Saint Denis, kings and architecture

Today the Church remembers the first bishop of Paris, Saint Denis, martyred in the third century during the reign of Emperor Decius.  Saint Denis is easy to identify in Christian art since as seen above, he is always depicted holding his head with a bishop’s miter on top.  It is said that after being martyred by decapitation at Montmartre, the highest hill of Paris, Denis arose, picked up his head and walked several miles outside the city to the place where he wished to be buried.  A small chapel was built to mark the burial site of Saint Denis and it soon became a pilgrimage destination.

In time a prestigious Benedictine abbey was built and it became the burial site for the kings of France.  From Clovis, the first king of the Franks in the fifth century to Louis XVI, the Basilica of Saint Denis became the royal mausoleum.  During the French Revolution all the tombs were desecrated, the remains of the royals dumped into a mass grave nearby, the abbey was suppressed and left in disrepair.

Once the monarchy was restored in France after Napoleon’s defeat, the jumbled remains of the monarchs were placed in the crypt of Saint Denis, leaving the tombs in the church empty inside.  A small plaque in the crypt marks their resting place.  When I visited the crypt and read the plaque, I remember thinking, “all the glory and comforts they enjoyed in life and attempted to have even in death with this magnificent mausoleum, yet here they are just like everyone else.”

The abbots of Saint Denis were powerful men in France, yet the most famous among them is Abbot Suger due to his vision to make the basilica more magnificent.  In the twelfth century, Suger ordered the rebuilding of sections of the church in a different style to increase the entry of natural light.  The first section rebuilt was the apse of the basilica, giving the world the first example at what became known as Gothic architecture.  The beauty of Suger’s style spread throughout France, making Saint Denis the model for French medieval cathedrals with their pointed arches, flying buttresses, well-lit interiors and  vertical emphasis.  The Gothic style spread beyond France into Europe giving us some of the most magnificent man-made structures of the continent.

The first attempt at Gothic architecture, the apse of Saint Denis