Saint John Berchmans Church, Brussels
St- Jean- Berchmans (Dutch Sint January Berchmans, St. John Berchmans dt ) is a Roman Catholic church in the city area Rector of Brussels ( Etterbeek municipality ). It was built from 1908 to 1912 as part of the Jesuit College St. Michel in the Romanesque Revival style and is under ownership of the Jesuit Order.
History
1908, three years after the laying of the Brussels Jesuit College to its present Boulevard St Michel in Etterbeek, put the then Nuncio in Belgium Giovanni Tacci Porcelli ( 1863-1928 ) laid the foundation stone for the Church, according to the plans of the Brussels architect Joseph Prémont in the basilica scheme was built. Prémont, whose design go back several historicist houses in Brussels, took as his plans to basic forms of Rhenish Romanesque. On July 9, 1912, the church by the then Bishop of Galle ( Sri Lanka) Josef van Reeth SJ ( 1843-1923 ) was consecrated and placed under the patronage of the Dutch Jesuit St. John Berchmans.
As a spiritual, social and architectural center of the largely symmetrically laid colleges, which in its building design the ideal-typical forms of Romanesque monasteries followed, the church was taken in the service of school operations and its focus on religious education. At the same time the church sat a striking urban landmark in the time still less developed area on the outskirts of Brussels.
Architecture
The visitor enters the system via the Boulevard St Michel, facing south face side, the twin-towered facade is made of gray sandstone along the lines of Sint Servaas church in Maastricht. With its central second choir and flanking doorways it is the vanishing point of the Rue des Bollandistes (see Bollandists ). In the central axis of a round-arched niche carries the gold painted monumental sculpture of the Archangel Michael, the patron of the college.
The plan of the church follows the shape of a Latin cross; the nave is created with three aisles. In the three-story nave, which is run at the top by a gallery of Triforiumsbögen and by a clerestory of round -arched windows, is accented by six monumental sculptures depicting saints of the Jesuit order; there are works by the Belgian sculptor Oscar Sinia (1877-1956) and C. Van de Cappele. Sixteen stained glass windows, works from the Ghent workshop Camille Ganton - Defoin (1872-1946), depict scenes from the Gospel, in his Spiritual Exercises describes the founder of the Jesuits, Ignatius of Loyola. In the choir completion of the nave a glass window work on the Trinity ( mercy seat ).
The original interior (including a high altar after designs Prémonts ) was partially removed in the wake of the liturgical reform of Vatican II. Get the other hand, is a historical church organ, which was built in the years 1909-1910 by the Brussels workshop Jean -Emile Kerkhoff (1859-1921) and consecrated on April 6, 1910 with a concert by Charles -Marie Widor ( register 36, three manuals as well as pedal, partly pneumatic and partly mechanical action ).