There was a great procession organized in 1590, during the siege of Paris by Henri IV. Sermons were preached against "Le Béarnais," the clergy took up arms, and the pope's legate promised the palm of martyrdom to all who fell in the holy cause. The day after the first assault, the procession took place. The principal heroes of the League, after shaving head and face, marched first, vested in "camail and rochet," and bearing sword and "partisan." Then came a number of monks in order of battle, shouldering their axes and arquebuses, "dans un accoutrement moitié religieux et moitié militaire qui avait quelque chose de burlesque et de terrible à la fois. L'Eglise militante chantant des hymnes entremêlées de salves de mousqueterie. Ils défilèrent devant le legat, qui les traita de vrais Machabées; pour que quelques-uns mériterent à la défense des remparts." But it did not save them from starvation.
There was at one time a mass said for the idle at "la plus haute heure du matin. Ainsi qu'en d'aucunes paroisses de Paris, il y a la messe d'unze heures." This was suppressed in 1722 by the Cardinal de Noailles, archbishop of Paris. It was founded by the kindly regular canon, Jean Le Moyne, and its revenues were applied to the bénéficiers machicots and clercs du matins. The machicots were officers of the church of Notre-Dame inferior to the bénéficiers, and superior to the simple wage-singers. The word machicotage "se dit de certaines additions des notes, suivant une merche diatonique avec lesquelles on remplessait dans le plain chant les intervalles du tierces et autres." A number of corona hang from the vault, and in the crossing of the transepts is a huge one recalling that of Hildesheim. When lighted during the services of Holy Week, just giving a gentle diffused glimmer, the effect is very fine; never, indeed, are these great churches so grand as at the evening services. The mass of men sitting in the nave (it is reserved for them), the deep roar of their voices as they sing the Miserere, the intense silence during the eloquent discourses of Père Monsabré or some other Dominican, the procession, dimly lighted, of old canons in every stage of decrepitude, the small boys, followed by a crowd of the most unharmonious specimens of humanity, carrying tapers, are elements forming a picture which is uniquely picturesque. In the old days before the war, the graceful, sweet-expressioned archbishop, bending to this side and that, while the faithful kissed his episcopal ring and received his blessing, added to the beauty of the scene. Had we known what was in store for him, it would have added also to the pathos.
NOTRE-DAME DE L'ASSOMPTION.
This building may be described as a dome and a portico, built from 1670 to 1676, by Charles Erard, director of the Academy of France at Rome, and decorated by Charles de la Fosse. The cupola is graceful, and if it were as well decorated as the Allerheiligen church of the palace at München, or the Apollinarus-Kirche at Remagen on the Rhine, it would be an imposing edifice; as it is, it seems under a cloud, and is only used as a succursale or dépendance of the Madeleine. It belonged to the convent of Augustinian nuns, now turned into barracks, but still showing a few remains of the cloister. It is strange that no one in these days should desire to build a round church under a dome ablaze with mosaic decoration. It might have a sanctuary as at Aix-la-Chapelle for the Divine offices, with a pulpit in the dome, which would have the advantage of being placed so that all the congregation could see the preacher. I am thinking at this moment of the beautiful Russian church in Paris, which is gorgeous with colour and gilding. Such a building upon a large scale, built in the sumptuous style of the Brompton Oratory, of marbles and mosaic, and in the form of the church of the Assumption, would be a refreshing change from red brick and Doulton tiles, which seem to be inseparately mixed up with elaborate ritual, and are as infallibly correct as clothing for an Anglo-Catholic service as is chocolate colour for dressing up pseudo-Grecian temples surmounted by pepper-box turrets, which delighted the architects at the beginning of this styleless century.
NOTRE-DAME DE L'ABBAYE AUX BOIS.
If I say that the little church and cloister, which are all that remain of a monastery of Cistercian nuns, built in 1718, are situated in the Rue de Sèvres, hard by the Bon Marché, my readers will immediately picture their whereabouts. At the beginning of this century, the Abbaye became a genteel boarding-house for fashionable ladies who played at being weary of the world; but, although they retired into a monastic building, their monde followed them; and thus we find Madame Recamier receiving her admirers in her cloistered salon, and listening to their philosophical sophistries while she elegantly reclines upon a satin sofa with straight legs and curling arms.
NOTRE-DAME DES BLANCS-MANTEAUX.
When the white-mantled religious, the servants of Mary, came to Paris about the year 1258, they set up housekeeping in the street which is now named after them, the Rue des Blancs-Manteaux. Everyone who has been to Florence knows the chapel of the Annunziata, where during mass one day, the general of the Servites, Filippo Benozzi, saw a vision of the Virgin sitting in a chariot, and heard her voice calling upon him to draw near, and join himself to her servants, who, some fifteen years earlier, had banded themselves together. There were seven of them, all of noble family, and they gained their name from their especial devotion to the Virgin. As they wandered out to the church of the Annunciation to sing their Angelus, the women and children used to point at them and cry out, "Guardate i Servi di Maria"; and so, when they formed themselves into a community, they became known as the "Servi" or "Serviti." Benozzi was a medicine man of benevolent disposition, who, tired of witnessing suffering (perhaps of operations performed without anæsthetics), gave up his work, and retired, like another S. Benedict, to Monte Senario. His power in smoothing down the ruffled-up backs of the Tuscans in their many family squabbles was so great that he became a renowned moral healer; and in 1285, when he died, his order was flourishing all over Italy and France. It was soon after his beatification, about 1671, that Andrea del Sarto was called upon to decorate part of the cloisters of the Annunziata; and, as a result, we have the lovely Madonna del Sacco. At the end of the 13th century the hermits of Saint-Guillaume replaced the Servites at the monastery of the Blancs-Manteaux, and in 1618 the house was united to the Reformed Benedictines who erected a new church. The habit of the monks was then changed to black, but as the name of Blancs-Manteaux was still retained, the people called the fathers les mal nommés. The conventual buildings are now occupied by the Mont-de-Piété, another kind of service of the poor, in the shape of official and honest pawnbroking. If anyone wishes to study character, let him go into the great hall, and look at those rows and rows of physiognomies sitting upon the benches awaiting their turn to be served. Young, old, poor, and, apparently, rich, all go there for loans upon their goods; and you may pile upon the mountain anything you like, from a bundle of rags to a diamond butterfly.