Saint-Nicolas, Saint-Nicolas-de-Port: A Flamboyant Gothic Pilgrimage Basilica
Site at a Glance
- Rating
- 4.7
- Popularity
- Low
- Country
- France
- Primary era
- Early Modern
- External website
- Open
- Eras represented
- Medieval, Early Modern
- Civilizations
- Duchy of Lorraine, Holy Roman Empire
- Site type
- Religious
- Remains
- Basilica
On this page14 sections
History
Saint-Nicolas is a Roman Catholic pilgrimage basilica in France, located in Saint-Nicolas-de-Port and dedicated to Saint Nicholas. Built in the Flamboyant Gothic style during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, it grew from a relic cult that had made the town an important pilgrimage center. The church belongs to the Diocese of Nancy-Toul and was originally intended exclusively for pilgrims. Saint-Nicolas-de-Port did not become a parish until 1803.
The relic and the early pilgrimage
Tradition places the arrival of a relic of Saint Nicholas at the site in the late eleventh century. Aubert de Varangéville, a knight from Lorraine, was said to have brought a bone from the saint’s right hand from Italy to Varangéville. Known as the “blessing hand,” the relic was associated with Nicholas of Myra, the fourth-century Christian bishop whose cult spread widely through Europe and became linked with sailors, children, charitable acts, and intercession.
The relic led the Abbey of Gorze to establish a church dedicated to Saint Nicholas across the Meurthe, at the port then associated with Varangéville. A first church was built in the early twelfth century. As the number of pilgrims increased, it was replaced, reportedly in 1193, by a larger building. The pilgrimage helped make Saint-Nicolas-de-Port an important religious center, and Saint Nicholas became the patron saint of Lorraine.
Medieval traditions and pilgrimage fame
Several traditions strengthened the church’s reputation. One legend concerns Cunon de Linange, lord of Réchicourt, who was said to have been miraculously freed from captivity during or after the Sixth Crusade through Saint Nicholas’s intercession. According to the story, he awoke before the church, and his chains fell away during the service that followed. He allegedly ordered an annual procession that continued until the French Revolution. A torchlit procession is still held at the basilica on the Saturday nearest 6 December.
Jean de Joinville, a medieval French seneschal and historian associated with the court of Louis IX, also helped spread the fame of the pilgrimage. His account describes Queen Margaret of Provence’s vow during the Seventh Crusade. After surviving the danger of shipwreck near Cyprus, she commissioned a silver ship weighing five marks and sent it to the church through Joinville in 1254.
Other traditions connect the church with the emperor Charles IV in 1359, King John II of France in 1360, the parents of the future Saint Colette, and Joan of Arc. Joan’s visit is legendary, although it has also been regarded as possible after her visit to the seriously ill Duke Charles II of Lorraine.
The basilica of René II
The present basilica originated in the aftermath of the Battle of Nancy on 5 January 1477. René II, Duke of Lorraine and Bar, defeated Charles the Bold, Duke of Burgundy, and the victory restored Lorraine’s independence. René II intended the new church as an act of thanksgiving to Saint Nicholas and as an expression of the duchy’s renewed position. The town, then generally called Port, was chosen because it was Lorraine’s economic center and its fairs attracted merchants from across Europe.
Construction began in 1481. Simon Moycet served as master builder, while Valentin Bousch was the master glazier. An architect named Michel was connected with an expert assessment at Troyes in 1506, and the first architect is identified as Michel Robin. Designs associated with Champagne influenced the choir and the circulation of the interior. A second construction campaign began in 1515, but the building largely followed the original plans.
The church was almost complete and inaugurated in 1544. Its facade was finished in 1545, and it was consecrated in 1560 after the two bell towers, built in 1544, received their first lead roofs. The campaign lasted about sixty years, a relatively short period for a church of this scale, allowing its overall design to remain substantially coherent.
War, fire, and rebuilding
During the Thirty Years’ War, an assault and major fire in November 1635 destroyed the roof and furnishings. Lead from many stained-glass windows melted, causing the glass to collapse. Numerous wall paintings made before 1520 were blackened and later covered with whitewash. Around 1664, the church received a new oak roof structure, and in 1725 the towers were fitted with bulb-shaped slate domes.
The fire gave rise to the legend of the “weeping pillar.” Dom Moye, a Benedictine prior who was said to have been celebrating Mass during the Swedish assault, was believed to have disappeared inside a pillar while escaping a sword. The pillar nearest the southern, or Saint Peter’s, tower was later said to transmit the prior’s chanting and to release drops before events threatening Lorraine. Parishioners associated the phenomenon with the wars of 1870 and 1914.
Saint-Nicolas was placed on France’s first list of historic monuments in 1840. Pope Pius XII granted it minor-basilica status in 1950, a papal designation recognizing a Catholic church’s historical, religious, or pastoral importance.
Twentieth-century damage and conservation
The basilica was severely damaged by bombing on 19 June 1940 during the Second World War. Restoration from 1983 into the early twenty-first century returned much of the building to its former appearance and brought wall paintings hidden after the 1635 fire back to view. The work was financed through the legacy of Camille Croué-Friedman, a woman from Saint-Nicolas-de-Port who attributed her survival of a shipwreck off Cyprus to Saint Nicholas. After her death in New York in 1980, she left a substantial bequest for the basilica.
The association Connaissance et renaissance de la basilique de Saint-Nicolas-de-Port was founded on 7 April 1973 and recognized as a public-interest organization by decree on 9 March 1981. Its purposes include research, public knowledge, and restoration, and it publishes the periodical La Gargouille three times a year. The basilica also houses an Orthodox parish dedicated to Saint Nicholas. Its bell towers serve as fifth-order geodetic points within the New Triangulation of France, a national network of surveyed reference points used for mapping and measuring positions.
The treasury and its survival
The basilica’s treasure was built largely through donations from Lorraine’s ruling families and other benefactors. Inventories made in 1584, 1604, 1715, and 1737 record gifts associated with Louis IX, Charles II of Lorraine, René II, Margaret Gonzaga of Mantua, Henry of Lorraine, Anne du Châtelet, and Louis de Guise-Joyeuse.
During the crisis of 1635, important objects were transferred to the Benedictines of Nancy for protection until 1636. In 1691, during the French occupation of Lorraine, royal authorities ordered the surrender of nonessential ecclesiastical silver. Dom Placide Beaufort supervised the dispatch of silver worth 4,052 francs for melting at Metz. Further demands followed during the Seven Years’ War, and a revolutionary decree of 10 September 1792 ordered ecclesiastical gold and silver to be sent to the mint to support the war effort.
On 3 June 1797, several relics were entrusted to devout women of Saint-Nicolas-de-Port to prevent their seizure during the Revolution. Afterward, the treasury was augmented or reconstituted with objects including a seventeenth-century bust reliquary of Saint Nicholas, a silver-gilt and mother-of-pearl ship associated with the cardinal of Lorraine, a True Cross reliquary, a reliquary of Saint Sigisbert, a processional cross, and a later reliquary containing the principal Saint Nicholas relic.
Under the 1905 law separating Church and state, the treasure became state property while remaining available for ecclesiastical use. An inventory begun on 23 January 1906 was interrupted by about one hundred women singing hymns and completed on 15 March. It revealed that twelve principal objects were missing, including the mother-of-pearl ship, the arm reliquary, and the silver bust reliquary. They were recovered on 5 December at the Rolin house in Saint-Nicolas-de-Port.
Remains
Saint-Nicolas is a large Flamboyant Gothic church oriented approximately from northwest at the portal to southeast at the eastern end, or chevet. Its eleven bays contain a high central nave, two lower lateral naves, two aisles, and two small subsidiary apses called apsidioles. The building measures about 71.5 metres in length and 31 metres in width. Its consistent design, restrained decoration, and rapid construction preserve the coherence of a project begun in 1481.
Plan, elevation, and construction
The nave rises about 30 metres above the floor. At the crossing, where the nave meets the crosswise transept, two slender columns rise 21.5 metres. One is twisted to conceal a false vertical alignment, or structural deviation, of roughly 20 centimetres. These columns are described as among the highest Gothic columns in France.
The transept projects little in plan but is strongly expressed in elevation. In effect, it consists of two fused naves, each reaching the height of the main nave. Exceptionally slender columns support its arms at the crossing. The nave axis turns six degrees to the right rather than following a straight line, probably because the available building plots constrained the plan. During the second campaign, begun in 1515, non-orthogonal bays and vaults preserved the visual unity of the interior despite this deviation.
The choir reflects Champagne influence, particularly in its plan and in the internal gallery or passage at the base of the lower windows, about seven metres above the floor. Lorraine traditions appear in the five-sided apse with very tall windows and in the arrangement of the eastern end without a passage around the back of the choir. The sloping ground on the north side allowed six commercial loges to be inserted beneath the floors of the northern side chapels. These spaces open toward Rue des Fonts.
Chapels and painted decoration
The baptismal chapel was built against the northern apsidiole while the basilica was still under construction. It is a Flamboyant Gothic space at a lower level than the adjoining area and contains a notable vault with a pendant. Its retable presents Christ and the twelve Apostles.
Paintings on the stone columns include scenes of the Descent from the Cross, Job, Saint Yves, Saint Martin, Saint Aprône, and Saint Didier. Frescoes show Saint Martin sharing his cloak and the rapture of Saint Mary Magdalene. Another sequence from the early sixteenth century depicts John the Baptist, the Virgin and Child, John the Evangelist, and Saint Didier holding his severed head. A fresco of Saint Aprône appears at the base of the twisted southern transept column.
Stained glass
Significant quantities of sixteenth-century stained glass survive despite the fire and sack of the town in 1635. The windows are anonymous or attributed to Valentin Bousch, the Lyon glazier Nicolas Droguet, Georges Millereau, Veit Hirsvogel, Hans von Kulmbach, and other artists. Their dismantling and restoration, begun in 1983, was accompanied by a major stylistic and technical study published in 1993.
A window in the Chapel of Saint Margaret dates from 1544 and is known as the Berman grisaille. A grisaille is a stained-glass composition made mainly with gray or monochrome tones. The window probably came from the house of Hanus Berman, a wealthy merchant represented with his family, and was installed in the basilica only in the seventeenth century.
The right window of the Chapel of Notre-Dame-des-Victoires presents scenes from the life of the Virgin, including the Assumption. The right window of the Chapel of Saint Anne is largely by Valentin Bousch, apart from its nineteenth-century right-hand section. It depicts the donors Fiacre Fériet and Jeannon Thiriet with Saint Adrian, together with the arms of Lorraine, Anjou, and Saint-Nicolas-de-Port.
Behind the choir are sixteenth-century windows approximately 20 metres high. The left window is attributed to Georges Millereau, while the other two are attributed to Nicolas Droguet. In the southern Chapel of Saint Nicholas, a window depicts Jean de Joinville and places above him an image of the arm reliquary containing the saint’s relic.
Towers and bells
The two bell towers rise approximately 85 and 87 metres. Their lower sections are square and change into octagonal forms before reaching bulb-shaped roofs, which were added in slate in 1725 and remained in place at the beginning of the twenty-first century.
The basilica has eighteen functioning bells, twelve of which can be rung with a full-swing motion, forming one of the largest ensembles of this kind in France. The southern tower contains the nearly five-ton bourdon, the largest and lowest-sounding bell, named Joseph-Auguste-Edmond. Ch. Martin cast it at Nancy in 1897, and it sounds the note G2.
The northern tower contains fourteen bells, including eight full-swing bells. Four were cast at Robécourt in the Vosges by the Perrin-Martin foundry in 1853, and four more were cast at Nancy by Jules Robert in 1896. Six carillon bells, forming a tuned set played as a musical instrument, were cast by the Paccard foundry in Haute-Savoie in 2000. A small belfry above the choir contains three manually rung bells, one from 1856 and two from 2000. A fourth bell, cast by Thuielle in 1839, was damaged in the June 1940 bombing and placed in the Chapel of Saint Margaret after its removal from the small belfry in 2000.
Organ and sculpture
The present organ is the fifth installed in the basilica. The Haerpfer-Erman firm reconstructed it in 1994. It has 3,673 pipes, 54 stops, four keyboards, and a pedalboard, with suspended mechanical action for the notes. The instrument stands at mid-height in the northern arm of the transept, with its gallery floor about seven metres above the pavement.
Its troubadour-style case, built in 1848 by the Nancy organ builder Joseph Cuvillier after a design by Désiré Laurent, is 16 metres high and 7 metres wide. A life-size eagle symbolizing Saint John the Evangelist stands at the base of the projecting gallery. The case includes 56-note keyboards, a 30-note pedalboard, mechanical couplers and tremulants, and reed stops including Cromorne, Trompette, Clairon, Basson, Basson-Hautbois, Voix humaine, and Bombarde.
The basilica contains a statue of Saint Nicholas with three children at his feet in a salting tub, as well as statues of Saint Sebastian and an eighteenth-century Holy Family. A relief of Judith after the beheading of Holofernes dates from the late sixteenth or early seventeenth century, while a statue of the Virgin and Child dates from the thirteenth century. The recumbent effigy of Simon Moycet was sculpted by Victor Huel in 1893.
Relics and the treasury
The Saint Nicholas arm reliquary is made of silver, gold, enamel, and diamonds and dates from the late nineteenth century. Shaped as an arm so that a saint’s limb relic can be presented visibly, it contains the phalanx attributed to Aubert de Varangéville. A seventeenth-century bust reliquary of Saint Nicholas has a mitre replaced in the nineteenth century, while its original precious stones were replaced with colored stones.
Other objects include a sixteenth-century silver-gilt and mother-of-pearl ship associated with the cardinal of Lorraine, a True Cross reliquary attributed to a gift from Conrad of Basel, and an eighteenth-century monstrance containing relics of Saint Sigisbert. The processional cross, added in 1894, was modeled on the cross of Saint John Lateran. A later gilt reliquary weighs more than six kilograms and incorporates two topazes bearing busts of Mary and Jesus. Display cases designed by Eugène Vallin were installed in the treasury room in 1893, while the arm reliquary is also represented in the stained glass of the Saint Nicholas chapel.
