De Utrechtse Catharinakerk

A. P. H. Meijers, C. H. Staal, Wouter van Belle

Not far from the Utrechtse Domkerk is the Catharinakerk on the Lange Nieuwstraat. Where once stood a chapel in the fifteenth century a monastery church. The Carmelites began construction, but by order of Emperor Charles V, the building was completed by the Johannites. This building is the current cruciform church in the style of the Brabant Gothic. When Utrecht became Protestant in 1580, the church came to stand empty. For some time, the building then had non-church functions. Thus the church functioned as -theatrum anatomicum - for the study of human anatomy. In the seventeenth century, the church was used as a Protestant preaching and burial church. But in 1840, after twenty-five years of rigging and stealing, King William II donated the church to the Catholics. When Pope Pius IX restored the episcopal hierarchy in 1853, the Catharina Church was elevated to a metropolitan cathedral....