The Cimetière des Saints Innocents,--said to have dated from the time of
Philippe-Auguste,--which thus contributed to the first furnishing of the
catacombs, was one of the institutions of mediæval Paris. Surrounded by
its arcades of _charniers_, it had long been one of the most popular
resorts of the city, and the Danse Macabre, earlier than the famous one
at Bâle, painted along fifteen of these arcades, with inscriptions "to
incite the people to devotion," only incited them to dance themselves.
It was believed that the Duc de Berry had caused these paintings to be
executed after the assassination of the Duc d'Orléans, the king's
brother, in 1407, and the verses written under each personage were
attributed to Jean Gerson, who was "inspired by serious contemplation to
appeal, by the presentation of death, to his contemporaries of this
fifteenth century--so abounding in calamities of every nature." The
contemplation of death ceased to appal them,--for the space of six
months, from August, 1424, to Lent, 1425, the people were in the habit
of assembling in the cemetery on Sundays and fête-days, grotesquely
attired to represent various classes of society, and, led by a mask
disguised as Death, dancing frantically over the graves and along the
charniers heaped with skeletons. In this _ronde infernale_ might be
recognized some obnoxious abbot, or procureur, or bourgeois, or serjent,
travestied and caricatured; the people, "seeking for the moment to
forget their cares and sorrows, mocked at that death which they no
longer scarcely feared, for it was, at this disastrous epoch, very often
for them a deliverance." Too close familiarity with the _Camard_--"the
flat-nosed," the death's-head--had bred the proverbial lack of respect.
There is not very much information available concerning this Danse
Macabre,--it is known that it was the most important mural painting of
the cemetery of the Innocents, and it is now attributed to Jehan
d'Orléans, _valet de chambre_ and painter in ordinary to Charles VI,
familiar companion of Jean, Duc de Berry. The first record that is known
of it is found in the memoirs of a contemporary, printed under the title
of _Journal de Paris sous Charles VI et Charles VII, à l'année 1424_,
and which gives this "ITEM: _l'an iiiie xxiv fut faite la Danse
Macabre à Saint-Innocent, et fut commencée environ le moys d'aoust et
achevée au carême ensuivant_,"--begun in August, 1424, and finished in
the following Lent. In the library of the city of Grenoble is the only
known copy of a work illustrating this painting with wood-cuts,--"_cy
finit la d[=a]se macabre imprimée par ung nommé Guy Marchant demeurant
en Champ Gaillart à Paris le vingt-huitiesme iour de septembre mil
quatre c[=e]t quatre vings et cinq_,"--printed by Guy Marchant, Champ
Gaillart, Paris, September 28, 1485. The earliest known wood-engraving
is the German one of Saint Christopher, dated 1423,--one year before the
execution of the Danse Macabre on the walls of the Innocents. The famous
Dance of Death in Bâle was not executed till 1439, and Holbein--to whom
it has been attributed--was not born till 1498. The Paris dance is thus
much the earlier, and in the reproduction given by Guy Marchant the
varying buffoonery of the grotesque figures of death is remarkable,--they
laugh, they become astonished, they become enraged,--the "serious
contemplation," which they were to inspire, seems far away to our modern
eyes, so conventional in their conception only of a conventional horror,
silent, menacing, without any shade of humor.
Another image of this mediæval Death has been preserved to our day. This
is the small alabaster statue, formerly known as the _Mort
Saint-Innocent_; now preserved in the museum of the École des
Beaux-Arts. It stood under the fifth arcade, when issuing from the
church, in the charnier of "Messieurs les Martins," and had been
executed by their order. It was kept enclosed in a box of which the
church wardens had the key, and on All-Saints'-day it was exhibited to
the people until noon of the next day. Although attributed to Germain
Pilon, it is probably anterior to his time, and is now considered to be
the work of a sculptor named François Gentil, a native of Troyes. As
shown in the illustration, on page 278, it represents a corpse in the
process of dissolution, "a much more striking figure than a skeleton;"
it is about a mètre in height, stands upright, with a menacing
expression, in its right hand it holds the folds of a shroud or
winding-sheet, while the left rests upon the top of a species of shield
on which is engraved the following quatrain, which was indicated by a
dart placed between the fingers of the left hand:
"Il n'est vivant, tant soit plein d'art,
Ni de force pour résistance,
Que je ne frappe de mon dard,
Pour bailler aux vers leur pitance."
Which may be translated "There is none living, however artful or strong
to resist, that I do not strike with my dart, to give to the worms
their share." Underneath this somewhat trite observation is a sort of
monogram, the upright of which is supported by an M. When the church,
the cemetery, and the charniers of the Innocents were all suppressed in
1786, this figure was transferred to the church of Saint-Jacques-la-Boucherie,
afterward to the Musée des Monuments français, by M. Alexandre Lenoir,
then to the Louvre, and finally to the Beaux-Arts.
"In the Middle Ages, Death played a very important part; in the arts,
the games, and the ornamentation, his image was everywhere. The
churches, the cemeteries, and the charniers were covered with epitaphs
and with sinister phrases relating to death, and paraphrases of the _De
profundis_ and the _Dies iræ_. At every step, says the author of the
_Légende des trépassés_, the thought of the life eternal presented
itself, sombre and terrible;--the melancholy chants and lamentations
sobbing under the vaults of the churches hung with black, the hurried
tolling of the death-bell which seemed to appeal for help and to sound
the tocsin of eternity, the slow and solemn processions of the monks and
the penitents intoning in the public squares the seven psalms of
penitence, the great dance macabre performed in the cemeteries and the
city streets, the representation of the Last Judgment by the brothers of
the Passion, ... the bell-ringer of the dead making his nocturnal
round,--all these formed an ensemble of awe-inspiring scenes well
calculated to alienate the living from the frailties of this world."
[Illustration: ENTRANCE TO THE CATACOMBS, PLACE DENFERT-ROCHEREAU.