Heiligenstadt St. James's Church

St. James’s Church (German: Kirche St. Jakob) is one of two Roman Catholic churches in the parish of Heiligenstadt in the 19th district of Vienna, Döbling. It stands at the Pfarrplatz and is dedicated to James, son of Zebedee (Saint James).

The church is sometimes wrongly called St. Jacob's. The confusion arises because German, like many other languages, uses the same word for both James and Jacob.

The church takes the form of a simple Romanesque structure. Its modern-day appearance dates back to the 12th century. The church consists of a single nave with a raised and slightly offset choir. The left-hand side of the church has three round arched windows; the right-hand side only two.

Heiligenstadt was early on home to an organised Christian community with regular religious services. St. James’s Church’s roots can be traced back to the 5th century.

From 1105, there are reports of the presence of a cult to Saint Severinus of Noricum in Heiligenstadt. A document from Bishop Rüdiger von Passau dating from 1243 indicates that the church was a subsidiary of St. Martin in Klosterneuburg. It was made independent in 1246.

A hospital and rectory next to St. James’s Church are first mentioned in 1263. In 1307, Heiligenstadt was attached to the Klosterneuburg Monastery, and the parish priests of Heiligenstadt have been Canons Regular ever since. At the time, the parish of Heiligenstadt also covered the neighbouring communities of Grinzing, Sievering, Salmannsdorf, Nussdorf, Oberdöbling and Unterdöbling. The parish chronicle records that the parish was served by one parish priest, two parochial vicars and five mounted chaplains in 1480.

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