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Origin and history

The Church of Our Lady of the Assumption of Metz, located on Rue de la Chèvre, is a Roman Catholic building marked by its Jesuit heritage. Built on the site of a former Calvinist temple confiscated in 1642, its first stone was laid in 1665 under the leadership of Claude de Bretagne, President of the Metz Parliament. The work, interrupted by financial constraints and the Dutch War (1676), only resumed in 1735 and ended in 1739, with a solemn consecration in 1741 by Bishop Saint-Simon.

The monument embodies the Counter-Reform: the Jesuits, who had been in Metz since 1622, established their college and church, nicknamed "Creve-Coeur" by the Reformed. In 1744, the church welcomed Queen Marie Leszczynska and the Dauphin for a ceremony in which Louis XV was acclaimed "Louis the Beloved". After the Revolution, it became a Decadar Temple (1795) before being restored to Catholic worship in 1802, then restored in 1833 by architect Pierre-François Gautiez.

Its architecture, inspired by the Parisian Jesuit novitiate, houses remarkable furniture (confessionnals of the eighteenth century, statuary of Molknecht) and the stained glass windows of Laurent-Charles Marshal (1841–60), restored between 2009 and 2014. The organ, housed in a 1729 buffet, is a Mutin-Cavaillé-Coll instrument played by masters such as Widor or Dupré. Ranked a Historical Monument in 1968, the church remains a major cultural and spiritual place, linked to figures like Paul Verlaine, baptized in 1844.

The Messin context is that of a border town, capital of the Trois-Évêchés (Metz, Toul, Verdun) integrated into France in 1648. Under Louis XIV, Metz is a strategic stronghold, with an influential parliament and a dynamic intellectual life, between religious tensions (closure of the Calvinist temple) and artistic influence (influence of Poussin, Lully). The church thus symbolizes denominational struggles and monarchy prestige.

After the suppression of the Jesuits (1762), the Benedictines of Saint-Symphorien took over the college until 1794. During the Revolution, the building, renamed Temple Décadaire, welcomed Jacobin clubs (1,700 seats). In the 19th century, it again became parish and enriched with narrative stained glass windows (cycles of the Virgin, Peter, and the Church), witnesses to the glassmaking techniques of the century. His organ, classified in 1968 as the church, still attracts concertists and music lovers.

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