Genoveva of Paris. St. Geneviève

St. Genevieve

Was by far the most important person in the reign of Clovis.

Flemish art, late 16th century. In the background: Paris seen from the east. From left to right, the Bastille, the Temple keep, the towers of Saint-Martin-des-Champs; in the distance: the Benedictine Abbey of Montmartre.

Genoveva of Paris.

Genoveva of Paris, also spelled Genovefa, French Geneviève, (born around 422 in Nanterre; died around 502 in Paris) was a consecrated virgin and saint. She is the patron saint of Paris.

The only source of historical information about the figure is the Vita de Geneviève, a hagiographic text probably written at the request of Clotilde, the wife of Clovis. The anonymous author, probably a priest of Saint Martin of Tours whom the queen had installed in Paris, claims to have written 18 years after the saint’s death, around 520, making it one of the very few literary monuments of the 6th century in Gaul.

This Genoese hagiography, Vita sanctae Genovefae, imbued with wonder and containing no chronology, was written by a cleric of Burgundian origin who gathered everything he knew about her from direct witnesses who were still alive in order to glorify Geneviève and Clovis.

Clotilde, an anti-Arian missionary based in Tours, the centre of anti-Arian propaganda after her husband’s death, wanted to highlight the figure of Geneviève, an anti-Arian Roman Catholic who, by prioritising the fight against the Arian Visigoths, following the example of her role model, Saint Martin, made her triumph that of Clovis and the orthodoxy of Nicene Christianity.

Abbé Saint-Yves, in his Life of Saint Genevieve, attributes a Celtic origin to the name Genevieve (Genovefa). According to him, in Welsh, genoeth means ‘young girl’ (cf. Gaulish genata ‘young girl’), an unlikely etymology because the element -eth (or -ata) is missing in Geno- and -vefa has no explanation in Celtic.

In reality, the name Genovefa is probably the Latinisation of the Frankish *Kenowīfa or *Kenuwefa, a Germanic female name consisting of the elements ken- “gender, race” (related to kin in English) and wīf “woman” (related to wife in English and Weib in German). However, most sources cite another Germanic etymology, namely: *ginu- ‘large, spacious’ and *waifō- ‘restless’.

Historians have repeatedly debated the social origins of the saint. Biographers Dom Jacques Dubois and Laure Beaumont-Maillet have settled the debate: Geneviève, born into a wealthy family of the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, was the only daughter of Severus (a Latin name meaning ‘austere’), probably a Romanised Frank who, after a career as an officer, served as steward of the Empire’s lands, and Geroncia (or Gerontia, a Greek name ‘designating a person wise in age and virtue’), the daughter of a general.

As the only daughter, she would have inherited her father’s position as a member of the municipal council (curia), a position she would have held first in Nanterre, then in Paris (the city was already called that at the time), (as one of the ten leading members of the municipal aristocracy) after moving to the city to live with an influential ‘godmother’.

Baptised at a very young age, she devoted herself to God and, according to legend, was noticed by Saint Germain of Auxerre and Saint Loup of Troyes, who passed through Nanterre around 430 (the legend behind the church of Saint-Germain-de-Charonne) on their way to the Roman province of Brittany (now Great Britain). She led a consecrated and ascetic life, probably from the age of sixteen.

According to the Vita sanctae Genovefae, at the age of 18 or 20, she received the veil of virgins in Paris from Bishop Wllicus, a prelate unknown to historians. Upon the death of her parents around 440, she left Nanterre and came to live with her godmother Procula in the heart of Paris, on the Île de la Cité.

According to tradition, during the siege of Paris in 451, thanks to her strength of character, Geneviève, who was only 28 years old, convinced the inhabitants of Paris not to abandon their city to the Huns. She encouraged the Parisians to resist the invasion with the famous words:

‘Let the men flee if they wish, if they are no longer able to fight. We women will pray to God so much that He will hear our pleas.’

In fact, Attila avoided Lutetia (Paris). But contrary to what iconography depicts, he never met Geneviève.

Another controversial hypothesis claims that she warned the invader of a cholera epidemic raging in the region. Finally, through her connections with the Franks, who were part of the Roman system, she may have known that Attila wanted to attack the Visigoths in Aquitaine first and probably did not want to waste time in front of Paris. In any case, the most important thing was to prevent the Parisians from risking their lives by fleeing.

In 465, she opposed Childeric I, who laid siege to Paris, managing to supply the city several times with wheat from Brie and Champagne, thereby breaking the blockade. She had a chapel built on the site of the tomb of Saint Denis, the first bishop of Lutetia.

She also convinced Clovis, whom she had always supported, to build a church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul on Mons Lucotitius (now known as Montagne Sainte-Geneviève), in what is now the 5th arrondissement of Paris, in the heart of the Latin Quarter. While recent historiography suggests a date of death of 3 January 502, tradition prefers 3 January 512. According to her Vita, she died at the age of 89 in the hermitage in Paris.

She was buried in the same church alongside Clovis and later joined by Queen Clotilde, her most famous disciples. The church was first entrusted to Benedictines, then to secular canons: it is the Abbey of Sainte-Geneviève in Paris, whose bell tower is still visible within the grounds of the Lycée Henri-IV (this bell tower is known as the ‘Clovis Tower’).

Saint Geneviève has also been the patron saint of the French National Gendarmerie since the decree of 18 May 1962, signed by Pope John XXIII. Gendarmes traditionally celebrate her on 26 November, in reference to the ‘miracle of the Ardents’, which refers to the rye poisoning that ravaged Paris in 1130.

This epidemic came to an end after a procession of the saint’s relics, strengthening the devotion of Parisians towards her and giving rise to a tradition of large processions between her church and Notre Dame Cathedral, which remained popular with the political, professional and religious elites until the 18th century.

A church dedicated to Sainte-Geneviève-des-Ardents existed until the mid-18th century on the current forecourt of Notre-Dame.