Dear Reader,
Today I begin this journey, and perhaps yours as well, with an image to inspire us to travel through time and space in search of links between people, places, and dates, by way of historical and legendary fragments. Just as this Viking ship looks both forwards and backwards, we will explore the past without losing sight of the present. The Vikings are often seen as medieval bandits, traveling at warp speed in their graceful and powerful ships across the seas and up rivers to descend on prey throughout the western world, but as you might have guessed, there are always two sides—or many more!—to the story. During their peregrinations, the Vikings also created towns and future cities and opened up lines of trade. And indeed one of our first subjects, King Edward the Confessor, proudly counted them among his Norman relatives.
Deciding on my choices for this first week of January was much easier that I thought. Three superstars of medieval history jumped off the pages: Saint Geneviève, patron saint of Paris, born c. 420 (January 3), Edward the Confessor, King of England from 1042 to 1066 (January 5), and Simeon Stylites (January 5). Geneviève was a fifth-century superhero with endearing human frailties who saved her city from destruction and whose church became a seat of the avant-garde, and Edward…well, Edward is remembered for being ridiculously pious; apparently he never consummated his marriage, but he was responsible for no mean feat: putting Westminster Abbey on the map. The third member of this trio, Simeon Stylites was a major nutcase who ostensibly spent thirty-seven years living atop a pillar near Aleppo in the Middle East. All three had a significant influence on building projects.
Geneviève influenced the urban and cultural development of Paris, and we could even say that she launched the Avant Garde Think Tank of the Left Bank. She became a saint in her lifetime for her miraculous and heroic deeds and was the influencer of the first important royal family of France. Her fame began in childhood with recognition of her healing powers, but she, like the Vikings, had some mischief in her blood. It’s reported that she blinded her mother as revenge for some reprimand, repented and then restored her mother’s sight with yet another miracle. I do not condone these theatrics in the least; they run too close to Trump’s nasty tendency to manipulate his admirers, and I leave the question of miracles to others, but there is no question that this woman exercised a great influence over the city of Paris. Her healing powers were invoked repeatedly long after her death c.500 CE, even into the nineteenth century, when her relics were carried through Parisian streets to ward off plague and illness.
I prefer to appreciate her for her reputed bravery in rallying the Parisians to resist their invaders, and in her ability to convince King Clovis to build a basilica which became an important pilgrimage site immediately, and later, a medieval think tank. Her bravery was proven in 451 when Attila the Hun threatened to attack Paris during his murderous sweep through Europe. It was Geneviève who convinced the terrified Parisians to stay and fight. Attila abandoned his attack plan, and Geneviève turned her attention to a different sort of invasion from the paparazzi. About thirty years later a tribe of Franks threatened the city, and this time she was not so successful. King Childeric and his son Clovis had arrived in Paris to stay, launch the Merovingian lineage of royalty, and give the country that we know as France its name. Geneviève had a lucky star however, or at least a persuasive personality, as she became close friends with King Clovis and his wife Clotilde, and in cahoots with Clotilde converted Clovis to Christianity and convinced him to build one of the first basilicas in Paris, dedicated to the apostles Peter and Paul. In the early sixth century all three celebrities—the saint and the royal couple—were buried here, and in the ninth century the church became known as that of Saint Geneviève, recognizing the significance of the steady stream of pilgrims devoted to her life and to her status as the patron saint of Paris.
This church was located on the mons lucoticius, a Roman sacred site (associated with the goddess of dawn and childbirth) on a hill south of the Seine midway between the sites of the Roman amphitheater and the forum. You can see fragments of Roman work today (or in the future when museums open again!) in the Musée Cluny in Paris (https://www.musee-moyenage.fr/). The left bank of the Seine was favored for development as it was less swampy than the right bank and contained deposits of limestone that offered good building material. The church building is only known through archaeological excavations and through descriptions in the Vita of Saint Geneviève, which show the classic form of an early basilica: a single nave with painted narrative panels, vaulted side aisles, an apse with odd-shaped chapels that were probably added over time, a wooden roof with a flat ceiling, and lots of Merovingians safely stashed in their sarcophagi under the floor. It seems that like all wise church builders, Clovis used necessity to generate political and religious authority; in re-purposing columns and other useful materials from nearby Roman monuments. By the way, don’t be misled by the “Tower of Clovis,” which still exists and was once attached to Geneviève’s church, but was in fact built a few hundred years after Clovis died.
In the case of the church of Saint Geneviève, the building project, which has long been subsumed by other buildings, is less important than the legacy of the saint, which ensured a status to an entire neighborhood and a connection to other critical sites in the city. In the early Middle Ages Geneviève’s church was associated with an abbey, which became an important center of progressive learning when Peter Abelard (1079-1142) began teaching there, preferring it to the more conservative school at Notre Dame on the Ile. Abelard is known for his brilliant intellect which challenged church authorities and ensured his popularity as a teacher, his passionate love affair with his student Héloise, his punishment by castration, and their lifelong correspondence. The church of Geneviève became the site of a perfect storm of celebrity: a hilltop site where the first King of France was buried along with his wife and the patron saint of Paris, and a site favored by a famous risk-taker.
One could say that The Left Bank, later known as the hangout for intellectual giants like Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, gained its intellectual authority thanks to Geneviève. And this idea is reflected also in another building, the only library to have survived the French Revolution, the Bibliothèque de Sainte-Geneviève. Located near the church, this library, designed by the architect Henri Labrouste and inaugurated in 1851, was a daring experiment with a then new material, cast iron, which allowed for a lightweight, skeletal structure supporting large domes and vaults of glass and allowing light to flood in on the readers below. Illuminated thought. Abelard would have approved.
Before we leave Geneviève, let us also appreciate her influence on two other medieval urban magnets in Paris, places made important by human movement; by pilgrimage. Just as certain parts of Disney World become preferred destinations and inform the routes taken by visitors, sites associated with celebrity saints drew visitors in sixth-century Paris. Two other saints who left their mark on the city are Denis, martyred on Montmartre (guess how it got its name!), and Germain, the first bishop. Denis, whose story will be told in October, lived about 200 years before Geneviève, and she urged Clovis to create a pilgrimage site for him as well, located at the site of his burial about 7 kilometers due north of her basilica. The third site that enjoyed status as part of this triangle was created in the sixth century by the son of Clovis, Childeric, at the request of the bishop of Paris, Germain. It was also on the left bank not far from Geneviève’s church, and became known as Saint-Germain-des-Prés (the word prés signifies “field”). Germain’s feast day is in May, so we’ll come back to him, but for the moment, know that these three sites imposed a sort of sacred triangle of influence on the nascent urban form of Paris through their saints: Saint Geneviève for her role as patroness of Paris, Saint Denis for his preaching and dramatic martyrdom, and Saint Germain for his power which turned his church into a literal treasury glittering with gold.
Part II of this first two weeks’ installment, soon to be published, will concern Edward the Confessor, a medieval Mike Pence, and his legacy at Westminster Abbey.
References for Part I
Druon, Maurice. Paris de César à Saint Louis. Paris: Hachette, 1964.
Hillairet, Jacques. Connaissance du Vieux Paris. Paris: Editions Gonthier, 1954.
Knowles, David. The Evolution of Medieval Thought. New York: Vintage Books, 1962.
Middleditch, Michael. The Paris Mapguide: The Essential Guide to La Vie Parisienne. London: Penguin, 1998.
Millet, Marietta S. Light Revealing Architecture. New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1996.