THE PANTHEON AND ST. GENEVIEVE
A Church's Vicissitudes--St. Genevieve--A Guardian of
Paris--Illustrious Converts--_The Golden Legend_--A
Sabbath-breaker--Genevieve's Sacred Body--Her Tomb--The
Pantheon Frescoes--Joan of Arc--The Pantheon Tombs--Mirabeau
and Marat--Voltaire's Funeral--The Thoughts of the
Thinker--From the Dome--St. Etienne-du-Mont--The Fate of St.
Genevieve--The Relic-hunters--The Mystery of the Wine-press.
The Pantheon, like the Madeleine, has had its vicissitudes. The new
Madeleine, as we shall see, was begun by Napoleon as a splendid Temple
of military glory and became a church; the new Pantheon was begun by
Louis XV. as a splendid cathedral and became a Temple of Glory, not,
however, military but civil. Louis XV., when he designed its erection
on the site of the old church, intended it to be the church of St.
Genevieve, whose tomb was its proudest possession; when the Revolution
altered all that, it was made secular and dedicated "aux grands hommes
la patrie reconnaissante," and the first grand homme to be buried
there was Mirabeau (destined, however, not to remain a grand homme
very long, as we shall see), and the next Voltaire. In 1806 Napoleon
made it a church again; in 1830 the Revolutionaries again secularised
it; in 1851 it was consecrated again, and in 1885 once more it became
secular, to receive the body of Victor Hugo, and secular it has
remained; and considering everything, secular it is likely to be, for
whatever of change and surprise the future holds for France, an excess
of ecclesiastical ecstasy is hardly probable.
So much of Louis XV.'s idea remains, in spite of the perversion of his
purpose, that scenes from the life of St. Genevieve are painted on the
Pantheon's walls and sculptured on its facade; while in its last
sacred days the church was known again as St. Genevieve's. Possibly
there are old people in the neighbourhood who still call it that. I
hope so.
The life of St. Genevieve, as told in _The Golden Legend_, is rather a
series of facile miracles than a human document, as we say. She was
born in the fifth century at Nanterre, and early became a protegee of
St. Germain, who vowed her to chastity and holiness, from which she
never departed. Her calling, like that of her new companion on the
canon, St. Joan, was that of shepherdess, and one of Puvis de
Chavannes' most charming frescoes in the Pantheon represents her as a
shadowy slip of a girl kneeling to a crucifix while her sheep graze
about her. I reproduce it opposite the next page. Her mother, who had,
like most mothers, a desire that her daughter should marry and have
children, once so far lost her temper as to strike Genevieve on the
cheek; for which offence she became blind. (A very comfortable corner
of heaven is, one feels, the due of the mothers of saints.) She
remained blind for a long time, until remembering that St. Germain had
promised for her daughter miraculous gifts, she sent for Genevieve and
was magnanimously cured. After the death of her parent, Genevieve
moved to Paris, and there she lived with an old woman, dividing the
neighbourhood into believers and unbelievers in her sanctity, as is
ever the way with saints. Here the Devil persecuted and attacked her
with much persistence and ingenuity, but wholly without effect.
During her long life she made Paris her principal home, and on more
than one occasion saved it: hence her importance not only to the
Parisians, who set her above St. Denis (whom she reverenced), but to
this book. Her power of prayer was gigantic; she literally prayed
Attila the Hun out of his siege of Paris, and later, when Childeric
was the besieger and Paris was starving, she brought victuals into the
city by boat in a miraculous way: another scene chosen by Puvis de
Chavannes in his Pantheon series. Childeric, however, conquered, in
spite of Genevieve, but he treated her with respect and made it easy
for her to approach Clovis and Clotilde and convert them to
Christianity--hence the convent of St. Genevieve, which Clovis
founded, remains of which are still to be seen by the church of St.
Etienne-du-Mont, in the two streets named after those early
Christians--the Rue Clovis and the Rue Clotilde. Christianity had been
introduced into Paris by Saint Denis, Genevieve's hero, in the
third century; but then came a reaction and the new faith lost ground.
It was St. Genevieve's conversion of Clovis that re-established it on
a much firmer basis, for he made it the national religion.
[Illustration: STE. GENEVIEVE
PUVIS DE CHAVANNES
(_Pantheon_)]
"This holy maid," says Caxton, "did great penance in tormenting her
body all her life, and became lean for to give good example. For sith
she was of the age of fifteen years, unto fifty, she fasted every day
save Sunday and Thursday. In her refection she had nothing but barley
bread, and sometime beans, the which, sodden after fourteen days or
three weeks, she ate for all delices. Always she was in prayers in
wakings and in penances, she drank never wine ne other liquor, that
might make her drunk, in all her life. When she had lived and used
this life fifty years, the bishops that were that time, saw and beheld
that she was over feeble by abstinence as for her age, and warned her
to increase a little her fare. The holy woman durst not gainsay them,
for our Lord saith of the prelates: Who heareth you heareth me, and
who despiseth you despiseth me, and so she began by obedience to eat
with her bread, fish and milk, and how well that, she so did, she
beheld the heaven and wept, whereof it is to believe that she saw
appertly our Lord Jesus Christ after the promise of the gospel that
saith that, Blessed be they that be clean of heart for they shall see
God; she had her heart and body pure and clean."
Caxton also tells quaintly the story of one of the first miracles
performed by Genevieve's tomb: "Another man came thither that gladly
wrought on the Sunday, wherefor our Lord punished him, for his hands
were so benumbed and lame that he might not work on other days. He
repented him and confessed his sin, and came to the tomb of the said
virgin, and there honoured and prayed devoutly, and on the morn he
returned all whole, praising and thanking our Lord, that by the worthy
merits and prayers of the holy virgin, grant and give us pardon,
grace, and joy perdurable."
To St. Genevieve's tomb we shall come on leaving the Pantheon, but
here after so much about her adventures when alive I might say
something about her adventures when dead. She was buried in 511 in the
Abbey church of the Holy Apostles, on the site of which the Pantheon
stands. Driven out by the Normans, the monks removed the saint's body
and carried it away in a box; and thereafter her remains were destined
to rove, for when the monks returned to the Abbey they did not again
place them in the tomb but kept them in a casket for use in
processions whenever Paris was in trouble and needed supernatural
help. Meanwhile her tomb, although empty, continued to work miracles
also.
Early in the seventeenth century her bones were restored to her tomb,
which was made more splendid, and there they remained until the
Revolution. The Revolutionists, having no use for saints, opened
Genevieve's tomb, burned its contents on the Place de Greve, and
melted the gold of the canopy into money. They also desecrated the
church of St. Etienne-du-Mont (which we are about to visit) and made
it a Temple of Theophilanthropy. A few years later the stone coffer
was removed to St. Etienne-du-Mont, where it now is, gorgeously
covered with Gothic splendours; but as to how minute are the fragments
of the saint that it contains which must have been overlooked by the
incendiary Revolutionaries, I cannot say. They are sufficient,
however, still to cure the halt and the lame and enable them to leave
their crutches behind.
The Pantheon is a vast and dreary building, sadly in need of a little
music and incense to humanise it. The frescoes are interesting--those
of Puvis de Chavannes in particular, although a trifle too wan--but
one cannot shake off depression and chill. The Joan of Arc paintings
by Lenepveu are the least satisfactory, the Maid of this artist
carrying no conviction with her. But when it comes to that, it is
difficult to say which of the Parisian Maids of art is satisfactory:
certainly not the audacious golden Amazon of Fremiet in the Place de
Rivoli. Dubois' figure opposite St. Augustin's is more earnest and
spiritual, but it does not quite realise one's wishes. I think that I
like best the Joan in the Boulevard Saint-Marcel, behind the Jardin
des Plantes.
The vault of the Pantheon may be seen only in the company of a guide,
and there is a charge. To be quite sure that Rousseau is in his grave
is perhaps worth the money; but one resents the fee none the less.
Great Frenchmen's graves--especially Victor Hugo's--should be free to
all. There is no charge at the Invalides. You may stand beside Heine's
tomb in the Cimetiere de Montmartre without money and without a guide,
but not by Voltaire's in the Pantheon; Balzac's grave in Pere Lachaise
is free, Zola's in the Pantheon costs seventy-five centimes.
The guide hurries his flock from one vault to another, at one point
stopping for a while to exchange badinage with an echo. Rousseau, as I
have said, is here; Voltaire is here; here are General Carnot,
President Carnot with a mass of faded wreaths, Soufflot--who designed
the Pantheon, thinking his work was for St. Genevieve, and who died of
anxiety owing to a subsidence of the walls; Victor Hugo, and, lately
moved hither, not without turmoil and even pistol shots, the historian
of the Rougon-Macquart family and the author of a letter of accusation
famous in history.
Not without turmoil! which reminds one that the Pantheon's funerals
have been more than a little grotesque. I said, for example, that
Mirabeau was the first prophet of reason to be buried here, amid a
concourse of four hundred thousand mourners; yet you may look in vain
for his tomb. And there is a record of the funeral of Marat, in a car
designed by David; yet you may look in vain for Marat's sarcophagus
also. The explanation (once more) is that we are in France, the land
of the fickle mob. For within three years of the state burial of
Mirabeau, with the National Guard on duty, the Convention directed
that he should be exhumed and Marat laid in his place. Mirabeau's
body therefore was removed at night and thrown into the earth in the
cemetery of Clamart. Enter Marat. Marat, however, lay beneath this
imposing dome only three poor months, and then off went he, a
discredited corpse, to the graveyard of St. Etienne-du-Mont close by.
Voltaire, however, and Rousseau held their own, and here they are
still, as we have seen.
Voltaire came hither under circumstances at once tragic and comic. The
cortege started from the site of the Bastille, led by the dead
philosopher in a cart drawn by twelve horses, in which his figure was
being crowned by a young girl. Opposite the Opera house of that
day--by the Porte St. Martin--a pause was made for the singing of
suitable hymns (from the Ferney Hymnal!) and on it came again.
Surrounding the car were fifty girls dressed by David for the part; in
the procession were other damsels in the costumes of Voltaire's
characters. Children scattered roses before the horses. What could be
prettier for Voltaire? But it needed fine weather, and instead came
the most appalling storm, which frightened all the young women
(including Fame, from the car) into doorways, and washed all the
colour from the great man's effigy.
Remembering all these things, one realises that Rodin's _Penseur_, who
was placed before the Pantheon in 1906, has something to brood over
and break his mind upon.
I noticed also among the graves that of one Ignace Jacqueminot, and
wondering if it were he who gave his name to the rose, I was so
conscious of gloom and mortality that I hastened to the regions of
light--to the sweet air of the Mont du Paris and the blue sky over
all. And later I climbed to the lantern--a trifle of some four hundred
steps--and looked down on Paris and its river and away to the hills,
and realised how much better it was to be a live dog than a dead lion.
For the tomb of St. Genevieve we have only a few steps to take, since
it stands, containing all of her that was not burned, in the church of
St. Etienne-du-Mont. The first martyr, although he gives his name to
the church and is seen suffering the stone-throwers in the relief over
the door, is, however, as nothing. St. Genevieve is the true patron.
St. Etienne's is one of the most interesting churches in Paris,
without and within. The facade is bizarre and attractive, with its
jumble of styles, its lofty tower and Renaissance trimmings, and the
sacristan's prophet's-house high up, on the northern side of the odd
little extinguisher. You see this best, and his tiny watchdog
trotting up and down his tiny garden, by descending the hill a little
way and then turning. Within, the church is fascinating. The pillars
of the very lofty nave and aisles are slender and sure, the vaulting
is delicate and has a unique carved marble rood-loft to divide the
nave from the choir, stretching right along the church, with a rampe
of great beauty. The pulpit is held up by Samson seated upon his lion
and grasping the jawbone of an ass.
The last time I saw this pulpit was during the Fete of St. Genevieve,
which is held early in January, when it contained a fluent nasal
preacher to whom a congregation that filled every seat was listening
with rapt attention. At the same time a moving procession of other
worshippers was steadily passing the tomb, which was a blaze of light
and heat from some hundreds of candles of every size. The man in front
of me in the queue, a stout bourgeois, with his wife and two small
daughters, bought four candles at a franc each. He was all nervousness
and anxiety before then, but having watched them lighted and placed in
position, his face became tranquil and gay, and they passed quickly
out, re-entered their motor-cab and returned to the normal life.
Outside the church was a row of stalls wholly given up to the sale of
tokens of the saint--little biographies, medals, rosaries, and all the
other pretty apparatus of the long-memoried Roman Catholic Church. I
bought a silver pendant, a brief biography, and a tiny metal statue. I
feel now that had I also bought a candle, as I was minded to, I should
have escaped the cold that, developing two or three days later, kept
me in bed for nearly a fortnight. One must be thorough.
The church not only has agreeable architectural features and the tomb
of this good woman, it has also some admirable glass, not exactly
beautiful but very quaint and interesting, including a famous window
by the Pinaigriers, representing the mystery of the wine-press, as
drawn from Isaiah: "I have trodden the wine-press alone, and of the
people there was none with me". The colouring is very rich and
satisfying, even if the design itself offends by its literalism and
want of imagination--Christianity being figured by the blood of Christ
as it gushes forth into barrels pressed from his body as relentlessly
as ever was juice of the grape. All this is horrible, but one need not
study it minutely. There are other windows less remarkable but not
less rich and glowing.
Other illustrious dust that lies beneath this church is that of Racine
and Pascal.