Metronome

Sometimes the subway affords shortcuts, which allow us to move away from the heart of Paris and inspire us to go outside the city limits—into a suburb, or a new neighborhood, or the Paris of tomorrow. The project of Greater Paris is already in the works; with the help of the Métro it has been realized. It can be found in one of the major new pillars of this Paris: the Stadium of France with its seats for eighty thousand spectators—me among them—who were there when the French national team won the World Cup in 1998.

The true pillar of our history can be found a little farther off: in the basilica in the very heart of the abbey of Saint-Denis. When you approach the church, the Gothic style of the façade can seem a little heavy and massive, nearly Romanesque. This is probably because before you stands the first Gothic church in France, constructed in 1136. Extensively restored in the nineteenth century, it nonetheless retains the appearance desired by its creator, Abbot Suger.

Within the church, on the other hand, one finds a more enchanting prospect, with the columns rising up in airy elegance. The windows allow in rays of brilliant light that play with the lines and lighten them. Here the Gothic has the upper hand, in its radiating phase. In this, again, Saint-Denis was a pioneer, the term “radiating” deriving from the rosette designs that adorn the transept.

Where did the royal bodies go?

In 1793, the Convention decided to “destroy the sumptuous mausoleums of the monarchy in Saint-Denis.” Under the direction of a commissary and wearing black clothing and a tricolor pointed hat, a group of workers carrying picks broke into the cavern of the Bourbons. Three heavy stones blocked the entrance; the picks went at the thick walls, which resisted for a number of hours. Finally they gave way and the workers made their way into the long crypt in which reposed fifty-four oak coffins. They were opened systematically. Louis XIII’s moustache caused a sensation, the face of Louis XIV was strangely black, and the body of Louis XV gave off a horrendous odor.

Soon there was the eerier face-to-face confrontation between the incorruptible Robespierre—the commissary in black—and the good king Henri IV, assassinated one hundred and eighty-three years earlier. Time had barely altered the monarch’s features, though his neat beard had become bushy, gray, and stiff. The body bound by strips of cloth was leaned, upright and stiff, against a pillar of the church. Robespierre, cinched up in his suit with its long folded collar, his hair powdered and set in perfect white curls, examined closely the royal face whose eyes remained obstinately closed. What did Robespierre, this instigator of revolutionary terror, hope to find in this time-defying meeting?

Suddenly, driven by some irresistible force, Robespierre raised his hand toward the beard of the desiccated corpse and, with a sharp gesture, pulled out two hairs. He carefully placed these royal relics into a small wallet that he had pressed close in his suit.

Others there had their way with the corpse. An amateur collector of souvenirs pulled out two teeth, and took them away, a soldier cut off a large portion of the beard with his sword. Finally the body of the Vert-Galant, as Henri IV, or Henri de Navarre, was called, was thrown along with all the others into a common pit located north of the church, near what is today the garden Pierre-de-Montreuil.

Exhumed during the Restoration, the remains of the royals, mainly destroyed by quicklime, were piously replaced in an ossuary of the crypt.

Here in the half-shadows of the interior, the history of France awaits us. Here is where the ancient kings can be found. Most of them, anyway. The actual mortal remains of these rulers have long disappeared, but here at any rate is the mausoleum constructed for the purpose of celebrating the grandeur of the monarchy across the centuries. How can one not be awed by this dazzling domain of effigies, by these centuries of royalty immortalized in limestone and marble? You can see them, talk to them, and touch them, proudly laid out for eternity. Here is Dagobert, who founded the necropolis, as well as Pepin the Short, Robert the Pious, Louis X, Charles V, François I, and on and on. There are more than seventy of them with their frozen stares. The tombs were profaned during the Revolution—emptied of their occupants—but most of the tombs themselves were miraculously preserved.

The crypt of the basilica also stands as wonderful witness to the deep past. The mausoleum of Saint-Denis, the first to inhabit the setting, was removed. All that remains is the empty spot where his tomb once was. Around him are the remains of the eighth-century crypt belonging to Fulrad, the abbot of Saint-Denis, with its little niches in which sit candles lit to his memory. A little farther off is the ninth-century crypt in which were placed the coffins of Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, having been retrieved from the common pit on Rue d’Anjou in which they had been thrown after their execution. For me this is history’s most symbolic setting.

One afternoon in November of the year 751 a delegation of nobles and bishops respectfully presented themselves before King Childeric III and to his stunned amazement announced, “The Frankish nation has brought the reign of Your Sublimeness and the continuity of your dynasty to an end.”

Childeric opened his eyes wide in surprise but before he had time to react a strong arm seized the frail man, forced him into a low chair while other men, armed with scissors, went at cutting off his long hair, the symbol of his royal authority. The strands of blond hair fell silently to the cold floor and marked the end of the Merovingian reign.

His hair cut short, Childeric was lifted into a litter carried by two horses, which, with a flick of the whip, took off at a gallop toward the north, all the way to the Saint-Bertin Abbey, built on a small island in the Aa River. For the last of the Merovingians, the monastery represented a golden retreat; the community was prosperous and capable of doing honor to a deposed king. Despite it all, the thick walls were a reminder to the former king that he would never leave.

The idea for this coup, which destroyed the royal line, was not arrived at suddenly. Fulrad, the abbot of Saint-Denis, had gone to Rome to see Pope Zacharias, a gentle man, fair and good, but also expert at politics; his advice was sought after in difficult situations. Who should be the king of France—the listless Childeric or Duke Pepin, who had effectively been leading the country for ten years?

“To whom is it right to give the name of king? To him who has no more royal authority than that conferred by a name, or to him who has possessed it completely without a name?” asked Fulrad.

His Eminence slowly stroked his gray beard, and after a long silence responded in a grave and measured voice. “It is reasonable and just that whoever truly exercises royal authority should be given the title of king.”

The pope had given his blessing to Pepin, who would ascend to the throne of the Franks. This showed fairly stunning ingratitude to the Merovingians, who had imposed Christianity onto their kingdom. Thus was poor Childeric deposed.

A new day was dawning. Pepin, called “the Short” because of his diminutive stature, was a hyperactive man who micromanaged and had an insatiable appetite for glory, honor, and power.

Rome had given benediction to his ambitions, but he needed still greater legitimacy than that conferred in a few words spoken by an aging pope behind closed doors. Bishop Boniface, an able diplomatic adviser to the new king, thought up a coronation service that exceeded Pepin’s imagination. He took his inspiration from the Bible, specifically the Book of Samuel, with its use of oil on the kings of Israel: “Samuel took a flask of oil and poured it on the head of Saul.” (1 Sam. 10:1.) Then he looked across the Channel at what the Britons did on their great island. The kings of Scotland were blessed and ordained by the highest ecclesiastical authority. Boniface concocted a mixture of traditions and came up with a coronation that artfully combined the authority of God and the faith of men.

The ceremony took place in the cathedral at Soissons. With his long hair, his full beard, and the purple robes draped across his shoulders, the king repeated the words Boniface whispered to him.

“I do solemnly swear to preserve in peace the Church of God and all the Christian people under my governance, to fight injustice, whatever its source, and to combine justice and mercy in all of my judgments.”

After this, Boniface solemnly poured the holy oil—a mixture of olive oil and perfume—on Pepin’s face. It would instill in him the Holy Spirit. He then conferred the emblems of authority, placing the crown on the king’s head and the scepter in his hands.

“May he be always victorious and magnanimous. And may all of his judgments be fair and wise. And may his reign be a peaceful one.”

The nobles and the clerics who were gathered together under the vaulted ceiling of the cathedral responded by chanting three times:

In an instant the king of France became a monarch by holy right, unifying in his person both God and the nation.

Three and a half centuries later, Hincmar, the archbishop of Reims and a man with more imagination than scholarly rigor, would write that Clovis had been anointed by God. Indeed, a dove had carried in its beak the holy oil used in the ceremony. Actually, this never happened. First of all, the ceremony had not yet been instituted. And secondly, Clovis was not Christian when he was crowned. Still, this holy myth permitted the kings of France to believe that they were part of a line of kings whose power had been consecrated by God Himself.

The benediction of Pepin the Short was not necessarily good news for Paris. The new king had shown only scant interest in settling in the Merovingian capital. Moreover, he apparently saw no need to install his court and his authority in any particular location. He would turn out be an itinerant king, who went from his palace in Cologne to his palace in Thionville to his villa in Worms and to the one in Compiègne. The Frankish nobility followed him around during this constant shuffling, more a result of royal whim than kingly necessity.

A little after his coronation, while Pepin was back on the road, the good pope Zacharias, whose approval had led to the deposition of the Merovingians, took his place in paradise. Stephen II replaced him on the throne of Saint Peter. Now it was he whom it was necessary to placate in order to remain in the good graces of the Church. This changed everything. Zacharias had been a capable politician; Stephen was a priest of faith and charity who spent his life visiting the poor and having hospitals built for the sick. While His Holiness as yet knew nothing about diplomacy, events would very quickly force him to catch on.

Aistulf, the king of the Lombards, wanted to extend his power across all of Italy. He demanded a sizable tribute from the pope and threatened to march upon Rome. The natural protector of the Church was Constantine V, the emperor of the Eastern Roman Empire who ruled from Constantinople; Constantine believed that he had more important things to worry about than saving the Eternal City. He was attempting to consolidate his empire, having invaded Syria, and planned on retaking Cyprus. He was entirely indifferent to the danger in which Rome and its inhabitants found themselves.

Stephen II no longer knew to which saint he should appeal. Who would protect him from the Lombards? That’s when he thought of Pepin, who, after all, was king thanks to the good grace of his predecessor. He would prove himself an ingrate if he did not now come to the aid of Zacharias’s successor. His Holiness immediately gave a letter to a Frankish nobleman who was then doing his pilgrimage to Rome. In this missive the pope asked the king to send an ambassador to Neustria. This invitation, to which the Lombards were of course opposed, permitted the pope to set a trap.

Pepin immediately saw the benefits of the situation. If he acted carefully, he could align himself with the Holy See forever. A second ambassador was thus immediately dispatched to Rome and the pope departed from the City of Seven Hills—to the great surprise of its population, who were therefore delivered up to their enemies the Lombards. Leaving Rome at this moment seemed the height of folly. No one could think of a precedent for this.

In the month of December in 753, Stephen II arrived in the Aosta Valley, crossed the Alps, and stopped at the monastery of Great Saint-Bernard, a vast building lost in the immense whiteness of the landscape. Soon a Frankish delegation, led by Abbot Fulrad, joined the pope there. Fulrad and the others kneeled respectfully before Stephen, who was somewhat surprised to find his authority so respected and piously celebrated.

The pope and his escort continued on their way while Pepin and his queen, Berthe, moved toward them from the opposite direction. They met just south of Champagne. Pepin galloped toward the pontifical procession, got off his horse, prostrated himself and begged for the pontiff’s blessing. This made for a good start: the pope was happy to recognize him as king of the Franks.

The next day, discussions began within the walls of the royal villa at Ponthion. Now the tone had changed: it was Stephen who was forced to kneel before the king and make his plea.

“Give us your help to put an end to this oppression by the Lombards, and save Rome from the tribute that Aistulf wants to impose upon us.”

Pepin was rather flattered by the pope’s earnestness. In effect, the pontiff was choosing him rather than the emperor of Byzantium to come to his aid. From now on it would be the king of France who would guarantee the continuance of the Roman Catholic Church.

Pepin was prepared to negotiate the departure of the Lombards from Rome, and even wished that the Holy See would henceforth benefit from greater territory to protect itself from further predations. Would a few royal declarations do the trick with the Lombards? Probably not, and hence the king of the Franks declared himself prepared to raise an army and lead a military expedition.

Stephen was appeased by this and indeed thrilled, for his pontifical throne and his city were saved. Pepin demanded something in return: a new coronation ceremony led in person by His Holiness. The ceremony would settle definitively, and before all Christendom, that the king and his sons would be uncontested in their rights, sanctified by the Holy See, thus instituting forever the line of Pepin. The pope agreed. He didn’t really have much choice.

What became of the treasure of Saint-Denis?

As we’ve seen, the abbey was gutted during the Revolution, but the pillagers were disappointed by what they found there—a few measly pieces of gold and silver. Nonetheless, during an inventory that was done in 1634, there were documented 455 objects considered of great value. These consisted of the weapons of ancient kings, jewel-encrusted crowns, holy relics kept in precious chests, illustrated manuscripts—all these were listed.

There were those who wanted to believe that the treasure of Saint-Denis had been hidden somewhere. In 1939, one particular gentleman by the name of Leclerc bought the property of La Dimeresse, near Messy, located twenty or so miles from Saint-Denis. The new owner found in the papers discovered in the house a deed of sale that proved that the land had once belonged to the monks at the abbey. This was enough to persuade that man that the mythical treasure was buried beneath his feet. A dowser by training, he called upon his colleagues to help. They all came and brought their divining pendulums and declared that there were underground passages and detected deep within them the presence of precious metals.

Leclerc leaped into action and started digging. In 1954, the excavations discovered a series of steps that led down into the ground. Getting wind of this, the newspapers announced the imminent discovery of the treasure of Saint-Denis. But alas the small passage they discovered was unsafe, so they retreated in a hurry. It is said that when he was dying in 1961 Commander Leclerc asked that one last hole be dug on his property. His final hope was that his dream would be realized, a dream in which he had invested all of his money and his time. As with the others, alas, the digging produced nothing of interest.

While waiting to perform this second coronation, Stephen II determined not to return to Rome, not out of some political calculation but because he wanted to spare himself the rigors of a new voyage in the middle of winter.

Therefore the pope spent several months in Saint-Denis. Dagobert’s abbey had become rich and powerful, and the abbot fought hard to gain fiscal privileges, as well as lands that extended all the way to Pantin and La Villette. Out of esteem for his dear friend Abbot Fulrad, Pepin was magnanimous toward Saint-Denis and refused those cranky lords who wanted to stem the abbey’s territorial expansion.

Naturally the new consecration of Pepin would take place within the walls of Saint-Denis. But before then, the pope had a holy mission to accomplish: the solemn transfer of the remains of Saint Germain. The good bishop of Paris was canonized for curing the sick, exorcising demons, fighting against slavery and paganism, and in general living a life of boundless charity. Nonetheless his remains had spent the previous 177 years in a modest chapel at the entrance to the Saint-Vincent-Sainte Croix Basilica. This was not a resting place worthy of a venerated saint, and it was past time to place the body in a more appropriate spot: in the choir, just behind the main altar.

Everyone was reunited in Paris for the ceremony: Stephen II, King Pepin, Queen Berthe, their son Charles, the future Charlemagne. Once again the city was witness to the kind of grandeur that it had once known. For one moment it refound its place as the capital of the Frankish kingdom.

Before the kneeling crowd, the crypt was opened and the coffin of Saint Germain was carried into the chancel. During the entirety of the following day and night, he remained there, subject to the veneration of the faithful.

The next morning, in the presence of Pepin and his son Charles, the sarcophagus was to be transferred to the place chosen for its burial. The trouble was that it couldn’t be moved. Levers and ropes and pulleys did no good; the thing simply wouldn’t budge. Was this a sign that the saint refused to be taken from the choir in which he was placed? The bishops who were witness to this offered an explanation.

“Glorious king,” they said to Pepin, “Your Highness knows well that blesséd Germain was a bishop. It therefore seems appropriate that his precious relics be borne by the bishops. That is perhaps what the saint wants to tell us.”

“Most pious king, is it possible that only the blessed monks of the monastery have been accorded the honor of moving the holy relics?”

The monks took the place of the bishops and tried to move the coffin by the same means, and they as well couldn’t move it an inch. Tears poured down Pepin’s face. He wondered whether he had committed a terrible sacrilege in taking the saint far from the place that he himself had designated as the spot at which he would await the Resurrection.

At that moment an unknown man came forward from the gathering of faithful. Through a remarkable feat of intuition, he had finally solved the mystery.

“If His Most Mild Majesty Our King would deign to listen to the word of the humblest of his servants, I believe I have found the true cause of this unfortunate resistance. Not far from the royal villa at Palaseau, the monastery possesses a number of outbuildings. The treasury agents, emboldened by the power of Your Greatness, exert in this place a tyrannous and intolerable oppression. They have killed the inhabitants, destroyed the vines and the harvest, the fields and woods, and seized the animals and in general inflicted upon this land great terror. That, I believe, is the injustice that the Venerable Germain wants to make us aware of today.”

That was the reason. The miracle manifesting itself here was not a call for human nature to change, or to bring a bit of goodness to the earth, or to relieve the misery of the human condition. No, it really was all about some overzealous tax agents and adjoining new land to the benefit of the monastery.

The monks of the abbey must have dreamed all this up to obtain a few extra land grants. In any case, the trick worked perfectly and Pepin consented to what the Venerable Germain was demanding of him from beyond the grave: he offered the monks his beautiful villa at Palaiseau along with several extra farms.

“I ask in return the power to transport your sacred body,” begged the king to the spirit of the saint.

And it came to pass that the blessed spirit of Germain was appeased, for the coffin now was lifted with disconcerting ease and taken down into the new crypt. Those there remembered smelling a sweet perfume waft through the basilica; the most fervent among them saw an angel descend from heaven to carry the body of the saint. Young prince Charles was so joyful of the happy solution to the business that he jumped into the crypt to observe the miracle from close up. He didn’t meet any seraphim, but during the fall he did lose his first baby tooth.

A little later, a chiseled stele would confirm the royal gift. One couldn’t be too careful and it seemed like a good idea to set in stone the king’s generous bequest. “On this spot where lay Saint Germain the day of his transference, King Pepin gave to him the treasury of Palaiseau.”

And to mark the greatness of the event, the abbey Saint-Vincent-Sainte-Croix was henceforth to be called Saint-Germain-des-Prés.

You have to have an ability to see beyond what’s there now to imagine the dimensions that this abbey and the neighborhood assumed in the days following this. Its adjacent lands spread far and wide and added to them were the fiefdoms of Issy, Vaugirard, Châtillon, and Thiais, comprising lands that went all the way to Montereau and Saint-Cloud, and to Palaiseau, of course. It was roughly the equivalent of what is today called a département in France—a small state. The congregation’s prestige included learned Benedictine monks, who were friends of the arts, sciences, and letters and who gathered here to reflect, work, and write. The quartier already had its identity, and the number of intellectuals would grow. Today when a writer sits at a table at one of the famous cafés there, or feverishly composes on her laptop, I would like to think that she still is inspired by the spirit of intellectual curiosity that took root here so long ago.

Pope Stephen now devoted his attention to the ceremony for Pepin, but there was a problem. Queen Berthe informed His Holiness that her husband was living in a state of sin. Though Pepin’s legitimate wife, she was condemned to solitude in the palace while the king frolicked, spending his nights with a pretty Saxon girl. The pope was horrified. The heavens would punish this adulterer. Stephen met with the king in Saint-Denis.

“We cannot proceed with a ceremony for a king who is living in a state of sin. Not only is he not in a state of grace, he shames those around him and sullies the throne of the Franks to which all of Christendom has turned its gaze.”

What a lot of to-do over nothing, thought Pepin. He immediately placated the pope and had the pretty Saxon girl locked up in an abbey in the diocese of Langres, praying firmly that she never be allowed to leave and do penitence for the rest of her life.

Finally, at the end of July 754, nothing stood in the way of the consecration of the king of the Franks by the Vicar of Christ. All was in readiness. Two days before the ceremony was to take place, however, Pope Stephen became deathly ill. The pontiff requested that he immediately be taken to Saint-Denis Church, near to the tomb of the blessed martyr. While His Holiness lay in a comatose sleep and approached death, the apostles Peter and Paul, accompanied by Saint Denis himself, visited him.

And then Denis, holding an incense thurible in his hand, turned to the dying pope.

And that is what the pope did, apparently no longer debilitated by whatever it was that had laid him low. In gratitude, he conferred gifts upon the abbey: exemption from episcopal jurisdiction, new lands and buildings for the monastery, and favors galore to Abbott Fulrad.

Stephen II proceeded to the ceremony with King Pepin the Short, which took place on July 28 in Saint-Denis. This was not a complicated affair involving holy unguents or anointing oil. Stephen was not the kind of pope for such grandiosity; his approach was more sober and direct. He did exactly what was expected of him, which was to consecrate Pepin and his two sons, Charles and Carloman, in the name of the Holy Trinity. Then Queen Berthe was clothed in royal insignias and blessed by the Holy Father in the name of the Seven Virtues of the Holy Spirit.

Afterward, the pope turned to the princes and nobles gathered to witness the ceremony. He blessed them and then spoke.

“We order you upon pain of excommunication never to choose any other king than those descended of Pepin, to keep the scepter in this family that Divine Mercy has deigned to choose, and which the Holy Apostles have confirmed and consecrated by the hands of the Pontiff, their chosen Vicar.”

Pope Stephen had done everything in his power to ensure the grandeur of the Frankish realm and of Saint-Denis. In the three years that followed, and until 758, King Pepin repaid his debt. He undertook three successful military campaigns against the Lombards and gave their lands to the pope—adding up to no fewer than twenty-two towns, including Ravenna and Perugia. From the collection of conquered provinces would emerge the notion of the pontifical states, whose power, riches, and extent would henceforth protect the pope from unwarranted invasion.

By 768, Pepin, a man of fifty-four, was worn out. During a visit to Poitou he was suddenly gripped by a high fever; he was dying and he knew it. Expiring in Poitiers didn’t seem an enviable fate—he thought the town unworthy to receive his final wishes—so he asked to be taken away immediately. He made it to Saint-Martin Abbey in Tours, whose treasury he had mercilessly drained to make charitable gifts. He then asked to be taken straight to Saint-Denis.

Within the abbey’s vaults, before the great and grand of the kingdom, he divided his estates between his two sons and died on September 24. His request was that his remains be placed in the most modest section of the abbey, under the outer porch, facing the earth, as a symbol of the expiation of his sins.

Two weeks later, Charles was consecrated king of the Franks in Noyon. His younger brother Carloman took the title of King of Austrasia in Soissons, the capital of his realm. Paris disappeared from the royal chronicle. And when, three years later, Carloman died prematurely, he was buried in Saint-Remi Church in Reims. For his part, Charlemagne had slowly been accumulating territories that would lead to his assuming the crown of Emperor of the West. He eventually chose Aix-la-Chapelle (Aachen) as his capital.

This was a tough blow to Paris, which now was little more than a small port on the Seine, its population reduced to a few thousand inhabitants, perhaps five or so.

Charlemagne did not completely ignore the ancient capital. In 779, during a trip back from Rome, he came up with the idea to found schools that would instruct young men who desired instruction in the human sciences. By his command several centers of study were established in Paris: in the palace of the bishop, in Sainte-Geneviève Abbey, and in the abbey at Saint-Germain-des-Prés. One could learn about things in Paris, even if the grand march of history no longer passed by the Cité palace, which was abandoned to the four winds.

Also abandoned were the plans for a Carolingian necropolis whose a idea was essentially initiated by Pepin the Short. This was not permanent, of course, because the heroes of Paris in the coming centuries, such as Count Eudes, soon to be king of the West Frankish kingdom, and the first of the Capetians, Hugh Capet, would be buried there, sure signs of the abbey’s prominence. But it would only truly be under Saint Louis in the thirteenth century that Saint-Denis would officially become the “cemetery to the kings,” the royal necropolis where nearly all the great rulers and central figures of royal power would be gathered together.