Cream City Catholic
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Perhaps one of the most remarkable sacred sites in the city, if not region, is located just off Wisconsin Avenue. We talk a lot on CCC about churches in Milwaukee that are historic, dating back one century, maybe a little more or a little less. But here, nestled among a tranquil garden, and smack dab in the middle of a busy campus with students and smart phones, you’ll find a small stone chapel that dates back centuries. Step inside and you’re transported to medieval France, and to the time of a young French girl and soldier who died at the stake and, several centuries later, was canonized.
What makes this chapel so unique? Well, for starters, the fact that it’s here, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin is impressive, to say the least. How did its journey unfold?
To learn more, check this out.
For more than five centuries — no one knows how much longer — and before Columbus was even born — the special little Gothic oratory known as the Chapelle de St. Martin de Sayssuel was important to the noble families of the countryside and to the little French village of Chasse in the Département de L’Isère, Arrondissement de Vienne, twelve miles south of Lyon, six miles north of Vienne, in the Rhone River Valley. There a rambling cluster of buildings grew up around the Chapel, forming the ecclesiastical center of the village and of the surrounding château. . . .
After the French Revolution, when the archives of many of the French churches were lost or destroyed, it gradually fell into ruin and wind-swept dilapidation. . . .
Read the rest of Pick’s story. It’s fascinating.
A while back, on a more verdant, sunny day than today, I stopped in to snap some pictures. I hope you enjoy them!