The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles X. Beale Sophia
his last moments to have arrived, he caused his body to be placed upon a bed of ashes, and wearing the habit of the third order of S. Francis, his noble spirit passed away. He was embalmed, according to the fashion of the day; or rather, his bones were relieved of their outer casements, by boiling in wine and water; other parts of his body, which it is unnecessary to specify, being given by his son to the King of Sicily, who placed them in the church of Monreale, Palermo. The young Comte de Nevers had died just before S. Louis; and Alfonso de Brienne, Comte d'Eu, son of John de Brienne, King of Jerusalem, and the Chevalier Pierre, the King's chamberlain, had also succumbed to the unhealthy climate. The funeral procession set out, and wended its way towards France under the care of S. Louis' son, Philippe le Hardi. Arriving at Paris, the bodies were placed temporarily in Notre-Dame on the 21st of May; and the next day, amidst a large concourse of people, the procession, consisting of clergy, and religious, started early for S. Denis, Philippe, reverently bearing his father's bones, walking like the rest. Up through the city they went, singing and chanting, and taking much the same route as had been traversed by S. Denis and his companions, after their martyrdom, as recorded by the old chroniclers. In an engraving by Boulogne a long procession of monks and knights is seen issuing from the abbey to meet another coming from Paris, the king and bishops being dressed in that peculiar high wind-blown drapery common to pictorial art in the 17th and 18th centuries. S. Louis' bones were placed in a stone coffin and buried in front of the altar of the Holy Trinity, near the resting place of the bodies of Louis VIII. and Philippe Auguste. Philippe le Hardi's wife, Isabelle, and Tristan, Comte de Nevers, were placed on the right; the chevalier Pierre, who, as chamberlain, had the privilege of sleeping in the King's chamber, was laid at his feet. In 1292, Henri de Luxembourg caused the relics to be placed in a silver shrine and conveyed to the Sainte-Chapelle by the Archbishops of Reims and Lyon; but after some days they were returned to S. Denis, and it was not until 1306 that Philippe le Bel succeeded in his desire of placing the remains of his grandfather in the chapel which was so dear to him, that he felt a malaise each time he heard the divine offices elsewhere. The Bull of canonization was promulgated by Pope Boniface VIII. in 1297, and the translation of the king's skull followed nine years later, accompanied by all the picturesque pomp of the 14th century. The reliquary was in the form of a gold bust of natural size, enriched with precious stones, and supported by Angels upon a pedestal which rested upon four silver-gilt lions. The crown and the collar of the vestment were decorated with rubies, pearls, emeralds, and sapphires; and around the socle were representations of the twenty-nine kings of France, and a Latin inscription giving the date of the work, and the name of the smith, Master Guillaume Juliani. Such was the châsse which enclosed the principal relic of S. Louis: "Afin que la présence du Chef de ce grand roi, qui pendant sa vie avait eu la justice en singulière recommandation, animat les Juges de ce Parlement à maintenir les loix, protéger les gens du bien, rendre la justice à ses sujets sans exception de personne."3
L'an mil et trois cens et six ans,
Ot à Paris joie nouvele,
Car li rois mit en sa chapele,
Que S. Loys fist tele faire
Qu'a tout le monde devroit plaire,
Le chief de lui si richement
Et si très-honorablement,
Que par raison de la bel euvre
Que li dons saintuaire queuvre
Le vessel où l'en la mis prisent
Toutes personnes qui l'avisent. (Guil. Guiart.)
On the 15th May, 1843, an interesting discovery was made in the chapel. Some workmen, in removing a stone of the pavement of the apse, discovered a tin box containing the remains of a heart, and a procès-verbal, stating that it had been previously found on the 21st January, 1803. Although the position of the box (the centre of the apse) indicated that it had belonged to some distinguished person, yet there was no clue to its owner, neither inscription, nor name, nor date. The box, it is true, was in the style of the 13th century; but it seemed doubtful, that, had the heart been S. Louis', such an important relic should have been lost sight of, and no record of it given by the Benedictines at S. Denis in their inventory of the treasures which they had received from the Sainte-Chapelle. The matter was referred to the Academie des Inscriptions et Belles Lettres, and fully discussed; but the members could arrive at no decision, and consequently the box was replaced where it had been found.
While the kings resided in the old Cité, the most brilliant ceremonies succeeded one another at the Sainte-Chapelle; it was, in fact, the chapel belonging to the adjoining palace, now the Palais de Justice. The Queens, Marie de Brabant, second wife of Philippe le Hardi; Marie de Luxembourg, second wife of Charles le Bel; Jeanne d'Evreux, third wife of the same Prince; and Isabelle de Bavière, wife of Charles VI., were all crowned there. The marriage of the Emperor, Henri VII. and Marguerite de Brabant, and the betrothal of Isabeau, eldest daughter of Charles VI. with Richard II. of England, were also solemnised in the chapel. There, in 1332, Philippe de Valois held a great assembly of prelates and barons, to announce his project of another crusade against the Infidels – a project which was never carried out. On the feast of the Epiphany, 1378, King Charles V., the Emperor Charles IV., and his son Wenceslas, King of the Romans, offered gold, frankincense and myrrh, after the manner of the three holy Magi. Every time that the sovereigns convoked an assemblage of the clergy in the palace, the prelates first went to the chapel and asked the blessing of the Holy Spirit, while prostrated before the relics. In 1483, when Louis XI. was lying ill at Tours, he hoped to prolong his life by surrounding himself with the most sacred relics of his kingdom – so reluctant was this devôt to depart from our wicked world. The Sainte Ampoule was brought by the religious of S. Remi from Reims; the canons of the Sainte-Chapelle took the Cross of Victory and the Rod of Moses out of their treasury, and a grand procession of clergy and laity was formed on the 1st of August to carry them from Paris to Plessis-les-Tours. But, alas! to no end; for on the 30th of the same month the poor creature finished his earthly career of hypocrisy.
Boileau, in his Lutrin, gives an amusing account of an unseemly squabble which took place between the canons of the chapel, and which was in this wise. On a certain Sunday in 1667, one of the precentors named Barrin found a huge lectern placed in front of his stall. He protested against the intruder, and the other canons taking his part, it was ordered to be removed. But here the treasurer stepped in with objections, and a whole month was passed in discussions, orders, and counter-orders; the dispute only being ended through the mediation of the first president, Guillaume de Lamoignon, who decreed that the precentor should remain imprisoned behind the lectern an entire morning, until the end of the High Mass, the treasurer undertaking to remove the offending piece of furniture before the hour of vespers.
It was the president who suggested this subject to the poet. Boileau had remarked to M. de Lamoignon that an epic poem could be written upon the most trivial incident, if only a poet had sufficient imagination to work it out. "Faites donc un poème sur le débat de la Sainte-Chapelle. Vous pourrez l'intituler 'Le Lutrin enlevé,' ou 'La Conquête du Lutrin."
"Pourquoi non," replied Boileau. "Il ne faut jamais défier un fou; et je le suis assez, non seulement pour entreprendre ce poème, mais encore pour le dédier à Monsieur le premier president."
The result of defying the "fool," who was withal a wit, is a series of portraits in verse, of the canons, the singers, the precentor, and the treasurer. The latter was not spared, as may be seen by the following lines: —
"Dans le réduit obscur d'une alcove enfoncée,
S'élève un lit de plume à grands frais amassée.
Quatre rideaux pompeux, par un double contour,
En défendent l'entrée à la clarté du jour.
Là, parmi les douceurs d'un tranquille silence,
Règne sur le duvet une heureuse indolence.
C'est là que le prélat, muni d'un déjeuner,
Dormant d'un léger sommeil, attendait le dîner.
La jeunesse en sa fleur brille sur son visage;
Son menton sur son sein descend
The bust was given to the chapel by Philippe le Bel in 1304. Another, of silver-gilt, containing the upper part of the head, used to be at the Abbey of Poissy. The little church of la Montjoie rejoices in a portion of the sainted king's hand, enclosed in a 14th century reliquary; and the cathedral of Meaux possesses a chalice said to have belonged to him.