hidden, yet the presence of Catholics and their secret worship were tacitly tolerated. 1677, this first church was a result of the addition, they learned replaced by a second, larger one that was indeed like its predecessor hidden inconspicuously behind the bourgeois façade. Even when the Jesuit order was banned in 1708 in Holland and 1773 completely abolished by Pope Clement XIV, the chapel remained in operation.
1796 received the Catholics in the Netherlands, the right of free exercise of religion and could thus build public churches. 1835, the chapel was expanded again, and the original house De Crytberghen was torn down to make the extended church and a rectory, where to this day some community halls and rooms of the Jesuit community are housed space. On the pediment of the entrance of the new facade was henceforth the typical for the Jesuit Order Acronym ihs.
As in 1853, the hierarchy of the Catholic church was restored in the Netherlands, the church was - awarded jointly with the second Jesuit church in Amsterdam De Saaier the diocese of Haarlem. Increasing membership numbers of the community seemed to justify the construction of a larger church, whose construction was commissioned in 1879 in order. The new church, for whose construction several historic houses were demolished without hesitation at the Singel and the hangover bridge was built in neo-Gothic style by Alfred Tepe (1840-1920) and consecrated on December 3, 1883 by the then Bishop of Haarlem.
As the general admissions in the church and the church membership in the Amsterdam population declined drastically in the 1960s, the closure, and even the demolition of the Krijtberg were considered, but the Bishop of Haarlem in 1974 withdrew its closure plans after the church in 1974 public of the authorities was classified as a historic building and declared a National Monument. As a result, De Krijtberg underwent extensive refurbishment; the work could be completed in 2003.
Equipment
The three-nave interior was equipped according to contemporary tastes with numerous projecting image programs that stand out from the sobriety of the Reformed churches of Amsterdam strong and recognizable followed an effort to bring the full restoration of Catholicism in Amsterdam after 1853 also artistic expression. The church had room when the building was completed, first received temporary murals in the years 1886-1889, which were replaced in 1892 by the visible today works by Martin Schenk ( 1933-1911 ).
The stained glass windows and the altar and canopy and numerous other elements of the interior are from the Cologne workshop Friedrich Wilhelm Mengelberg and built in the years 1882-1886. From the same workshop, the choir screen, which in height by a screen separates the chancel from the community room comes: it shows individual representations of the twelve apostles, and is surmounted by a Calvary in which Mengelberg was mainly a consequence of the medieval iconography. The left aisle opens into a chapel dedicated to the high altar, in turn, comes from Mengelberg's studio ( 1885) and depicts scenes from the Life of Mary in medieval forms of representation.
The walls of the nave are of sandstone sculptures of prominent Jesuit saint ( including Francis Xavier, Ignatius of Loyola, Alphonso Rodriguez) dominates. Even the stained glass windows - also from Mengelberg's Workshop represent the Society of Jesus is Holy (Peter Claver, Aloysius Gonzaga, etc.).
In addition to a smaller Psalierorgel from 1960 (left transept ), the church has a second organ from the workshop Piet J. Adema en Zonen (Amsterdam ) from 1905; she is on the gallery on the right aisle since 1985. The instrument has 33 stops on two manuals and pedal.