Situated in the Rue du Temple, the church dedicated to the great Hungarian princess formerly faced the entrance to the grim fortress of the Templars, where the poor little Dauphin sighed out his infant life. The church was built for the nuns of the third order of S. Francis, of which S. Elizabeth was a member; and the first stone was laid in 1628 by a very different sort of Queen, Marie de' Medici. The exterior, with its Doric pilastered doorway, and the interior, with its poor glass and indifferent sculptures, are alike utterly uninteresting; but the white marble font, bearing the date of 1654, and the woodwork which ornaments the aisle of the sanctuary, are worth a visit. The latter consists of a series of little panels representing scenes from the Old and New Testament in bas-relief, of the end of the 16th century, and are said to have been originally in a church at Arras. There is nothing in the building worthy of its patron, that most perfect of saints, whether we think of her as woman, as queen, or as mother.
"AVE GEMMA SPECIOSA!
MULIERUM SYDUS, ROSA!
EX REGALI STIRPE NATA,
MUNDO LICET VIRO DATA
NUNC IN COELIS CORONATA;
CHRISTO TAMEN DESPONSATA.
UTRIUSQUE SPONSALIA,
SIMUL SERVANS ILLIBATA;
SARAM SEQUENS FIDE PIA,
ET REBECCAM PRUDENTIA,
O DILECTA! O BEATA!
NOSTRA ESTO ADVOCATA,
ELIZABETH EGREGIA![62]
SAINT-ÉTIENNE DU MONT.
Upon the summit of the hill which rises up from the Seine, opposite and on the south side of Notre-Dame, is the church of S. Étienne du Mont. Some few years ago this "mountain" was an interesting hunting ground to the archæological explorer and the collector of bric-à-brac; but it has been so cut through by new streets and boulevards that it has almost been improved out of existence. At the foot of it, in a little street turning on from the Quai de la Tourelle, is all that remains of the famous college of the Bernardins, now used by the sapeurs-pompiers. The college was founded by an Englishman, Stephen of Lexington, Abbot of Clairvaux, in 1244, upon some ground belonging to the rich abbey of S. Victor; Alphonse, the brother of S. Louis, being the titular founder and protector of the establishment. The great church, begun in 1338 by Pope Benedict XII. and Cardinal Curti, to replace the one built by Stephen Lexington, was never finished, but was considered, in the 14th century, to be of great beauty. (Pope Benedict, as Jacques Fournier, was professor of theology in the college.) But more fortunate than the church, the refectory has remained intact in all its beauty until our own time, though unfortunately, in 1845, it was sadly mutilated in order to adapt it for use as a barrack. A portion of the cloister may still be seen in the Rue de Poissy, a pointed arch built into the modern wall of a house with square windows in between. It is time the municipality of Paris or the Society for the Preservation of Ancient Buildings bestirred itself to restore the few fragments of old Paris which yet remain. The Revolution did much damage, but often it only put the conventual buildings to secular uses without destroying them, leaving for later governments, and those moreover professedly religious, to utterly demolish the mutilated monasteries and churches, in order to make straight streets and spacious boulevards, which, beautiful as they are, do not prevent us from regretting the past.
The convent of S. Geneviève was founded by Clovis, and so extensive were its lands and dependencies that ere long it drew to it a large population of workmen and labourers for the cultivation of its land. A priest, one of the monks of the abbey, was appointed to take spiritual charge of these people; and from this commencement grew the parish of S. Étienne. Originally the congregation met and worshipped in the crypt of the abbey church, which was dedicated to Our Lady; then the chapel was placed under the protection of S. John the Evangelist, and called St. Jean-du-Mont. But at the beginning of the 13th century the congregation outgrew its chapel, and in 1224 the Bishop of Paris authorised the building of a church by the side of the abbey, to be consecrated to the memory of S. Étienne, the proto-martyr. This first church, in fact, was only a part of the abbey; having had no separate entrance of its own, it could only be entered by a doorway from the choir of S. Geneviève. The reason for changing its name for the third time was probably the demolition of a church dedicated to S. Stephen to make space for Notre-Dame. The memory of the first of martyrs being dear to the citizens, nothing would be more appropriate than the naming of a new church to take the place of the old one, although upon a different site. The first mention of S. Étienne is in the History of Guillaume le Breton, in the year 1221.
This first church lasted three hundred years, and then again, the population having increased enormously, S. Étienne was found to be too small for its congregation, and another and finer church was projected. In 1491 it was deemed better to rebuild than to patch up and enlarge the church; but many years passed in projects and delays, and it was only in 1517 that the work was actually commenced. Abbot Philippe Lebel finished the choir in 1537, and in 1541 the Bishop of Mégare consecrated the altars in the name of the Bishop of Paris; but that the church was not finished in 1552, or even in 1563, the diocesan permission to apply the Lenten offerings to the work is sufficient proof. The jubé was commenced in 1600, the porches nine years later, and the chapel of the Virgin (rebuilt) was only finished in 1661. It was Queen Marguerite de Valois, the lady who so strangely prances about Paris upon a white palfrey at dead of night in the much-admired controversial opera, who laid the first stone of the great portal in 1610; and, moreover, she gave a sum of three thousand livres to aid the work; but what was this when so much was wanted? All was not complete until 1626, and meanwhile the alms during Lent were appropriated to the building fund. However, a glance at a slab of black marble on the north wall of the nave will tell us that on the 25th February, 1626, the Sunday called Sexagesime, under the pontificate of Urban VIII., and in the reign of Louis XIII. of gracious memory, the church and the high altar were dedicated to the glory of God and of the Virgin Mary by the "révérendissime messire Jean-François de Gondi," archbishop of Paris. Another inscription informs the reader of a wonderful accident which took place on this occasion:—
"Et pendant les cérimonies de la dédicace, devs filles de la paroisse tombèrent dv hauvlt des galleries du cœvr, avec l'appvy et devx des ballvstres, qui fvrent miraculeusement préservées, comme les assistants; ne s'étant rencontré personne sovbs les rvines, vev l'affluence dv pevple qvi assistaient avs dites cérimonies."
Before the Revolution the curé was always one of the regular canons of S. Geneviève. At the end of the 16th century he was assisted in his duties by a community consisting of twenty-four priests. In 1791, when the parishes of the city were reorganized, it was determined to remove the relics, the ornaments, and the monuments of the abbey church to S. Étienne, and to re-name the latter after the maid of Nanterre; but the decree was never carried out. Reforms and resolutions followed each other so rapidly that there was no time to put them into execution.
S. Étienne is a cruciform building, very much leaning to the right (as is so common in old churches), with a nave, two aisles, and nineteen chapels. The transepts scarcely project beyond the nave. The exterior is a mass of elegant ornamentation, and on the north side, under the windows, is a passage which connects the porch of the second bay with the charnier, a sort of cloister, built at the end of the Lady Chapel, exterior to the church. The enclosure within this cloister was formerly the little burial ground; the great cemetery being situated in the square which fronts the church.