Today I'm taking you on a tour of The Basilique de St-Denis also known as the The Cathedral Basilica of Saint Denis. I have been here many times and try to visit it every time I'm in Paris. It is a large medieval Gothic abbey church in the commune of Saint-Denis, now a northern suburb of Paris. Founded in the 7th century by Dagobert I on the burial place of Saint Denis, a patron saint of France, the church became a place of pilgrimage and the burial place of the French Kings and family, nearly every king from the 10th to the 18th centuries being buried there, as well as many from the previous centuries. (It was not used for the coronations of kings, this role being designated to the Cathedral of Reims; however, queens were commonly crowned there.)
Opposing the destruction of the royal tombs of the French monarchy in the Church of Saint Denis by
Alexandre Lenoir 1761-1839 The story of St Denis is very interesting! According to legend, St Denis was the first bishop of Paris. Following his decapitation on the Hill of Montmartre in Paris, The headless Denis supposedly pick up & carried his head to the site of the current church, thereby indicating where he wanted to be buried. A martyrium was subsequently erected on the site. There Dagobert I, king of the Franks (reigned 628 to 637), founded the Abbey of Saint Denis, a Benedictine monastery. Dagobert also commissioned a new shrine to house the saint's remains, which was created by his chief councillor, Eligius, a goldsmith by training. It was described in an early vita of Saint Eligius:
Above all, Eligius fabricated a mausoleum for the holy martyr Denis in the city of Paris with a wonderful marble ciborium over it marvelously decorated with gold and gems. He composed a crest [at the top of a tomb] and a magnificent frontal and surrounded the throne of the altar with golden axes in a circle. He placed golden apples there, round and jeweled. He made a pulpit and a gate of silver and a roof for the throne of the altar on silver axes. He made a covering in the place before the tomb and fabricated an outside altar at the feet of the holy martyr. So much industry did he lavish there, at the king's request, and poured out so much that scarcely a single ornament was left in Gaul and it is the greatest wonder of all to this very day.
None of this work survives today.
During the French Revolution, these Royal tombs were opened by workers under orders from revolutionary officials. The bodies were removed and dumped in two large pits nearby and dissolved with lime.
In 1817 the mass graves containing all the Royal remains were opened, but it was impossible to distinguish any one from the collection of bones. The remains were therefore placed in an ossuary in the crypt of the church, behind two marble plates with the names of the hundreds of members of the succeeding French dynasties that were interred in the church duly recorded.
The bodies of the beheaded King Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette of Austria, and his sister Madame Élisabeth were not initially buried in Saint-Denis, but rather in the churchyard of the Madeleine, where they were covered with quicklime.
During Napoleon's exile in Elba, the restored Bourbons ordered a search for the corpses of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The few remains, a few bones that were presumably the king's and a clump of grayish matter containing a lady's garter discovered in a unmarked grave believed to be that of Marie Antoinette, were found on January 21, 1815, brought to Saint-Denis and buried in the crypt. There will be more on this in the second part of the tour.
Tombs of Henry II of France and his wife Catherine de' Medici.
Catherine de' Medici
Tombs of Henry II of France and his wife Catherine de' Medici.
Henry II of France
Detail of the Tomb of Louis II and Anne of Brittany
Marie Antoinette
Marie Antoinette's Tomb
Marie Antoinette's Tomb
Royal hearts
Madame Adélaïde & Madame Victoire both daughters of King Louis XV of France, and a great influence on the early court life of Marie Antoinette at Versailles are interred in theses wooden coffins
The coffins of royal family members that died between 1815 and 1830 were also placed in the vaults.
Madame Adélaïde & Madame Victoire both daughters of King Louis XV of France, and a great influence on the early court life of Marie Antoinette at Versailles are interred in theses wooden coffins
The coffins of royal family members that died between 1815 and 1830 were also placed in the vaults.
Madame Adélaïde with a medal showing her parents and the then king her nephew King Louis XVI
A portrait of Marie Louise Thérèse Victoire of France
Marie Antoinette's son Charles Louis
Louis Charles de France, future Louis XVII (1785-1795), Duke of Normandy, was the second son of Marie Antoinette and Louis XVI and he became dauphin when his older brother Louis Joseph (1781-1789) died. Called by his mother with love "Chou d' amour", he was shut with the royal family in the Temple's tower and he was entrusted to Simon, a parisian shoemaker. Louis Charles died in prison
In 2004 the mummified heart of the Dauphin, the boy that would have been Louis XVII, was sealed into the wall of the crypt.
The crystal encased heart of Louis XVII, son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. When the child died in Paris’s Temple Prison after the Revolution the doctor who performed the autopsy secretly carved out his heart, in keeping with a tradition of preserving royal hearts separate from their bodies. He then smuggled it away from Paris in a handkercheif. The doctor kept the heart as a souvenir for years until it was stolen by a student of his. On his deathbed, the student repented and asked his wife to return the heart to the Bourbon family. After many attempts, the heart was finally accepted by the Spanish branch of the Bourbon family. In 1975 the heart was given to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, home of the royal Bourbon crypt but was recognized only as the heart of boy who died during the Revolution. In 2004 the heart was officially recognized as the heart of the “lost dauphin” after DNA testing and interred near the graves of the overthrown monarchs, over 200 years later.
Marie Antoinette's son the Dauphine Louis-Joseph
Louis-Joseph (1781-1789)
King Louis XVIII, upon his death in 1824, was buried in the center of the crypt, near the graves of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.
The Protestant Prince who brought peace to France after the bloody civil wars of the 1500's, Henri IV (13 Kb), married the last surviving child of Henri II and Catherine de Médicis, Marquerite de Valois ("Queen Margot") and converted to Catholicism declaring the "Paris is well worth a mass" ("Paris vaut bien une messe"), thus becoming the founder of the Boubon dynasty. A political genius, it is he coined the expression "a chicken every pot" (" une poule au pot tous les dimanches") and who proclamed the famous Edict of Nantes -- the first declaration of religious tolerance. It was with his second wife, Marie de Médicis, that the "Good King Henry" would father Louis XIII who would work with Richelieu to establish the tools with which the great Louis XIV create a system of absolute monarchy. Ironically, the grandson of the Protestant Prince would revoke the Edict of Nantes in 1685, the ending the experiment in religious freedom.
Tomb of the Sun king Louis XIV
Tomb of the Sun king Louis XIV
The Sun king Louis XIV
Tomb of the Sun king Louis XIV
Base of Tomb of François II
The boy King François II
A Column surrounded by mourning boys commemorating the memory of the boy king, François II, son of Cathérine de’ Medici and adolescent husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. His parents, Henri II and Cathérine lie nearby in their sumptuous tomb:
A Column surrounded by mourning boys commemorating the memory of the boy king, François II, son of Cathérine de’ Medici and adolescent husband of Mary, Queen of Scots. His parents, Henri II and Cathérine lie nearby in their sumptuous tomb:
The urn here holds the heart of the great Renaissance king and builder François Ier, easily identifiable from the letter "F" that marks so many of his works.
François I
A marble statue of a kneeling Louis XVI, for the église de Saint-Denis : Praying Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI (commissioned by Louis XVIII in 1816 from Edme Gaulle and Pierre Petitot, realised in 1830).
A marble statue of a kneeling Louis XVI, for the église de Saint-Denis : Praying Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI (commissioned by Louis XVIII in 1816 from Edme Gaulle and Pierre Petitot, realised in 1830).
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I loved St. Denis, when I visited. Many of the tombs are quite flashy; quite remarkable works of art, many of them.
ReplyDeleteI always thought it sad that they didn't arrange for better sculptors to create the effigies of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. Rather awkward, both. It's a fairly good likeness of the queen, but what is she wearing?! I guess they thought she should be wearing something more stylish and appropriate to the time of the carving. (It's like that lovely portrait of Mesdames Victoire and Adélaïde's long dead sister, Louise-Elisabeth, painted by Labille-Guiard: she passed in 1759, and reappeared in le bon ton of thirty years later!)
It is perhaps indelicate to mention, but I also think her breasts look quite odd. And the left one looks particularly discolored and shiny - I wonder if, over the years, people thought it good luck to "fondle" the poor dear? Hmmm....
Oh to get to go some day, I am afraid I might not ever make it. Thanks for sharing your visit, it did get me a little closer in spirit. Richard from My Old Historic House.
ReplyDeleteStephilius thanks for your comment. Yes the costume that Marie Antoinette is wearing is circa 1816 when the statue was first commissioned. It was not completed and delivered until 1830 and by that time the dress was out of fashion. Plus the hair of Marie Antoinette is wrong. Over the years people have rubbed on the statues breast. Hi Richard you will make it to France one day. I have not been in some time as the prices have gone up over the last 4 years. i wish I could be there now but I will live France thru my photo's
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