Friday: May 28
Basillica of Saint-Denis - Burial spot of the Kings
The Cathedral Basilica of Saint-Denis (French: Cathédrale royale de
Saint-Denis, or simply Basilique Saint-Denis, previously the Abbaye
de Saint-Denis) is a large abbey church in the commune of
Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The abbey church was
created a cathedral in 1966 and is the seat of the Bishop of
Saint-Denis, Pascal Michel Ghislain Delannoy. The building is of
unique importance historically and architecturally.
Founded in the 7th century by Dagobert I on the burial place of Saint Denis, a
patron saint of France, the church became a place of pilgrimage and the burial
place of the French Kings, nearly every king from the 10th to the 18th centuries
being buried there, as well as many from the previous centuries. (It was not
used for the coronations of kings, this role being designated to the Cathedral
of Reims; however, queens were commonly crowned there.) "Saint-Denis" soon
became the abbey church of a growing monastic complex. In the 12th century the
Abbot Suger rebuilt portions of the abbey church using innovative structural and
decorative features that were drawn from a number of other sources. In doing so,
he is said to have created the first truly Gothic building.[1] The basilica's
13th century nave is also the prototype for the Rayonnant Gothic style, and
provided an architectural model for cathedrals and abbeys of northern France,
England and other countries.
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Saint Denis is a patron saint of France and, according to legend, was the first
bishop of Paris. A shrine was erected at his burial place. There Dagobert I,
king of the Franks, who reigned from 628 to 637, founded the Abbey of Saint
Denis, a Benedictine monastery. The shrine itself was created by Eligius, a
goldsmith by training.
The Basilica of Saint-Denis is an architectural landmark as it was the first
major structure of which a substantial part was designed and built in the Gothic
style. Both stylistically and structurally it heralded the change from
Romanesque architecture to Gothic architecture. Before the term "Gothic" came
into common use, it was known as the "French Style" (Opus Francigenum).
As it now stands, the church is a large cruciform building of "basilica" form,
that is, it has a central nave with lower aisles and clerestory windows. It has
an additional aisle on the northern side formed of a row of chapels. The west
front has three portals, a rose window and one tower, on the southern side. The
eastern end, which is built over a crypt, is apsidal, surrounded by an
ambulatory and a chevet of nine radiating chapels.
Abbot Suger (circa 1081-1151), friend and confidant of the French kings Louis VI
and Louis VII, decided in about 1137 to rebuild the great Abbey Church of
Saint-Denis, attached to an abbey which was also a royal residence. Suger began
with the West front, reconstructing the original Carolingian façade with its
single door. He designed the façade of Saint-Denis to be an echo of the Roman
Arch of Constantine with its three-part division and three large portals to ease
the problem of congestion. There is a rose window above a west portal. Although
circular windows in this position were common in Italian Romanesque churches, it
is believed to be the first rose window in this position in France, and was to
become a dominant feature of the Gothic facades of northern France, soon to be
imitated at Chartres Cathedral and many others.
At the completion of the west front in 1140, Abbot Suger moved on to the
reconstruction of the eastern end, leaving the Carolingian nave in use. He
designed a choir (chancel) that would be suffused with light. To achieve his
aims, Suger's masons drew on the several new features which evolved or had been
introduced to Romanesque architecture: the pointed arch, the ribbed vault, the
ambulatory with radiating chapels, the clustered columns supporting ribs
springing in different directions and the flying buttresses which enabled the
insertion of large clerestory windows.
It was the first time that these features had all been drawn together. Erwin
Panofsky argued that Suger was inspired to create a physical representation of
the Heavenly Jerusalem, however the extent to which Suger had any aims higher
than aesthetic pleasure has been called into doubt by more recent art historians
on the basis of Suger's own writings.
The new structure was finished and dedicated on June 11, 1144, in the presence
of the King. The Abbey of Saint-Denis thus became the prototype for further
building in the royal domain of northern France. From 1231 the old nave of
Saint-Denis was rebuilt, introducing the new Rayonnant Gothic style, and
gaining, in its transepts, two spectacular rose windows.
Among the other important features were statue columns flanking the portals on
the west facade (now destroyed but known from Montfaucon's drawings). A plan of
circa 1700 by Félibien shows a large mortuary chapel in the form of a domed
colonnaded "rotunda", adjoining the north transept of the basilica and
containing the tomb of the Valois. The basilica retains stained glass of many
periods, including exceptional modern glass, and a set of twelve misericords.
The abbey is where the kings of France and their families were buried for
centuries and is therefore often referred to as the "royal necropolis of
France". All but three of the monarchs of France from the 10th century until
1789 have their remains here. Some monarchs, like Clovis I (465-511), were not
originally buried at this site. The remains of Clovis I were exhumed from the
despoiled Abbey of St Genevieve which he founded.
The abbey church contains some fine examples of cadaver tombs. The effigies of
many of the kings and queens are on their tombs, but during the French
Revolution, these tombs were opened by workers under orders from revolutionary
officials. The bodies were removed and dumped in two large pits nearby and
dissolved with lime. Archaeologist Alexandre Lenoir saved many of the monuments
from the same revolutionary officials by claiming them as artworks for his
Museum of French Monuments.
The bodies of the beheaded King Louis XVI, his wife Marie Antoinette of Austria,
and his sister Madame Élisabeth were not initially buried in Saint-Denis, but
rather in the churchyard of the Madeleine, where they were covered with
quicklime. The body of the Dauphin, who died of an illness, was buried in an
unmarked grave in a Parisian churchyard near the Temple.
Napoleon Bonaparte reopened the church in 1806, but allowed the royal remains to
be left in their mass graves. During Napoleon's exile in Elba, the restored
Bourbons ordered a search for the corpses of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The
few remains, a few bones that were presumably the king's and a clump of greyish
matter containing a lady's garter, were found on January 21, 1815, brought to
Saint-Denis and buried in the crypt. In 1817 the mass graves containing all the
other remains were opened, but it was impossible to distinguish any one from the
collection of bones. The remains were therefore placed in an ossuary in the
crypt of the church, behind two marble plates with the names of the hundreds of
members of the succeeding French dynasties that were interred in the church duly
recorded.
King Louis XVIII, upon his death in 1824, was buried in the center of the crypt,
near the graves of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette. The coffins of royal family
members that died between 1815 and 1830 were also placed in the vaults. Under
the direction of architect Viollet-le-Duc, famous for his work on Notre-Dame de
Paris, church monuments that were taken to the Museum of French Monuments were
returned to the church. The corpse of King Louis VII, who had been buried at the
Abbey at Saint-Pont and whose tomb had not been touched by the revolutionaries,
was brought to Saint-Denis and buried in the crypt. In 2004 the mummified heart
of the Dauphin, the boy that would have been Louis XVII, was sealed into the
wall of the crypt.