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.
NOTRE-DAME DES CHAMPS
Legendary history records an assemblage of the first Christians of Lutetia in the fields where now runs the Rue S. Jacques, listening to the preaching of S. Denis, and strengthening themselves against the persecution which loomed in the distance. And legend further relates that a chapel was built upon this spot. But leaving the realms of tradition, we find an authentic account of a church in the 8th century which, in the next hundred years, was served by the Benedictine monks of Marmoutier. This remained the headquarters of a priory for about six hundred years. In 1604, Cardinal Bérulle introduced the Carmelite order as reformed by S. Theresa, and the nuns began to rebuild. The church they left intact with its 13th century porch, and its great statues of S. Denis, Moses, Aaron, David, and Solomon. This building disappeared, and a modern one arose in its stead, more to the West; but the crypt is supposed to be under the level of the street; and according to the abbé Lebœuf, a second subterraneous burial-ground of Gallo-Roman origin was discovered still lower down, with fragments of tombstones, slabs, pottery, and the like. The present church contains a few débris of its former grandeur, a statue by Sarazin, of Cardinal de Bérulle, being the principal one.
The monastery was celebrated, during the 17th century, as the asylum of many distinguished ladies who sought a refuge from their troubles; amongst others, of the blessed Sœur Louise de la Miséricorde, who died there in 1710, in the odour of sanctity. In her mundane career this Madeleine da la Cour was Mdlle. de la Vallière, and she is said to have posed to Le Brun for his terrible picture of La Madeleine pénitente renonce à toutes les vanités de la vie, which was painted for M. de Camus as an adornment of this Carmelite church. It is now in the Louvre, which it in nowise adorns. Lebrun, as a decorative artist, painting allegories and battles, is bearable; but his religious pictures are only gross exaggerations of the Italian Eclectics. This Madeleine de la Vallière is in a tortuous state of agony at the thought of the vanities she enjoyed. With eyes turned up, with her flowing locks, and swathed in rich satin garments, which are blown by a gust of wind coming in at the open casement on the top of a cloud, she looks thunder-struck; it is astonishment at the discovery of her sinfulness, revealed by the heavens opening, and the Divine voice addressing her. Surely the moderns, the Bérauds, the Lhermites, the Dagnan-Bouverets, Uhde, Hitchcock, Pierce, and their followers, have far more religious feeling, although they clothe their personages as Parisian workpeople, and paint their Madeleines, like Henner, in the pastures (apparently) of the Bois de Boulogne – backgrounds, considering the subject, not altogether inappropriate.
NOTRE-DAME DE LORETTE
An utterly uninteresting exterior encloses some good mural paintings by Orsel, Périn, and Roger. The church was completed in 1836 by Lebas, and were the weather always bright, the interior would not fail to impress the visitor; but it is too dark for a Northern clime, and it is therefore difficult fully to appreciate the frescoes. That over the altar is by Picot; the subjects from the life of the Virgin are by Dubois, Langlois, Vinchon, and Hesse; the choir is the work of Delorme; the Presentation in the Temple, and Christ disputing with the Doctors, are by Heim and Drolling. They are all inspired by a reverent feeling for the subjects, and are resplendent with gold.
NOTRE-DAME DES VICTOIRES
Louis XIII. laid the first stone of this church in 1629, and dedicated it to Our Lady of Victory, in memory of the famous battle of La Rochelle. It was part of the convent of barefooted Augustins, who were nicknamed the Little Fathers, by Henri IV., on account of the diminutive stature of some of the friars, and consequently the church was as often called Notre-Dame des Petits Pères as Notre-Dame des Victoires. Pierre Lemut was its original architect; and before it was completed, in 1740, by Cartaud, two other architects, Libéral Bruant and Gabriel Leduc, lent their aid. The cupola is decorated with an Assumption; pictures by Vanloo adorn the choir, and other chapels contain some by Perrault. Those by Vanloo represent the thanksgiving of the King and the Cardinal for the mighty victory aforesaid, the taking of La Rochelle. But the interest of, or the objections to, the church, according to the point of view from which we start, consists in the innumerable ex-voto tablets which cover the walls, and proclaim the answers to prayers by mothers, wives, husbands, sons, fathers, and daughters. They are emblems of the faith which saves. But would not the same earnest prayers, put up on other spots, produce the same results? Is it not a narrow notion that we are more likely to be heard in the Place des Victoires than in the Halles? Such is not the view of the dévots and dévotes, as the statue of the Virgin proclaims, for it is hung all over with costly jewels and ornaments; and whatever time of the day we may enter the church, we find it almost filled with troubled souls who come to gain an indulgence at its privileged altars, which are to those of a different sort of mind examples of what to avoid. For those persons having leanings to superstition, let me commend this church as an antidote; to others, it is neither æsthetically interesting nor, from a religious point of view, particularly edifying. To musicians it has one attraction, as being the burial-place of Jean-Baptiste Lulli, the charming fiddler, who died in 1687, and whose bronze statue by Cotton is in the transept.
L'ORATOIRE
Built for the Oratorians, this elegant circular church is now given over to Protestant gloom of the least decorative order. It was constructed by François Mansard, and dedicated to Notre-Dame-des-Anges in 1634, upon the site, some authorities say, of the Hôtel of Gabrielle d'Estrèes; it may therefore be said to have passed from the good Gabrielle, through the better fathers, to the best Protestants; or, contrariwise, from the bad Demoiselle to the worse Catholics, and, worst of all, Calvinists. However, now all is calm, and passions have subsided; and a fine statue of Admiral Coligny is fixed to its wall, facing the scene of his murder on that fearful feast of bloodshed which S. Bartholemew must have been scandalized to find attached to his name.
SAINT-PAUL-SAINT-LOUIS
In the Rue Saint-Antoine is the old church of the Jesuits, gorgeous in marbles, gilding and stucco, as is the wont of the architects employed by those wary fathers. It was built from the designs of François Derraud from 1627-41. The remains of the conventual buildings are now occupied by the Collège Charlemagne. The expenses of the building were defrayed by Louis XIII. and Richelieu, who celebrated his maiden mass there. It was the second cupola erected in Paris, the first being that belonging to the Carmelite church. It is Italian in style, the façade being very similar to that of S. Gervais, recalling the Gesu and S. Ignacius at Rome, and is adorned with statues of S. Louis, by Lequesne; of S. Catherine, by Auguste Préault; and of S. Anne, by Etex. Bourdaloue and archbishop Huet of Avranches are buried there, and in a crypt below lie the Jesuits who have died in the convent from its foundation until the suppression of the order. The numerous monuments were swept away at the Revolution: a rich sculptured coffer for the heart of Louis XIII., and another by Coustou le jeune, containing Louis XIV.'s heart. The tabernacle was of silver gilt, but it is no more. The only contents now of any interest are a picture representing the abbey of Longchamps, attributed to Philippe de Champaigne, and a fine work by Delacroix, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane. Although his first known picture, it is an example of his splendid colouring and grand composition. Victor Hugo's first child was born in the parish, and baptized at S. Paul's, and to commemorate the event the poet presented two holy-water stoops, in the shape of shells, very beautiful in design.
SAINT-PHILIPPE DU ROULE
"This church presents you with a single insulated row of fluted Ionic pillars, on each side of the nave; very airy, yet consequential, and even imposing. It is much to my taste, and I wish such a plan were more generally adopted in the interiors of Grecian-constructed churches. The choir, the altar … the whole is extremely simple and elegant. Nor must the roof be omitted to be particularly mentioned. It is an arch constructed of wood, upon a plan originally invented by Philibert Delorme – so well known in the annals of art in the sixteenth century. The whole is painted in stone-colour, and may deceive the most experienced eye. This beautiful church was built after the designs of Chalgrin, about the year 1700, and is considered to be a purer resemblance of the antique than any other in Paris. Perhaps the principal front may be thought to be too close or servile a copy. It was erected upon the site of an ancient Gothic chapel, of which latter the author of the three quarto volumes of Parisian topography has given a vignette from the only known design of it, in aquatint, but very indifferent. This church, well worth your examination, is situated in a quarter rarely visited by our countrymen, in the Rue du Faubourg du Roule, not far from the barriers."118
I give this criticism of S. Philippe because it shows how taste has changed in architecture, as indeed in all else. From most persons' point of view the church is quite uninteresting; indeed the only object in going there is, except to a certain number of fashionables, to hear some celebrated preacher. It was from the pulpit of S. Philippe that Père Didon poured forth those eloquent and learned discourses, stocked with liberal ideas, which brought him into disgrace and forced retirement, until quite recently.
It is curious, too, that the quarter should have so changed. It is now the centre of the English and American colonists, and withal well filled with persons who delight in the one o'clock mass. It is so convenient; they can saunter in after déjeuner, say a few prayers, step into their carriages again, and go straight off to the races. Perhaps S. Augustin has bereft S. Philippe of some of its fashion; but it has still plenty to spare; it may be said to swarm with elegant toilettes, and not much else in the way of beauty. Let us walk on.
SAINT-PIERRE DE CHAILLOT
"Chaillot, très ancien village de la banlieue de Paris érigé en faubourg, sous le nom de la Conférence, par arrêté du conceil du mois de Juillet 1659. Le nom de ce faubourg lui fut donné à cause de la porte de la Conférence, située sur la rive droite de la Seine, vers l'extrémité de la terrasse du jardin des Tuileries."
The apse of this church is the only part that is old; the rest is Italian, and very poor of its kind, which makes the groined vault of the apse all the pleasanter to contemplate. Lately a new chapel has been added on in the Avenue Marceau, something between a Swiss châlet and a café, all ablaze with gilding and tawdry decoration.
The abbey of Sainte-Perrine de Chaillot was founded by Philippe le Bel about 1300, in the forest of Compiègne for the canonesses of the order of S. Augustin; and in 1646 it was transferred to La Villette. Later, the monastery was united to another community of the same order which was established at Chaillot in 1659. In 1760 the abbey ceased to exist, and the buildings gradually disappeared, with the exception of a few fragments belonging to some school buildings. Augustin's sisters may still be seen at Chaillot, working in the parish of S. Pierre, and observable by their quaint head-gear and their quainter clogs worn over spotless white stockings. By the way, why do Anglican sisters and nurses wear long gowns trailing about the wards of our hospitals? Are they not possibly receptacles for the germ and microbe population?
SAINT-PIERRE DE MONTMARTRE
The first church of S. Peter is said to have been founded by Louis VI. and Alix de Savoie his wife, upon the site of a still older edifice; and its most remarkable event in those early days was the presence of S. Bernard at its consecration. Little remains earlier than the 15th century, except two verd antique columns and some of the pillars of the choir. Upon a slab may be read an inscription bearing upon the martyrdom of S. Denis and his companions, who suffered here upon the mountain; and in the open ground outside is a Calvary to which the pious world resorts. A splendid new church dedicated to the Sacré Cœur is being built hard by, to which a vast number of processions and pilgrimages now industriously and toilfully wend their way.