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"The Church of St James the Greater was founded in 1209 by Holy Roman Emperor Otto IV. The Knights of St. John built a hospital next to the church. Under the reign of Emperor Frederick II, starting in 1220, the order "...was equipped with more and more possessions." (See note). Among those new possessions was St. Jakob Church.
The Teutonic Knights were formed in Jerusalem in 1199 as a German speaking branch of the Knights of St. John. After the fall of Jerusalem in 1244 they moved their base of operation from the Mediterranean to the Baltic and became an independent Catholic Order. As such, many former possessions of the Knights of St. John were handed to the Teutonic Knights, among them St. Jakob's church in Nuremberg.
In 1531, when the Reformation swept through Europe, St. Jakob's church became one of the first Protestant churches, but legally, it "...remained in possession of the Catholic Teutonic Order." (See note).
100 Years later, in 1632, during the Thirty Years' War, Sweden's King Gustav Adolf expropriated the Teutonic Order, and "...handed the church to the city of Nuremberg". However, it was "returned to the Teutonic Order in 1648" (See note) at the end of the war and remained in its possession for another 161 years until 1806, when Bavaria's Duke Maximilian I ordered the secularization of the Order's property. In 1810, St. Jakob "became the third Protestant parish church of Nuremberg" (See note) and today, only parts of the altar, dating back to the 14th century, remind of the time of the Teutonic Knights. |
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