Paris’s most important festivities are probably not the first ones that come to mind.
It’s not the Nuit Blanche, nor New Year’s Eve and even less (sorry to disappoint) the fancy dress party you organise every year in your living room. In fact, Paris’s most emblematic festivities are celebrated on January 3rd in honour of a saint – and this year they’re going to be hard to miss.
In 2020, we are celebrating the 1600th anniversary of the birth of Saint Genevieve (the patron saint of Paris), who was born in 420 into an aristocratic Gallo-Roman family and who decided to devote her life to Christianity from an early age.
Genevieve is renowned for having supposedly saved Paris twice and prevented the massacre of its inhabitants. Attila the Hun invaded Gaul in 451 and when he arrived in front of the gates to the city (which was called Lutetia at the time), the terrified populace got ready to flee leaving him the city and everything in it. As legend has it, Genevieve encouraged the Parisians to resist telling them: “Let the men flee if they will. Should they no longer be able to fight, we the women will pray to God until he hears our prayers”. Growing weary of the siege, Attila retreated. The second exploit was in 476, when it was the turn of Childeric I to lay siege to Lutetia. He installed a blockade and was trying to starve the population, but Genevieve, who was a town councillor, managed to break through the blockade several times to bring food and supplies to the population. The city never fell and the young woman became the symbol of Paris’s resistance.
Statue de Sainte Geneviève, par Michel-Louis Victor Mercier, au jardin du Luxembourg, Paris
She went on to convince Childeric’s son Clovis to build a church devoted to St. Peter and St. Paul on Mons Lucotitius (today’s Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in the 5th arrondissement), which is where Clovis, Queen Clotilde and Genevieve (elevated to patron saint of Paris) would be buried.
Various invasions and the French Revolution got the better of the church buildings, of which only the bell tower still remains. It is called the Tour Clovis and lies within the walls of the prestigious Lycée Henri-IV, which is just a six-minute walk from French Theory in the continuation of Rue Cujas. If the church is no longer there, St Genevieve’s ideals are still just as relevant today: our period, which has seen Paris victim to terrible attacks, needs more than ever the fervour of all the men and women who love this city.
Saint Genevieve’s day: 3rd January.
2020 marks the 1600th anniversary of the birth of Saint Genevieve. For the occasion, she will be the focus of an exhibition at the town hall in the 5th arrondissement.