Saints' Lives: Saint Denis

Jamb statue from the
West Facade of Notre
Dame de Paris

As I said in last Friday’s post on the Basilica-Cathedral Saint Denis, today’s post is on the saint the church is dedicated to.

His feast day is October 9th in the Western church and October 3rd in the Eastern church, and he is the patron saint of France. He is generally portrayed as holding the head that was chopped off.

Saint Denis (Denis being the French* form of the name Dionysius)’s legend was confused with that of two other figures, the first being the 1st C. Dionysius the Areopagite, the second being a 5th or 6th C. writer who assumed the name so his writing would be given more authority. This is the Pseudo-Dionysius the Areopagite whose writings on light and God influenced Abbot Suger in his redesign of the Basilica of St Denis. Saint Denis, the first bishop of Paris, dates from the 3rd C, though the first written account of his life dates from c. 600.

The information below comes from The Golden Legend by Jacobus de Voragine, translated by William Granger Ryan (volume II). Princeton University Press, 1995. pp 236-241. Saints lives weren’t examined critically in the middle ages, so don’t expect the information below to sound particularly credible from a modern standpoint. But this is how medieval people understood his story. Jacobus compiled his ‘Readings on the Saints’ from various sources c.1260 and the book was a bestseller, with thousands of copies of the manuscript surviving.  

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Dionysius, called the Areopagite because he was from that area of Athens, was an upper-class philosopher who was converted to Christianity by the Apostle Paul. Dionysius had noted a darkness that fell across the region that didn’t correspond with - or follow the rules of - an eclipse. When Paul explained that the darkness corresponded with Christ’s crucifixion and that Christ was ‘the Unknown God’ to whom the Athenians had created an altar for the event, he asked Paul to heal a blind man in Christ’s name. Paul told Dionysius the words to use and had Dionysius heal the man using them. Dionysius, his wife, and his household were all baptized. He was taught by Paul for three years and was then ordained Bishop of Athens. Though his preaching, he converted the city and much of the surrounding area. He visited Peter and Paul when they were in prison in Rome, and was present at the death of Mary, the mother of Christ.

Pope Clement, successor of Peter, sent him to preach in Gaul (modern day France), with Rusticus and Eleutherius as companions. When he arrived in Lutetia (Paris), he converted many people and built several churches. Pagan priests convinced the people to attack him, but he was protected by God, and they either grovelled at his feet in awe or ran away in fear. The devil got Emperor Domitian to issue the order than anyone found to be a Christian had to sacrifice to idols or be tortured. He sent a prefect, Fescenninus, to Lutetia, who then found Denis preaching about Christ. He had Denis and his 2 companions arrested, beaten, scourged, and imprisoned.

St Denis and his 2 companions being brought to prison,
left portal, Basilica-Cathedral Saint Denis

Several methods were used to torture or kill Denis without result including: an iron grill, hungry animals, and partial crucifixion. Denis performed a mass for his followers, many of whom were also now imprisoned with him. As he was giving the consecrated bread and wine to the people, Jesus appeared and, taking them from him, gave him communion as well.

St Denis receiving Communion from Christ while in prison,
right portal tympanum, Basilica-Cathedral Saint Denis

Brought before the prefect once more, the three men were tortured and beheaded. Denis’s body immediately stood up, picked up his head, and walked from his place of martyrdom (Montmartre - hill of martyrs) to the place where his body now rests (where the basilica-cathedral of St Denis now stands). The sounds of angels singing at this spot converted many, including Laertia, wife of the prefect Lubrius, who was then beheaded. Her son, serving in Rome, later returned to Lutetia and was baptized.

Life and martyrdom of St. Denis
South Transept portal tympanum, Basilica-Cathedral Saint Denis

Around A.D. 644 the Frankish King, Dagobert, held St. Denis in high regard, so much so that he hid in the church of St. Denis when he feared his father’s anger. A holy man had a vision that when Dagobert died and his soul was being brought for judgement, several saints accused him of stripping their churches of valuables. But the soul of St Denis protected him from their demands for punishment.

King Clovis had the body of St Denis uncovered and broke off and removed one of the arms. Soon after he lost his mind.
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The passage in The Golden Legend ends with the following paragraph, “Note also that Hincmar, bishop of Rheims, says, in the letter he wrote to Charles, that the Dionysius who was sent to Gaul was Dionysius the Areopagite, as was said above. John Scotus makes the same assertion in a letter to Charles. This cannot be questioned, therefore, on the ground that the dates are contradictory, as some have tried to argue.” (p. 241).

In other words, it was recognized that they must be different men, even as they kept the idea that they were, somehow, the same figure.

According to Wikipedia:

In time, the "Saint Denis", often combined as "Montjoie! Saint Denis!" became the war-cry of the French armies. The oriflamme, which became the standard of France, was the banner consecrated upon his tomb. 

Oriflamme copy at Basilica-Cathedral St. Denis

Stained glass window at Chartres showing
St. Denis handing the oriflamme to a knight.

Click the images to see them larger, and check out this webpage for a clearer image of the stained glass.

* This is one of those things that took me ages to grasp, that names can change drastically from one language to another. It was years before I made the connection between Santiago de Compostella (Spanish) and Saint James (English).

Medieval Cathedrals: Basilica-Cathedral of Saint Denis

[I'll be using a lot of architectural terms in this series of posts, and in the interests of not doing work that's already been done, instead of making my own glossary I'm linking to this excellent one by Athena Review.  With one noted exception, all photos used in this post are mine, and can be used by others provided you post a link to this page and credit me.]







Built on what was believed to be the resting place of Saint Denis (whom I'm planning a post for for next Friday), this basilica (which only became a cathedral in 1966) was the centre of worship for a benedictine abbey.  It was patroned by kings, and served as their mausoleum.  It was also used to house their war standard, the Oriflamme.  Before they went to war the kings would go to the abbey for a blessing and to retrieve their flag.

A copy of the Oriflamme is seen in the same area
as effigies for Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette.

Bourbon tombs in the crypt.

In the 12th century Abbot Suger, having read the works of Pseudo-Dionysius about the esthetics and symbolism of light as a way of seeking God and Heaven, wanted to allow more light into the church. The building style that came out of his ideas - vaulted roofs that put pressure on buttresses rather than the whole wall and allowed holes to be cut into the sides of the building to put in windows, the tripartate structure of the inside (of aisle arcade, gallery or triforium (in a few cases both), and clerestory) as well as the tripartite structure of the new west facade (with three portals for entering the church), became widespread and led to what we now call Gothic architecture.

Suger wrote two works that have come down to us, one on how he raised money for the rebuilding and one on some of the commissioned works that adorned it, including some stained glass scenes - featuring him - that have survived.  (The Metropolitan Museum of Art has a book you can download for free on his works.)  He was also the first to commission a stained glass window depicting the Tree of Jesse (some panels of which still exist).

Abbot Suger presenting the Tree of Jesse window to the right of the reclining King Jesse.

Abbot Suger at the feet of Mary in the Annunciation panel.

Rather unusually, Suger started his renovations with the west end of the church from 1135-40, creating the first three portaled west facade.

The facade is currently undergoing renovations and is boarded up, so I'm including a photo from wikimedia taken by Ordifana75.

Basilica-Cathedral St Denis, June 2015

Photo by Ordifana75, 2010

A few things to note are the three portals, the circular rose window(which now has clock hands) with the symbols of the evangelists/beasts of Revelation in the 4 corners around it, and the crenelations along the top of the building, giving it the look of a castle.

The central portal depicts the Last Judgement.  Here is a photo of the door - with a mini Suger at the bottom left of the last supper image (right side, two down) - and the stone portal above it, with an image of Christ in Majesty, hands outflung as if hanging on the cross, that I took in 2003. (The other two doorways, both of which depict scenes of St. Denis' life, have been heavily restored.  The left portal is flanked by stone sculpture of the signs of the zodiac, while the right is flanked by a calendar of work done during each month.  Both of these are used by later cathedrals.)

The east end of the church (choir and chevet) was rebuilt next, from 1140-44.  This included lots of stained glass (the entire upper level of which was melted down for its lead and so contains modern glass).  He also had a double ambulatory constructed, so large numbers of pilgrims could walk around the chapels without disturbing the monks at worship.

The chevet

Ambulatory and radiating chapels

The nave, connecting Suger's two projects, was rebuilt starting in 1231 by Abbot Odo Clement, in the Rayonnant Gothic style, with thin walls and lots of windows.  The triforium level, usually backed by stone, was instead filled with stained glass, in addition to the windows in the aisle and clerestory, almost creating a wall of glass.

Nave

Elevation of the nave

The north transept sculpture (as well as the entire east end of the church, inner transept arms and crypt) is only visible if you pay to see the east end (normally Eur 8.50, but reduced to 6.50 when I was there due to the renovation work), is mostly broken archivolt sculpture.  There are traces on the bottom left of what may have been annunciation and visitation scenes, while the right shows definite signs of some sort of hell scene.  The stone tympanum has been replaced with wood.


















The south transept has been restored and shows scenes of the life of St. Denis in the tympanum, with kings in the archivolts and on the jambs and a Virgin and Child trumeau.

For my trip I created a one page layout of the cathedral and all of its sculpture.  I was a little too rushed to use it properly, but I've updated it (based on what I learned on my trip) and present it here for anyone wishing to use it for their own trip or research.  If you use this for a website or school paper, please credit me as the creator and/or link back to this post.  The map of the tombs and the dates of those resting in them comes from this UK Tourism 93 website.  

[I'm not sure how to upload them as pdfs so I've converted them to jpgs.  They're printable, but the text is a bit blurry.  If you want the pdf files, email me and I'll send them to you.]