II.3.1. MEDIEVAL SPIRITS LINGER

MENU: 2.3.1. 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 1530 / zoom

How the past stays with us

• Very long rue Saint-Denis is divided into segments

• 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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Next,

Very long rue Saint-Denis is divided into segments

VERY LONG RUE SAINT-DENIS IS DIVIDED INTO SEGMENTS...

EACH IS A PUZZLE THAT REVEALS THE PAST 

Adapted from a Mappy plan

The first segment goes up to the church that you glimpse from the steeple. It dates from the Middle Ages.  

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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

      Adapted from a Google map

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

Adapted from a map of 1750 / zoom

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

 

The Fountain of Victories, built in 1808 to celebrate Napoleon's victories, was moved to the center of the new open space.

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

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

Yellow arrows show a location, red arrows our route. 

The data behind the green sign informs on transport and services but skips the past. It does not  mention the trade and pilgrimage route. 

We head toward the church steeple you glimpse in the background:

       Adapted from a Google map

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The medieval path had no distinguishing features and neither does this part of the route. Touristy shops and fast-foods align:

Then there's a puzzle: tiny parallel streets a few steps apart.

Rue de la Ferronerie follows the trace of the earliest rampart, indicating the boundary of the 11th-centuty town.

Rue des Innocents crops off the edge of the space we come to, giving the growing population a new street (in the 1820's). 

We come to the cemetery of the Holy Innocents...

 That space.

That for centuries was a site

 of death, commerce and conviviality:

It is still a site for meetings.

"No Kings," an American demonstration against Trump with a strong French presence (in 2025)

 

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Next,

A cemetery that bewilders

THE AREA BETWEEN TOWN AND THE 11th CENTURY WALL HAD NO OUTSTANDING TRAITS

 

SO THE START OF THE MODERN STREET HAS NONE EITHER

The panel that introduces it informs on transport and services, but says nothing about the past.  

 At first you pass only touristy shops and fast foods.   

Then comes an enigma: streets separated by only a few steps. 

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

Rue de la Ferronerie follows the vanished rampart of the early medieval town, so what comes next was right outside it.

 

Rue des Innocents cuts off the edge of the void to which we come, to give a little more room to the growing population (of the early 1820's).

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,

for meetings and demonstrations.

"No Kings,"an American demonstration against Trump (in 2025). 

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Suite,

Un cimetière qui nous déroute

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, flirts... 

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

Festivity given by the City of Paris at the Halles for the Birth of the Dauphin,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. But 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"