Grand'Église, Gothic church in Saint-Étienne, France.
Grand'Église is a Gothic church in Saint-Étienne built with pointed arches, ribbed vaults, and flying buttresses as its main structural elements. These techniques allow the walls to rise high and create large window openings that define the interior.
The present church was built between 1450 and 1480 under the twin dedication to Saints Stephen and Lawrence. The choir, in ruins in 1469, was rebuilt in Flamboyant Gothic before 1486. The building was damaged and pillaged during the Wars of Religion (1562–1598) and turned into a forge workshop during the Revolution. It has been listed as a monument historique since 29 December 1949.
The choir windows, made in 1840 by the Clermont glass painter Émile Thibaud, show colourful figurative panels above the white stone altar. The church keeps the memory of a vow made by the town's aldermen on 21 November 1629, when they asked the Virgin Mary to spare Saint-Étienne from the plague and promised a procession every 21 November.
The church stands at 25, place Boivin, in the historic centre of Saint-Étienne, within the parish of Saint-Étienne – Saint-Benoît and the diocese of Saint-Étienne. Entry is through the pointed portal with its tall red double doors on the main facade, where a smaller red door is set into the right half. Inside, dark wooden benches face the white stone altar down the central nave, and a carved wooden pulpit projects from a column on the right.
The choir windows were made in 1840 by the Clermont glass painter Émile Thibaud, not in the Middle Ages. In the same church, a polychrome wooden Entombment group dates from the 16th century, and the stone relief of the Stoning of Saint Stephen, flanked by statues of Saints Lawrence and Stephen, is attributed to Joseph-Hugues Fabisch.
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