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

by H. Sutherland Edwards

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[{60}] 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.

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[{61}] 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.”