La préceptorerie des Antonins d'Issenheim

Issenheim

Issenheim was the head of the Antonine network of Upper Alsace, Basel and Strasbourg. The canons established themselves there at the end of the 13th century and bought in 1313 the estate of the Benedictines of Murbach. The house comprised a church, a convent, a guesthouse for pilgrims to Rome and Compostela, and above all a hospital where the sufferers from St Anthony's fire were received: they were fed on wheaten bread and meat, they were given the saint-vinage and the balm, and what was lost was amputated. For the choir of the church, the preceptor Guy Guers commissioned from Matthias Grünewald, between 1512 and 1516, the painted wings of an altarpiece whose shrine Nicolas de Haguenau had carved about 1490. The sick, as they entered, saw a Christ with a green body riddled with wounds, and, at the foot of the Temptation of St Anthony, a man seated, his belly swollen, his skin ulcerated, his limbs eaten away: their own image. This was intended. Of the convent itself, the Revolution and the rebuildings have left only the porch and a few vault keystones; the altarpiece, for its part, has gone to Colmar. But it is here that it was painted, and here that it served.

Wikipédia — Préceptorerie des Antonins ↗

Getting there : 5 km south of Guebwiller by the D 430, or from Colmar by the wine route (25 km). The former convent is occupied by the Maison Saint-Michel; from the street one sees its old porch and its vault keystones, on which St Anthony and St Veronica are figured. A museum space devoted to the Antonines, to medieval medicine and to the altarpiece — of which a model is exhibited — was laid out there in 2011; open by appointment or during the heritage days, enquire at the town hall or with the association of the friends of the Antonines.

Opening times and access details are given as a guide only: check before you set out.

Ambient sound