CHAPTER XVII. LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIEVE

RUE DE LA MONTAGNE STE-GENEVIEVE, leading to the hill-top from Boulevard St-Germain, went in twelfth-century days by the unsesthetic name Rue des Boucheries. Nearly every wall, every stone is ancient. In past ages three colleges at different positions stood on its incline. The sign at No. 40 dates from the time of the Directoire. A statuette of the saint there in Revolution days was labelled, "A la ci-devant Genevieve; Rendez-vous des Sans-Culottes." And now we have before us the beautiful old church St-Etienne-du-Mont. The place, in very early times a graveyard, was laid out as a square in the fourteenth century and the church burial ground was on the north-western side. The present church dates as a. whole from the early years of the seventeenth century, built on the site of a thirteenth-century chapel dedicated to St-Etienne. The abside and the choir were built in early sixteenth-century years, close up against the old basilic of the abbey Ste-Gene-vieve. Among the people the church is still often referred to as l'Eglise Ste-Genevieve, chiefly, no doubt, because the tomb of the patron saint of Paris is there. The original chasse—a richly jewel-studded shrine— was destroyed at the Revolution, melted down, its gems confiscated, the bones of the Saint burnt.

 

The stone coffin cast aside as valueless was recovered, filled with such relics of Ste-Geneviève as could be collected from far and near, and is now in the sumptuous shrine to which pilgrimages are continually made. A smaller châsse is solemnly carried round the aisles of the church each year during the "neuvaine" following January 3rd, the revered Saint's fête day, when services are held all day long, while on the place without a religious fair goes on ... souvenirs of Ste-Geneviève and objects of piety of every description are offered for sale on the stalls set up upon the place from end to end. The church, showing three distinct styles of architecture, Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance, is especially remarkable for its rood-screen—the only one left in a Paris church. It is rich, too, in exquisite stained glass, beautiful woodwork, fine statuary. We see inscriptions and epitaphs referring to Pascal, Rollin and many other men of note, buried in the church crypt or in the graveyard of past days.

The Panthéon, the most conspicuous if not the most ancient or most seductive building of this hill-top, was begun as a new church Ste-Geneviève. Louis XV, lying dangerously ill at Metz, made a vow to build on his recovery a church dedicated to the patron saint of Paris. It was not begun till 1755, not solidly constructed then; slips followed the erection of its walls, threatening collapse, and Soufflot, the architect, died of grief thereat. The catastrophe feared did not happen; the building was consolidated. Instead, however, of remaining a church it was declared, in the Revolutionary year 1791, the Panthéon, with the inscription, "Aux Grands Hommes de France, la Patrie reconnaissante." Napoleon restored it to the ecclesiastical authorities at the Concordat. In 1830 it became again the Panthéon; was once more a church in 1851—then the Panthéon for good—so far—in 1885, when the body of Victor Hugo was carried there in great state. Its façade is copied from the Panthéon of Agrippa at Rome. It is noted for its frescoes illustrative of the life of Ste-Geneviève, by Gros, Chavannes, Laurens and other nineteenth-century artists. Rodin's "Penseur" below the peristyle was put there in 1906.

 

The Faculté de Droit, No. 10, is Souffiot's work (17721823). The Bibliothèque Ste-Geneviève, quite modern (1884), covers the site of the demolished Collège Montaigu, founded in 1314. Ignatius Loyola, Erasmus and Calvin were pupils there. All the surrounding streets stretch along the site of ancient buildings, convents, monasteries, etc., swept away but leaving here and there interesting traces. In Rue Lhomond débris of the potteries once there have been unearthed. Michelet lived for a time at the ancient hôtel de Flavacourt. No. 10, incorporated later in the École Ste-Geneviève, of which the chief entrance door is a vestige of the hôtel de Juigné, was the private abode of the Archbishop of Paris in preRevolution days. Another part of the school was the home of Abbé Edgeworth, confessor to Louis XVI in his last days. Yet another was the Séminaire des Anglais, founded under Louis XIV. We find a fine façade and balconies in the courtyard at No. 29, once the abode of a religious community, now the lay "Institution Lhomond."

The Séminaire des Missions des Colonies Françaises at No. 30 dates from the time of Louis XIV. Fine staircase and chapel. The cellars of the modern houses from No. 48 to No. 54 are those of the convent which erewhile stood above them.

In Rue des Irlandais we see the college founded in 1755 for Irish, Scottish and English priest-students. In Rue Rataud, once Rue des Vignes, which led to a cemetery for persons who had died of the plague, is, at No. 3, the orphanage of l'Enfant Jésus, formerly "Les Cent Filles," where the duchesse d'Angoulême, daughter of Louis XVI, had fifty young orphan girls educated yearly at her own expense.

Contents