Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

by H. Sutherland Edwards

THE SAINT-GERMAIN MARKET.

It seems strange and somewhat absurd to English Conservatives that so many peasants in France should have a vote; but inasmuch as of these peasants nine millions are proprietors, the establishment of universal suffrage in France was not a revolutionary but a Conservative measure. The peasantry, moreover, are in some degree trained to public affairs by the part they play in the communal councils. There are about 40,000 communes in France, and each commune has its mayor and its municipal councillors elected by universal suffrage for the[{170}] management of local affairs. Every peasant may become a municipal councillor and, if duly elected by the municipal council, a mayor. The municipal council meets periodically for the discussion of local affairs; so that its members accustom themselves to public speaking and the interchange of ideas. France has now about 10,000,000 electors, of whom two-thirds are peasants, but, as before explained, peasants in the possession of landed property.

CHAPTER XXV.
SAINT-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS.

Its Origin and History—Its Library—Its Organ—Saint-Sulpice.

IF the Pantheon and the Luxemburg are by their size, their appurtenances, and their dominant position, the most important buildings on the left bank of the Seine, the most interesting, by its antiquity, is the church, with the monastery attached to it, of Saint-Germain-des-Prés; which, like the cathedral-church of Notre Dame in the city, and the church of Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois on the right bank, belong to the most ancient period of the Merovingian monarchy, to that, in other words, of Childebert I. and Ultrogothe his wife, who reigned at Paris from 511 to 538. Childebert, returning from an expedition against the Visgoths, brought back from Spain as trophies of his victory the tunic of Saint Vincent, a gold cross and precious stones, together with some vases which were said to have belonged to King Solomon. By the advice of Saint Germain, Bishop of Paris, he constructed for the reception of the holy relics a church and a monastery at the western end of the gardens belonging to the Palace of the Hot Baths, or Palais des Thermes. On the very day of Childebert’s death, in 558, Saint Germain consecrated the new church as “Church of the Holy Cross and of St. Vincent”; and he was himself buried in it when he died in 596. After the death of the good bishop the church which he had dedicated to the Holy Cross and to St. Vincent got to be known under no other name than that of Saint-Germain; and it now became the burial-place of the kings, queens, and princes of the Merovingian dynasty.

The abbey remained for a long time an isolated building, which the high walls, erected around the church and convent in 1239 by Simon, abbé of Saint-Germain, made into a veritable fortress, which was strengthened in 1368 by Charles V., who, at war with the English, feared a sudden attack on their part against the suburbs of Paris. A narrow canal was at the same time dug, which placed the ditches of the fortified abbey in communication with the Seine. This canal, called at the time “the little Seine,” was filled up towards the middle of the sixteenth century, when the line of land thus formed became the Rue des Petits Augustins, now Rue Bonaparte.

Of this ancient church, three times burned by the Normans and three times rebuilt, but little now remains. Thirty years ago fragments of the walls and two of the gates were still to be seen. But the last traces of the old abbey disappeared when through the Place Saint Germain-des-Prés the Rue de Rennes was made to run. The church, however, was destined to survive, in a sadly mutilated condition, the convent and the walls. It suffered greatly, like so many other sacred buildings, at the time of the Revolution, when the tombs of the Merovingian kings were broken into and their contents dispersed. These or portions of them are now to be found in the abbey of Saint-Denis.

Again and again the church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés has been restored: as in 1644, in 1820, at the time of the Restoration, and finally under Napoleon III. The choir preserves intact the style of the twelfth century. Among the tombs may be seen the tomb of King Casimir of Poland, who, after becoming a monk, was made abbé of Saint-Germain, and died holding that office in 1672. In a chapel on the opposite side of the church is the tomb of Olivier and Louis de Castellan, who fell in the service of Louis XIV., and a little further on the chapel of the Douglases, many of whom served in the Scottish Guard. Here too[{171}] are the remains of Boileau and Descartes. The sacred pictures around the choir and the nave are the work of Hippolyte Flandrin, the most celebrated among the pupils of Ingrès, who died before completing his work, and to whom, in the church he loved to decorate, a monument in white marble has been erected, surmounted by his bust.