The use of _charniers_ to receive the bones of the dead, disinterred to
make room for more recent corpses in the century-old cemeteries, was
peculiar to Paris, and began with the Cimetière des Innocents at an
unknown date. The word seems to have first been used in France in the
eleventh century;--the historian, Raoul Glaber, quoted in MM.
Firmin-Didot's important work on Paris, previously cited, tells us that
after a terrible famine, "as it was no longer possible to inter each
body separately because of their great number, the pious people who
feared God constructed in divers localities charniers, in which were
deposited more than five hundred corpses." A dictionary of architecture,
published in Paris in 1770, defines the word as meaning a "gallery or
portico, formerly constructed around the parish cemeteries, in which
the catechism is taught, and in the lofts of which are stored the
fleshless bones of the dead. They may be found in several parishes of
Paris." Their use was not entirely discontinued till the close of the
last century. A pious regard for the relics of the departed led to the
search for some honorable place in which to store this constantly
increasing multitude of skeletons; sheds or penthouses were used,
chapels, the lofts of cloisters and churches. In Paris there were six
important churches, the cemeteries of which were surrounded by extensive
galleries, lit by rich windows and ornamented with elaborate funerary
monuments, and eight other parishes of minor importance; one of the
latest built of these, that of Saint-Philippe-du-Roule, prided itself on
having its steeple and its charnier in miniature. The two most important
were that of the Innocents, the popular cemetery, and that of
Saint-Paul, the aristocratic one.
To the accidental and isolated places of storage in the former succeeded
a series of symmetrical constructions, built independently of each
other, yet rapidly succeeding one another, and apparently all by funds
proceeding from pious legacies and donations in the fourteenth century.
These different galleries enclosed from twenty to twenty-five arcades
each, and were largely open to the air, so that their ghastly contents
were plainly visible. Some of them, it is thought, had no roofs, or very
imperfect ones. Notwithstanding these charnel-houses and the reeking
soil of the cemetery itself, a deposit for refuse and offal of every
description, this locality was one of the most thronged in the mediæval
city. The present Halles Centrales and the Marché des Innocents, which
occupied the same site from 1785, are but the legitimate successors of
the busy commerce carried on in this locality from the earliest times.
Louis XI authorized the construction, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie,
against the walls of the charniers, of little stalls or sheds to be let
to poor trades-people on condition that they did not display their
merchandise on the public street, very narrow in this quarter,--a
restriction which was speedily disregarded. "An ordinance of Henri II,
on highways, directed that this street should be widened, May 14, 1554;
it was not executed, and, fifty-six years later, to the day, Henri IV
was assassinated here, May 14, 1610." It may be remembered that the
temporary obstruction of the narrow street, which compelled the royal
coach to halt, gave Ravaillac his opportunity. In 1669, the charnier des
Lingères was ordered to be demolished, and two years later it was
reconstructed to form the northern wall of the Rue de la Ferronnerie.
Even the very imperfect sanitary science of the Middle Ages recognized
this cemetery as a centre of infection, and innumerable complaints were
addressed to the civic authorities from reign to reign. Toward the
middle of the eighteenth century, these protestations became more
frequent, and various reports were made upon the subject. In 1737, the
Parlement, by a decree dated July 9th, appointed a committee of experts,
consisting of MM. Lemery and Hunault, physicians of the Hôtel-Dieu, and
Geoffroy, _médécin chimiste_, all three of them members of the Académie
des Sciences, to report "upon the grounds for the complaints which have
been made for more than forty years, perhaps for more than a century,
upon the infection caused by the Cimetière des Innocents." The report of
this commission, dated May 22, 1738, gives some lively details
concerning the manners and customs of the times that may be sought for
in vain in other and less candid records. "Two causes of these evil
odors may be observed,--the fecal matter which the inhabitants of the
neighboring houses throw into the cemetery, partly in a trench that has
been made along the sides of the houses that are on the Rue de la
Ferronnerie, and the infection from the graves during the time that they
are open and being refilled. The first cause is the most obvious; the
second does not seem to exercise any injurious effect on the health of
the neighborhood.... Do the exhalations from the cemetery augment in
time of epidemics?... The experience of the past does not seem to
furnish any grounds for these slight suspicions.... The soil is not
exhausted, but it is less fit to bring about the dissolution of the dead
bodies."
Various remedies were proposed in the conclusion of the report: "Prevent
the lodgers in the neighboring houses from throwing their water, urine,
and filth into the cemetery, and, to this end, increase the number of
_lunettes_ in the closets and close the windows up with gratings." This
particularly concerned the row of houses along the Rue de la
Ferronnerie, which formed one of the long sides of the cemetery; they
were five stories in height, and had been reconstructed under Louis XIV,
eighty years before. A typical detail of the period may be found in the
fact that there were "lunettes" only on the first floor; the dwellers in
the upper stories found it more convenient to throw their refuse out of
the windows than to carry it down-stairs. In fact,--says MM.
Firmin-Didot's editor, from whom we gather these details,--had the
private individuals any right to complain when, in building the palace
of Versailles, only one thing had been forgotten,--the closets? "And yet
these were the good old times, and Monsieur _Purgon_ [of Molière's
_Malade Imaginaire_] was then held in great honor!"
The commission also made several recommendations concerning the
cemetery, which to-day would be thought to be very insufficient. It was
proposed to level the ground, to divide it into squares, to dig graves
in a diagonal direction opposite to the one formerly followed, to oblige
the grave-digger to take out the bones each time, to have only one
common grave open all the time--instead of three, to double the size of
the graves, to cover the bodies with eight inches or a foot of
earth--according to the season, to open the graves by preference only in
the winter, to burn the bones or transport them to the new grounds of
the Porcherons, acquired by the chapter of Saint-Germain, and to
exchange part of the soil taken from the graves for new soil from this
locality. Another report, made by the commissioner Laumônier in 1780,
advised the establishment of a provisional cemetery under the charge of
the Capuchins,--"it were better," said the commissioner, "to have monks
for a guardian rather than a drunkard, like that of the Innocents."
This was Maître Poutrain, who had been _fossoyeur_ here for thirty
years, and who made application to be transferred to the new cemetery as
soon as he heard that his old one was to be suppressed. It was not
suppressed, however, till six years later, and in 1785 we find another
commission from the Académie des Sciences taking testimony and adopting
the recommendations of the grave-digger Poutrain as though he had been a
member of their own learned body. They even accepted this statement from
him:--there was a square tomb in the cemetery, near the church, then
only some three feet high, and which, when he commenced his labors in
the grounds, had been so high that he could scarcely reach the top with
his hands. That the soil had risen, however, cannot be doubted. There
were two thousand or three thousand burials a year; Poutrain said he had
officiated at ninety thousand himself during his term of office; and M.
Héricart de Thury has estimated the number of inhumations in the course
of six centuries as high as one million two hundred thousand. This has
even been considered as below the probable number, on a basis of three
thousand a year, and not allowing for famines, pestilences, epidemics,
and wars,--all in a space estimated at nine thousand six hundred square
feet.
Another account says that the cemetery was closed on the 1st of
December, 1780, in consequence of the following incident: In July of
that year, a shoemaker of the Rue de la Lingerie, having occasion to go
down into his cellar to get some leather, was driven back by an
insupportable odor. His neighbors having been called in and due
investigation made, it was discovered that the foundation wall had
yielded to the pressure of the earth of the cemetery, and that the
cellar was half full of decomposing bodies, mostly from a trench that
had been opened on that side of the grounds in the latter part of the
preceding year, for the reception of some two thousand corpses. The
police forbade the gazettes and journals to give any publicity to this
incident, and a commission was appointed to investigate. A decree of the
Archbishop of Paris, June 10, 1786, definitely closed the cemetery, the
earth was screened, the bones placed in sacks and transported in covered
carts to the old quarries under the plain of Montsouris in the locality
called the Tombe-Issoire, as has been stated. Those which it had been
intended to transport to the cemetery of the Faubourg Montmartre were,
for want of space, taken to Montrouge.
The vegetable market which had been held in the Rue de la Ferronnerie
was transferred to the site of the old cemetery, and for a number of
years this Marché des Innocents, with its four or five hundred immense
red parasols, under which the vendors sheltered themselves, was one of
the sights of Paris. In 1813, galleries of wood were constructed around
the enclosure for this purpose. In the centre was placed the old
fountain from the corner of the Rues Aux Fers and Saint-Denis, with the
five naiads in relief sculptured by Jean Goujon supplemented by three
more, more or less in the same style, by Pajou. Since the reconstruction
of the Halles Centrales, the Marché des Innocents has been transformed
into a public garden, surrounding this monumental fountain.
As early as 1766, the Parlement of Paris had taken up the very important
reform of suppressing all interments within the city, "a custom which
had its origin only in the growth of the city which, in extending its
limits, had gradually taken into its enclosure the cemeteries originally
outside its walls." A municipal decree, in nineteen articles, forbade
any further burials in the cemeteries then within the city walls, after
the first day of January, 1766, or in churches, chapels, or vaults,
excepting under certain limitations. This sanitary measure was, however,
so vehemently opposed by all the curés of Paris that it was never
enforced; the question of compelling all interments to take place in
suburban cemeteries was not seriously taken up till 1804, when the
grounds of Père-Lachaise were purchased by the city, and, to this day,
the only interments that are forbidden within the built-up limits of the
capital are the temporary ones, and the common ones for the poor,--the
_fosses temporaires_, and the _fosses communes_.
[Illustration: CLOISTERS OF THE CHURCH DES INNOCENTS, SHOWING UPPER
PORTIONS CONTAINING HUMAN SKULLS, AND THE FRESCOES OF THE "DANSE
MACABRE."]
By a grotesque arrangement, the funeral arrangements in Paris were
formerly in charge of the town-criers, the _crieurs de corps et de
vins_, the _crieurs-jurés_, who held a monopoly of these public
announcements, and who bawled through the streets, indifferently, the
proclamation of _choses estranges_ which were lost, mules, children,
horses, and the like, of wine to sell--when they carried a gilded
drinking-cup, and of deaths--when they wore a sort of dalmatic sown with
black "tears" and death's-heads. Their number was at first fixed at
twenty-four, then at thirty, and an edict of January, 1690, raised it to
fifty. They had a reprehensible fashion of announcing deaths and ringing
their bell through the streets at all hours of the night: "Pray to God
for the soul of Messire Suchaone, who has just died! Awake, all ye who
sleep, and pray God for the dead!" The Parisian bourgeois, suddenly
aroused from slumber by this hoarse appeal under his windows, entered
into a state of fright, or of fury, according to his temperament. These
_crieurs_ and _clocheteurs des trépassés_, moreover, formed a wealthy
and influential corporation which held the monopoly of what is to-day
the _Pompes funèbres_,--they furnished the serge, the robes, the
mantles, the chaperons or hoods, the hangings, and the torches for the
funerals, they even furnished the hired mourners when required, who
preceded the cortège to the graves in black garments, "ringing their
bells, drawing lugubrious sounds from grotesque instruments, appealing
to the people to pray for the defunct, making an infernal uproar, and,
in order to honor the dead, nearly killing the living." This corporation
was in existence after 1789, but the hospitals and hospices had obtained
the right of furnishing hangings for funeral ceremonies, and a decree of
the year XII transferred it to churches and consistories.
The arrangements for interments, generally, were in harmony with the
condition of the overcrowded and reeking cemeteries,--the bodies were
usually transported to their last resting-places on men's backs or by
their arms, the poor enjoyed the luxury of a bier only during this
journey and were thrown half-naked into the common grave. From this
period of the Revolution, these summary processes were forbidden; the
bodies were obliged to be carried in wagons or cars, excepting those of
children, though sometimes several coffins were placed in the same
vehicle. For more seemly processions, the cars were drawn by two horses,
walking, accompanied by an _ordonnateur_ and three porters in costume,
or even by four _aumôniers_ on horseback supporting the canopy. In the
latter case, the hearse would be furnished with no less than eight
horses. For these sumptuous occasions, however, the _jurés-crieurs_
would deem it necessary to accompany the funeral cortége with a convoy
of saddle-makers, harness-makers, and wheelwrights, in case the heavy
funeral car should happen to upset or to become stalled in the mud. The
presence of these auxiliaries in their working costumes was concealed as
much as possible; they were placed in the hearse, sitting on the coffin
itself, and concealed from view by the heavy black curtains of the
vehicle,--here they amused themselves by playing at dice on the bier,
drinking, if they had had the forethought to bring a bottle along, or
sometimes by showing their faces through the openings of the black
curtains and making grimaces at the four mounted aumôniers, whose
dignity forbade them to reply in kind.
A certain contractor, a Sieur Bobée, was authorized by the Préfet of the
Seine, M. Frochot, in 1801, to furnish to wealthy families the means
necessary to give their interments the desired pomp, and he was, in
fact, the first organizer of the Pompes funèbres. He collected, at his
own cost and risk, all the requisite material, and drew from his wealthy
clients a sufficient recompense to reimburse him for the gratuitous
burial of the poor, which was required of him. He received, also, the
proceeds of the funerary tax, which provided the indigent with a shroud,
a coffin, and the necessary transportation to the grave. Under his
successors, the business gradually enlarged till, in 1869, the municipal
administration judged it expedient to purchase a site and erect
buildings that should assure a sufficient establishment for the future.
The war with Germany delayed the completion of this undertaking, but the
new buildings of the Pompes funèbres, offices, stables, store-rooms,
etc., all complete, were finally inaugurated in 1873. They were
constructed in the name, and at the cost, of the city of Paris, and the
funerary establishment pays a rent of two hundred thousand francs. These
buildings are situated on the site of the former abattoirs de la
Villette, on the Rues Curial and d'Aubervilliers. In the manufactory is
kept a large stock of coffins and caskets of all kinds, and a reserve
stock is always on hand in case of epidemics; in the carriage-houses are
nearly three hundred and fifty vehicles of all kinds, and in the
stables, three hundred and sixty-four horses,--two hundred and
ninety-one black ones.
The service of the Pompes funèbres is placed under the surveillance of
the Préfet of the Seine. The administration centrale may be addressed
directly by telephone, to 104 Rue d'Aubervilliers, when required, or
application may be made to the bureau of the Pompes funèbres in each
Mairie, or to their agents in each arrondissement. There is a conseil
d'administration of thirteen members, elected, ten by the city churches,
one by the consistory of the Reformed Church, one by the consistory of
the Confession d'Augsbourg, and one by the Israelite consistory. This
conseil represents the _fabriques_--that is to say, the revenues and
property--of the parochial churches, divided into ten circonscriptions,
and the consistories of the non-Catholic churches of the city. There is
also a vicar-general, delegated by the Archbishop of Paris, who is a
member of the conseil, and ranks next to the president.
[Illustration: DEATH.
Alabaster statuette, one mètre high, kept in the charniers of
Saint-Innocent; uncovered on All-Saints'-day.]
The expense of a funeral, of course, varies very greatly. An ordinary
coffin costs from eight francs to forty-four. The municipal tax, which
brings in to the city treasury annually some eight hundred and sixty
thousand francs, is included in the cost of each class of funeral, and
varies from forty francs for the first and second classes to six francs
for the ninth. For the _convois catholiques_, the expense is from eight
thousand to ten thousand francs for the first class; for the _convois
protestants_, four thousand two hundred to seven thousand five hundred
for first class; for the _enterrements israelites_, two thousand nine
hundred at the most. The ninth, or cheapest, class of funeral, of all
these may be had for eighteen francs seventy-five centimes for the
Catholic, nine francs for the Protestant, and three francs for the
Israelite. These figures vary according to the parish, the size of the
church or temple, etc., but they generally include the decoration of the
residence, the draping of the place of worship in which the service is
held, the payment for this religious service, etc., but not the cost of
the coffin, of the land in the cemetery, of the tickets of invitation or
notices of death, and other details. In the Jewish service, there is an
item of a thousand francs for the choir, either at the dwelling or in
the cemetery. For the _convois civils_, where there is no official
religious service, the price varies from eighteen hundred and fifty to
twenty-four hundred francs for the first class to nine francs for the
ninth. For incinerations, the cost is about the same, adding the tax to
be paid the city,--three hundred francs for the first class, and fifty
for the sixth, seventh, and eighth. A permit for a gratuitous interment
may be obtained by presenting at the Mairie a certificate of indigence
obtained from the Commissaire de Police upon application sustained by
two witnesses in good standing.
As in every other important event of his life, the Parisian is obliged
in this--the last--to occupy himself with the official _procès-verbaux_
of his _état civil_. At his decease, an _acte_ must be drawn up, upon
the declaration of two witnesses, if possible the nearest relatives, or
neighbors, giving his name, Christian name, profession, age, place of
birth, domicile, those of his father and mother, and those of the
attestors, with an indication of their relationship if they are
relations; stating whether the deceased was married or widowed, and, in
either case, the name and Christian name of his spouse. No operation
upon the corpse, such as autopsy, embalming, or taking a cast, can be
performed before the expiration of twenty-four hours after death, and
then only upon the authorization of the Préfecture de Police, and in the
presence of the Commissaire de Police of the quarter. This authorization
is granted only upon the statements of two doctors,--one of the official
Médecins de l'État Civil, and another physician, sworn and delegated for
the occasion. The family must preserve and produce upon the demand of
the Médecin de l'État Civil all the prescriptions of the doctor who had
attended the deceased in his last illness; they must also give the name
and address of the doctor and of the druggist who prepared the
prescriptions. It is also forbidden to clothe the body or place it in
the coffin, or to cover the face, before the expiration of twenty-four
hours,--a light veil of very thin gauze alone is permitted. It cannot be
denied that these are all very intelligent precautions.
In these funeral processions, the public authority is represented by the
_ordonnateur des Pompes funèbres_; "it is he who, from the residence of
the defunct to his last resting-place, never quits him, watching over
him like a faithful friend." His official costume has been modified of
late years,--he now wears a red and blue scarf, a cockade with the two
colors, and his insignia is embroidered on the collar of his coat. The
Napoleonic cocked hats, black garments, and high boots of the drivers of
the hearses are familiar sights in the streets of the capital,
especially in the neighborhood of the cemeteries, driving slowly at the
head of their mournful processions, or, in their moments of relaxation,
descended from the heights of their sable chariots and drinking
familiarly at the zinc bar of a workman's wine-shop, side by side, it
may be, with the white blouses of masons and plasterers. The four
hundred _porteurs_ of the Pompes funèbres still retain their ancient
familiar designation of _croque-morts_, concerning the derivation of
which there is much uncertainty. A number of the _Revue des traditions
populaires_ suggests that it may come from the mediæval custom of biting
the little finger of the deceased at the moment of placing in the
coffin, in order to obtain a final assurance of death. At the masked
balls of the Opéra, these personages are represented by the traditional
Père Bazouge and the cheerful Clodoche,--shedding their decorum with
their official costumes.
By the decree of 1804, which forbade all inhumations within the walls of
the capital, it was provided that there should be established
cemeteries outside the city limits, and at a distance of not less than
thirty-five or forty mètres. Four such enclosures were ordained: the
Cimetière du Nord, or of Montmartre, on the north; that de l'Est, or of
Père-Lachaise, on the east; that du Sud, or of Vaugirard, on the south,
and that of Sainte-Catherine. The first of these was already in
existence, having been established in 1798 by the municipal
administration, to replace that in the plain of Clichy, comparatively
new, which had replaced the old one of Saint-Roch. The Montmartre
cemetery occupied the site of an abandoned and very extensive plaster
quarry, whence it took its popular name of Cimetière des
Grandes-Carrières, and it was also known, more poetically, as the _Champ
de repos_, while the Montparnasse, later, was given that of _Champ
d'asile_. When the city limits were enlarged, in 1859, Montmartre, in
common with other communes of the suburbs, was brought within the
enclosure, and, after the creation of the new cemetery of Saint-Ouen,
called by the people Cayenne, the only interments in Montmartre were
those made in the vaults of certain private families.
Père-Lachaise, the most important and most picturesque of these
enclosures in Paris, takes its name from the confessor of Louis XIV, to
whom it was presented by his royal penitent. The Cimetière de l'Est was
inaugurated, in 1804, in a locality which originally bore the name of
Champ l'Évêque, because it had been the property of the Bishop of Paris.
The Jesuits purchased it, in 1626, under cover of a private individual,
and established there a country house, surrounded by trees and
shrubbery, the site of which is indicated to-day very nearly by the
central rond-point of the cemetery. Popular report ascribed to this
pleasure-house a character in keeping with the hypocrisy and luxury of
the order as painted by its enemies; and young Louis XIV visited it, in
consequence of which it became known as Mont-Louis. Afterward, when in
the possession of the royal confessor,--who said, himself, of his
office: "_Bon Dieu! quel rôle!_"--it was still further enlarged, and the
grounds handsomely laid out around his little villa, two stories in
height, overlooking Paris. At his death, it came again into the
possession of the fathers of his order, and at their suppression, in
1763, it was sold to pay their creditors. The Préfet of the Seine
purchased it for its conversion into a municipal cemetery in 1804.
That of Vaugirard was situated near the ancient barrière and at the
entrance of what was then the village of Vaugirard; it had in nowise the
importance of the two just mentioned, and was much more the
burial-ground of the poor than of the rich. As early as 1810, its
insufficience was recognized, and in 1824 it was closed, and replaced by
that of Montparnasse. The Cimetière Sainte-Catherine was in the quarter
Saint-Marcel, by the side of the old cemetery of Clamart, which was full
of bodies and closed in 1793; Sainte-Catherine was also replaced by
Montparnasse in 1824. The latter, the necropolis of the left bank of the
Seine, is the least interesting and least visited of any of the Parisian
cemeteries. The ground is quite level, and the enclosure so crowded with
tombs that there is very little space left for verdure or shade. The
number of distinguished dead who rest here is also less than in either
Père-Lachaise or Montmartre. Previous to 1824, it received only the
human débris from the hospitals and the bodies of criminals from the
neighboring scaffold. Vaugirard and Sainte-Catherine have since been
completely removed, and the sites devoted to other uses; and the number
of ancient urban cemeteries that have thus disappeared is very
considerable. That of the old church of Saint-Roch is now traversed by
the narrow streets which enclose the church; that of Saint-Gervais is
buried under the caserne Lobau, back of the Hôtel de Ville;
Sainte-Marguerite-Saint-Antoine, in which were placed the remains of the
young dauphin, is now a waste land; Saint-Joseph, and the little
Cimetière de la Chapelle Marcadet which was used during the siege of
1871, are now occupied by commercial or secular establishments. Among
those the sites of which are still recognizable are Saint-Vincent and
Saint-Pierre at Montmartre; Saint-Médard--so famous in the last century
as the scene of the extravagances of the convulsionnaires and the
alleged miracles on the tomb of the Jansenist deacon, Paris--has been
only partially destroyed by the opening of the Avenue des Gobelins; and
on the old Cimetière de la Madeleine now rises the Chapelle Expiatoire
to the memory of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette.
[Illustration: A CORNER IN THE CEMETERY OF PÈRE-LACHAISE: TOMBS OF
COUTURE, THE PAINTER; LEDRU-ROLLIN, THE STATESMAN; COUSIN, THE
PHILOSOPHER; AND AUBER, THE COMPOSER.