The Mountain Church or Saint Nicholas Church () is a former place of worship in

Deventer Deventer (; Sallaans dialect, Sallands: ) is a List of cities in the Netherlands by province, city and Municipalities of the Netherlands, municipality in the Salland historical region of the Provinces of the Netherlands, province of Overijssel, ...

Overijssel Overijssel (; ; ; ) is a Provinces of the Netherlands, province of the Netherlands located in the eastern part of the country. The province's name comes from the perspective of the Prince-Bishopric of Utrecht, Episcopal principality of Utrecht ...

. This Romanesque basilica was built around 1209 and consecrated to

Saint Nicholas Saint Nicholas of Myra (traditionally 15 March 270 – 6 December 343), also known as Nicholas of Bari, was an early Christian bishop of Greeks, Greek descent from the maritime city of Patara (Lycia), Patara in Anatolia (in modern-day Antalya ...

. Centuries later it received some Late Gothic alterations. In 1580 the

Dutch Reformed Church The Dutch Reformed Church (, , abbreviated NHK ) was the largest Christian denomination in the Netherlands from the onset of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th century until 1930. It was the traditional denomination of the Dutch royal famil ...

took the temple and renamed it the Mountain Church. In 1967 the church was disestablished and its property transferred to the Municipality of Deventer. The building is used as an exhibition center and concert hall. From 1991 until 2005, the church was used for temporary exhibitions by

Museum de Fundatie Museum de Fundatie () is a museum for the visual arts in Zwolle, Netherlands. Museum de Fundatie forms part of the Hannema-de Stuers Foundation, to which Kasteel het Nijenhuis in Heino also belongs. Museum de Fundatie possesses a collection of vis ...

Building and renovations

The Mountain Church was built between 1198 and 1209, near where the Deventer harbour section was at the time. It was founded in the golden age of the

Hanseatic city The Hanseatic League was a Middle Ages, medieval commercial and defensive network of merchant guilds and market towns in Central Europe, Central and Northern Europe, Northern Europe. Growing from a few Northern Germany, North German towns in the ...

. Its completion was dedicated to

, the

patron Saint A patron saint, patroness saint, patron hallow or heavenly protector is a saint who in Catholicism, Anglicanism, Eastern Orthodoxy or Oriental Orthodoxy is regarded as the heavenly advocate of a nation, place, craft, activity, class, clan, fa ...

sailors A sailor, seaman, mariner, or seafarer is a person who works aboard a watercraft as part of its crew, and may work in any one of a number of different fields that are related to the operation and maintenance of a ship. While the term ''sailor'' ...

, as the city Deventer took great advantage of their strategic position on the River

IJssel The IJssel (; ) is a Dutch distributary of the river Rhine that flows northward and ultimately discharges into the IJsselmeer (before the 1932 completion of the Afsluitdijk known as the Zuiderzee), a North Sea natural harbour. It more immediatel ...

. The church has a lot of features in common with churches from around the

Baltic Sea The Baltic Sea is an arm of the Atlantic Ocean that is enclosed by the countries of Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and the North European Plain, North and Central European Plain regions. It is the ...

. In the fifteenth century the Mountain Church underwent several renovations, which gave it a more late Gothic appearance. The two characteristic tower spires are built in that period. The lower part is still original. In 1580 went over to the

protestant church Protestantism is a branch of Christianity that emphasizes justification of sinners through faith alone, the teaching that salvation comes by unmerited divine grace, the priesthood of all believers, and the Bible as the sole infallible sourc ...

and all

catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the List of Christian denominations by number of members, largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics Catholic Church by country, worldwid ...

features were removed from the interior, which was very common to do. The wall paintings were covered with white chalk.

Legend

There is a

legend A legend is a genre of folklore that consists of a narrative featuring human actions, believed or perceived to have taken place in human history. Narratives in this genre may demonstrate human values, and possess certain qualities that give the ...

that describes how the building of the church came to be. Two sisters from Deventer, Martha and Beatrix, were heavily impressed by a

knight A knight is a person granted an honorary title of a knighthood by a head of state (including the pope) or representative for service to the monarch, the church, or the country, especially in a military capacity. The concept of a knighthood ...

who had come to Deventer. Both of them fancied the knight. Beatrix eventually married the knight, leaving Martha behind in solitude. Martha ordered the church to be built in peace with her loneliness, and let one of the two towers become slightly taller than the other one, since both sisters were of different height too. This should explain the difference in height between the two towers. The tower on the west (on the right hand stand when you face it) is the biggest one. "''In remembrance of the love of my sister and me, I want a church to be built from my money on the mountain. Two towers will be built upon it, one a little taller than the other, two children of one father alike and inseparable. So that will eternally remain the memory of our love and after our demise at any rate there be two towers that will not abandon one and another.''"Free translation of: J. Cohen, ''Nederlandsche Sagen En Legenden'', Teddington: The Echo Library (2007). Another legend of the west tower is that it was taken under siege in the seventeenth century, by pirates on the river IJssel. A big stone ball, which appears to be a stone

cannonball A round shot (also called solid shot or simply ball) is a solid spherical projectile without explosive charge, launched from a gun. Its diameter is slightly less than the bore of the barrel from which it is shot. A round shot fired from a lar ...

, can still be seen, stuck inside the exterior of the tower.

References

External links

* {{Coord, 52, 15, 07, N, 6, 09, 47, E, region:DE_source:kolossus-nlwiki, display=title Buildings and structures in Deventer Churches in Overijssel Rijksmonuments in Overijssel