Temple Saint-Martin de Montbéliard, Renaissance Protestant church in Montbéliard, France.
Temple Saint-Martin is a Lutheran church built of white Jura limestone with pink Alsace sandstone, in a Renaissance style. It forms a single rectangular hall 37 m long, 16 m wide and 11 m high, without a choir or apse. Its walls are divided by 34 pilasters into seven bays along the length and three across; the windows and portals have triangular pediments, and the main door is topped by an oculus. A square tower with a slate spire and clock rises above the entrance.
A Catholic church of Saint-Martin is documented from 1343; it passed to Reformed worship in 1536 after Guillaume Farel preached the Reformation in Montbéliard in 1524. Prince Frederick I of Montbéliard commissioned Heinrich Schickhardt to build a Lutheran church on the same site: the first stone was laid in 1601, the roof frame finished in 1604 and the building completed in 1607. In 1677 Louis XIV imposed Catholic worship, so residents added a bell tower and converted the temple into a church.
The name Saint-Martin comes from the Catholic church first recorded in 1343, replaced by the Lutheran building from 1601. Since June 2016 a copy of the Montbéliard Altarpiece, commissioned in 1538 by Count George I of Württemberg-Montbéliard and looted during the Thirty Years' War, is displayed here; the original is in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum. The temple now stands at the centre of Montbéliard's Christmas market.
The temple stands in the historic centre, facing the town hall and the theatre, and since 2007 its roof has been renewed after the 1991 restoration. It is an active Lutheran parish of the Église protestante unie de France, so visits fit around worship; the main door on the gabled facade is the one to look for, with carved panels by Friedrich Megnin.
The 1755 organ by Jean Louis Perny was rebuilt in 1843 by Joseph Callinet, restored 1985–1989 by Alain Sals, and a rear positive was added, giving it three manuals and a pedalboard. It has been a listed object since 13 June 1978. The 17th-century ceiling painting The Good Shepherd and the carved door panels by Friedrich Megnin are also listed.
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