Twenty Centuries of Paris

by Mabell S. C. Smith

To Louis VI is attributed the building of the second city wall, piecing out its predecessor so as to protect the suburbs on the right bank. He was interested, too, in religious establishments. He added to the number of the clergy of the chapel of Saint Nicholas near the palace, making part of their emolument six hogsheads of wine apiece from his own vineyards. He repaired Notre Dame, already five centuries old. He was a patron of Saint Denis, where he had been educated and where he adopted as the royal banner the oriflamme of the saint. He dedicated a church of the Cité to Sainte Geneviève in gratitude for her staying an epidemic of fever. He had the heads of cattle carved over the door of the church with which he honored Saint Peter—Saint Pierre-aux-Boeufs—for the especial benefit of the butchers of the city.

On top of Montmartre, standing demurely to-day beside the glittering basilica of the Sacred Heart, is the little church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre built by Louis as the chapel of a Benedictine abbey. Its restoration has been completed within the last decade, and its cold, undecorated severity compels a realization of monastic cheerlessness and of how acceptable must have been the reaction to the colorful warmth and grace of the Gothic. Though their church was not beautiful the Benedictines had no reason to be uncomfortable, for Louis granted to them a whole village and sundry estates, and in addition such eminently secular property as a monopoly of the baking privileges of certain ovens, a slaughter-house, the confiscated house of an Italian money-changer, and the exclusive right to fish in certain parts of the Seine.

Up to this point the buildings mentioned have but little to show to modern eyes beyond their ancient character and perhaps their form. A Roman bath, a Merovingian tower on the Church of Saint Germain-des-Prés, a rebuilt tower of Saint Martin’s Priory, two aged columns in Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre—these are but fragments of the old constructions. From this period on, however, it will become more and more usual to find large portions of early buildings. One such is the church of Saint Julien-le-Pauvre. Its date is a little later than that of the abbey church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre. It is Gothic at its simplest, yet its pointed windows and arches are prophetic of the beauty to come.

The story of Saint Julien, to whom the church is dedicated, is one of tragic interest. A youth of noble family, he gave himself earnestly to all the pursuits of his time and of his class, his one fault being his love of the cruelties of the chase. One day a dying stag whose doe and fawn he had killed prophesied that he would slay his own father and mother. The prophecy came to pass and Julien, in horror at the misfortune that had befallen him, left home and wife and wealth and wandered in poverty through the world seeking whom he might help. At last he established himself on a river bank in a hut where he sheltered travelers through the night, and in the morning ferried them across the stream. There he lived a life of expiation till death took him.

It was in the sixth century that a pilgrim’s hostel was built in Saint Julien’s honor on the south side of the Seine. There Saint Gregory of Tours lodged in 580, and there the Normans came in 886 and destroyed it. In the twelfth century it was rebuilt as a part of the Abbey of Longpont. Since then the unpretentious building has had a varied history. At one time it served as the general assembly hall of the University; again it became the chapel of the hospital, the Hôtel Dieu. During the Revolution it served as a storehouse for fodder. At some time the nave was destroyed, leaving in the present courtyard a well which once was beneath the roof of the church. The existing edifice, which is merely the choir of the twelfth century building, is used for the Greek service.

Thanks to his father’s prudent arrangements Louis VII, called “the Young” and “the Pious” (1137-1180), inherited a far larger and stronger territory than had Louis VI. He was by no means his father’s equal in intelligence or energy and his reign was unmarked by events notable either for Paris or for France. His happiest days were those that he spent in the cloisters of Notre Dame, he said. His father was happiest in the field.

A few years after Louis’ accession he became involved in a quarrel with the pope over a candidate for a bishopric. When the Count of Champagne sided with the Holy Father Louis invaded his domains. During the siege of the town of Vitry no fewer than thirteen hundred people who had taken refuge in a church were burned to death with the destruction of the building. Remorse for this disaster for which he was responsible made him lend a willing ear to the exhortations of Saint Bernard, an opponent of Abélard’s heresies who was now preaching the Second Crusade, and when Pope Eugenius came in person to France he gave the French king the pilgrim’s equipment and the oriflamme of Saint Denis in the Saint’s own church. The crusade ended in bitter disaster, and Louis died before the Third Crusade was under way, but his interest in the Holy Wars led to his patronage of the order of Knights Templar, which had been founded to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher. At the time when Pope Eugenius went to Paris there was a mighty gathering there of Templars, and probably it was then that King Louis granted them the land not far from the Priory of Saint Martin on which they built a huge establishment, part fortification, part religious house, whose surroundings they made fair by draining the marshes and converting waste land into fruitful fields.

The king does not seem to have been the cause of much civic improvement of Paris in spite of his long reign. He built an oratory to Notre Dame-de-l’Étoile near the palace. If we may judge by his usual oath—“By the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem”—it must have been he who gave the name to the cemetery of the Holy Innocents and its chapel, though probably they were established before his day. The burying ground was near the Halles, and it was laid out when that section was far beyond the crowded part of the town. By the time of the accession of Philip Augustus (1180), however, the population had pushed northwards from the busy river bank, the marsh had been made habitable, and the quickly increasing cemetery stood on the outskirts of the town, not in the country, and needed the wall which Philip gave it.

The Pont au Change, the bridge leading from the right bank to the island near the palace—perhaps the very line which the Grand Pont drew across the river at the time of the siege by the Normans—received its name at this time. There were houses built upon it from end to end, and Louis allowed the money-changers to do business upon it along one side and permitted the goldsmiths to establish themselves on the other. For four centuries this was the fashionable promenade of Paris until Henry IV finished the Pont Neuf whose open expanse across the western tip of the Cité gave more space for display. When a new king made his formal entry into Paris it was customary for a huge flock of birds to be let loose from the Pont au Change that they might carry the glad news abroad.

Eleanor of Aquitaine who had brought Louis and France so handsome a dowry proved a wife whose conduct her husband could not countenance, though he loved her with a stern fondness. Their marriage was annulled. Within a few months Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet who became Henry II of England and she gave her new husband possessions in France which, added to those which he already had as lord of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou and Maine, made him richer in French lands than the king to whom he owed allegiance. Then began the friction between the two countries which it has required centuries to still. Louis was twice married after his separation from Eleanor. His last wife was Alix or Adelaide of Champagne, whose marriage, consecration and coronation on a November day in 1160 were the ceremonies of the last brilliant scene enacted within the walls of the ancient Merovingian church of Notre Dame, soon to be replaced by the building which ennobles the Cité to-day.