The Mal des Ardents

The most celebrated of Genevieve’s posthumous miracles: in 1129–1130 an epidemic of the mal des ardents — the “burning sickness,” an outbreak of ergotism — ravaged Paris, and when the relics of Genevieve were carried in solemn procession to the cathedral the plague was said to have ceased, the great majority of the afflicted gathered there being healed. So famous was the deliverance that a special feast was instituted for it. This file treats the disease, the event, and the medieval cult, per §3.5.

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

The Burning Sickness

The mal des ardents — the “burning sickness,” also called ignis sacer, “holy fire,” and later feu de Saint-Antoine, “St. Anthony’s fire” — was, in its epidemic form, ergotism: poisoning by the alkaloids of the ergot fungus (Claviceps purpurea) growing on rye, which in its gangrenous form constricts the blood vessels of the extremities, producing an agonizing burning sensation, the blackening and mortification of hands, feet, and limbs, and, in severe cases, death (on ergotism and the medieval mal des ardents, see John G. Fuller, The Day of St. Anthony’s Fire, Macmillan, 1968, on the disease; and, for the medieval epidemics, standard histories of the ignis sacer). Recurrent outbreaks afflicted medieval Europe wherever damp seasons spoiled the rye harvest, and they were terrifying precisely because they seemed to consume the living body with fire from within. The Paris outbreak of 1129–1130 was a severe one, killing, by the medieval accounts, a great number of the city’s people before it was checked (Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris: Rituals of Devotion in Early Modern France, Brill, 1998, on the 1129–1130 epidemic and the miracle).

The Miracle of 1129–1130

When the epidemic was at its height and ordinary remedies had failed, the clergy and people of Paris turned to their patroness. The reliquary shrine (châsse) of Genevieve was brought down from the abbey-church on the hill and carried in solemn procession to the cathedral church of Paris, where the sick had gathered; and there, the tradition holds, the plague ceased — the great majority of the afflicted who were present or who touched the shrine were healed, with only a small number (the accounts say three, who were unbelieving) not cured (Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris, 1998, on the procession, the healings, and the “all but three” motif). The deliverance was ascribed directly to the intercession of Genevieve and to the presence of her relics.

The event was received as a great public miracle and given lasting liturgical form. A special feast — the feast of the Miracle des Ardents, kept at Paris on 26 November — was instituted to commemorate it, and the tradition holds that Pope Innocent II, who was in France at the time and who visited Paris, confirmed or instituted the feast in 1131 (Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris, 1998, on the feast of 26 November and its papal confirmation; on Innocent II’s presence in France in 1130–1131, see the accounts of his schism with Anacletus II and his French journey in the standard histories of the twelfth-century papacy). The miracle became one of the fixed glories of the Parisian cult, commemorated for centuries and depicted in art — most famously in Gabriel-François Doyen’s vast canvas Le Miracle des Ardents (1767), painted for the church of Saint-Roch (on the Doyen painting and the eighteenth-century memory of the miracle, see the discussion in French History 30, no. 3, 2016, “Saint Geneviève’s miracles: art and religion in eighteenth-century Paris”).

[Disputed: the circumstantial details of the 1129–1130 miracle. That an ergotism epidemic struck Paris and that a procession of Genevieve’s relics to the cathedral was credited with ending it, followed by the institution of the feast of 26 November, is well attested in the medieval and later Parisian tradition (Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris, 1998). The exact figures (the number of the sick, the “all but three”), the identity of the presiding bishop (the bishop of Paris in 1130 was Étienne de Senlis; some popular accounts miscall him otherwise), and the precise role of Pope Innocent II vary among the accounts and the popular retellings. The healing itself is reported here as what the tradition attests, not as adjudicated fact (METHODOLOGY §3.5).]

The Medieval Cult

The mal des ardents miracle did for the high-medieval cult of Genevieve what the Attila deliverance had done for its origin: it renewed and dramatized her standing as the deliverer of Paris, now against pestilence as before against the barbarian and the famine (see Mother of the City). It fixed the pattern of appeal that would govern Paris’ relation to its patroness for the rest of the Middle Ages and beyond: in extremity, bring down the shrine, process it to the cathedral, and pray — a pattern enacted again and again over the following centuries (Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris, 1998; see The Processions of the Châsse). The annual feast of 26 November kept the memory of the miracle alive independently of her principal feast on 3 January, so that Genevieve had, in effect, two great days in the Parisian calendar — the day of her repose and the day of the burning sickness stayed (Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris, 1998).

Reported soberly, the episode is the best-documented instance of the working of Genevieve’s relic-cult: a real and terrible disease, a real procession of the relics, a real cessation of the epidemic in its aftermath, and a real and lasting ascription of the deliverance to the saint — the causal claim being, as always in such cases, a matter of the tradition’s faith rather than of demonstrable fact, and honoured here as such. For the Orthodox reader it exemplifies the same theology of relics and intercession that runs through the veneration of the saints of the undivided Church: the holy dead as living intercessors, their relics as vessels of grace, the city delivered through the prayers of its saint (cf. Holy Tradition).

See Also

References

  • Sluhovsky, Moshe. Patroness of Paris: Rituals of Devotion in Early Modern France. Leiden: Brill, 1998. (The 1129–1130 epidemic, the procession, the healings, the feast of 26 November, and the cult.)
  • “Saint Geneviève’s miracles: art and religion in eighteenth-century Paris.” French History 30, no. 3 (2016): 322–353. (Doyen’s Le Miracle des Ardents and the eighteenth-century memory of the miracle.)
  • Fuller, John G. The Day of St. Anthony’s Fire. New York: Macmillan, 1968. (Ergotism and the mal des ardents.)