Landscape with Two Saints: How Genovefa of Paris and Brigit of Kildare Built Christianity in Barbarian Europe
Lisa M. Bitel
Number of quotes: 10
Book ID: 125 Page: 32
Section: 2E3
…At Grand, the healing spring of Grannus Apollo became the well of Saint Libaria (Libaire), a statue-bashing patrician virgin who was supposedly beheaded with her siblings at the order of Emperor Julian 362. Christians continued to leave ex-votos at the saint’s well into the nineteenth century.
Quote ID: 2856
Time Periods: 01234
Book ID: 125 Page: 33
Section: 3A4C
Likewise, Saint Martin of Tours carried out campaigns of destruction across Gaul at the end of the fourth century, reflecting a growing sentiment among episcopal leaders around the old empire, as well as a perceptible shift in the larger transregional landscapes of Christianity. However, Martin’s violent disgust was still in Gaul well into the fifth century.
Quote ID: 2857
Time Periods: 45
Book ID: 125 Page: 33
Section: 2E3
The goal of northern church leaders, except Martin, was not to destroy old sacred sites but to reconceive both pagan and Christian places and their visible markers. Both architectural remains and written texts suggest that Parisians and their northern Gaulish neighbors constantly and creatively renegotiated their sacral sites and monuments.
Quote ID: 2858
Time Periods: 456
Book ID: 125 Page: 35
Section: 2E5
The documentary tradition of Denis and his itinerary from Rome to Paris is reliable only from the sixth century. Before that, the only known commemoration of Denis was in the liturgy of prayers performed in the churches of Paris, where priests invoked his name on the anniversary of his death. …We might suppose that Parisian worshipers prayed to Denis perhaps as early as 400.
Quote ID: 2859
Time Periods: 56
Book ID: 125 Page: 119
Section: 3A1
When Cogitosus wrote in the 650s or so, he considered christianization to be complete. Pagans hardly figured in his tales of Brigit’s fifth-century adventures. However, Irish bishops gathered in synod around the same time and produced written decrees, which offered some specific advice about interactions between Christians and unbelievers. They advised Christians not to behave like or do business with the unbaptized. [see fall of thr Roman Empire, p. 127]
Quote ID: 2860
Time Periods: 567
Book ID: 125 Page: 121
Section: 2A3
In, another story, Tirechan laid out a step-by-step guide for transforming a fertae into a properly identified Christian burial. Patrick had successfully converted King Loegaire’s two daughters, who then immediately expired and went to heaven. Their bodies were placed in a ditch-ringed mound near a well, according to the hagiographer, “after the manner of a ferta, because this is what the heathen Irish used to do, but we call it a relic, that is, the remains residuae of the maidens.”
Quote ID: 2861
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 125 Page: 195
Section: 2A3
In 1161, someone in Paris whispered that the canons of Sainte-Genevieve had misplaced her head and that it had not been buried with the rest or her bones. The rumormonger may have been a monk from Saint-Denis or a canon at Notre Dame. Both the monastery north of town and the bishop’s church on the Ile de la Cite had been tussling with the community at Sainte-Genevieve over property and authority in Paris. Nonetheless, the accusation spread rapidly around the city and among the French bishops assembled there for a major council. The Genovefans panicked. A mob gathered. The bishops demanded that Saint Genovefa’s tomb be busted open and the body examined.What did the community of Sainte-Genevieve fear? Presumably, even if the saint lacked a head, she remained immanent at her sanctuary. For more than five centuries she had shielded the city against floods and invaders.
Quote ID: 2862
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 125 Page: 196
Section: 2E1
The monks of Saint-Denis should have been more sympathetic, for Genovefa had once authenticated their own patron’s remains. What is more, they would suffer an identical crisis two and a half centuries later. In 1410 the canons of Notre Dame challenged the community of Saint-Denis before the Parlement of Paris to prove that they kept the genuine head of Denis. The canons from the island claimed to have it in their own treasury.
Quote ID: 2863
Time Periods: ?
Book ID: 125 Page: 214
Section: 2A3
…Likewise, when ergotism[typo?] (called by the chronicler, ignis sacra, holy fire) struck the city in 1129, no relief arrived until Genovefa emerged from her church and went down into the city. Christ had turned a deaf ear while doctors applied all their skills and medicines to no avail. The bishop and canons of Notre Dame tried deploying their relics, but still the fever raged. Genovefa, out of respect for the Virgin Mother, meanwhile had refrained from intervening until invoked. When the bishop of Paris finally recalled how Genovefa had saved the city before – once from the Huns, once from flood – he ascended to the hill to seek her aid. The bishop begged her canons to escort Genovefa to Notre Dame, where she might heal her patients in person. After much preparation, the canons agreed to procession with relics across the river. Attended by raucous multitudes, the saint was borne by ordained men to Notre Dame. There Genovefa’s intercession healed all but three victims of the holy fire.
Quote ID: 2864
Time Periods: 7
Book ID: 125 Page: 215
Section: 2E1
In 1248, when King (and later saint) Louis brought the Crown of Thorns from Saint-Denis to Sainte-Chapelle and summoned the saints of Paris to the dedication of his glorious new church, neither Genovefa nor Marcel attended.
Quote ID: 2865
Time Periods: ?
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