Church of St. Nicholas, Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, Roman Catholic church in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés, France.
The Church of St. Nicholas in Saint-Maur-des-Fossés has a pale ashlar stone facade with a steep gabled roof topped by a small cross, and a square tower with a pyramidal roof on the left. Inside, a long nave runs beneath a high pointed stone vault carried on tall columns with pointed arcades; a large pointed-arch window with circular tracery and five vertical lights sits above the dark altar area. In 2019 a fundraising campaign was launched to remove a 1930s vaulted ceiling and restore the original 12th-century roof.
A chapel dedicated to St. Nicholas is first recorded in 1137, when monks of Saint-Maur Abbey processed the relics of St. Maur during a drought and a storm broke as they said Mass there. The building was listed as a Class Historic Monument on 3 February 1947. In 2019 a restoration campaign was launched to remove a 1930s vaulted ceiling and restore the original 12th-century roof, with €910,000 approved by the municipal council.
The Marian pilgrimage to Notre-Dame-des-Miracles ran for nearly nine centuries until 1968 and resumed in 1988. The statue, said to have appeared in a sculptor's workshop on 10 July 1068, survived the Revolution when the abbey church was destroyed; its hand position earned it the nickname "The Virgin on the Telephone".
The church stands at the corner of rue de Paris and rue du Four. A restoration campaign launched in 2019, funded partly by the Fondation du patrimoine and a municipal contribution of €910,000, removed a 1930s vaulted ceiling to reveal the original 12th-century roof structure, so parts of the interior may be under works.
The church keeps a wooden Virgin Mary statue said to have appeared in a sculptor's workshop on 10 July 1068, as told by Regnault de Citry in 1328. Tradition holds it was made without hands. Its joined hands earned it the nickname "The Virgin on the Telephone".
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