Clovis to celebrate his victory over the Visigoths in the plains of
Vouillè. Having overrun a great part of Gaul, and annexed it to the
kingdom of the Franks, what was more natural than that he should offer
his thanks for robbery, violence, and slaughter, by the building of a
church upon the hill overshadowing his Palais des Thermes? He dedicated
it to S. Peter and S. Paul, and put it under the charge of some monks
who were succeeded later on by secular canons, and eventually in the
12th century, by regular canons of S. Augustin. Clovis died ere the
church was terminated, but Queen Clotilde was able to carry the work on,
and it became the resting place of both sovereigns, as well as of the
children of Clodomir, who were done to death by their loving relatives
after the manner of some modern Africans. In the 11th century, the
church was put under the patronage of S. Geneviève in consequence of the
numberless miracles performed at her tomb, for the maid of Nanterre had
been laid to rest in this church. The legend of S. Geneviève is
picturesque in the extreme, affording endless subjects for the artist,
as witness the wall paintings in the modern church. Born in 421 at
Nanterre, a little village situated upon the plain over which the fort
of Mt. Valérien now frowns, she was employed, as are many of her
compatriots of the present day, in tending sheep. A graceful, if
somewhat affected picture by Guérin, represents her with a distaff in
her hands. When about seven years old, S. Germain, bishop of Auxerre,
passed through Nanterre on his way to Britain. A crowd assembled to
receive the good bishop's blessing, and among them were S. Geneviève and
her parents. _La pucelette_ was already famed for her piety and
humility, and S Germain, wise man, had no sooner cast his eyes upon her
than he became aware of her future glory; and finding that she desired
to be a handmaiden of Christ, he hung round her neck a small coin marked
with the symbol of the cross, thus consecrating her to God's service.
Many were the miracles which she wrought by prayer, even in her
childhood; as for instance, when her mother, being struck blind for
boxing her little Saintship's ears, recovered her sight through the
prayers of the daughter. Some say that Geneviève prayed for her hasty
parent after a year and nine months had elapsed; but surely it is better
to believe that the prayers were unanswered for that length of time,
than that the daughter, whose intercession was so efficacious, should
have omitted to help her mother for so many months.
At fifteen, Geneviève renewed her vows, but remained with her parents
until their death. She then took up her abode with an old kinswoman in
Paris, where, from her piety and devotion, she became the subject of
disputes between those who venerated her as a saint, and others who
considered her sanctity and benevolence mere hypocrisy and sham piety.
And so it came about that at night, when she kept her vigils, the arch
enemy, not content with putting into the hearts of men the desire to
slander and vilify the godly maiden, set himself to worry her, by
extinguishing her candle. But she had a tinder-box in her faith and
prayer, and so she was never left in darkness. This is a favourite
subject of the old artists; one frequently sees the Saint holding her
taper, while a demon is blowing it out, sometimes using a pair of
bellows, as at the doorway of S. Germain l'Auxerrois, S. Nicholas, and
other French churches; and it is obvious that the legend grew out of the
promise that God never leaves those in darkness who pray for light. So,
too, the holding up of the re-kindled taper in the face of the fiend,
and his consequent flight, symbolises the Light of the World chasing
away evil. Another legend relates that when a storm overtook her and
some friends on their way to S. Denis, and blew out their tapers, an
Angel descended to relight them in answer to Geneviève's prayers.
The Saint was a sort of early Jeanne d'Arc, inasmuch as she delivered
the city from its enemies; but Geneviève depended only upon her prayers;
and yet, simply by these means, she caused the Huns, who were besieging
Paris under Attila, to flee. On another occasion, when the city was
invested by Childéric, she took command of some boats which were sent up
the river to Troyes for succour, and brought them back laden with
provisions. When the city was taken, Geneviève was treated with great
respect by Childéric, and it was through her influence that Clovis and
his wife, Clotilde, were converted to Christianity, and the first
Christian church was erected in Paris.[74] Geneviève died at the ripe
old age of eighty-nine, and was buried in what was then called the
church of SS. Peter and Paul; and it was in consequence of her
miracle-working tomb that the patronage of the church was given over to
her, the Apostles falling into complete oblivion. Among these miracles
was a cessation of a terrible visitation of the plague called the _mal
ardent_, which raged in Paris in the reign of Louis le Gros; hence the
dedication of a church to S. Geneviève-des-Ardents, situated near the
cathedral, and long since destroyed.
Most painters of modern times have depicted the Saint as a shepherdess,
somewhat after the Chelsea china pattern, and a few have given her the
suggestiveness of the nymphs of Boucher. Watteau's is a charming
picture, but the graceful maiden scarcely comes up to our ideal of the
pious little peasant girl of Nanterre. Guérin's is pure and refined, if
somewhat affected, but one feels inclined to hail our old friend with
the fiend behind her puffing or blowing the bellows as a more worthy
reading of the character of S. Geneviève. In the church of S. Merri
there is a very curious picture representing the maid surrounded by her
sheep, and enclosed by a circle of huge stones after the manner of those
at Stonehenge.
The legend of feeding the besieged Parisians is said to be the origin of
the _pain bénit_ of the Paris churches, a custom peculiar to the old
Parisian rite, and almost the only one kept up since that use was
superseded by the Roman, some few years since. This blessed bread is a
large _brioche_ offered by some of the parishioners, and brought into
church in procession during the offertory. It is usually piled up on a
stage and decorated with flowers and lights, the whole being carried on
the shoulders of acolytes. Preceded by the beadle and donor, it is taken
to the altar and sprinkled with holy water; some prayers are said, the
donor is presented with a pax to kiss, and the procession then returns
to the sacristy, where the bread is cut up and put into baskets, which
are then carried round the church, and the _brioche_ distributed among
the congregation. One often sees strangers refuse this, thinking it
something peculiarly popish; indeed, I was once assured by a friend that
he had been offered the Sacrament, "which of course he had refused." But
we may be certain that if the _pain bénit_ were considered so
exceedingly holy, promiscuous strangers would not get the chance of
partaking of it. It rather figures a sort of amicable meal after the
manner of the early Agapæ, and is a very pretty ceremony; besides, it is
always refreshing to witness any little peculiarity in ritual, instead
of the dull uniformity which recent papal decrees have enforced over
western Europe.
In the 9th century S. Geneviève became the patron of the abbey; and some
of the capitals of the church of that period are now in the court of the
École de Beaux-Arts. In the 13th century the church was rebuilt, but
gradually falling into decay, it was condemned in the reign of Louis
XV., and demolished in 1801-7 to make way for the Rue Clovis. When the
crypt was destroyed a large quantity of stone coffins, medals, pottery,
shields and lances of Gallo-Roman and Mérovingian workmanship were
found.
The early capitals mentioned above are rude in treatment, and the
personages, Adam and Eve, and other Old Testament worthies, are coarse,
but the scraps of ornament are quaint, and the carving of the foliage is
vastly superior to that of the figures. The crypt of the church was the
largest of any in Paris, and being the burial place of so many holy and
regal persons, was interesting in the extreme; but to the men of the
18th century what mattered it that 13th century work should be swept
away? The street was required as a short cut, a deviation of five
minutes more or less had to be rectified; and so all that remains of the
abbey church is its tower. But from the ruins many precious fragments
were saved. The stone coffin of S. Geneviève was carried off to S.
Étienne hard by, and there enveloped in a gorgeous shrine; which,
besides being a work of art, had the advantage of being portative, and
so could be marched about when processioning was resorted to as a remedy
for city troubles. In the _Statistique Monumentale de Paris_, published
by Albert Lenoir, may be seen some plates representing this motley crew
of fragments. Portions of stone coffins, sculptured with crosses and
monograms, were sent to the museum of the Petits-Augustins, but do not
seem to have survived the dissolution of the collection; they were
similar to those at the Hôtels de Cluny and Carnavalet.
The reliquary of the Saint was in the form of a church, and was executed
by order of the abbot, Robert de la Ferté-Milon, in 1242. The craftsman
was one of the most cunning goldsmiths of the city, Bonnard. It
contained 193 marks of silver and 7-1/2 marks of gold; and kings,
queens, and commoners vied with each other to cover it with precious
stones. Marie de' Medici crowned the front with a mass of diamonds; and
Germain Pilon was engaged to sculp a group of four women standing upon a
marble pedestal to support the _châsse_. This graceful work of art was
all that was saved in 1793: being of wood it was of little value to a
starving and poverty-stricken mob. Or, had the municipality any
reverence for it as an art treasure? Certain it is that, whereas the
reliquary was melted up into coin, and the jewels sold, the part which
was really the most precious was saved, and is now in the Renaissance
Museum of the Louvre. But in spite of the value and beauty of the
_châsse_, the _Conventionel_ Grégoire, in his report, gives 21,000
_livres_ only as the sum obtained by its destruction.
Some of the monuments of the church were saved; that of the Cardinal
François de la Rochefoucault, abbot of S. Geneviève, and High Almoner of
France, who died in 1645, sculptured by Philippe Buister, being placed
in the chapel of the Hospital for Incurable Women, of which he was the
founder. The statue of Clovis, renewed in the 12th century, is now at S.
Denis, owing to the accident of its having been replaced in the 17th
century by a superior one in white marble, which was destroyed in
1793.[75] Another tomb, that of a chancellor of Notre-Dame de Noyon,
who died in 1350, is now in the École des Beaux-Arts. The monument of
René Descartes was less fortunate, for, after having been transferred to
the museum of the Petits-Augustins, it was dismembered, and dispersed or
destroyed; but the remains of the great philosopher were re-buried at S.
Germain des Prés.
Some of the conventual buildings remain and form part of the Lycée Henri
IV. The tower is Romanesque at the base and pointed at the upper
stories--14th and 15th century respectively. The cloisters and refectory
form part of the school buildings, but they have been much modernized.
The latter is an elegant structure of the 13th century, and now serves
as the school chapel. In the sacristry is a large stone statue of the
patroness (13th century) which formerly formed part of the central
pillar of the principal doorway of the abbey church; it represents her
with a demon on one shoulder blowing out her candle, and an Angel on the
other relighting it. What was formerly the library is a series of
galleries upon the plan of a cross, with a cupola at the intersections.
It is no longer used for this purpose, all the books having been placed
in the new building on the other side of the square.
"Contiguous to the Sorbonne church there stands, raising its
neatly-constructed dome aloft in air, the Nouvelle Eglise Ste.
Geneviève, better known by the name of the Panthéon. The interior
presents, to my eye, the most beautiful and perfect specimen of Grecian
architecture with which I am acquainted. In the crypt are the tombs of
the French warriors. From the gallery running along the bottom of the
dome, the whole a miniature representation of our S. Paul's, you have a
sort of panorama of Paris, but not a favourable one. The absence of
sea-coal fume strikes you very agreeably, but I could not help thinking
of the superior beauty of the panorama of Rouen from the heights of St.
Catherine."[76] This "perfect specimen of Grecian architecture" owes its
birth, it is said, to Madame de Pompadour; and if this be so, it must
have been one of the last of that lady's contributions to art, as she
died in April, 1764, the foundation stone being laid in the following
September. It is curious how artistic the French kings' handmaidens
were, and, with the exception of the daughters of the house of Medici,
how little we owe to the queens in the way of fine works of art. Whether
this particular handmaiden obliged the king to decide upon the
rebuilding of the old church, which had been tumbling into decay for a
long period, or whether it was the king's fright lest he should fall ill
again if he did not propitiate the Saint who had cured him of a sinking
fever, it is impossible to decide. Very likely it was the king's own
fears. He had all but died at Metz; he had appealed to the patroness of
Paris; she had answered his prayers, somewhat unwisely perhaps, in the
interest of his hapless subjects; and in sheer gratitude, thus proving
himself far more honest than many a holier and more godly man, he
decided that the much-talked-of church should be set going, and that it
should be worthy of the maid of Nanterre. And so it is. Soufflot was the
architect, and his design is one of the happiest of its class. But what
a strange life the church has had! And what an extraordinary jumble of
Christianity and philosophy the great dome has witnessed! Emblems of the
Roman Republic and the religion of Christ stand side-by-side. Cardinals
repose in the crypt by the side of Voltaire and Jean-Jacques. At one
time masses are said for the repose of the souls of defunct Christians;
at another, funeral allocutions are delivered by laymen. And the
chopping and changing about! Scarcely finished in 1791, the
Constitutional Assembly decreed that the new church should become a
Temple of Fame, and be known as the Panthéon. The cross was taken down
from the summit of the dome, the inscription, _Aux grands hommes, la
Patrie reconnaissante_, was substituted for _D.O.M. Sub invocatione
sanctae Genovefae sacrum_; and under the peristyle was written:
_Panthéon français, l'an III. de la Liberté_. The words of the report
issued, describing the changes to be adopted in the building, are in the
accustomed grandiloquent language of the First Republic: ... "en un
moment où tout doit contribuer à renforcer dans l'ame des citoyens
toutes les sensations que l'enthousiasme de la liberté fait puiser dans
l'amour de la Patrie, &c." Mirabeau, Marat, and Lepelletier
Saint-Fargeau were laid to rest in the crypt.
[Illustration: THE PANTHÉON FROM CHARENTON.]
One of Napoleon's first acts was to decide that "l'église
Sainte-Geneviève serait rendue au culte, conformément à l'intention de
son fondateur, sous l'invocation de Sainte Geneviève, patronne de
Paris." But it was also to preserve the destination ascribed to it by
the Constituante, that of being the burial-place of senators, officers
of state, dignitaries, officers of the Legion of Honour, and of citizens
who had rendered eminent service to their country. The divine offices
were to be conducted by the canons of Notre-Dame, and to this end they
were increased by six members. With the restoration of Louis XVIII. all
homage to "great men" disappeared, and the old inscription was restored.
Baron Gros was commissioned to paint the dome with the Apotheosis of S.
Geneviève, a work described by an old writer in not over flattering
terms: "On one of the cupolas of the dome, which is surrounded by a
colonnade of Corinthian pillars, is painted the Apotheosis of St.
Geneviève. Her saintship is in the costume of a shepherdess, breathing
all peace, all happiness, all immortality. Nothing of earth is in her
composition. Beside her is Louis XVIII. and little winged angels. They
are very busy--the angels--in scattering flowers about the saint. Above
her is Louis XVI. and his queen, as elegant as she was upon the
threshold of Versailles, and Louis XVII., all surrounded by celestial
glory. Before her are the persons the most illustrious of each race;
Clovis, who looks very savage; St. Clotilde, very pretty; Charlemagne,
very heroic; and St. Louis and Queen Margarite, who look very pious....
The floor of this temple, incrusted with various-coloured marble, is
very remarkable and very beautiful. It is exclusively occupied by
Voltaire and Rousseau, at opposite extremities. Who would have thought
that these two champions of Infidelity, who were refused Christian
burial, would one day have assigned to their remains the first church of
France, and one of the first in Christendom, as their mausoleum? I
wonder if Jean-Jacques, in his prophetic visions, foresaw this? Why did
they not lay them at the side of each other, that we might all learn how
vain are the jealousies, the petty competitions and animosities of men
so soon to come to this appointed and unavoidable term of all human
contentions? It was once the custom of these old countries to multiply a
man by burying him piecemeal,--his heart at Rouen and his legs in
Kent,--because the world was then on short allowance of heroes; but
modern times have reversed this practice; and Bonaparte has laid up
together a whole batch of them in the basement of this church, for
eternity, as you lay up potatoes in your cellar for winter. Here are the
names graven overhead in a catalogue, on the marble, of men famous for
giving counsel to the Emperor (who never took any) in the Senate, and of
men who gained a great deal of celebrity by having their brains knocked
out on the fields of Austerlitz and Marengo. When Marat was deified by
the Convention he was interred here in 1793, and in 1794 he was
disinterred and undeified, and then thrown into his native element, the
common sewer, in the Rue Montmartre--to purify him."[77]
In 1830 another _bouleversement_ took place, and the law of the
Constituante was promulgated once more; but inasmuch as some former
heroes had found their way, through change of opinion, into the sewers,
it was decreed that nobody's ashes should be considered worthy of burial
in the national Walhalla until ten years had elapsed from the time of
death. Thus citizens could be turned into _les grands hommes_ in a
comparatively short period, as compared to the years often required for
beatification or canonization. The second Republic also busied itself
with lowering the cross, and replacing the inscription _Aux grands
hommes, la Patrie reconnaissante_. It was used as an ambulance during
the 1848 troubles, but restored to divine service by that devoted son of
the Church, Louis-Napoléon, soon after his iniquitous massacre of the
people in the streets of the city; and then, having endowed himself with
Imperial honours, he obtained the aid of the archbishop to create a
number of chaplains to serve at the altar of S. Geneviève. The decree of
1851, which took "ultérieurement des mesures pour régler l'exercise
permanent de culte catholique," only lasted nineteen years. When the
city was besieged, the permanency of the services exploded like the
bombs from Mont Valérien, and the crypt became a powder-magazine. The
church was shored up, the windows were bricked, and the interior was
filled with some 30,000 bundles of straw, as a precaution against the
enemy's artillery. But the German invasion left the building as it found
it, and the troubles in the immediate future were the work of the Comité
central. The soldiers were replaced by National Guards, who began their
occupation by industriously sawing off the arms of the crosses upon the
pediment, and at the summit of the dome, and converting the emblems of
Christianity into flagstaffs for the red flag of the Commune. From the
26th March until the 24th May it waved aloft in all its pride; but upon
the latter day it saw the church occupied by the Versaillais, who
entered just in time to save the building from the vengeance of the
Fedérés, who had threatened it with fire. Like all the other churches
and public buildings, the Panthéon suffered far more from the shells of
the Communists than from those of the enemy; and it took some years
before all the repairs were executed, and "_le plus beau gâteau de
Savoie qu'on est jamais fait en pierre_"[78] was restored to its former
condition. Some few years ago the Republic suppressed the chaplains, and
re-converted the church into what the Parisian press fondly calls "their
Westminster"; and the next _grand homme_ who was laid in "the most
lovely _gâteau de Savoie_" was, oddly enough, Victor Hugo himself. He
was buried there immediately after his death; but it is not likely that
posterity will ever wish to reverse our judgment of the poet's
greatness, or look upon him as anything but one of France's noblest
sons.
The sculptures of the pediment, representing that sentimental personage
La Patrie accompanied by Liberty and History, are by David d'Angers. La
Patrie is throwing crowns about to its great men; Liberty is fabricating
the crowns, and History is religiously writing up the names, that there
may be no mistake. Civilians stand on the right, _messieurs les
militaires_ are relegated to the left, while several young men and
youths are labouring vigorously in order to attain in the future their
right to be amongst the elect. It is no case of Angels and scales, no
weighing of good and bad deeds; the services of Madame la Justice are
not even required; it is simply Patriotism which selects and serves up
for glory those who have deserved well of their country. The bas-reliefs
of the peristyle are by Nanteuil. Here La Patrie, holding a palm in one
hand, is guiding with the other one of her sons who has died in her
service; while Renown is puffing away at a trumpet to herald forth the
deeds of this devoted hero. In another bas-relief Art and Science are
honouring the country by their works; a warrior is, one knows not why,
refusing the crown tendered to him; and a woman, representing Study and
Intellect, is propounding the advantages of Education to the mothers who
have brought their children to Madame la Patrie. The bronze doors are
the work of Destouches, and recall, in style of ornamentation, those of
Ghiberti at Florence.
The interior is, no doubt, grand. Originally lighted by windows in the
walls, it is now somewhat dark and sombre, suitable to a temple for the
repose of the dead. The walls have been covered with paintings, which
partially relieve the dull monotony of the stone; but a building devoid
of sunlight must of necessity be gloomy in a city the sky over which is,
for half the year, grey and colourless.
Although the first of the 425 steps leading to the summit of the dome is
upon the level of the top of the towers of Notre-Dame, the view is not
nearly so interesting as from the latter. There is no river winding at
our feet, and none of those guardian monsters who gaze at the city from
the heights of the cathedral.