The Basilica of Saint Denis

The Vita remembers Genevieve as the promoter of a church over the tomb of St. Denis, the martyr-bishop of Paris, north of the city — the modest sanctuary that grew into the great royal abbey of Saint-Denis. This file treats the martyr, the tradition of Genevieve’s devotion to him, and the growth of the shrine, distinguishing the Vita’s testimony from the later architectural and dynastic history.

Tradition: Western (pre-Schism, Gallo-Roman Gaul)

Saint Denis, Martyr of Paris

Denis (Dionysius) was, by the tradition Gregory of Tours records, one of seven bishops sent from Rome to evangelize Gaul in the third century; he became the first bishop of Paris and was martyred, with his companions, on the hill north of the city that took the name Montmartre (mons martyrum, “the hill of the martyrs”), his body afterward buried a little to the north at the site that would become Saint-Denis (Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks I.30, trans. Thorpe, Penguin, 1974, on Dionysius among the seven bishops sent to Gaul under Decius). [Corrected: the widespread later legend that Denis walked from Montmartre to his burial-place carrying his own severed head (the cephalophore motif), and the medieval conflation of Denis of Paris with Dionysius the Areopagite of Acts 17 and with the author of the Corpus Dionysiacum, are later developments; Gregory of Tours knows only the third-century bishop-martyr of Paris (Gregory of Tours, History of the Franks I.30). This compendium follows the early attestation.] Denis was the chief martyr-patron of Paris, and devotion to his tomb was already established in Genevieve’s day.

Genevieve and the Church over the Tomb

The Vita Genovefae attributes to Genevieve a special devotion to St. Denis and a leading part in the building of a church over his tomb. It recounts that she urged the priests and people of Paris to raise a basilica at the martyr’s grave, overcame the practical obstacles — in the Vita‘s telling, a shortage of lime for the mortar was miraculously supplied in answer to her prayer — and saw the church built (Vita Genovefae 17–22, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3, 1896; trans. McNamara, Halborg, and Whatley, Sainted Women of the Dark Ages, 1992, “Genovefa,” §§17–22). The episode presents her again as a builder and organizer of the sacred fabric of Paris, and ties her personally to the cult of the city’s protomartyr — a fitting association for the woman who would become its protectress (McNamara et al., “Genovefa,” introduction, on Genevieve and the Denis cult).

The tradition of a modest fifth-century church at the martyr’s tomb is historically credible. Archaeology and the early sources indicate a sequence of churches on the site of Saint-Denis, beginning with a small late-antique funerary structure over the Gallo-Roman cemetery and the martyr’s grave, well before the Merovingian and Carolingian rebuildings (on the archaeological sequence at Saint-Denis, see Sumner McKnight Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis from Its Beginnings to the Death of Suger, 475–1151, Yale University Press, 1987). Crosby’s very title dates the beginnings to c. 475 — precisely Genevieve’s maturity — which is consistent with, though it does not by itself prove, the Vita’s ascription of an early church to her initiative.

[Disputed: Genevieve’s personal role in founding the first church at Saint-Denis. The Vita Genovefae credits her with promoting and building it (§§17–22); the later and better-documented history of Saint-Denis focuses on the Merovingian foundation associated with King Dagobert I (r. 629–639), long after her death, and on the Carolingian and Gothic rebuildings (Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, 1987). That an early, modest church stood at the martyr’s tomb in the later fifth century is archaeologically plausible; that Genevieve was its promoter is the Vita’s testimony, reported here as such (METHODOLOGY §3.5).]

From Martyr’s Tomb to Royal Abbey

Whatever Genevieve’s precise part, the shrine at the martyr’s tomb grew into one of the most important churches of the medieval West. Under the Merovingians it received royal patronage; King Dagobert I richly endowed it and was buried there, beginning the tradition that made Saint-Denis the burial-church of the kings of France; under the Carolingians it flourished as a great monastery; and in the twelfth century Abbot Suger’s rebuilding of its choir (consecrated 1144) is conventionally regarded as the birthplace of Gothic architecture (Crosby, The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis, 1987; Erwin Panofsky, Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures, 2nd ed., Princeton University Press, 1979, on Suger and the Gothic). The little church the Vita places at Genevieve’s initiative was thus the seed of the royal necropolis of France and of a decisive moment in the history of Western art.

For the theme of this collection the significance is twofold. It ties Genevieve to the deepest stratum of Paris’ Christian identity — the cult of its protomartyr — and it shows her, again, as a founder of churches and a shaper of the city’s sacred space, the same role she plays in the building of her own burial-church of the Holy Apostles (see The Church of the Holy Apostles). Reported soberly, the Saint-Denis tradition is the memory of a holy woman’s devotion to the martyr-patron of her city, attached to a shrine whose later greatness lent the memory its lustre. It is honoured here as the Vita’s testimony, with the firm archaeology of an early church at the site noted and the later royal-abbey history kept distinct.

See Also

References

  • Vita Genovefae, ed. Krusch, MGH SRM 3 (1896), §§17–22 (Genevieve and the church of St. Denis; the lime miracle).
  • McNamara, Jo Ann, John E. Halborg, and E. Gordon Whatley, trans. Sainted Women of the Dark Ages. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1992. “Genovefa, Virgin of Paris,” §§17–22.
  • Gregory of Tours. History of the Franks I.30. Trans. Lewis Thorpe. Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974. (Dionysius among the seven bishops sent to Gaul; the martyrdom.)
  • Crosby, Sumner McKnight. The Royal Abbey of Saint-Denis from Its Beginnings to the Death of Suger, 475–1151. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987. (The archaeological sequence; the beginnings c. 475; the royal patronage.)
  • Panofsky, Erwin. Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St.-Denis and Its Art Treasures. 2nd ed. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1979. (Suger and the origins of Gothic.)