Five ideas for a spiritual stroll in Paris

Associate Professor of History, Cyprien Mycinski has lived in Paris for fifteen years. This lover of the capital’s heritage has just signed Paris, sacred land. A spiritual history of the capital (PUF, 224 p., 22 euros). In twenty chapters like so many stages, it recounts these places which make up the religious density of the Parisian heritage. Discover five of them, like a first route in an endless walk.

The pillar of the nauts, pagan vestige of a Christian city

It could be point 0 of Paris, its starting point in space and time commented Cyprien Mycinski. Discovered in 1711 under the choir of Notre-Dame, this pillar today preserved in the Cluny museum freshly renovated, was in fact a column-shaped altar, dating from the 1st century BC. The brotherhood of the nautes, in other words the navigators, formed the elite of the Parisii, a Romanized Gallic people living in Lutetia. This is reminiscent of the syncretism of the pillar, mixing Gallic deities – such as Esus and Cernunnos – and Roman deities, such as Jupiter, Vulcan and Mars.

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One can thus read, on the column: During the reign of Tiberius Caesar Augustus, to Jupiter very good, very great, the nauts of the territory of the Parisii erected this monument. What was this block doing under Notre-Dame? Two hypotheses are considered: the famous cathedral would have been built on an old temple or, more unexpectedly, the pillar would have been voluntarily placed under the church to symbolize the entry into the new Christian era.

Sainte Geneviève, a statue to protect Paris

The statue of Saint Geneviève sits atop a stone pinnacle of the Pont de la Tournelle, in Paris.

Lovers of Île Saint-Louis coming from the Latin Quarter may have noticed this curious construction soaring skywards, on which you have to linger to see that it is a woman holding a young girl who grab a boat. Located on the Pont de la Tournelle, just behind Notre-Dame, this veiled woman is none other than Saint Geneviève (422-502), the patron saint of Paris. His great act was to protect the city threatened by the Huns, in 451. The little girl symbolizes Paris and the boat represents its emblem, which is also its motto: fluctuat NEC mergitur – pitch but not sink.

Geneviève is therefore turned towards the East where the Huns come from, but not only. Sculpted by Paul Landowski (also author of the iconic Christ the Redeemer of Rio de Janeiro) to adorn the new Tournelle bridge in 1928, the statue also looks towards Germany: erected by a IIIe Republic less anticlerical since the collective sacrifice of the Great War, it symbolizes the union against the enemy.

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Five ideas for a spiritual stroll in Paris