The Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris is more impressive than any fictitious tales in the ‘Da Vinci Code’

The Church of Saint-Sulpice is the third largest church in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

On our last day in Paris, we returned to the Saint-Germain-des-Près district, having savoured the literary legacy of the area the previous evening, stopping in Les Deux Magots and raising our glasses to the previous clientele, including James Joyce, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir and Ernest Hemingway.

We were back in the 6th arrondissement to stroll through the back streets with their art studios, to see the Luxembourg Garden, to taste authentic French crepes, and to visit the Church of Saint-Sulpice (Église Saint-Sulpice).

Saint-Sulpice is the third largest church in Paris – only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and Saint-Eustache. The church is as impressive from the outside as it is inside, and its twin towers dominate the square in front of the church, the Place Saint-Sulpice.

The twin towers of Saint-Sulpice tower above the square below (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Many people point out that Saint-Sulpice is similar in appearance to Saint Paul’s Cathedral in London. Inside, the features include the nave, the Lady Chapel, a statue of Jean-Baptiste Pigalle, the sacristy and its wood-panelling, murals by Eugène Delacroix and Cavaillé-Coll’s organ. The church also has an elaborate 18th century gnomon, once used to determine the equinoxes and the precise date of Easter.

Saint-Sulpice is also one of the locations where Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code was filmed. The bizarre appearance of the Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice in the film has brought curious but seemingly unwelcome visitors in large numbers to the church.

The church is the second one on the site dedicated to Saint Sulpitius (or Sulpicius) the Pious, a seventh century Bishop of Bourges who died in 644. It was built over a 13th century Romanesque church, to which additions had been made over the centuries up to 1631.

Inside Saint-Sulpice, facing the east end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The new church was the vision of Jean-Jacques Olier (1608-1657), the parish priest who founded both the Society of Saint-Sulpice, a clerical congregation, and a seminary linked to the church. Christophe Gamard drew up the designs in 1636, Anne of Austria, wife of Louis XIII, laid the first stone, and building work began in 1646.

The work was disrupted by a series of civil wars from 1648 to 1653 known as Fronde. Only the Lady Chapel had been built by 1660, when Daniel Gittard draw up a new design for most of the church. He completed the sanctuary, ambulatory, the chapels in the apse, the transept and the north portal (1670-1678), but building then stopped due to a lack of funds.

Gilles-Marie Oppenord and Giovanni Servandoni were then called in. They followed Gittard’s designs closely and supervised further construction, including the nave and side chapels (1719-1745). The decoration was carried out by the brothers Sébastien-Antoine Slodtz (1695-1742) and Paul-Ambroise Slodtz (1702-1758).

Oppenord created the north and south portals of the transept in 1723-1724, with an unusual interior design for the ends: concave walls with nearly engaged Corinthian columns instead of the pilasters found in other parts of the church. He also built a bell tower on top of the transept crossing. But when its weight threatened to collapse the building, it was removed.

After his potentially disastrous miscalculation, Oppenord was relieved of his duties as an architect and was restricted to designing decorations.

Inside Saint-Sulpice, facing the west end (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Jean-Baptiste Languet de Gergy, then priest of Saint-Sulpice, commissioned a gnomon in the church in 1727 to help him determine the time of the equinoxes and the date of Easter. A meridian line of brass was inlaid across the floor and ascending a white marble obelisk, almost 11 metres high, at the top of which is a sphere surmounted by a cross. The obelisk is dated 1743.

As we walked around the church, a funeral was about to begin. Rather than intrude on the grief of a family, we missed out on looking for the gnomon and the small opening with a lens in the a south transept window that shines a ray of sunlight onto the brass line. At noon on the winter solstice (21 December), the ray of light touches the brass line on the obelisk. At noon on the equinoxes (21 March and 21 September), the ray touches an oval plate of copper in the floor near the altar.

The gnomon was built by the English clock-maker and astronomer Henry Sully. It was also used for various scientific measurements. This rational use may have protected Saint-Sulpice from being destroyed during the French Revolution.

The Italian-born architect Giovanni Servandoni (1695-1766) won a competition to design the west façade in 1732. He had moved to Paris from London in 1724 and his new design was inspired by Sir Christopher Wren’s entrance elevation of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London.

His pedimented façades were mostly complete by 1739, but still without the two towers. But his pediment was criticised for being classically incorrect because its width was based on the entire front rather than the size of the order on which it rested. During this period, the Marquis de Sade was baptised in Saint-Sulpice in 1740.

The high altar in Saint-Sulpice (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Servandoni’s work had not been completed when he died in 1766. Oudot de Maclaurin later erected the twin towers to Servandoni’s design. Servandoni’s pupil Jean Chalgrin rebuilt the north tower (1777-1780), making it taller, and modified Servandoni’s baroque design to one that was more neoclassical. He also designed the decoration of the chapels under the towers.

The French Revolution intervened, and the south tower was never replaced. Pierre Victor, Baron de Besenval de Brunstatt, whose failures led to the storming of the Bastille in 1798, was buried in the church in 1791.

During the Revolution, Saint-Sulpice became a place for worship of the ‘Supreme Being’. A sign over the centre door of the main entrance declared: Le Peuple Français Reconnoit L’Etre Suprême Et L’Immortalité de L’Âme, ‘The French people recognise the Supreme Being and the immortality of the soul’. During the Directory, Saint-Sulpice was used as a Temple of Victory.

Two halves of an enormous shell were a gift to King Francis I from the Venetian Republic (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Inside the church, at either side of the entrance, are two halves of an enormous shell (tridacna gigas). They were given to King Francis I by the Venetian Republic in the 16th century. They rest on rock-like bases sculpted in the 18th century by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle and are used as holy water fonts.

The Lady Chapel, rebuilt by Servandoni in 1729, was badly damaged in 1762 in a fire that destroyed the nearby Foire Saint-Germain, and the chapel and its baroque interior were designed by Charles de Wailly in 1774.

Pigalle designed the large white marble statue of the Virgin Mary in the Lady Chapel. Pigalle’s work replaced a solid-silver statue by Edmé Bouchardon that disappeared during the Revolution. It is made of silverware donated by parishioners and is known as ‘Our Lady of the Old Tableware.’ The stucco decoration around the Lady Chapel is by Louis-Philippe Mouchy.

A fresco by François Lemoyne depicts the Assumption (1734) and has been restored several times since.

Charles de Wailly designed the pulpit, completed in 1788 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Charles de Wailly also designed the pulpit, completed in 1788. From this pulpit, the parish priest of Saint-Sulpice declared his refusal to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Later, it was also used by Revolutionary orators.

Redecorations to the interior, to repair extensive damage during the Revolution, began after the Concordat of 1801.

Charles Baudelaire was baptised in Saint-Sulpice in 1821, and Victor Hugo and Adèle Foucher were married in the church in 1822.

The Chapel of the Souls in Purgatory … the Pièta is by Jean-Baptiste Auguste Clésinger (1868) and the frescos by François Joseph Heim (1845) (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Eugène Delacroix added murals (1855-1861) that adorn the walls and ceiling of the Chapel of the Holy Angels, including ‘Jacob Wrestling with the Angel’, ‘Heliodorus Driven from the Temple’ and ‘Saint Michael Vanquishing the Demon.

During the Paris Commune (1871), the Club de la Victoire chose Saint-Sulpice as its headquarters and Louise Michel spoke from the pulpit.

An arson attack during an organ concert in 2019 caused a fire that damaged doors, a stained-glass window, a bas-relief and a staircase.

The funeral mass of Jacques Chirac, former President of France, took place in the church in 2019.

Giovanni Servandoni’s design of the west façade was inspired by Sir Christopher Wren’s elevation of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church features in literature, operas, musical tradition, popular novels and in many films.

Massenet’s opera Manon has a scene set in Saint-Sulpice in which Lescaut Manon convinces Le Chevalier des Grieux to run away with her once more.

In Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes , Honoré de Balzac has the Abbé Herrera celebrate Mass in the church, and the plot of Balzac’s short story La Messe de l’athée centres on Saint-Suplice.

The church has a long list of celebrated organists, from Nicolas Séjan in the 18th century, to Charles-Marie Widor (organist 1870-1933), Marcel Dupré (1934-1971) and Jean-Jacques Grunenwald (1973-1982). The current organists are Karol Mossakowski, Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin and Daniel Roth.

The organ was built by François-Henri Clicquot and rebuilt by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1862. It is regarded as Cavaillé-Coll’s magnum opus, and is one of the most impressive instruments of the romantic French symphonic-organ era. The church also has a two-manual-and-pedal choir organ by Cavaillé-Coll from 1858.

Sunday organ concerts take place regularly at 10 am (‘Auditions des Grandes Orgues à Saint Sulpice’, before the 11 am Mass). The Sunday Mass is preceded by a 15-minute Prelude of the Great Organ, starting at 10:45 am.

The organ was built by François-Henri Clicquot and rebuilt by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll in 1862 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Dan Brown’s novel The Da Vinci Code (2003) has attracted visitors in large but often unwelcomes numbers to Saint-Sulpice.

But a notice in the church declares that despite ‘fanciful allegations’ in his novel, the line in the floor ‘is not a vestige of a pagan temple. No such temple ever existed in this place … It does not coincide with the meridian traced through the middle of the Paris Observatory.’

It points out too that the initials ‘P’ and ‘S’ in small transept windows refer to Saint Peter and Saint Sulpice, the patron saints of the church, and not to an imaginary Priory of Sion.

It is easy to understand why the Archdiocese of Paris decide to refuse Ron Howard permission to film inside Saint-Sulpice when he was making The Da Vinci Code in 2005.

Saint-Sulplice faces onto Place Saint-Sulpice, with the Fontaine Saint-Sulpice, or Fountain of the Four Bishops (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church faces onto Place Saint-Sulpice, which is a popular place for tourists. The chestnut trees in the square produce pink flowers in season, and the square includes the city hall of the 6th arrondissement and the Café de la Mairie, a rendezvous for writers and students.

The Fontaine Saint-Sulpice, or Fountain of the Four Bishops (Fontaine des Quatre Evêques), designed by the architect Joachim Visconti and erected in 1844-1848. The fountain has the statues of four bishops, one on each side: Bossuet (north) by Jean-Jacques Feuchère; Fénelon (east) by François Lanno; Fléchier (west) by Louis Desprez; and Massillon (south) by Jacques-Auguste Fauginet.

The fountain is also known as the fontaine des quatre points cardinaux (‘Fountain of the Four Cardinal Points’), although none of the four bishops ever became a cardinal.

That afternoon we also had a genuine taste of Paris at the Crêperie La Bolee at the top of Rue Servandoni, close to the Jardin du Luxembourg and with a reputation as ‘one of the best creperie in the Latin Quarter’. Of course, the street name recalls Giovanni Servandoni, the architect who truly shaped Saint Sulpice as we see it today.

The south side of Saint Sulplice glimpsed through Rue Servandoni, close to the Jardin du Luxembourg (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Église Saint-Paul in the Marais, its royal links, and a tragedy that befell the family of Victor Hugo

The Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis on rue Saint-Antoine is the parish church in the Marais in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

My main purposes in visiting the Marais during my visit to Paris last week were to stroll through the Jewish district, to visit some of the synagogues, to see the Holocaust Memorial and the Museum of Jewish Art and History, and to stop in some of the Jewish shops and cafés.

As I was walking back to the Left Bank and the hotel where we were staying, I also stopped to visit the Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis on rue Saint-Antoine, the Catholic parish church in the Marais. The church gives its name to Rue Saint-Paul Place Saint-Paul and the nearest Metro station, Saint-Paul.

A shrine dedicated to Saint Paul in the Fields, Saint-Paul-des-Champs, was built on this site in 632-642, and served as a chapel for the cemetery of a convent founded by Saint Eloi and Saint Aure on Ile de la Cité during the reign of King Dagobert. Prominent figures buried in the old cemetery included François Rabelais and the architect François Mansart. The monastic cemetery disappeared and the old church was demolished in 1799.

The chapel was replaced by the first church on the site, Saint-Paul-des-Champs, built ca 1125, when the neighbourhood became a parish, and the dedication of the church was changed from Saint Paul the Hermit, a monk in Egypt in the third-fourth century, to Saint Paul the Apostle.

Charles V designated the Hôtel Saint-Pol on Rue Saint-Paul as his royal palace in 1358. Charles VI and Charles VII were baptised at Saint-Paul. The church was rebuilt in the Gothic style in 1431, and remained as the king’s parish up to 1559, when Henry II was mortally wounded in a jousting tournament on rue Saint-Antoine.

Cardinal Charles de Bourbon, uncle of Henry IV, bought the Hôtel de La Rochepot in 1580 and donated it to the Jesuits, who had been brought to Paris the previous year by Saint Ignatius Loyola. The Jesuits established their first house there and built a chapel dedicated to King Louis IX, also known as Saint Louis, close to the present church.

Jean-Jacques Olier, founder of the Prêtres de Saint-Sulpice, was baptised in the old church in 1608, and Madame de Sévigné, a leading figures in 17th century French literature, was baptised there in 1626.

Inside the Église Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis, the first church in Paris built in the Baroque style (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

As the city grew, this chapel was too small, and it was replaced with a new church built in 1627-1641 with the financial support of Louis XIII.

This was the first church in Paris to break entirely from the Gothic style and to use the new Baroque style favoured by the Jesuits. It would have an important influence on church architecture in Paris. Next door to the church, the Jesuits also founded the Lycée Charlemagne. A portion of the old wall still remains, next to the Lycée.

The first stone of the new building was laid by Louis XIII in 1627. The new church was given the name of the king’s ancestor, Louis IX, and became the église Saint-Louis de la maison professe des Jésuites, a reference to the Maison Professe des Jésuites beside it.

The first Mass in the new church was celebrated on the feast of the Ascension, 9 May 1641, by Cardinal Richelieu in the presence of Louis XIII.

The dome was an unusual feature for a Jesuit church and is one of the first domes built in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The new church was designed by the Jesuit architects Étienne Martellange, who drew the initial plans, and François Derand, who was responsible for the design of the façade. The plan is inspired by the Chiesa del Gesù in Rome.

The façade was influenced by the new Italian baroque style, particularly the Church of the Gesù in Rome, the mother church of the Jesuits. It was also influenced by the façade of the église Saint-Gervais-Saint-Protais de Paris (1618) by Salomon de Brosse, which has the same design of three bays with two levels on the side bays and three levels for the central bay, highlighted by a projection and doubled columns. It uses Corinthian columns on the two lower levels and composite order.

The dome which is 55 meters high was an unusual feature for a Jesuit building and was one of the first domes built in Paris. Both the dome and the bell tower are largely hidden from view from the street by the very high façade. The dome served as a model for other domes, including those of Les Invalides and Val-de-Grace.

Another notable influence was the Flemish baroque style, more lavish than the Italian style and seen in the abundance of sculpture and ornament covering the façade.

Jean-Jacques Olier, Madame de Sévigné and the children of Victor Hugo were baptised in the parish (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The interior design was largely inspired by the Church of the Gesù in Rome, with some French additions. The lavish decorations follow the decrees of the Council of Trent (1545-1563), and were intended to contrast with the austerity of Protestant churches. The decoration also had numerous symbols and sculptures of the Virgin Mary.

The plan is a compromise between the Gesù’s single nave flanked by side chapels and the traditional French cruciform plan, as seen in its long transepts. The tall windows in the prominent transepts and the short east apse allow in large amounts of light, and the dome under the crossing also recalls Italian architecture of a slightly earlier period, such as that of Carlo Maderno.

The Jesuit priest Louis Bourdaloue preached some of his best-known sermons for Lent and Advent in the church, between 1669 and 1693. He also preached a funeral sermon for the Grand Condé in the church in 1687. The preacher and author Bishop Esprit Fléchier also preached there, and the preacher Louis Bourdaloue was buried in the crypt in 1704.

The new church soon acquired a reputation for its music. Marc-Antoine Charpentier was master of music in 1688-1698, and other masters of music included Jean-Philippe Rameau, André Campra and Louis Marchand.

The Jesuits were the confessors or ‘directors of conscience’ of the Kings of France. But, after a dispute with the King, they were expelled from France by the Parlement of Paris in 1762. The church was transferred to another religious order, the Congregation of France, or Génofévains, whose headquarters were at the Abbey of Saint Genevieve.

The church retained its close relationship with the royal family. The urns containing the hearts of Louis XIII and Louis XIV were kept in the church. The urns were hidden during the French Revolution, and later they were transferred to the Abbey of Saint Denis, where they remain to this day.

Celebrated preachers in the church included Louis Bourdaloue, Esprit Fléchier and Louis Bourdaloue (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

During the French Revolution, the church was closed and used to store works of art and books plundered from other churches in the area. Five priests were killed in the church during the September Massacres on 2 September 1792. They are commemorated with a plaque.

The church was then used as a temple of the Cult of Reason and the Supreme Being. In 1793, Robespierre preached the cult of the goddess Reason in the church against the atheism promoted by Hébert. The chemist Antoine Lavoisier, who was an important patron of the church, was guillotined in 1794.

The old Saint Paul’s Church was demolished in 1798, but a section of the wall of the square tower is still visible on rue Saint-Paul.

Under the Concordat of 1801, the church was restored as a Catholic parish church in 1802, with a new dedication to Saint Paul and Saint Louis, recalling the older church that had been demolished in 1798. A bell from old Saint Paul’s was salvaged as well as the great clock on the façade.

The church was restored by the architect Victor Baltard in 1850, and the white marble high altar was moved and rebuilt under Louis-Philippe I with fragments from Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides.

On the right side of the nave, one pillar has an inscription that is almost erased, République française ou la mort (‘French Republic or death’), scrawled during the Paris Commune in 1871.

The façade and the lantern on the dome were restored by the City of Paris in 2012-2015.

Most of the stained glass in the windows was white to bring a maximum of light into the church. Many of the windows were decorated with the coats-of-arms of families that donated the windows.

In addition to the free-standing sculptures on the façades and in the interior, the pendentives of the dome and other features inside have their own lavish sculptures. Indeed, there are very few surfaces inside without some sort of sculpture.

The white marble high altar was moved and rebuilt with fragments from Napoleon’s tomb at Les Invalides (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church has several notable 17th century paintings. A series of three paintings depicts scenes from the life of Louis IX, or Saint Louis, but the fourth in the series has disappeared.

‘Louis XIII offering to Saint Louis a model of the Church Saint-Louis’, attributed to the workshop of Simon Vouet, is in the right transept.

‘The Death of Saint Louis’, by Jacques de Létin (1597-1661), is also in the right transept. It shows Saint Louis stricken with the plague being given the holy sacraments before his death. The figure on the left, whose face is almost hidden by drapery, has the features of the artist.

‘Saint Louis receiving the Crown of Thorns from the hands of Christ’ is by Michel Corneille the Elder (1601-1664), a pupil of Simon Vouet.

Another notable work painted for the church is ‘Christ at Gethsemane’ by Eugène Delacroix (1793-1863). It was commissioned to replace ‘Saint Louis leaking for the Crusades’, destroyed during the Revolution. Until recently, this painting was seen to the left of the altar, but it is on a long-term loan to the Metropolitan Museum in New York.

The church also holds ‘La vierge del Douleur’ by Germain Pilon (1586).

The gallery organ was dismantled during the Revolution and was lost. After the reconsecration of the church, the organ builder Pierre Allery used components from two other instruments to install a three-manual, 30-stop organ in 1805.

Narcisse Martin of Rouen was hired in 1867 to make modifications to the organ case and to restore the organ. This work was completed in 1871 and the organ was approved by César Franck. The case has been designated as an historical monument. The organ was restored again in 1972 and in two stages in 1999 and 2005.

The current instrument has three manuals with a compass of 56 notes, plus a 30-note pedal board, and consists of 40 stops and 46 ranks. The organ in the chancel was built by Krischer in the 19th century.

The organ in the gallery was rebuilt by Pierre Dallery and had the approval of César Franck (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Before I left the church, I stopped to look at the two clam-shell holy water vessels or stoups at the entrance, donated by the writer Victor Hugo (1802-1885), author of The Hunchback of Notre-Dame (1831) and Les Misérables(1862). They mark the baptism of his daughter Adele in 1830 and in memory of his daughter Léopoldine.

Léopoldine Hugo was 18 when she secretly married Charles Vacquerie, then 25, in the church on 15 February 1843. Seven months later, Léopoldine was pregnant when she drowned after their boat capsized on the Seine in a sudden gust of wind. Her wet, heavy skirts pulled her down, and Charles drowned as he made six attempts to save her. They were buried in the same coffin.

The tragedy had a significant and measurable impact on the work and personality of Victor Hugo, and he dedicated numerous poems and a book to the memory of his drowned daughter.

The great clock on the façade was salvaged from old Saint Paul’s, when it after was levelled in 1798 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Small synagogues and traditional shops showthe resilience of Jewish life in the Marais in Paris

The Foundation Roger Fleischman and the former Synagogue Beit Yossef on rue des Ecouffes in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

I spent an afternoon during our visit to Paris last week walking around the Jewish district in Le Marais and strolled through the Rue des Rosiers, known affectionately in Yiddish as Pletzl or the ‘Little Place,’ and the surrounding streets, including Rue Pavée, with the Rue Pavée Synagogue, built as the Agoudas Hakehilos Synagogue.

The Rue des Rosiers is the main street in the Marais and the neighbouring streets are home to many Jewish restaurants, cafés, bakeries and bookshops.

Many luxury brand shops have moved onto rue des Rosiers in recent years. A one-time community hammam, or steam bath, was in 2008 transformed into another link in the chain of Swedish fashion retailer H&M.

But these narrow, cobbled streets remain an important centre of Parisian Jewish life with their kosher food shops, bookshops, restaurants and cafés. Throughout the Marais, memorials plaques on many buildings are reminders of the impact of the Holocaust on the Jewish community in Paris.

The Kosher Pizza shop on rue des Ecouffes, a little street off rue des Rosiers, was previously the Synagogue Beit Yossef. Next door at No 18, the Roger Fleischman Foundation dates from 1931, when it was set up as a study centre.

The founder, Armand Fleischman (1886-1973), was born in Paris and was an infantry sergeant major during World War I and was awarded the Croix de Guerre and the Military Medal. He became President of the Fonds National Juif (FNJ) of France in 1923.

Armand Fleischman set up the Foundation Roger Fleischman in 1931 as a centre for young people to study the Torah, with a small oratory following the death of his son, a young Tzadik and medical student, at the age of 19.

This shtibel or small house of prayer is said to be one of the few places in the Marais still representative of the places of worship of Jewish immigrants who arrived from Poland in the 1920s.

It became a house of prayer for Jews from North Africa in the 1960s, and now follows the Sephardic rite, and it continues to serve as a place devoted to prayer and religious instruction.

The Tephilat Israel or Frank-Forter Synagogue on rue du Bourg Tibourg is named in honour of Rabbi Ray Israel Frank-Forter, who was murdered in Auschwitz in 1943 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Tephilat Israel or Frank-Forter Synagogue is a small oratoire or prayer house at 24 rue du Bourg Tibourg in the Marais. It was founded in the 1920s for another Jewish community from Central Europe. It is named in honour of Rabbi Ray Israel Frank-Forter, who was deported during the Holocaust and murdered in Auschwitz in 1943.

It too became a Sephardic synagogue in the 1970s and is open for Shabbat services, holidays and on Sunday mornings.

During that afternoon last week, I also visited the Mémorial de la Shoah or Holocaust Museum in Marais, the Memorial of the Unknown Jewish Martyr and the Museum of Jewish Art and History. But more about these visits on other days.

Shabbat Shalom

Many of the traditional Jewish shops continue to thrive in the Marais (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Church of Saint Louis-en-l’Île took 80 years to build and is in one of the smallest parishes in Paris

The Church of Saint Louis-en-l’Île in Paris, with its unusual spire, designed to allow the wind to pass through (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

During our visit to Paris last week, as I walked from Notre Dame to Marais, I strolled through Île Saint-Louis, one of two natural islands in the River Seine – the other natural island is the Île de la Cité, on which Notre-Dame de Paris is built.

Île Saint-Louis is in the 4th arrondissement and is 11 ha (27 acres) in size with a population of 4,453, making it one of the smallest parishes in Paris. It is connected to the rest of Paris by four bridges to both banks of the river and to the Île de la Cité by the Pont Saint-Louis.

I was there to see the house on rue Saint Louis-en-l’Île that had been home in the 1940s and 1850s of the exiled Russian theologian, Nicholas Lossky, discussed in my reflections in my prayer diary on this blog this morning (13 February 2024). On the same street, I also visited the Church of Saint Louis-en-l’Île (Saint Louis on the Island), built between 1647 and 1725 and is dedicated to King Louis IX of France, or Saint Louis.

A statue of Saint Louis in the Church of Saint Louis-en-l’Île … the king came to pray on the uninhabited island (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The island was originally owned by the chapter of Notre-Dame Cathedral, and Louis IX (1226-1270) would come and pray on the island, which was uninhabited at the time.

Although Louis is revered as a saint, he is remembered for overseeing the Disputation of Paris in 1240, when the Jewish leaders in Paris were imprisoned and forced to admit to anti-Christian passages in the Talmud. As a result, Pope Gregory IX declared that all copies of the Talmud to be seized and destroyed. Louis ordered the burning of 12,000 Talmudim in 1242, along with other important Jewish books and manuscripts. The edict against the Talmud was eventually overturned by Gregory IX’s successor, Innocent IV.

It is said Louis IX proclaimed the Eighth Crusade from Île Saint-Louis in 1267. He died in 1270 and was canonised by Pope Boniface VIII in 1297, the only king of France to be proclaimed a saint.

Inside the Church of Saint Louis-en-l’Île, built between 1647 and 1726 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Church of Saint Louis-en-l’Île dates from 1623, and was dedicated to Saint Louis in 1634. The island of Île Saint-Louis had remained uninhabited until the early 17th century. In 1614, Christophé Marie, the general contractor of the bridges of France, was asked by the king to build a bridge and to subdivide into lots the Ile Notre-Dame that had been connected to the Ile aux Vaches.

When the first houses were built on the island, a parish was created and the first chapel was built in 1623. That first chapel was named Our Lady of the Island, was dedicated to Saint Louis in 1634.

Several famous priests preached in the church, including Saint Francis de Sales (1567-1622), and Saint Vincent de Paul (1581-1660), who founded the first house of the Daughters of Charity nearby in rue Poulletier in 1632.

As the population of the island grew, a larger church was needed. The new church was designed by the architect François Le Vau (1613-1636), younger brother and assistant of the more famous royal architect Louis Le Vau, the architect of Versailles, the Louvre and the Institut de France. The church was the only building François Le Vau built without his brother.

Priests who preached in the church include Saint Francis de Sales and Saint Vincent de Paul (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The plans for the new and well-lit church reflected the spirit of the Counter-Reformation, and it was originally built in the French baroque style of the 17th century.

Work began in 1647, but was delayed due to problems with the foundation, and the first stone was not laid by the Archbishop of Paris until 1 October 1664. The choir and altar were consecrated in 1664, but the old chapel was still used as the nave as work was delayed again due to a shortage of funds and other mishaps: the architect died soon after the project began, and was replaced by Gabriel Le Duc, and then by two more architects in succession, Pierre Bullet and Jacques Doucet; then, in 1701, a hurricane destroyed the new roof, killing many parishioners.

Builders and developers took advantage of these long delays, and houses were built next to the church, taking the space originally intended for the traditional west front, which had to be relocated. A royal lottery was organised to raise the money needed to complete the church. But it was not completed until 1725, and the church was consecrated in 1726, almost 80 years after work first began on the site.

The original bell tower was destroyed by lightning in 1740, and was replaced by a new openwork tower in the shape of a pyramid that allowed the strong winds on the island to pass through. Another unusual feature of the tower is the clock hanging over the street like a shop sign.

During the French Revolution, the church was closed in 1791, looted and stripped of its decorations. The only statues that remained were a statue of the Virgin Mary and a statue of Saint Genevieve by François Ladatte (1741). A sculpture depicting two angels holding the royal coat of arms was smashed during the Revolution.

The church was sold in 1798 and was turned into a storehouse for books. However, the parishioner who bought it returned it to the church in 1805, and the first Mass was celebrated there on 10 March 1805 by Pope Pius VII, who had come to Paris the previous December to crown Napoleon Emperor. The Papal Tiara and Saint Peter’s keys that adorn the original High Altar are reminders of that occasion.

The City of Paris bought the building in 1817 and embellished it with numerous paintings from other churches destroyed during the Revolution. A long campaign to add new murals, paintings, sculpture and windows was led by the Abbot Louis-Auguste Bossuet, the cure of the parish in 1864-1888. He sold the large library of the church and used the proceeds and his own private fortune to buy many works of art that adorn the side chapels and to add a profusion of gilding, murals, sculptures in stucco, and the windows that are seen today.

Auguste Czartoryski (1858-1898), a prince and priest who was a parishioner of the church, was beatified in 2004. His family donated the stained-glass window of the Resurrection in one of the side chapels.

The Papal Tiara and Saint Peter’s keys that adorn the original High Altar are reminders of the visit by Pope Pius VII in 1805 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

With its rectangular plans and plain exterior, the church is hardly visible from the street. Several entrance projects were thought of but never carried out, and the church has kept its blank west wall.

A clock suspended from the side of the tower indicates the entrance of the church. The portal is decorated with a sculpture depicting two angels with their arms outstretched holding the coat of arms of France. This was a reference to the patron saint, King Louis IX or Saint Louis. The angels are still there, but the coat of arms was smashed during the French Revolution.

The large interior is a tribute to Louis IX, with the French royal coat of arms and the crown of arms in the cupola. The interior is given a more human dimension by the profusion of ornament and gilding, and detail It was decorated following drawings by Jean-Baptiste de Champaigne (1631-1681), a nephew of the famous painter.

The stained glass windows in the church mostly date to the mid 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The arcades have rounded arches and as pilasters with trompe-l’oeil channelling, joined with columns with Corinthian capitals, carved of travertine stone, and decorated with sculpted foliage and angels. Other decoration includes a variety of sculpted sceptres, the hands of justice and other royal emblems, illustrating the association with Louis IX.

The church, particularly in the choir, the transept and the chapels along the outer aisles, is particularly rich in art and decoration of the French Baroque period in the 18th century, as well as more modern work from the 19th century. The art includes painting, sculpture, and smaller intricate works in alabaster and other rare materials.

The stained glass windows mostly date to the mid 19th century. A major series, illustrating the life of Christ, is by Alfred Gérente.

A series of chapels line the outer aisles of the nave, and are richly decorated with paintings and sculpture.

The statue of Saint Genevieve (1735) by François Ladatte survived the French Revolution (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Communion Chapel (1715) displays ‘The Pilgrims of Emmaus’ by Charles Coypel (1694-1752) vividly representing a celebration of the Eucharist, crowded with figures and full of movement.

The Chapel of the Compassion has three paintings by the 19th-century French artist Karl-Henri Lehmann (1814-1882): ‘The Annunciation’, ‘The Virgin Presenting Christ to the World’ and ‘The Virgin and the Saints at the Foot of the Cross’. Lehmann was a prominent figure in the school of French Romanticism. ‘The Virgin and the Saints’ painting was presented at the 1848 Paris Salon.

The Chapel of Baptism at the west end has a group of eight small paintings representing scenes from the life of Christ, set into the wood panelling, by 16th century artists. Here too is a work of the French Renaissance painter Jacques Stella (1596-1657), ‘The Baptism of Christ’, inspired by the art of the Italian Renaissance.

The Chapel of Saint Mary Magdalene contains a monument to the 19th century Abbot Bossuet, an important benefactor of the church.

The organ was completed in 2005 but is covered during the present restoration work (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

There is no remaining trace of the original 17th century organ. It was replaced in 1744 by a new organ by Lesclop, with a very ornate buffet or case covered with rocaille sculpture. This instrument, like most of the other Paris organs of the period, was destroyed during the French Revolution, in order to recover the lead used in the pipes to make munitions.

A smaller instrument by Merklin was installed on the tribune In the 19th century. But it was of mediocre quality. That organ was replaced in 1923 by a new organ by Charles Mutin, which kept the buffet of the earlier instrument. This organ also was of poor quality and was poorly maintained. A smaller organ was installed in the choir in the 1960s, which served as the church organ for several decades.

The present organ, with 51 stops, was completed in 2005 by Bernard Aubertin with funding from the City of Paris. The organ is in the German style, or Bach type. While the instrument is new, it preserves the original tower sculpture and sculpted angels of the 18th century buffet, and its gilded case adds a contemporary touch to the baroque appearance of the church.

Île Saint-Louis is in the 4th arrondissement and is 11 ha (27 acres) in size with a population of 4,453, making it one of the smallest parishes in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Daily prayer in Ordinary Time with French saints and writers 11: 13 February 2024

Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky (1903-1958) was among the more influential Orthodox theologians of the mid-20th century

Patrick Comerford

We have been in Ordinary Time, that time between Candlemas and Lent, which begins tomorrow, Ash Wednesday (14 February 2024). Today is known in many places as Shrove Tuesday.

Shrove Tuesday or Pancake Tuesday is traditionally a day for self-examination and repentance, for thinking about amendment of life and spiritual growth, asking for God’s help in these areas. The term Shrove Tuesday comes from the word shrive, meaning ‘absolve’.

But popular practices on this day have also involved indulging in sweet and fatty food that might be given up during the 40 days of fasting in Lent, represented, of course, by pancakes. The term Mardi Gras is French for ‘Fat Tuesday’, referring to the practice of the last night of eating richer, fatty foods before Lent begins. On Shrove Tuesday, many churches burn the palms from the previous year’s Palm Sunday to make the ashes for use on Ash Wednesday.

We spent two days in Paris last week, and so, during these 11 days in Ordinary Time, my reflections each morning have drawn on the lives of 11 French saints and spiritual writers.

When this series of reflections began, I admitted how am often uncomfortable with many aspects of French spirituality, and that I need to broaden my reading in French spirituality. So, I turned to 11 figures or writers you might not otherwise expect. They have included men and women, Jews and Christians, immigrants and emigrants, monks and philosophers, Catholics and Protestants, and even a few Anglicans.

Before the day begins, I am taking some quiet time early this morning for reflection, prayer and reading in these ways:

1, A reflection on a French saint or writer in spirituality;

2, today’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

The house on Rue Saint-Louis en l'Île in Paris where Vladimir Lossky lived from 1947 to 1958 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

French saints and writers, 11: Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky (1903-1958)

Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky (1903-1958) was a Russian Orthodox theologian who lived and worked in exile in Paris. He emphasised theosis as the main principle of Orthodox Christianity.

Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky was born on 8 June (OS 26 May) 1903 in Göttingen, Germany. His father, Nikolai Lossky, was a professor of philosophy in Saint Petersburg. He enrolled as a student at the Faculty of Arts at Petrograd University in 1919. In the spring of 1922, he was profoundly struck when he witnessed the trial that led to Metropolitan Benjamin (Kazansky) of St Petersburg being executed by a Soviet firing squad. Metropolitan Benjamin was canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church in 1992.

Lossky was expelled from Soviet Russia with his entire family In November 1922. He continued his studies first in Prague and then at the Sorbonne when he settled in Paris in 1924. He graduated in mediaeval philosophy in 1927. He married Madeleine Shapiro in 1928.

Lossky was a member of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique from 1942 to 1958. He was the first dean of the St Dionysius Institute in Paris, where he taught dogmatic theology and ecclesiastical history until 1953, and, from 1953 to 1958, and then professor of dogmatic theology at the Orthodox Institute of St Irene at rue Pétel in Paris from 1953 to 1958.

He was a member of the Brotherhood of Saint Photius and the ecumenical Fellowship of Saint Alban and Saint Sergius. His best-known work is Essai sur la theologie mystique de l’Église d’orient (1944), published in English as The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church (1957). His great friend and fellow exile, the Russian theologian Georges Florovsky (1893-1979), termed Lossky’s Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church a ‘neopatristic synthesis.’

Lossky and Florovsky both lived and worked in exile in Paris and Sergei Bulgakov, Justin Popović and Dumitru Stăniloae, they are among the more influential Eastern Orthodox theologians of the mid-20th century.

Lossky died of a heart attack on 7 February 1958 in Paris.

Although Lossky was Russian, he was concerned to address the people among whom he lived, and so most of his work was written and published in French. He emphasised θέωσις (theosis) as the main principle of Orthodox Christianity, and his main theological concern was exegesis of mystical theology in Christian traditions.

He argues that Orthodox theologians maintain the mystical dimension of theology in a more integrated way than those of the Catholic and Reformed traditions after the East-West Schism because Western theologians had misunderstood Greek terms such as οὐσία (ousia), ὑπόστᾰσις (hypostasis), θέωσις (theosis) and θεωρία (theoria).

To illustrate his argument, he cites the Philokalia and The Ladder of Divine Ascent by John Klimakos, as well as Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite, Gregory of Nyssa, Basil of Caesarea, Gregory Nazianzen, and Gregory Palamas.

At a conference organised by the Institute for Orthodox Christian Studies in Cambridge ten years ago, the Revd Dr Andrew Louth lectured on ‘Vladimir Lossky and the notion of mystical theology,’ while the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware gave a lecture on ‘Florovsky, Lossky and the notion of Mystical Theology.’ The conference in Sidney Sussex College, was discussing the ‘Horizons and Limitations of Russian Religious Philosophy.’

The Revd Dr Andrew Louth is Emeritus Professor of Patristic and Byzantine Studies in the Department of Theology and Religion at the University of Durham. He placed Lossky within the context of contemporary writers on mysticism, including Evelyn Underhill, who rooted her mysticism in the sacramental life of the Church, Baron von Hügel, and the Catholic modernists in France. He also reminded us that in 1975 Archbishop Rowan Williams wrote his DPhil thesis at Oxford, ‘The theology of Vladimir Nikolaievich Lossky: an exposition and critique.’

Lossky and Florovsky were opposed to the sophiological theories of Sergei Bulgakov and Vladimir Solovyev, who were also discussed extensively at that same conference in 2014.

But Lossky also spent much of his time working on the writings on mysticism by Meister Eckhart, and his doctoral dissertation on Eckhart was published shortly after his untimely death. Lossky found many affinities between the thinking of the Dominican friar and Orthodox mystics.

For Lossky, Christian mysticism and dogmatic theology are one and the same, and mysticism is Orthodox dogma par excellence. He wrote:

‘The eastern tradition has never made a sharp distinction between mysticism and theology; between personal experience of the divine mysteries and the dogma affirmed by the Church… To put it another way, we must live the dogma expressing a revealed truth, which appears to us as an unfathomable mystery, in such a fashion that instead of assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding, we should, on the contrary, look for a profound change, an inner transformation of the spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically… There is, therefore, no Christian mystery without theology; but, above all, there is no theology without mysticism… Mysticism is … the perfecting and crown of all theology: as theology par excellence.’

Father Andrew went on to say: ‘Mysticism and theology relate as experience and theory. But experience of what? Ultimately of God.’

But that is not where Lossky begins, he said. He begins by speaking of ‘personal experience of the divine mysteries,’ the term ‘mysteries’ being – not exactly ambiguous, but with at least two connotations – meaning both the sacraments of the Church, and also mysterious truths about the Godhead.

The mysterious truths about God – his existence as a Trinity of love, his creation of the world, his care for the world and his redemption of it, pre‐eminently in the Incarnation – are truths that we experience and celebrate in the Divine Mysteries, or the Sacraments of the Church. It is this that gives Lossky’s presentation such a different orientation from what is normally associated with mysticism in the West: it is not detached from dogma, but rooted in the dogmatic truths of the Christian tradition; it is not indifferent to Church organisation, hierarchy and sacraments, but rooted in the structured life of the Church.

It is not individualistic – indeed individualism is seen to be the deepest flaw in Western Christianity – but rooted in the experience of the Eucharistic community, the Church.

The writings of Lossky also informed the late Metropolitan Kallistos Ware when he spoke about ‘Florovsky, Lossky and the notion of Mystical Theology.’ He knew both Florovsky and Lossky personally, took them as his mentors while he was at Oxford, and stayed with the Lossky family. Metropolitan Kallistos was the President of the IOCS, and was a much-loved lecturer at the IOCS summer school in Cambridge each year.

Georges Vasilievich Florovsky (1893-1979) was born in Odessa, the son of a priest. He spent his working life in Paris (1920-1948) as Professor of Patristics and later Professor of Dogmatics, and – after failing to secure an appointment at Oxford – in the US (1948-1979), where he was a professor at Saint Vladimir’s, Harvard and Princeton. His pupils included Metropolitan John Zizioulas.

Florovsky was particularly concerned that modern Christian theology might receive inspiration from the lively intellectual debates of the patristic traditions of the undivided Church rather than from later Scholastic or Reformation categories of thought.

Lossky was committed to the Moscow Patriarchate, attaching great importance to links with the persecuted mother church, and disapproved of other Russians loyalties. On the other hand, Florovsky was among the Russians who belonged to the Ecumenical Patriarchate.

Florovsky often spoke without notes, something Lossky would never have done at a major public meeting. Florovsky disagreed strongly with Bulgakov, including their ideas on limited inter-communion with Anglicans, but never did so publicly. His major work is Ways of Russian Theology. His collected works are available in a 14-volume collection published between 1972 and 1989.

Metropolitan placed Lossky and Florovsky within the context of two 20th century movements in Orthodox theology, Russian religious renaissance and the neopatristic school.

Florovsky is the mastermind of the movement for a return to the Church Fathers. His vision of the neopatristic synthesis became the main paradigm of Orthodox theology.

His evolving interpretation of Russian religious thought, particularly Vladimir Solovyov and Sergius Bulgakov, informed his approach to patristic sources.

Florovsky’s neopatristic theology is often contrasted with the modernist philosophies of Pavel Florensky, Sergius Bulgakov, and other representatives of the Russian Religious Renaissance. He critically appropriated the main themes of the Russian Religious Renaissance, including theological antinomies, the meaning of history, and the nature of personhood, and the distinctive features of Florovsky’s neopatristic theology – Christological focus, ‘ecclesial experience,’ personalism, and Christian Hellenism – are best understood against the background of the Russian religious renaissance.

Bulgakov’s sophiology provides a polemical subtext for Florovsky’s theology of creation, and Florovsky’s theology is marked out by his use of the patristic norm in application to modern Russian theology.

Florovsky was concerned with a living tradition, and Metropolitan Kallistos summarised his thinking as not being ‘Back to the Fathers’ but as ‘Forward with the Fathers.’ He suggested that to follow the Fathers is not to quote them but to acquire their mind, where theology and prayer become one.

He also traced Florovsky’s influence on Anglican-Orthodox dialogue, his advocacy of Christian Hellenism and the debate about whether he had neglected the heritage of the Latin, Syrian and Coptic Fathers, and his role in the ecumenical movement. He understood that the canonical limits of the Church, as understood in Orthodoxy, are not the same as the charismatic limits of the Church.

A plaque on the house where Vladimir Lossky lived in Paris reads: ‘Expelled from Russia in 1922, with his philosopher father. In love with France, mediaevalist, became a naturalised French citizen in 1939. Member of the Resistance. He moved into this building in 1947 and died here in 1958.’

The plaque on the house on Rue Saint-Louis en l'Île where Vladimir Lossky lived from 1947 to 1958 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Mark 8: 14-21 (NRSVA):

14 Now the disciples had forgotten to bring any bread; and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 And he cautioned them, saying, ‘Watch out – beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.’ 16 They said to one another, ‘It is because we have no bread.’ 17 And becoming aware of it, Jesus said to them, ‘Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes, and fail to see? Do you have ears, and fail to hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ They said to him, ‘Twelve.’ 20 ‘And the seven for the four thousand, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you collect?’ And they said to him, ‘Seven.’ 21 Then he said to them, ‘Do you not yet understand?’

Vladimir Lossky’s best-known work, ‘The Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church’, was published in French in 1944 and in English in 1957

Today’s Prayers (Tuesday 13 February 2024):

The theme this week in ‘Pray With the World Church,’ the Prayer Diary of the Anglican mission agency USPG (United Society Partners in the Gospel), is ‘Ash Wednesday Reflection.’ This theme was introduced on Sunday by the Revd Jessie Anand, Chaplain, USPG.

The USPG Prayer Diary today (13 February 2024) invites us to pray in these words:

Heavenly Father, help us prepare for the holy season of Lent. Allow our focus to be fully on You and the Cross.

The Collect:

Almighty Father,
whose Son was revealed in majesty
before he suffered death upon the cross:
give us grace to perceive his glory,
that we may be strengthened to suffer with him
and be changed into his likeness, from glory to glory;
who is alive and reigns with you,
in the unity of the Holy Spirit,
one God, now and for ever.

The Post-Communion Prayer:

Holy God,
we see your glory in the face of Jesus Christ:
may we who are partakers at his table
reflect his life in word and deed,
that all the world may know his power to change and save.
This we ask through Jesus Christ our Lord.

Additional Collect:

Holy God,
you know the disorder of our sinful lives:
set straight our crooked hearts,
and bend our wills to love your goodness and your glory
in Jesus Christ our Lord.

Yesterday’s Reflection (Jacques Derrida, 1930-2004)

Tomorrow: Ash Wednesday, Introducing Early English Pre-Reformation Saints



Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

Saint Séverin, the oldest church in the Latin Quarter, and the saint who gives his name to a street and hotel

The Church of Saint-Séverin (Église Saint-Séverin) may be the oldest church in the 5th arrondissement in Paris (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Patrick Comerford

We were staying on the lively tourist street of Rue Saint-Séverin during our stay in Paris last week. The street and the hotel where we were staying on the Left Bank both take their name from the Church of Saint-Séverin (Église Saint-Séverin), perhaps the oldest church in 5th arrondissement.

The church, in turn, takes its name from Saint Séverin of Paris, a devout hermit who lived at the site in the sixth century, and died ca 540. One of his pupils, Clodoald or Saint Cloud, was a Merovingian prince who left the royal family to become a monk and hermit.

After Saint Séverin died, a chapel was built on the site of his cell, believed to be near the oratory of Saint Martin in the present church. This chapel was destroyed during the Norman invasions in the ninth century, and was rebuilt in the Romanesque style in the 11th century. Several sarcophogi from a cemetery of the Merovingian dynasty were discovered during rebuilding on the site in the 19th century.

Inside the Church of Saint-Séverin, first built in 1230 (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church was first built in 1230, and this was the parish church for students at the University of Paris. After a fire, was rebuilt and enlarged in the 15th to 17th centuries in the Flamboyant Gothic style.

At the end of the 12th century, due to the popularity and growing size of the theology school attached to the cathedral of Notre Dame de Paris, the students and teachers were relocated to the Left Bank. The University of Paris was founded in 1215, and Saint Séverin became its parish church.

The fame of the university and its teachers attracted students and scholars from across Europe, and a larger church was needed. Work on a new building in the High Gothic style began ca 1230. The church was contemporary with Notre Dame and Sainte-Chapelle. An additional aisle on the south side was built in the early 14th century.

The church was seriously damaged by fire in 1448 during the Hundred Years’ War. The archpriest Guillaume d’Estouteville began rebuilding the church in the more ornamental Flamboyant Gothic style. A new aisle was added on the north side, and, in 1489, a semi-circular apse and ambulatory were added at the east end, with dramatic Flamboyant columns, arches, and vaults, around a dramatic spiral central pillar.

A circle of radiating chapels was added around the apse, and new chapels built along the outer aisles between the buttresses.

As the church grew, the neighbourhood around it pressed against it. The 13th century bell tower, originally on the exterior, and still the original work up to the level of the balustrade, was surrounded by the expanded church, as was the ancient ‘Charnie’, or Charnel House, a mausoleum. The old cemetery is now a garden.

The old cemetery on the south side of the Church of Saint-Séverin is now a garden (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The church was completed in 1520, and acquired the appearance it has to this day. A second sacristy was added in 1643 and in 1673, the royal architect Jules Hardouin-Mansart built the Communion chapel on the southeast corner. The royal architect Charles le Brun (1619-1690) modified the design of the choir in 1684, removing the rood screen and providing the apse columns with marble facing.

The church was closed during the French Revolution, and was turned into a store for gunpowder store, and then a store for grain and for church bells, often melted down at the time to make cannon.

The church was returned to the Catholic Church in 1803, but, like other churches in Paris, it is still owned by the French State, although the Catholic Church has exclusive use of the building.

Inside the Church of Saint-Séverin looking west from the ambulatory behind the altar (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

Soon after the liberation of Paris from the Germans, the future President François Mitterrand and Danielle Gouze were married in the church on 28 October 1944.

The lower portions of the bell tower were part of the original 13th century church. The tower itself, originally separate from the church building, was completed in 1487. The bells include the oldest one remaining in Paris, cast in 1412.

The lower portion of the west portal, next to the bell tower, was originally part of another church, Saint-Pierre-aux-Bœufs, close to Notre-Dame but demolished in the 1830s to open space around the cathedral.

The former charnel house on the south side of the church was built in the 15th century and is the only one still existing in Paris.

Saint Martin above the north door of the bell tower (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The nave of the church was built in two distinctly different eras and styles. At the west end, near the entrance, the first three traverses are in the High Gothic style of the 13th century. They feature massive cylindrical pillars whose capitals have floral decoration, particularly water lilies, and support rounded arches.

Cul-des-lampes or brackets on the pillars receive the thinner colonettes which descend from the ribs of the vaults above. These date from the end of the 14th century. The upper walls between the ribs are filled with deeply-coloured stained glass windows from the end of the 14th century that depict the lives of the Apostles.

The columns in the four traverses closer to the apse were built in the 15th century, in the more Flamboyant style. They are more slender, form pointed arches, and are closer together, in the Flamboyant style.

The choir was built in the 15th century in the Flamboyant style. It has the form of a half-circle, surrounded by an arcade of pointed arches, and covered with flamboyant rib vaults with highly decorated criss-crossing compartments. The classical decoration was added in the late 17th century by Jean-Baptiste Tuby (1635-1700), using the designs of Charles Le Brun.

The principal organ, by Alfred Kern of Strasbourg, was installed in 1963. The carved wooden case of the organ dates to 1745.

The High Altar was replaced after the Second Vatican Council (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The high altar was removed following the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, and replaced with a more simple table.

The apse behind the altar has a double ambulatory, or semicircular walkway that was completed at the end of the 15th century. It has the most celebrated architectural features of the church: the twisting central pillar and surrounding pillars resemble stone palm trees, with branches reaching up and spreading out into the intricate web of the flamboyant vaults. The central pillar is illuminated, and is visible from all parts of the church.

The baptistry is in an unusual location in the ambulatory because the original baptistry was a natural spring outside the church

The baptistry is in an unusual location because the original baptistry was a natural spring (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The construction of the marble choir was made possible by donations from Anne, Duchess of Montpensier, a cousin of Louis XIV.

The oldest stained glass windows, dating to about 1378, are three pairs of bay windows, each with two lancets near the apse. They were originally intended for the chapel of the college of Beauvais.

A large part of the stained glass dates to the second part of the 15th century. This includes the rose window on the west front from 1482, portraying a Tree of Jesse or genealogy of Christ. Much of this window is hidden by the case of the organ, installed in the 18th century.

Beneath the vaults of the choir, the windows in the three central bays were installed in their present location in the 16th century. These windows were probably part of the original Gothic chevet of 1450. From left to right, they depict Saint John the Baptist, Saint Michael, the Virgin and Child, Christ Carrying the World, Saint John the Evangelist and Saint Martin of Tours.

The windows in the upper bays of the nave are also from the 15th century. Saint Severin, the patron of the church, is represented there, and a portrait of the donors who gave the window is at the bottom of the window.

The Gothic windows in the north front depict the Ascension (left), Saint Peter with the Key (centre) and Saint John the Baptist, with a lamb, with portraits of the donors. The third window depicts the Trinity, with God the Father in the centre, presented as a King, with Christ before him, and the Holy Spirit represented a dove. Two additional windows show angels carrying candles.

Much of the stained glass in the church was added in the 19th century (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

A large portion of the stained glass in the church was added in the 19th century. Most of the windows were based on drawings by Émile Hirsch. They includes the windows on the ground floor, as well as those in the openings on the north side, installed from 1848 on. The donors included Charles Garnier, architect of the Paris Opera, and his wife, who donated the windows ‘Christ blessing the children.’ The donors are portrayed in the corner of the window.

The windows of the chapel of Saint Vincent de Paul and of Saint-Francis de Sales on the north side are from this period and represent both scenes of the Latin Quarter and biblical scenes chosen by the donors.

In the intermediate level, the windows of the triforium depict a gallery of saints. In the choir, the main theme is ‘Mysteries of the Life of Christ.’

However, the most impressive windows for me are in the ambulatory, which is decorated with a group of eight modern stained glass windows by Jean René Bazaine in 1964-1970, depicting the seven sacraments.

The artist said that his abstract windows were designed ‘not as decoration but means to make the non-visible appear.’

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 1, L’Onction des Malades (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 2, Le Mariage (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 3, La Confirmation (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 4, Le Baptéme (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 5, Le Baptéme (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 6, L’Eucharistie (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 7, La Pénitence (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)

The Seven Sacraments by Jean René Bazaine: 8, Sacerdoce (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2024)