Protestant church, Coesfeld, Jesuit church in Coesfeld, Germany

The Jesuit Church of St. Ignatius is a red brick hall church with six bays and a tall central facade divided by light stone pilasters and bands. Three round windows sit above a pointed-arch tracery window and a stone portal with a carved relief panel. A lower brick wing with a corner spirelet flanks the left side, and tall pointed-arch windows with stone surrounds line the visible wall.

The foundation stone was laid on 1 May 1673 by Prince-Bishop Christoph Bernhard von Galen; the roof was slated by 1688 and the vaults finished in 1691, when a collapse of the choir vault killed five workmen. The first service followed at Ascension 1694, and the church was consecrated in 1710 after Johann Rendeles completed the interior. From 1803 it was used jointly by Catholics and Protestants until 1969, when it passed to the Protestant parish.

The church owes its name to Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Jesuits, who built it from 1673. From 1803 the small Protestant community, about thirty people, shared it with the Catholic school services of the Nepomucenum; this Simultaneum lasted until 1969, when the building passed to the Protestant parish. The high altar came from the Soest Minorite church, a foundation of Prince-Bishop Franz von Fürstenberg.

The church stands in Coesfeld's centre, next to the parish church of St. Lambert. The interior is a six-bay hall with strongly projecting wall piers, an organ gallery at the west end and a low-vaulted entrance porch beneath it. Look for the high altar brought here from the former Minorite church in Soest and the pulpit from Erwitte.

The high altar came from the Minoritenkirche in Soest, donated by Prince-Bishop Franz von Fürstenberg of Paderborn; it came from the same workshop as the lost original but stands about five metres lower. The pulpit is from Erwitte. During the 1945 reconstruction a plain black cross first stood in place of the altar.