Rue Mouffetard was one of the pricipal streets of Roman Paris. Now, it is one of its most fascinating markets; food mostly, fresh as paint and succulent, on stalls in front of the old shops with decorated façades. Before people could read, of course, a shop had to announce itself in pictures; so the butcher’s has a whole stylised forest covering its front, with deer and wild boar peeping out of the foliage.
Once upon a time this was a very different market. From 1350 to 1953 this was the site of the MARCHÉ DES PATRIARCHES; a flea-market, such as you’ll still find at most of the gates of Paris, a permanent enormous jumble-sale; but with its own rather special rules. How it came to be there was like this....
In the fourteenth century there was on the Île de la Cité a pastry-shop famous for its pork pies. Its best customers were the Canons of Notre-Dame. Now these Canons augmented their meagre incomes by letting lodgings to students. The times were dangerous, and if your student failed to come home it was safe to assume that he had either run off with the rent money or been mugged and chucked in the river. Whereupon you sighed for human wickedness, said a mass for his soul and put out the ‘Vacancies’ board. In 1387 a German student disappeared in the usual way, and nobody would have though any more of it had not his dog – a Great Dane – sat immovably down and howled for a week outside the pie-shop. When questioned (which is medieval for tortured) the baker and his assistant confessed that their pork pies actually were, and had been for years, student pies. Hence the superior taste. Baker and assistant were burned alive in iron cages, and the shop was reduced to rubble. There’s a garage for police motor-bikes there now.
But what of the poor Canons? They had eaten human flesh, and were therefore excommunicated. The law, like that of the Mikado, didn’t say anything about not knowing. The Archbishop reckoned it was too great a sin for him to pardon, and recommended that the Canons walk barefoot to Rome and throw themselves on the mercy of the Pope. Their feet, however, were soft and tender, and they never got to Rome. Truth to tell, they only got half a mile out of Paris. They got as far as the Rue des Gobelins – to your left, across the square from the church – and gave up. They settled down on the spot and lived by begging.
Not long afterwards a new Archbishop arrived, and was mugged on his way into town. I said those were dangerous times. Coming as he did from Rome, he was on this very road, and the excommunicated Canons turned out to rescue him. As a reward, he pardoned them for their cannibalism and for their failure to reach Rome. He couldn’t reinstate them at Notre Dame, though, so for their support allowed them the rents on the local
market. He made sure this would be a success by guaranteeing that no inquiries would be made into the origins of any article sold there. Which, when you think about it, helped the muggers as well. Until the Revolution, everything that fell off the back of a tumbril was sold here.
Saint-Médard
The church of SAINT-MÉDARD is set in a little green space called – originally enough – SQUARE SAINT MÉDARD. Peaceful, a nice place for a picnic, but a square with a past. Such goings-on this little patch has seen.
Once upon a time there was a nice man by the name of François Pâris. He had a rich dad, but took a vow of poverty and became a Deacon. Not a Priest, he was much too humble for that. He took great care of the local poor, even to knitting them socks, and died in 1727. Now, in so far as he ever expressed any theological opinions, he appears to have been a Jansenist – a follower of Jansenius. Soon after the death of nice François, the opinions of Jansenius on Predestination were declared to be heretical, and his followers were persecuted. Several of them began to treat François Pâris, deceased, as a Saint, and emotion on the subject became so strong that eight or ten young girls, getting all worked up as young girls will, had fits on his tomb. For some reason this was treated as a miracle, so within a year or two everybody was doing it, and the churchyard where you are sitting was full of writhing bodies. The Government, subtle as ever, simply ordered the churchyard closed. Next day, somebody stuck a notice on the church door which read:
De par le Roy, défense à Dieu
De faire miracle en ce lieu.
(By order of the King, God’s Grace
May work no wonders in this place.)
Well, that did it, didn’t it? Processions, riots, arrests, imprisonments, the lot. In the end the – the ones who had fits on the tomb – formed a union. There were several different classes of membership, including Leapers, Barkers, Miaowlers and Helpers. The helpers, incidentally, didn’t just catch the others when they fell down; they also slapped, whipped, thumped and jumped up and down on them according to the requests of the victim. Now that the churchyard was closed, they did these things in each other’s houses.
As time went on, everything got more extreme. Instruments of torture were brought in. Some, while the fit was on them, tried to strangle themselves; others swallowed things, such as hot coals or Bibles. Finally one young lady had herself crucified. This all went on for , until the persecution stopped and the fashion died out.
The whole thing, of course, was hysteria rather than religion; minor forms of the same thing can be seen at pop concerts and charismatic services to this day. In fact, the term Hysteria was medically defined down the road at the Salpétrière hospital on the basis of these very events. The churchyard was sensibly never re-opened and became, in time, the quiet little square we are in today.
Do look inside the church while you’re here, it’s rather charming – and a good example of the way Paris churches were adapted to changes in architectural fashion; pointed arches one year, round the next – so fill up the pointy arches with a bit of plaster, and hey presto! Neo-classicism.
ARÈNES DE LUTÈCE
This, of course, is the Roman Amphitheatre of the town of LUTETIA, where the PARISII lived. It’s a dual-purpose arena, circular but with a stage at one end, so you can have either plays or gladiators, pageants or Christian v. Lions. It appears to have been built shortly before the Romans declined, fell and were chucked out. After that it became a pagan cemetery, and then fell into disuse and was lost. How you lose a place fifty metres across and five high is a mystery, but the Dark Ages were good at that sort of thing. It was discovered again in 1885 when the foundations were being dug for the Rue Monge, which is why a row of houses cuts right across one side of it. (Yus, lads, I guess it is Roman, but don’t go telling no historians till we’ve got the job finished.) The archaeologists dug around a bit and then lost interest, and it wasn’t properly dug out until after the First World War, when it became a Bus depot. Now it has been somewhat restored and is used as a playground by the local schoolchildren, and a place to play pétanque for the men of the district. Close your eyes and the clink of metal on metal, the cries of the footballers, transport you back to the days of blood and sand.
