Church of Saint John
Church of St. John, St. Jāņa baznīca
Latvia, Riga
St. John's Church is a Lutheran church in Riga, in the Old Town. In the architectural aspect, it is a bizarre combination of late Gothic, Northern Renaissance, Mannerism and Baroque. Along with the other three churches in the Old Town (Dome Cathedral, St. Peter's Church and Yakovlevsky Church) can be ranked among the outstanding monuments of church medieval architecture in Riga.
Initially, the Church of John the Baptist was a small rather modest wooden chapel near the Dominican monastery. For the first time the church appears in the city chronicles in 1297.
By the beginning of the 16th century, the church was rebuilt in the late Gothic style.
First of all, the notable components of the new Church of St. John were the ceiling of mesh vaults, as well as the stepped western pediment, which is topped with an old weather vane, which most quickly indicates the direction of the wind in comparison with the other three Riga roosters crowning the spiers of the main churches.
The bloodless expulsion of the Dominicans from the city soon followed - during the Easter procession, the Dominican monks left the city in order to bypass the fortress wall, and the residents refused to let them back after the procession was over. During the Reformation, a crowd of angry citizens, inflamed by the fervent sermons of the German anti-Catholic missionary Melchior Hoffmann, broke into the Church of St. John, subjecting its interior to a merciless defeat, after which the church was abandoned and sealed.
Further in this building there was a stable, a granary and an armory. Later, the church building was transferred into the possession of the Latvian Lutheran community, which immediately organizes its expansion and reconstruction.
In 1677, one of the strongest and most devastating fires in its history took place in Riga, when the eastern altar part completely burned out - after the natural elements had finished raging, the brick ceilings of the church apse were restored from wood. The outer surface of the walls is decorated with the decor of the Roman architectural order.
Then, at the end of the 17th century, the townspeople added two sculptures to the outer symmetrically located niches of the altar part - John the Baptist, symbolizing the gullibility and innocence of the Lutheran inhabitants, and Salome, who, in turn, personifies the treachery and deceit of the city's Catholic elite.
In 1912, the founder of the national planned painting, the famous Latvian landscape and portrait painter Janis Rozental painted the religious painting "The Crucifixion", which was placed in the sacristy of St. John's Church.
In Soviet times, the church functioned as a Lutheran church, and the parishioners of the Church of St. John the Baptist had no problems with religious worship.
