Mature Flâneur

The Paris Nun vs. Attila the Hun

How Genévieve became the patron saint of Paris

Statue of St. Genevieve of Paris, Jardin du Luxembourg. All photos by Tim Ward

In 1793, the judicial court of the French Revolution tried and convicted St. Genevieve of Paris to be burned to ashes for her participation in “the propagation of error.” However, Genevieve had lived in the fifth century. She had been dead for nearly 1,300 years. So the revolutionaries gathered her bones from St. Etienne’s Church, where the relics had rested, and publicly incinerated them. Then they dumped her ashes in the Seine, as if that would exorcise the saint’s powerful hold over Parisians, once and for all.

For over a thousand years, St. Genevieve had been venerated by Parisians. Whenever flood, famine or war threatened, the people held a procession of her relics through the streets as they implored her to intercede with God on their behalf; this happened 153 times within those thousand years. Countless private miracles were also attributed to the saint by those who prayed to her for help and healing.

St Genévieve’s relics on procession in Paris. From the stain-glass windows of St. Etienne’s Church.

Ah, but the trouble was the Royal House of Bourbon had co-opted her cult in the 1700s and gave St. Genévieve a new role as protector of the…