examples – 29 – the wayside shrine at the Grande Rue

At the top of the Grande Rue in Rombach, there was a soup kitchen in the 15th century, a pitancerie, run by the monks of the Saint-Pierremont monastery. Nothing remains of this monastery—which descended from an 11th-century Augustinian monastery and was reformed in 1622 by the French priest Pierre Fourier—nor of the soup kitchen, except for a relic, a wayside shrine depicting Jesus Christ on the cross, which is embedded in a house wall and which the little girl knew well.

La Grande Rue

Foto: To the right of Jesus Christ stands the Virgin Mary and to the left Saint John, as is so often the case with the Calvaries—the famous wayside shrines!—as historians from Rombas have informed me. Above the cross stands Saint Peter with the one key to Paradise.