II.3.2. MEDIEVAL SPIRITS LINGER

MENU: 2.3.2. Medieval spirits linger  

WE PASS A CEMETERY, THE WHOLESALE PRODUCE MARKET AND RAMPARTS BUILT FARTHER AND FARTHER FROM THE CENTER  

Following rue Saint-Denis shows them still intangibly there.  

  Paris in 1572 / zoom

How the past stays with us

• The trade route divides into segments

• Touristy shops and fast-foods at the trade route's start

• A cemetery that bewilders

• The "Court of Miracles"

• That territory now

• Detour: a prostitute who (almost) rose up from the street

• The huge open space at the city's heart

• "Les Halles," above ground and below it

• Specters emerge from the cemetery

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The trade route divides into segments

THE TRADE ROUTE DIVIDES INTO SEGMENTS

EACH REVEALS THE PAST 

Adapted from a Mappy plan

The first segment, which dates from the 13th century) goes up to the church whose steeple you glimpse (look very carefully).

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When the rampart built toward 1200 made the fortress obsolete, it became the prison, Tribunal, police headquarters and morgue. 

 The Grand Châtelet Seen from rue Saint-Denis by T.G.H. Hoffbauer / zoom, drawing based on the archives

   

This map from 1750 shows why rue Saint-Denis starts at some distance from the river.

The Châtelet quarter, 1750 / zoom

In the 1850's Paris underwent a giant transformation — more later —  and this open space replaced the Grand Châtelet.

 

The Fountain of Victories, built in 1808 to celebrate Napoleon's victories, was moved here (in 1854).

 Rue Saint-Denis begins at the east-west trade route:  

 Paris in the 11th Century / zoom (please scroll down)

The yellow arrow shows a location, the red one our route. 

 

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Touristy shops and fast-foods at the trade route's start

TOURISTY SHOPS AND FAST-FOODS AT THE TRADE ROUTE'S START

 

THE 11TH-CENTURY TOWN HAD NO SPECIAL TRAITS

The beginning of the street has none either.

Then comes an enigma: streets that only a few stops separate. Rue de la Ferronnerie follows the vanished rampart of the early medieval town...

Plan of 1830 with a modern superposition / zoom (please scroll down)

  View of the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, anonymous, 1814 / zoom

Rue des Innocents crops the edge of the cemetery that was just beyond it to give an extra street to the growing 19th-century town.

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That space is the Cemetery of the Holy Innocents, a center of death, commerce and conviviality: please click on.

It is still a cheerful place,

with meetings and demonstrations.

The American "No Kings" demonstration starts out (in October 2025).

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A cemetery that bewilders

A CEMETERY THAT BEWILDERS

A CHURCH AND THE CEMETERY OF THE HOLY INNOCENTS APPEARED JUST BEYOND THE WALL

(TOWARD 1150)

The Cemetery toward 1550 as imagined by Hoffbauer, mentioned on the preceding page

 

 The Cemetery of the Holy Innocents by Jacob Grimer, 16th century / zoom

"SNF..." [snif] refers to the smell from the open graves:

Adapted from a graphic novel / zoom

Yet the cemetery was a place for shopping, fêtes, quarrels, flirting... 

 Pea Shellers of the Halle by Étienne Jeaurat, XVIIIe siècle / zoom

 

Festivité offerte par la Ville de Paris aux Halles pour la naissance du Dauphin en 1782, by Philibert-Louis Deboucourt / zoom

"The dead were sheltered by the living.

On every tomb sellers of ribbons, laces, trinkets.

Merchants spread out their wares while smiling at the client...  

"Never had death been so familiar; the handsome idle of the time constantly besieged those counters of a new kind. One flirted in the charnal house as at a market, planned to meet there as at the Tuileries [... ]"...

-- The Streets of Paris, ed. Kugelman, 1844, zoom (in French)

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The crowd provided an initiation site for thieves who hoped to join the Court of Miracles...

Chasing Pariahs (in French),  zoom

The candidate would steal a purse and flee. His potential comrades would cry "thief!" and join the crowd chasing him,stealing all the while. If he escaped with their help, they would  all celebrate his joining the Court. 

If he was caught he was hanged. 

  -- The Court of Miracles, 2020 (in French, unsigned)  

Adapted from a plan of 1760 / zoom

A historical novel begins:

"At that time [1738], 

towns stank in a way unimaginable for us

The streets stank of manure, the courtyards of urine, the stairs of moldy wood and rat excrement, the kitchens of rotting cabbage and sheep fat: Badly aired rooms stank of dust, bedrooms of greasy sheets, damp bedspreads and the bitter mustiness of chamber pots. Fireplaces spat a sulfurous stink, tanning establishments the stench of their corrosive baths, and slaughterhouses the stench of curdled blood. People stank from sweat and unwashed clothes : The mouths stank from rotted teeth, their stomachs stank from onions and their bodies from old cheese and sour milk and eruptive tumors. The rivers stank, the squares stank, the churches stank, it stunk under the bridges and in palaces. [...]

Naturally it was in Paris that the stench was greatest, for Paris was the biggest town of France. And in the center of the capital was a place where stench reigned in a way that was particularly infernal [...] that was the cemetery of the Innocents. For eight hundred years [...] day after day corpses had been carried by the dozen and thrown them into long ditches, for eight hundred years they had filled the successive layers of charnel houses and ossuaries." 

-- Perfume: the Story of a Murderer by Patrick Süskind, 1985

But stink was omnipresent — one smelled Paris from three days away. It could make visitors ill, but residents were used to it.

 

Death too was constant. Yet what counted was eternal life, and dying was terrible only when it happened outside the rites of the Church.

And there was no other large public space

in the center of town.

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Next,

The "Court of Miracles"