Burial in the churches was at first interfered with, if not prevented, even under the Christian emperors, by the Roman law, which prescribed that the cemeteries should be extramural. Thus, according to tradition, many of the early French saints were first of all buried outside the towns, and their remains were subsequently placed within some consecrated building or a church, erected over their original grave. The ancient cemetery in some cases developed into an inhabited suburb, as at Tours, where the Quartier de St. Martin occupies the ground where that saint originally reposed. In other districts, the Christian cemeteries occupied the same site down to the thirteenth century, as at Arles, Autun, Bordeaux, the cemeteries of the Aliscan (Elisii campi), St. Seurin, and Champ-des-Tombes. Other cemeteries, rendered necessary by the increase in the size of the towns, were made at about this period. Thus, after the accession of the Capet dynasty, the capital increased so much in size that it was necessary to limit the space accorded to burying-places, and twenty-two parishes on the right bank of the Seine had no cemeteries of their own. A track of waste land at Champeaux, running along the Rue St. Denis, was converted into what was called the Cemetery of the Innocents (Fig. 367), and it consisted of a large enclosure with three gateways; the first at the corner of the Rue aux Fers; the second at the corner of the Rue de la Ferronnerie; and the third in the Place-aux-Chats. Philip Augustus surrounded it with a wall in 1186, to prevent it being overrun by animals and the inhabitants of the neighbourhood. To this wall was afterwards added a covered gallery, called the charnel-house, in which were buried those whose fortune allowed them to purchase the privilege of being interred apart from the masses. This charnel-house, which was damp and dismal, was paved with tombstones, and its walls were covered with epitaphs and funeral monuments. In the thirteenth century it became a fashionable resort in which tradesmen placed their wares for sale, and the abode of death was converted into a place of rendezvous and promenade for the idle.
This long gallery was built at different epochs, out of the largesses given by several inhabitants of Paris. Marshal de Boucicault built part of it in the beginning of the fifteenth century, and the famous Nicholas Flamel, who is said to have had a bookstall in the charnel-house, built at his own cost the whole side which ran parallel with the Rue de la Lingerie, and in which he and his wife Pernelle were buried. This charnel-house was surmounted by large galetas (lofts) in which the bones of the dead were preserved. The famous “Danse Macabre” (Figs. 369–392), that philosophical allegory in which death was leading in the dance “persons of all conditions,” was painted about the year 1430 upon the walls of the charnel-house, on the Rue St. Honoré side.
Figs. 369 to 392.—The Dance of Death, a Fac-simile of Wood Engravings executed after the Holbein Drawings in the “Simulachres de la Mort;” small 4to, Treschel Brothers, Lyons, 1538.—“As fish are taken speedily with the hook (aine), so does death take men; for death spares no man, king nor emperor, rich nor poor, noble nor villain, wise nor fool, physician nor surgeon, young nor old, strong nor weak, man nor woman. Nothing is more certain; all have to take part in death’s dance.”—Explanation taken from the “Forteresses de la Foy,” Manuscript of the Fifteenth Century, in the Library at Valenciennes.
The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings (continued).
The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings (continued).
The Dance of Death, after Holbein’s Drawings (continued).