The Churches of Paris, from Clovis to Charles X

It was a time of troubles, civil and religious. The church work was stopped, and horrors were around, for in 1558 a poor student, denounced as a Lutheran by an old zealot of the weaker sex, was dragged out of the church and massacred upon the steps. But to return to Messire Jean Lecoq, the aforesaid curé. In the choir is his tomb, where he was buried with several of his relatives. His epitaph, bearing his arms d'azur au coq d'or, is as follows:

Nobilis venerabilis D. Magister Joannes Lecoq Hujus ecclesiæ pastor– 1568ANT. LECOQ, SEIG. D'ESGRENAY ET DE CORBEUIL (frère du curé), 1566F. PAJOT, SEIGNEUR DE BURY, mari D'ESTIENNETTE LECOQ, 1563F. PAJOT, SEIG. D'AUTEUIL, LEUR FILS, 1583

A story is told of this reverend curé by Bonaventure Déperriers, in his Joyeux Devis, which, if not authentic, is characteristic of the times. A certain popular actor and head of a wandering dramatic company, one Jean de l'Espine, called Pont-Allais, was one day beating his drum near the church, to announce the commencement of his entertainment. Within the church the curé was preaching, but alas, his voice could not be heard above the rattle outside. Exit the preacher from his pulpit. He hurries out, and addresses the comedian upon the stage of his booth: "How can you dare to strum while I am preaching?" "And how can you dare to preach while I am drumming?" retorted the actor. The curé, enraged at this impudent reply, broke the drum; but Jean Pont-Allais, with the swiftness of a man of action, seized the priest, and popping the drum upon his head, pushed him into the church. Whether the discourse was continued, with or without the coiffure, history does not relate. Jean Lecoq died in 1568.

René Benoist, born at Angers, and a member of the school of theologians calling itself the Société Royale de Navarre, was, when quite young, the confessor of Marie Stuart, whom he followed to Scotland. Upon the death of the queen he became curé of St. Pierre-des-Arcis, and afterwards of S. Eustache. At the commencement of his career he was a Ligueur, and by reason of his great influence was nicknamed le roi des Halles. In 1588 he pronounced a funeral oration upon the assassinated Guises at Blois:

Escouté, peuple, dit-il, par Isaïe: Auferam a vobis fortem et virum bellatorem, judicem et prophetam. Quand Dieu veut punir un peuple, il oste les personnes généreux et le conseil, car comme disait Cicéron en son premier des Offices: Non valent arma foris nisi sit consilium domi. Nous avions tous les deux en ce bon prince le duc de Guise: il était fort comme un Samson, prudent et advisé comme un Salomon… Les anciens disaient un exercite estre plus fort quand le chef est lion que quand les soldats sont lions et le chef cerf… Cette balafre qu'il portait, c'était en conservant la religion et l'état en France qu'il l'avait endurée. Cela devait faire peur aux méchants, non est vulnus aversum sed adversum. Faut des hommes vaillants, balafrés, qui ne fuient pas et ainsi que Notre Seigneur a porté ses cicatrices au ciel pour montrer ce qu'il avait enduré ainsi il a porté sa balafre pour le témoignage de sa vertu. II ne faut pas perdre courage, la maison en est seulement escornée. (Then he concluded thus:) Prions Dieu pour les échevins d'icelle, qu'ils aient la crainte de Dieu et une bonne prudence. Ce mot d'échevins veut dire chefs de la ville, sicut capita Urbis. Je les compare aux quatre parties qui conservent la santé de l'homme et aux quatre éléments qui sont les choses les plus nécessaires au monde. Paris a pour ses armes un navire qu'est Mare populi, ceux là sont les pilotes; ils quéront à Dieu qu'il leur donne son saint Spérit, mais surtout à eux et à nous l'union, faut que Civitas soit Civium unitas.

However, going over to the enemy, like many a better man, Benoist became the butt of l'Estoile:

De trois B B B garder se doit on,De Bourges, Benoist et Bourbon.Bourges croit Dieu piteusement,Benoist le prêche finement,Mais Dieu nous gard' de la finesseEt de Bourbon et de sa messe.

Another preacher of the time, Master Rose, gave Benoist the nickname of le Diable des Halles; but nevertheless he remained faithful to the king's party, and controverted those who refused to receive the royal heretic, even if he were to be converted. These views of the curé, coming to the ears of the Duc de Mayenne, caused Benoist to be sent for when the time came for Henri to abjure Protestantism, and he was present at S. Denis on the memorable 25th of July, 1592, when the king heard the mass which he bargained for the city of Paris.

This, of course, angered the Ligueurs yet more, and one said publicly that Benoist deserved to be hanged; and a poor woman of the parish (one of the forerunners of the celebrated "Dames de la Halle" who more than once defended their curés at all costs) was mauled and mangled by a Spanish soldier for having stood up for her parish priest and pronounced him a worthy man. Later on, being named bishop of Troyes by the king (whose confessor he became), the Ligue refused him obedience. Benoist was not only a fervent politician; he was also a writer of no mean merit, a learned preacher, an erudite theologian, and, above all, a friend beloved of his parishioners. He left his mark upon the church, embellishing the great door with a representation of his patron S. René, and composing an anthem, which was performed upon his fête day. Some authorities, Launoy to wit, give the number of his works as 154, Niceron 159. He was forty years at S. Eustache, and ten years dean of the Faculty of Theology. He died on the 7th March, 1608, at the ripe old age of eighty-seven, and just two years before the assassination of Henri, which took place at the very doors, one may say, of S. Eustache, in the Rue de la Ferronnerie.

After the death of René, Benoist's successor, we find the "Dames de la Halle" coming to the fore and asserting their importance. It appears that the appointment by the archbishop of a new curate (I use this term in its proper sense: the occupier of a cure) to succeed M. Tonnellier, led to a three day's revolt. The nephew of the latter, having been promised the cure by his uncle, opposed the new appointment, and, assisted by the market women, repulsed the soldiers – sent them flying, says tradition. However that may be, there was a vast commotion, which lasted three days, and was only ended by a species of armistice. "Les Dames de la Halle" consented to send a deputation to the queen (although it is not very apparent what her majesty could do in the matter), and after giving an account of the cause of the trouble, the envoy went on as follows: —

Notre curé qui est mort était si bon, si humain que nous l'avons tous pleuré. En mourant il a désigné son neveu pour son successeur et l'on a voulu nous en donner un autre. Ce n'est pas juste, n'est-ce pas, madame la Reine? Les Marlin, voyez-vous, depuis bien longtemps, sont curés de Saint-Eustache, de père en fils, et les paroissiens n'en souffriront pas d'autre.

The curious argument advanced by the deputy in favour of Marlin no doubt amused the queen, and she promised to do what she could. But "Les Dames" would have no evasive answers; they wanted their curate and intended to have him; and so, on their return, chains were put across the streets, barricades were commenced, and the revolt waxed stronger. At this juncture, the archbishop gave way, and the nephew was installed amidst enthusiastic cries of Vive l'archevêque! Vive la reine! While upon the church some wag placarded a notice: Avis. Le curé de Saint-Eustache est à la nomination des Dames de la Halle.

This little tale seems to have been the origin of the romantic story trumped up in 1783, in which Marie Antoinette is said to have given a flower-girl her bracelet in recognition of some interview between them; which story was added to and amended later on, to the effect that the queen, upon her way to the guillotine, recognising the girl by her bracelet, betrayed her, and thus inadvertently caused her arrest and execution.

This Marlin was curate when Louis XIV. made his first communion at S. Eustache, that being his parish church at the time he was living in the Palais-Royal with his mother. Louis' last wife was also a parishioner of S. Eustache before her marriage with Scarron. As Frances d'Aubigné she seems to have been as much of a dévote as in her later days, for she arose at midnight, and attended matins at two of the clock. At that time she was in receipt of alms from a charitable lady of the parish, and her extraordinary career had scarcely commenced.

Funeral orations abounded at S. Eustache. In 1666 Anne of Austria was eulogised by a celebrated preacher, père Sénault, in no mild terms: —

Souffrez que je vous dise que si elle a vaincu la douleur et la mort, si elle a procuré la paix à l'Europe, si elle a heureusement gouverné l'Etat pendant sa régence, si elle a obtenu des enfants du Ciel, ce n'a été que parce qu'elle se confiait en Dieu et qu'elle l'a obligé de faire cent miracles en sa faveur parce qu'elle espérait en sa bonté, spera in eo et ipse faciet.

Ten years later a greater preacher, the eloquent Fléchier, was called upon to sing the praises of Turenne, all the world following in the train of the king to hear him:

Quelle matière fut jamais plus disposée à recevoir tous les ornements d'une grave et solide éloquence, que la vie et la mort de très-haut et très-puissant Prince Henri de la Tour d'Auvergne, vicomte de Turenne, maréchal général des camps et armées du roi et colonel général de la cavalerie légère? Où brillent avec plus d'éclat les effets glorieux de la vertu militaire: conduite d'armées, sièges de places, prises de villes, passages de rivières, attaques hardies, retraites honorables, campements bien ordonnés, combats soutenus, batailles gagnées, ennemis vaincus par la force, dissipés par l'adresse, lassés et consumés par une sage patience; où peut-on trouver tant et de si puissants exemples que dans les actions d'un homme sage, modeste, libéral, désintéressé, dévoué au service du prince et de la patrie, grand dans l'adversité par son courage, dans la prospérité par sa modestie, dans les difficultés par sa prudence, dans les périls par sa valeur, dans la religion par sa piété.

Yet another celebrated orator, Massillon, was often heard at S. Eustache, and in 1704, preaching upon the small number of the elect, so terrified were his hearers that they all rose as one man, when he pronounced the words of the Supreme Judge. A lesser man, who rose to be a Cardinal, perhaps more by intrigues than anything else, was Guillaume Dubois. He was born at Brives-la-Gaillarde in 1657, and coming to Paris, he entered, while still quite young, the service of the curé of S. Eustache. Thence he obtained engagements as tutor to the great personages of the neighbourhood; entering the house of the Duc de Chartres, he managed to obtain the abbey of Saint-Just, in the diocese of Beauvais. A grand monument by Coustou was erected to his memory in the church of S. Honoré, with an epitaph composed by Couture, which seems to be a slight satire upon the worldly-minded who love the rich things of this nether world. After giving the titles of the defunct, the lines go on: "Quid autem hi titulis nisi arcus coloratus et fumus ad modicum parens Viator, stabiliora, solidioraque bona mortuo apprecare, etc., etc. Mais que sont ces dignités? nuages brillants, fumée qui s'évapore. Passant, demande à Dieu pour ce mort des biens plus stables et plus solides."

S. Eustache is still famous for its processions, and few churches are so fitted for grand ceremonial; but what are the functions of to-day compared with those of the 18th century? Here is an extract from the archives giving an outline of the procession upon the Fête Dieu, 20th June, 1716, during the minority of Louis XV.: —

Several lacqueys bearing torches.

Footmen of M. le duc de Charot with lights at the top of their weapons.

Sixteen footmen of M. le Comte de Toulouse.

Six pages of my lord count.

The preceptor of the pages of M. the duc d'Orléans, the Regent, in long cassock and surplice; their tutor bearing a taper; twelve pages of His Royal Highness, and two sub-tutors.

The banner of the confraternity of the Holy Sacrament.

The cross of the clergy of S. Eustache.

An officer bearing a cushion for His Royal Highness.

The Suisses armed, carrying halbards upon their shoulders and torches in their hands, the officers at their head accompanied by drums and fifes.

The dais of the Holy Sacrament, borne by high personages.

The curé under the dais.

Monseigneur le duc d'Orléans carrying a taper, preceded by several officers of his house, and two chaplains in surplices.

An officer bearing a bouquet of His Royal Highness.

Forty of the body-guard, the councillor of Parliament, and the churchwardens.

A coach belonging to His Royal Highness, followed by eight guards on horseback.

The archers of the town bringing up the rear.

The watchmen of Paris arranged in a line from the church door to the Hôtel de Soissons, on both sides of the Rue Coquillière, with flags and officers at their head; drums to be beaten when His Royal Highness arrives at the church in his coach, and on his return.

In 1736 the reposoir70 in the Palais-Royal was constructed from the design of Servandoni, the architect of S. Sulpice; and its importance attracted multitudes of curiosity-hunters from all parts of the town.

In 1729 Jean-François-Robert Secousse succeeded his uncle, and was the author of a pamphlet which he gave away to his parishioners entitled: Lettre d'un Curé à N – au sujet des Spectacles. His successor, Jean-Jacques Poupart, was for some time confessor to Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. When the storm arose, he took the oath to the Constitution; but, finding the lengths to which it carried him, he retracted, went into hiding, and administered to his flock in secret. During the early years of the Revolution, no church suffered more than S. Eustache. Situated in the midst of a populous district, it became the scene of untold horrors. But it was also the resting place for Mirabeau's body on its way to the Panthéon, on the 4th April, 1791; and had nothing worse than the funeral oration by Cerutti, pronounced from the banc-d'œuvre,71 taken place, the sacrilege would have been but small. Trouble was looked for in the following May, when the hairdressers' assistants caused a service to be said for the great orator; but instead of the church being invaded by 10,000 persons, as was expected, a poor 600 were all that put in an appearance, and these were well conducted. Not so the Women's Club which was held in the building, if Lamartine's Histoire des Girondins72 is to be trusted:

La société révolutionnaire siégeait á Saint-Eustache; elle était composée de femmes perdues, aventurières de leur sexe, recrutées dans le vice, où dans les réduits de la misère, ou dans les cabanons de la démence. Le scandale de leurs séances, le tumulte de leurs motions, la bizarrerie de leur éloquence, l'audace de leurs pétitions importuna le Comité de Salut Public, qui ferma le club. On peut juger par là ce qu'il devait en être de la pauvre église. Près de là siégeait aussi le fameux club de la rue Mauconseil.

Another club for women, founded by an actress named Lacombe, was dissolved after a speech of Robespierre's, in which we find that "Cette réunion de vraies sans-culottes ne saurait durer plus long-temps, parce qu'elle prête au ridicule et aux propos malins."

In 1793 the Feast of Reason was celebrated with as much profanity and indecency here as at Notre-Dame, as witness Mercier's account, told in the forcible language of Carlyle:

The corresponding festival in the church of S. Eustache offered the spectacle of a great tavern. The interior of the choir represented a landscape decorated with cottages and boskets of trees. Round the choir stood tables overloaded with bottles, with sausages, pork-puddings, pasties, and other meats. The guests flowed in and out through all doors; whosoever presented himself took part of the good things; children of eight, girls as well as boys, put hand to plate, in sign of Liberty; they drank also of the bottles, and their prompt intoxication created laughter. Reason sat in azure mantle aloft, in a serene manner; cannoneers, pipe in mouth, serving her as acolytes. And out of doors (continues the exaggerative man) were mad multitudes dancing round the bonfire of chapel-balustrades, of priests' and canons' stalls; and the dancers – I exaggerate nothing – the dancers nigh bare of breeches, neck and breast naked, stockings down, went whirling and spinning, like those Dust-vortexes, forerunners of Tempest and Destruction.73

S. Eustache was re-opened for divine service sooner than many of the other churches, M. Poupart coming out of his hiding in June, 1795; but he had to share his church for some time with the philanthropists and the municipal councillors, who held their meetings there upon certain days. And the church was, moreover, but four walls and a roof; nearly all the contents had vanished. The altars, the bronze statues, the pulpit, the pictures, the tombs, the slabs and epitaphs, all but the banc-d'œuvre, had gone to the museum of the Petits-Augustins; happily, for otherwise they would have gone into the fire.

In 1804, Pius VII., dragged to Paris by Napoleon to perform the coronation ceremony, was invited to visit S. Eustache and bless a statue of the Blessed Virgin; which he did with "une bonté paternelle." The occasion naturally called forth all the ceremonial of which the church was capable: Suisses (beadles), vergers, MM. les maires, and MM. les marguilliers, magistrates, juges de paix, clergy, M. le curé Bossic, and his eminence the cardinal archbishop. His Holiness was received at the church door by the archbishop, M. de Belloy, and divers other bishops and dignitaries of church and state; who had to submit to hearing a Latin oration by the curé. The music was brilliantly executed by a large choir, and the ceremonial of an imposing character; peculiarly touching was the moment when the archbishop, an old man of ninety-six, who had to be supported by two prelates, mounted the steps of the altar, and presented the linen cloth to his Holiness for wiping his hands. After mass a reception took place in one of the chapels, and a number of the faithful had the honour of "kissing the papal slipper," says the account of the ceremony signed by a number of the dignitaries present.

Among the celebrities buried in the church or the burial-ground hard by are the following: Bernard de Girard, Seigneur du Haillan, historian, who died in 1610; Marie Jars de Gournay, the adopted daughter of Montaigne, and the editress of his essays; Vincent Voiture, poet and wit, who died in 1650; the Academician François de la Motte-le-Vayer; the poet Isaac Benserade; another Academician Furetière; the graceful music-maker, Rameau; the painter, Lafosse; a superintendent of finance, Claude de Bullion (a curiously appropriate name); Phélippeau, duke of la Vrillière; the chancellor d'Amenonville; a peer and marshal, François d'Aubusson de la Feuillade, who worshipped his king, the fourteenth Louis, and elevated a wondrous monument to his glory, the prancing steed and man in the Place des Victoires; and a medicine man of the same king a member, too, of the Academy, Martin Cureau de la Chambre, aged seventy-five when he died in 1669. The physician is said to have been the consulter-general of the king, and they carried on a secret correspondence, in which the former thought that the sovereign would "court grand risque de faire à l'avenir de mauvais choix de ministres," if he survived Cureau. The last curate buried in the church was Poupart, in 1796.

What is now the market of S. Joseph was formerly the burial-ground dedicated to that Saint. It belonged to the parish of S. Eustache, and in 163 °Chancellor Séguier built a chapel therein at his own expense. Here Molière and La Fontaine were buried, but the monuments were carried off to the museum of the Petits-Augustins, where they remained until 1818, when they were re-erected at Père-la-Chaise. Molière was also born in the parish, at a house, since pulled down, which occupied the site of the corner of the rue St. Honoré and the rue du Pont Neuf, formerly de la Tonnellerie.

The following epitaphs used to be in the church, and are interesting; the two first for their quaintness; the last as a record of an architect of S. Eustache, if not the original builder:

BARTHÉLÉMI TREMBLET, SCULPTEUR DU ROY, DÉCÉDÉ A L'AGEDE 61 ANS, EN 1629Louvre me donna l'être et Paris la fortune.J'eus l'honneur d'être au roy, St. Eustache a mes os;Passant, au nom de Dieu, si je ne t'importune,Durant ce mien sommeil, pries pour mon repos.—Le monde n'a ésté à FrançoiseGallois que passage à l'éternité;Elle y a demeuré comme toujoursPreste d'en sortir, Les XXIII annéesDe son âge, n'ont estées qu'innocence,Les quarte de son mariage, que paixEt concorde, les vertus furent sesExercices, la piété son contentement,La crainte de Dieu la conduite deSa vie qu'elle finit le XXVIIe AoustMDCXVI. Si chrestiennement,Que Richard Petit, son mary,Conser secrét, du roy, M. et C. deFr. ne console l'affliction de sonAbsence que par la souvenanceDe sa mort.—Cy-devant git le corpsD'honorable homme Charles David, vivant sujet du RoyEs-œuvres de maçonnerie, doyen des jurés et bourgeoisDe Paris, architecte et conducteur du bâtiment de l'EgliseDe céans, lequel après avoir vescu avec Anne LemercierSa femme l'espace de 53 ans, il décéda le quatrième jourDe décembre 1650 âgé de 98 ans.

S. Eustache has suffered much of late years by fire and the doings of wicked men. In 1844 fire attacked the organ, and smoke and water destroyed a great portion of the church. L'abbé Duguerry, who was shot in 1871 by the Communists, was curé at the time of the conflagration; and in order to rebuild the organ, he instituted a lottery, and appealed for aid to the whole country. Ten years later the new organ was built, and inaugurated under a new curé, Gaudereau, Duguerry having been appointed to the Madeleine. It was an exquisite instrument, of delicious tone and with a large number of stops. But alas! during the Commune it suffered again, several bombs having exploded in the church. Glass was smashed, organ pipes pierced, and a great deal of damage done to the roof; and it was several years before the church was restored to its pristine beauty. In 1879 the organ was finished, having been reconstructed and very much enlarged by J. Merklin, under a committee of organists and musicians; other instruments may be larger, but few are so beautiful in tone. Several of the Paris organs are fine, and the French school of organists is of all the least conventional. One is not bored by Rinck and his fellows; one does not hear choruses by Handel intended to be sung, or solos by the same master upon flute and clarionet stops with a poor tum-tum accompaniment, or sonatas written for the pianoforte or violin. That, to some of us, peculiarly irritating form of composition, the fugue, is rarely heard (except at the Madeleine), and Batiste, I think, must have held them in holy horror as did Berlioz, and, was it Chopin? Many a time for years I heard Batiste "touch" the S. Eustache organ, and surely no more divine sounds (if organ notes can be divine?) have ever been drawn from an instrument than when he played some soft, tender, pathetic melody upon the voix céleste or vox humana with accompaniment upon the far-off stops and tremolo; it was, in effect, what one might conceive a chorus of Angels accompanying some beautiful human voice. I know all the principal Paris organs, and most of them have been played upon by distinguished musicians; I also heard Lefebure-Wély frequently in former days; but no one seemed to equal or to excel Batiste in taste. His soft passages were perfection; and when he made the instrument thunder forth in all its fortissimo, it was grand in the extreme. Such an admiration had I for the musician, that I looked upon him as an invisible master, and my enthusiasm led me one day to waylay him as he came down the stairs. Query, if one admires an artist or an author, a poet or a musician, is it wise to see him in the flesh? Some painters and pianists, some violinists or singers, have been appropriately built, so to speak. Nature, sometimes unassisted, more often aided and pruned, has turned out bodies which are fitted to become the cases of distinguished minds. But everyone knows instances of actors and actresses who are nought minus their war-paint; of painters who might be grocers, and of poets as un-ideal in appearance as any publican or butterman. On the other hand, there are exquisites behind the counters, ethereal-looking butchers, and poetic vendors of cooked ham and beef. It is as if nature had made a number of bodies and minds, and shuffling them like a pack of cards, had tossed them together without any thought or heeding. Such seemed to have been the case with Batiste, for he was the exact model of the French Mossoo so dear to Punch– the Mossoo one so rarely sees out of that sportive periodical. Nevertheless, the soul within that commonplace body was able to peal forth in most sublime sounds which touched the hearts of all who heard them. Batiste's was essentially emotional playing of the highest order. Never shall I forget the thrill which went through the crowd when he played Chopin's "Funeral March" at the funeral of the dear old curé, l'abbé Simon – the very type of the courteous, fine-gentleman priests of other days, without their vices. When, years ago, the abbé Simon and Duguerry his friend, sat side by side, their finely chiselled features and longish hair, their elegant manner, and courteous bearing, reminded one of the portraits of Fléchier, Massillon and Bossuet.