Klosterkirche St. Johannes der Täufer, former pilgrimage and abbey church in Holzen, Allmannshofen, Bavaria, Germany
The Klosterkirche St. Johannes der Täufer in Holzen is a baroque church building with tall, narrow towers rising between the nave and choir. The single-nave interior features a side gallery, elaborate stucco decoration, and ceiling frescoes completed around 1704 by Augsburg artist Johann Rieger.
A wooden monastery was replaced by a stone building under master builder Ulrich Unsinig in 1556/59, and a two-nave hall church was consecrated in 1561. After damage in the Thirty Years War, the foundation stone of the present church on the Karlsberg was laid in spring 1698; the shell stood in 1704 and the Augsburg auxiliary bishop Johann Kasimir Röls consecrated it in 1710. The monastery was dissolved in the secularisation and the abbey church became a parish church.
Pilgrimage to the church began in 1740, centred on a miraculous figure of the Child Jesus dressed in precious robes, kept on the Fourteen Holy Helpers altar. The figure itself dates from around 1610/20. The church remains the parish church of Holzen, formerly a branch of Druisheim until 1864.
The church stands on the Karlsberg above the Schmutter, reached on foot from Holzen; the towers and lantern domes mark it from a distance. Inside, the west gallery has three levels, with the organ above the nuns' choir. The building is a listed Bavarian monument and serves as the parish church of the Holzen curate, part of the Nordendorf-Westendorf parish community.
The stucco is attributed to Benedikt Vogel, a pupil of Melchior Steidl, and was made under Abbess Maria Benedikta von Remchingen (1723–1743). The high altar of about 1730 by Ehrgott Bernhard Bendl reuses an older altarpiece of the Baptism of Christ painted by Johann Georg Schmidtner in 1671.
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