08 — Veneration

Genevieve’s veneration as the patron saint of Paris: her feast on 3 January; the great neoclassical church of Sainte-Geneviève on the hill, finished on the eve of the Revolution and seized as the Panthéon; the destruction and burning of most of her relics during the French Revolution in 1793, the surviving fragments, and the continuing cult at Saint-Étienne-du-Mont; and her reception in the Orthodox Church as a pre-Schism Western saint.

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

This section treats the veneration as it stands: its high form as the patronage of Paris, and the great rupture the Revolution inflicted on it. The first file gathers the marks of her cult — the feast of 3 January, the title of patroness, the paradoxical fate of her intended church as the secular Panthéon — and her Orthodox reception. The second is the sober account of 1793: the seizure and melting of the medieval châsse, the condemnation and public burning of her relics at the Place de Grève, the scattering of the ashes, and the modest survival of the cult around the fragments preserved elsewhere. Per §3.5, the Revolutionary destruction is reported soberly and factually.

Files in This Section

File Description
patroness-of-paris.md Her veneration as patron saint of Paris; the feast of 3 January; the Panthéon (the former church of Sainte-Geneviève); and her reception as an Orthodox pre-Schism Western saint.
the-relics-and-the-revolution.md The destruction of most of her relics in 1793 — the seizure and melting of the châsse, the burning of the bones at the Place de Grève, the ashes cast into the Seine — the surviving fragments, and the continuing cult; §3.5, sober.

See Also

References

  • Sluhovsky, Patroness of Paris (Brill, 1998).
  • Encyclopædia Britannica, “Saint Genevieve.”
  • On the Revolution: the accounts of the 1793 destruction of the relics.