In my saunterings I frequently lingered before the tower of St. Jacques de la Boucherie, the highest in Paris, and the most perfect specimen of Gothic architecture. The remainder of the church was demolished at the Revolution. The tower was saved by the artifice of an architect, who besought the crowd to imitate the enlightened English revolutionists, who destroyed their churches, but preserved the towers to be converted into shot-houses! In this church crowds used to assemble to hear Bourdaloue thunder, as Madame de Sévigné expresses it. I fancy I can hear that uncompromising preacher ringing out like a trump in the presence of the Great Monarch, "Thou art the man!" This exclamation should have appealed to the heart of the people, and saved the church he loved from profanation.
This church was built by the alms of pious people. Nicholas Flamel built the portal in 1388, which he covered with devout images and devices, which were regarded, even by the antiquaries of the last century, as symbols of alchemy. This Flamel was a benefactor to many churches and hospitals of Paris, which he took pleasure in adorning with carvings in which he made all things tributary, as it were, to the worship of God. At first a simple scrivener, he became painter, architect, chemist, philosopher, and poet. He certainly had the fancy of a poet, and wrote in durable materials. He left by his will nineteen chalices of silver gilt to as many churches.
These churches and religious houses are all connected with the history of the city. Paris owed its extension on the north side of the Seine to the school in the Abbey of St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, which was famous at an early age. There were four great abbeys around Paris in the time of the third dynasty—St. Lawrence, St. Genevieve, St. Germain de l'Auxerrois, and St. Germain des Près. These were surrounded by their dependencies, forming villages which gradually extended till they united to enclose the city, then chiefly confined to the island. The poor loved to live near these abbeys. St. Germain des Près, besides providing for the poor in general, used privately to support several destitute families who were ashamed of their poverty. The old abbots of this monastery were both lords spiritual and temporal in the suburbs on that side of the city. This abbey was a monument of repentance. Digby says when it was rebuilt in the year 1000 the great tower and the portals were left as before. The statues of eight kings stood at the entrance, four on the right hand and four on the left. One of them held a scroll on which was written the tragical name of Clodomir. And another, with no beatific circle around his head, held an open tablet on which were the first and last letters of the name Clotaire. These were the statues of the murderer and his victim.
The square tower of the monastery, built in the time of Charlemagne, contributed greatly to the defence of the house against the Normans. A stout old monk, Abbon, conducted the defence, and proved himself on this occasion a valiant defender of the walls of Zion. Perhaps it was his skilful hand that wrote an Homeric poem on the siege of Paris by the Normans in the year 885. If not by him, it was by a monk of a similar name.
The Pré aux Clercs, now the Faubourg St. Germain, took its name from being a place of recreation for the students of this abbey. One of the scholars, Sylvester de Sacy, so learned in the Semitic languages, ascribed the bent of his mind to the aid and encouragement given him by one of the monks who took his constitutional in the abbey gardens at the same time as the boy, then only twelve years old.
The library belonging to this abbey was celebrated in the middle ages, and there were monks of literary eminence in the house. Dacherius was the librarian when he composed his Spicilegium. Usuard compiled a martyrology. They had a printing press set up immediately after the invention of printing, which gives one a favorable idea of their mental activity. Most of these old monastic libraries were accessible to all; that of the Abbey of St. Victor was open to the public three days in the week; and there were public libraries attached to some of the parish churches. In the time of Charles V., rightly named the Wise, he ordered the Royal Library of Paris to be illuminated with thirty portable lamps, and that a silver one should be suspended in the centre for the benefit of those students who prolonged their researches into the night. The numerous collections of books in Paris made that city very attractive to certain minds even in the middle ages. Richard de Bury, Bishop of Durham, in England, who established the first public library in that country, used to resort to Paris for fresh supplies. "O blessed God of gods in Sion!" he exclaims, "what a flood of pleasure rejoices our heart whenever we are at liberty to visit Paris, that paradise of the world, where the days always seem too short and too few through the immensity of our love! There are libraries more redolent of delight than all the shops of aromatics; there are the flowering meadows of all volumes that can be found anywhere. There, indeed, untying our purse-strings, and opening our treasures, we disperse money with a joyful heart (evidently the truth, for he paid the Abbot of St. Albans fifty pounds weight of silver for thirty or forty volumes), and ransom with dirt books that are beyond all price. But lo! how good and pleasant a thing it is to gather together in one place the arms of clerical warfare, that there may be a supply of them for us to use in the wars against heretics, should they ever rise up against us!"
What would this book-loving prelate have done had he foreseen that the church would one day be accused of being a foe to progress and to the diffusion of knowledge! This bishop, who lived in the thirteenth century, was the Chancellor and High Treasurer of England, and celebrated for his love and encouragement of literature. He had libraries in all his palaces, and the apartment he commonly occupied was so crammed with books that he was almost inaccessible. He was said to breathe books, so fond was he of being among them. None but a genuine lover of books would give such amusing directions for their preservation. "Not only do we serve God," says he, "by preparing new books, but also by preserving and treating with great care those we have already. Truly, after the vestments and vessels dedicated to our Lord's body, sacred books deserve to be treated with most reverence by clerks. In opening and shutting books, they should avoid all abruptness, not too hastily loosing the clasps, nor failing to shut them when they have finished reading, for it is far more important to preserve a book than a shoe." He then goes on to speak of soiling books; of marking passages with the finger-nails, "like those of a giant;" of swelling the junctures of the binding with straws or flowers; and of eating over them, leaving the fragments in the book, as if the reader had no bag for alms. Waxing warm over the idea, he wishes such persons might have to sit over leather with a shoemaker! And then there are impudent youths, who presume to fill up the broad margins with their unchastened pens, noting down whatever frivolous thing occurs to their imagination! And "there are some thieves, too, who cut out leaves or letters, which kind of sacrilege ought to be prohibited under the penalty of anathema." The bishop had evidently had some sad experience with his cherished tomes. His testimony respecting the appreciation of books by the monks of his time is valuable. Remember the age, reader—that period of deepest darkness just before the dawn! "The monks who are so venerable," says he in his Philobiblion, "are accustomed to be solicitous in regard to books, and to be delighted in their company, as with all riches, and thence it is that we find in most monasteries such splendid treasures of erudition, giving a delectable light to the path of laics. Oh! that devout labor of their hands in writing books; how preferable to all georgic care! All things else fail with time. Saturn ceases not to devour his offspring, for oblivion covereth the glory of the world. But God hath provided a remedy for us in books, without which all that was ever great would have been without memory. Without shame we may lay bare to books the poverty of human ignorance. They are the masters who instruct us without rods, without anger, and without money. (The bishop had evidently forgotten those fifty pounds of silver, and many more besides!) O books! alone liberal and making liberal, who give to all, and seek to emancipate all who serve you. You are the tree of life and the river of Paradise, with which the human intelligence is irrigated and made fruitful."
But I did not always linger at the doors of churches, studying the walls and pondering on their history. The true Catholic knows that these magnificent churches are only vast shrines enclosing the great Object of his adoration and love. M. Olier, when travelling, never saw the spire of a church in the distance without calling upon all with him to repeat the Tantum Ergo. He used to say: "When I see a place where my Master reposes, I have a feeling of unutterable joy." This feeling comes over every one at the first glimpse of that undying lamp before the tabernacle, "that small flame which rises and falls like a dying pulse, flickering up and down, emblematic of our lives, which even now thus wastes and wanes."
The very first act on stepping into a church completely changes the current of one's thoughts. The holy water, the sign of the cross, dispel the remembrance of material things and recall devout thoughts of the Passion.