THE PANTHÉON.
The Church of Clovis--The Church of Sainte-Geneviève--France in the
Thirteenth Century--The Building of the New Church under Louis
XV.--Mirabeau and the Constituent Assembly--The Church of
Sainte-Geneviève becomes the Panthéon.
The College of France and the Sorbonne stand close together at the
corner of the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Écoles; and between the
College of France and the new Sorbonne, on the right, stands the Lyceum
of Louis the Great (Lycée Louis le Grand), formerly a Jesuit college,
founded by the order in 1550 in the Hôtel de Clermont; the property of
Cardinal de Praat in virtue of letters patent which the Parliament of
Paris declined to register until some dozen years after they had been
issued. Expelled from Paris after the attempt made by Jean Châtel on the
person of Henry IV., the Jesuits did not again obtain permission to
teach until 1618. Amongst their celebrated pupils were some who might
well be suspected of having been educated elsewhere--Molière, for
instance, and Voltaire.
Originally known as the College of Clermont, this institution became, in
virtue of letters patent, a royal foundation in 1662, when it received
the name of Louis the Great. It was afterwards, in 1753, connected with
the university. Here, indeed, until the time of the Revolution, the
assemblies of the university were held, as well as those of the “four
nations” included in it. The Revolution brought the Lyceum, with its
monarchical name, to an end; but it was revived at the time of the
Revolution, when it was once more called “Collège Louis le Grand.”
Public institutions, however, like streets, ships, and theatres, change
their names in France with each new form of government. The Lycée Louis
le Grand was called, under the Republic, the Consulate, and the Empire,
the Collège de l’Égalité; and under the Republic of 1848, when M. Carnot
was Minister of Public Instruction, Collège Descartes.
A few more steps, and from the point where the Rue Saint-Jacques is
intersected by the Rue Soufflet, may be perceived the Panthéon, the name
given to the imposing edifice which under monarchical governments has
always been known as the Church of Sainte-Geneviève.
On the site of the Panthéon stood originally a church dedicated by
Clovis to the Holy Apostles. It was destroyed by the Normans in one of
their incursions, and replaced soon afterwards by the Abbey of
Sainte-Geneviève. The bell which tolled in this once-celebrated edifice
hangs to-day in the Lycée Corneille.
For a number of centuries the Church of Sainte-Geneviève seems to have
had an uneventful history. Dulaure, however, in that strange book, “Les
Singularités Historiques,” gives some remarkable details in regard to
the life led and the actions performed by the clergy attached to
Saint-Geneviève, and indeed by the French clergy generally.
Under the reign of Louis VII., styled the Young, Pope Eugène III., says
this writer, driven out of Rome, came in 1145 to Paris, and a few days
after his arrival wished to celebrate mass at the Church of
Sainte-Geneviève. The canons to do him honour brought before the altar a
large silk carpet, on which the Pope knelt to pray. After the mass the
sovereign pontiff retired to the vestry, when his servants, lay and
ecclesiastic, took possession of the carpet, claiming that it belonged
to them simply because the Pope had made use of it. The servants of the
canons being of a different opinion snatched the carpet from the hands
of the Pope’s servants. The carpet, dragged on one side and the other,
gave way and was soon in pieces; the accident caused insults on both
sides followed by blows. The king, who had witnessed the tumult, went
forward to stop it; his authority, however, was powerless against the
fury of the combatants, and in the confusion he himself was struck.
Victory remained with the holders of the place--the attendants in the
Church of Sainte-Geneviève. The Pope’s followers, with torn clothes and
bleeding faces, went before their master, who complained to the king and
begged him to punish the insult. Thereupon the Pope and the king
resolved to change the constitution of the Sainte-Geneviève Monastery.
It was first resolved to send away the canons and replace them by monks
from Cluny, but this idea was abandoned. A new abbé was named and twelve
new canons were introduced from the Abbey of Saint-Victor, who were
formally installed in the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève, to the great
displeasure of the former canons, who did all in their power to get rid
of these strangers.
They employed against them calumnious threats and even violence. In the
excesses of their animosity they ordered their servants to go in the
night and break in the doors of the church, take possession of the
building, and prevent the new canons from singing the matins, uttering
shrieks which prevented them from being heard.
[Illustration: THE PANTHÉON, FROM THE LUXEMBOURG GARDENS.]
In spite of the precautions taken by the Abbé Suger, in charge of the
church, they took possession of a great portion of the treasure,
detaching from the shrine of Sainte-Geneviève gold ornaments which
weighed fourteen marks, their object being to get together a sum
sufficiently large to send to the Pope in order to prevail upon him to
change his resolution in regard to the monastery. The conduct of the
canons caused all kinds of reports to be circulated; among others one to
the effect that the head of Sainte-Geneviève had been cut off and
removed from her shrine, whereupon the shrine was solemnly opened and
the body of the saint displayed, with its head, while at the same time
the Te Deum was sung.
Those indeed were lawless times; nor had matters improved in Paris in
the next century, when Jacques de Vitry, Archbishop Cardinal and Legate
of the Pope in France, wrote such an account of life in Paris as Pope
Eugène III. would doubtless have approved.
“Although the Lord has said,” wrote Jacques de Vitry in his “Western
History,” “that it is more blessed to give than to receive, the men of
our time, above all those who are in a position to command others, do
not confine themselves to extorting money from their subjects by
requiring from them unlawful presents, or by filling their greedy hands
with the product of the taxes and exactions with which they so unjustly
oppress them; they do far worse. The thefts, the rapines, and the acts
of violence which they exercise, now openly, now in secret on the
wretches under their dependence, render their cruel tyranny
insupportable. These lords, notwithstanding the pompous titles of which
they are so proud, do not omit to go out robbing and to perform the
trade of mere thieves; also that of brigands, for they ravage whole
tracts of country with their incendiarism. They respect nothing, not
even the property of the monasteries, nor of the churches. They profane
even the sanctuary, from which they carry away the objects consecrated
to the celebration of the mass. Whenever, for the slightest causes,
disputes arise between the poor and their lords and masters, the latter
succeed through their satellites in selling the property of these
unhappy beings. On the highways you see them, covered with iron, attack
the passers-by without sparing either the pilgrims or the monks. If they
wish to exercise personal vengeance against simple, innocent men, they
attack them through their bandits, scoundrels who follow the streets of
the towns and boroughs, or who, concealed in secret places, lay traps
for these poor wretches in order to catch them and shed their blood. On
the sea they are pirates, and without fearing the anger of God, they
plunder passengers and merchants, in many cases burning the ships and
drowning in the waves those whom they have despoiled. Princes and nobles
without faith are the associates of these robbers. Far from protecting
their subjects and maintaining them in peace, they oppress them; far
from repressing the rascals and keeping them down through the fear of
punishment, they favour them, become their patrons, and for the money
they receive from them help them in their scandalous actions. The French
nobles are like unclean dogs, who, always famishing, dispute with greedy
crows the flesh of carcases. The nobles, by the agency of their
provosts and their satellites, persecute the poor, rob the widow and the
orphan, lay snares for them, pick quarrels with them, and attribute to
them imaginary crimes in order to extort money. It is a common practice
with them to put in prison and load with chains men who have committed
no offence, and to make these innocent persons support cruel tortures in
order to extract sums of money from them. This is all done in order to
obtain supplies for their prodigality, their luxuries, their
superfluities, their mad expenditure on the vanities of the century, to
pay their usurers, to support mimes, singers, actors, jugglers,
parasites, and flatterers, veritable dogs of their courtyards.”
“This sketch,” says Dulaure, “traced by a man of serious character,
proves how great was the evil, how excessive was the disorder, how
entirely all principles were subverted. Such were the knights of the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, whose loyalty, so much exalted in
novels, in poetical compositions, and on our modern stage, is constantly
disproved by history. These men, to whom so many glorious exploits, so
many generous actions are attributed, were merciless brigands, wretches
who would now figure at the hulks or in the dungeons of Bicêtre.”
[Illustration: PLACE DU PANTHÉON.]
Some idea of the extreme corruption of the French clergy in the
thirteenth century may be formed from a letter written by Pope Innocent
III. in 1203 to the Abbé of Saint-Denis, close to Paris. “There are,” he
said, “in your town priests who, abusing the clerical privilege, go
through the streets at night and visit the most disreputable houses,
breaking in the doors and taking the same liberties with the daughters
of respectable citizens. The provost and the officers of justice, from
respect for the liberties of the clerical order, do not dare to lay
hands on them; and if you, my son, wish to stop these disorders, the
culprits at once appeal to us, invoke our authority, ignore your
jurisdiction, escape the canonical punishment, and continue with
audacity their lawless habits.” The Pope then authorises the Abbé of
Saint-Denis to exercise against these “priestly libertines” all
ecclesiastical powers, without attending to their appeals.
The period of religious and warlike fanaticism was also a period of
licentiousness and persecution.
The Jews, at the chivalrous time of the Crusades, were particularly
unhappy. Their faith, their wealth, their usurious practices, exposed
them at all times to persecution, and the Crusaders, before starting for
the Holy Land, habitually massacred them. Kings drove them from the
country, and then, on payment of large sums, allowed them to return.
Dulaure (“Singularités Historiques”) attributes simply to avarice the
accusations, always justified by the fanaticism of the people, which
rulers brought against them, and which were withdrawn on payment of
money.
In 1290 a woman living at Paris had pawned some clothes for thirty sous
to a Jew named Jonathan, and wishing to take them out for the Easter
holidays without repaying the money advanced, was told, according to her
sworn testimony, that she might do so if she would bring to the Jew a
piece of the Holy Sacrament, which she did. Then the Jew thrust his
penknife into the Host, from which blood flowed in abundance without in
any way terrifying him. Then he took a nail and hammered it into the
Host; threw it into the fire, when it hovered above the flames; plunged
it into a kettle of boiling water, which it reddened with its blood,
receiving meanwhile no injury. These miracles did not frighten Jonathan.
The son of this Jew, seeing Christians go to church, said to them, “It
is useless for you to pray to your God, my father has killed him.” Then
a woman who lived next door to Jonathan entered his house under pretext
of getting a light, and took away the Host in the skirt of her dress;
after which she placed it in a wooden vessel and carried it to the curé
of Saint-Jean-en-Grève, to whom she narrated what she had seen. The
Bishop of Paris had Jonathan arrested, tried to convert him, and as the
Jew refused, burnt him alive.
“Jonathan,” says Dulaure, in commenting on this strange story, the
authenticity of which he regards as undeniable, “possessed a large
fortune. Was he convicted in any legal manner? Why was not the woman
brought to justice who gave the Host to Jonathan? She was more criminal
than the Jew. Everything in this process makes one suspect that an
odious plot had been woven against the Israelite in order to get hold of
his fortune.”
It was not the Jews alone, however, who were maltreated in these cruel
times. How severely Marguerite de Bourgogne, wife of Louis X., and
Blanche and Jeanne de Bourgogne, her sisters-in-law, were punished for
their undeniably licentious lives. The Abbey of Maubuisson, near
Pontoise, was the theatre of their misdeeds. Their principal accomplices
were Philippe and Gauthier d’Aunay, and they were both of them
maltreated, skinned alive, and then decapitated and hung by the arms to
the gallows. A beadle who had been mixed up with the princesses’
intrigues was condemned to the gibbet, and a monk who had played a still
more active part in connection with them was tortured to death. Queen
Marguerite, after being imprisoned in the Château Gaillard with her
sister-in-law Blanche, was strangled there in 1315; Jeanne was detained
in captivity at the Château of Dourdan--that same Jeanne de Bourgogne
who, according to the tradition, threw from the Tour de Nesle into the
Seine the students of whose discretion she wished to make sure.
* * * * *
But to return to the Church of Sainte-Geneviève, which, though by its
site one of the very oldest in Paris, dates, by its structure, only from
the eighteenth century. In 1754 Louis XV., finding himself seriously
ill, vowed “that if, through the intercession of Sainte-Geneviève, he
recovered, he would raise to her honour a new and sumptuous temple.”
Restored to health he showed himself ready to keep his word. The
architect employed to plan the structure was Soufflot, a man imbued with
memories of Rome, where he had passed several years of his life. On the
6th of September, 1764, the first stone of the new church was laid by
Louis XV. The construction had advanced far, and the dome had already
been commenced, when Soufflot perceived with horror that the massive
edifice threatened collapse, ugly cracks showing themselves here and
there in the masonry. In despair, full of self-distrust, and harassed by
the raillery of his critics, Soufflot died in 1720, without seeing the
completion of his work. Rondelet, who took his place, substituted for
the graceful but fragile pilasters and columns of his predecessor, heavy
masonry supports devoid of beauty, but at least capable of keeping the
roof aloft. For the pursuance of his undertaking, however, he required
money, and the want of it more than once suspended or retarded his
operations. Until 1789 the building went on with exasperating slowness.
Then, however, it received an unexpected impetus. Mirabeau had just
died. The Constituent Assembly wished to give the great orator a tomb
worthy of him, and at the same time to create a monument in which might
be brought together the tombs of all those great citizens who had
deserved well of their country: to create a Westminster Abbey. This
monument already existed; for it was precisely a sort of Panthéon that
Soufflot, never suspecting to what purpose his edifice would be turned,
had constructed. “In a civic transport,” says M. E. Quinet, “the
Constituent Assembly baptised with the name of Panthéon a monument which
now for the first time seemed to receive a soul. The church soon became
a temple of Renown--a place where the People gather to pronounce their
judgment on the dead. This is why that colonnade bears its splendours so
high aloft; why the cupola lifts itself up as though it were a crown on
the head of Paris. Here occurs the apotheosis, not of a
shepherdess--Sainte-Geneviève, that is to say--but of France, of the
country, in the form of illustrious men who have gone to breathe the air
of another shore. What had been blamed as superfluous luxury for the
prophetess of Nanterre was assuredly necessary for the glorification of
glorious men. How could the columns be high enough, the capitals proud
enough, the wreaths rich enough to celebrate those to whom their
terrestrial country owed terrestrial honours? The defects which had been
found in the church became so many beauties in the Panthéon.”
The assembly voted the following decree: “Art. I. The new edifice of
Sainte-Geneviève shall be used for the reception of the ashes of the
great men belonging to the period of French liberty. Art. II. The
legislative body shall alone decide to whom this honour is to be
awarded. Art. III. Honoré Riquetti Mirabeau is judged worthy to receive
such honour. Art. IV. The legislature shall not, in the future, have
power to decree this honour to any of its members who may die; that is a
question which shall be decided by the succeeding magistracy. Art. V.
Any exceptions which may be made in favour of great men who died before
the Revolution, shall be decided only by the legislative body. Art. VI.
The directory of the department of the Seine shall with promptitude put
the edifice of Sainte-Geneviève into a condition to fulfil its new
functions, and shall cause to be engraved over the pediment these words,
‘To the great men of a grateful country.’ Art. VII. Until the new church
of Sainte-Geneviève is finished the body of Riquetti Mirabeau shall
repose beside the ashes of Descartes, in the vault of the old church.”
The remains of Voltaire were transported to the Panthéon soon after
those of Mirabeau, and with a pomp no less magnificent. On the 30th of
May, 1791, Gossin, deputy for Bar-le-Duc, addressed the Tribune in an
enthusiastic outburst thus: “It was on the 30th of May that the honours
of sepulture were refused to Voltaire, and it is on the same day that
the national gratitude must acquit itself of its duty of reverence
towards one who has prepared men for toleration and liberty.” The
procession which accompanied the relics of Voltaire on their conveyance
to the Panthéon was imposing in the extreme. Representatives of numerous
corporations and professions attended to do homage to his memory, and at
one point in the cortège eight women dressed in white, and carrying a
statue of Liberty which appeared to be pointing to a complete edition of
Voltaire’s works, were borne along in a gilded car. Finally came the
sarcophagus, drawn by twelve white horses. After halts innumerable the
solemn procession drew up before the Panthéon to the flare of torches.
The name of Panthéon, sufficiently heathen in character, had not
hitherto been applied to the church of Sainte-Geneviève; but it appeared
a few days later in a petition demanding the same honours for Rousseau,
and signed by poets, artists, and scholars. The Assembly would willingly
have acceded, but such was the resistance of the inhabitants of
Montmorency, who eagerly requested that the ashes of this great writer
might be left in their midst, that it deferred its decision.
On the 21st of January, 1793, the Convention decreed that the body of
Lepelletier, deputy of Saint-Fargeau, who had been assassinated for
having voted the death of the king, should be translated to the
Panthéon. Then Marat, to whom, after the stab of Charlotte Corday, the
Convention had already erected a mausoleum on the Place du Carrousel,
was judged worthy of the Panthéon. On the 25th of November, 1793, Marie
Joseph Chénier, speaking before the Tribune, and armed with documents,
proved the transactions which Mirabeau had had with the Court,
contrasting therewith the disinterestedness of Marat, whose remains, as
he eloquently maintained, should displace at the Panthéon those of
Mirabeau, unworthy of such a resting-place. The Convention adopted his
propositions in a decree which was not executed until after the fall of
Robespierre, on the 22nd of September, 1794. The official programme of
the ceremonies, still extant, is interesting enough. After having fixed
the order and the route of the cortège the authors of the programme
added: “The procession will stop when it arrives on the Place of the
Panthéon; a tipstaff of the Convention will advance towards the door of
entrance, and there will be read the decree which excludes from the
Panthéon the relics of Mirabeau. Thereupon the body of Mirabeau shall be
conveyed out of the precincts of the Panthéon, and handed over to the
commissary of police for that section. Then the body of Marat shall be
placed in triumph on a platform elevated in the Panthéon.... All
citizens assisting at this ceremony shall be unarmed.” From the last
injunction it is evident that the authorities feared the possibility of
a riot. Everything, however, passed off quietly. The body of Mirabeau
was laid in a corner of the cemetery of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
At length, on the 19th of October, 1794, the turn of Rousseau came. His
body, borne by a deputation of the inhabitants of Ermonville, where he
had breathed his last, was received at the Tuileries, where the future
arch-chancellor pronounced over it an impressive speech. The remains of
the philosopher, enclosed in an urn, were then conveyed to the Panthéon,
escorted by the crowd and preceded by an orchestra playing various airs
from his own “Devin du Village.”
But the political tide was already on the turn. On the 1st of February,
1795, the bust of Marat, placed in several of the theatres and cafés,
was hooted and overthrown. His remains, according to the Abbé de
Montgaillard in his history of the Revolution, were snatched from the
Panthéon, dragged through the streets by young men, and cast amongst the
refuse of the Rue Montmartre--“a tabernacle,” says the abbé, “worthy of
such a god.” This account, however, is inaccurate; it was only Marat’s
effigy which was thrown into the sewer, his relics were transported to
Saint-Étienne-du-Mont.
In the meantime the Panthéon, as a structure, was in a state of neglect.
These installations of illustrious men within its walls had taken place
more or less hastily, and the works were far indeed from completion.
Mercier, in his “Picture of Paris,” thus describes a visit which he paid
to the Panthéon in 1795: “I ventured on the staircases of the edifice,
across ladders, heaps of cement, hammers, long saws and moving
scaffoldings. The least sound reverberated, the least movement seemed to
announce the approaching fall of the dome, and for the moment I imagined
myself interred in the Panthéon without any pleading or contest. When I
quitted the edifice I experienced the pleasure which is felt by sailors
and warriors at the end of tempests and combats: that of discovering
that I was alive.” By the time the Panthéon had been put into a
satisfactory condition the Empire had come into existence, and Napoleon,
who had just re-established public worship, wished to present the
Republican temple to the clergy, whilst maintaining the purpose for
which the Constituent Assembly had designed it. A decree, dated 20th of
February, 1806, dedicated the Panthéon to public worship under the name
of Church of Sainte-Geneviève, and consecrated it as a sepulchre for
citizens who, in the career of arms or in that of the administration or
of letters, had rendered eminent services to their country. The remains
of thirty-nine persons, not all of them truly illustrious, were
deposited in the Panthéon under the Empire; but the fall of the Empire
brought about another change. Louis XVIII. suppressed the necropolis,
and removed from the pediment the famous legend, “Aux grands hommes, la
patrie reconnaissante.”
The last illustrious men admitted to the honours of the temple supposed
to have been erected to them by a “grateful country” were Victor Hugo,
the great Carnot, the deputy Baudin, killed on a barricade during the
_coup d’état_ of 1851, General Marceau, and La Tour d’Auvergne, “the
first grenadier of France,” whose name, by order of Napoleon, used to be
pronounced at every roll-call of his regiment, when this answer was
solemnly given: “Mort sur le champ de bataille.”
[Illustration: WELL IN THE COURTYARD, CLUNY MUSEUM.]
The large open space to which the Panthéon gives its name--Place du
Panthéon--was the scene of terrible conflicts between the troops and the
insurgents during the Revolution of February, 1848, and again during the
unsuccessful insurrection of June in the same year, when troops and
national guards all took part against the workmen set free to starve or
fight by the closing of the national workshops which, for financial
reasons, could no longer be carried on, and against the social
democrats who placed themselves at their head. On the northern side of
the Place stands the Sainte-Geneviève Library, which, like all the Paris
libraries, is open to all comers.
[Illustration: INTERIOR OF THE PANTHÉON.]
A foreigner who happened to visit the Quartier Latin, and observed the
students strolling, lounging, or driving off to the theatre or a ball,
might fancy that they led an easy and idle life, but he would be
mistaken. These youths, ardent pleasure-seekers as they are, give
three-fourths of their time to severe study. Earlier in the day a
visitor to the Rue Saint-Jacques might have seen them waiting
impatiently for the classes to begin at the College of France; might
have seen them issue thence, full of enthusiasm for the great thinkers
of their time, and wend their way to this or that public institution
affording facilities for private study. A proportion of them would be
found to resort to the Bibliothèque Sainte-Geneviève, where a noble
collection of books ranged on shelves adorned with delicate sculptures
may well conduce to the tranquil exercise of the mind.
The first library of Sainte-Geneviève, which was founded as a private
institution in 1624, and became national property in 1790, occupied in
the buildings of the old abbey of the same name a habitation which had
to be abandoned some forty years ago, because the building began
everywhere to crumble and threaten collapse. The new library was
finished and inaugurated in 1850; and although the external architecture
is somewhat plain and heavy, the interior is highly artistic, with many
a mural painting by master hands. Formerly this library possessed a very
curious collection of crayon sketches, portraits of personages of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which were transferred by an
imperial decree to the library of the Rue de Richelieu. It can support
this loss, however, rich as it is in quaint and valuable specimens of
art. For its manuscripts, with certain exceptions, the Bibliothèque
Sainte-Geneviève is not remarkable; though it boasts a particularly fine
collection of old printed books, with bindings sumptuous and fantastic
enough to turn the head of a bibliophile.
Dependent on the church of Sainte-Geneviève, which it was destined to
survive, is the church of St. Stephen-of-the-Mount. Among the wonders of
Saint-Étienne-du-Mont is the tomb of Sainte Geneviève, whose relics,
patroness saint of Paris as she was, were burnt in 1793 by the Paris
Commune in the Place de Grève. During the fête of Sainte Geneviève, from
the 3rd to the 11th of January, the church is crowded with pilgrims from
the Paris suburbs to the number, it is calculated, of more than one
hundred thousand. In the chapel immediately facing the altar stands a
monument which contains the heart of Monseigneur Sibour, Archbishop of
Paris, assassinated on the 3rd of January, 1857, in this very church,
when he was opening the nine days’ service in honour of Sainte
Geneviève, by a priest whom he had interdicted. The predecessor of
Monseigneur Sibour, Monseigneur Affre, was shot dead by the insurgents
of June, 1848, when exhorting them from a barricade to cease fighting.
His successor, Monseigneur Darboy, was put to death with the other
hostages whom the Paris Commune in 1871 had taken with the view of
securing for the Communards made prisoners by the troops the character
of prisoners of war.
[Illustration]