Roman legions marched into Paris past this
shop long
before portable phones were invented.
In Part of the Rue Saint-Jacques
This Spring's Last Stroll
By Richard Erickson
Paris Kiosque - July 2001 - Volume 8, Number 7
Copyright (c) 2001 Richard Erickson - used with permission
Last week I spent some time with Marcel Proust but
it didn't matter much because the weather was perfect for
not searching for lost time. Today, it seems like spring
has decided to pack all it has into one day,
the day before summer begins.
I feel like I've been
underwater for the past three seasons. The monitor I'm looking
at while doing this is swimming a bit too, so
I think I can combine two jobs here by getting
out in the sunlight - while on my way to
see what I can do about this lousy, flipping screen.
Outside the sky is good and blue but not quite
shimmering. The plane tree leaves are casting spattered shadows on
the sidewalks, a bit like olive-brown camouflage. It is warm
too, another rare novelty.
Once I see the Marco Polo
fountain is not spraying its waterworks around I decide to
follow the Rue Saint-Jacques from the Boulevard de Port-Royal down to
the Latin Quarter, where there are students - and where
there are students there are computer monitors. Rather, there may
be monitors and people who know something about them.
An
almost perfectly-ordinary crêpes café on Saint-Jacques.
So I turn into
the Rue Saint- Jacques - not where it begins about
a block south of the Seine - but somewhere on
its way to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain. As
far as Paris of this trip is concerned, I start
is where the street officially ends - but the whole
thing used to be part of the old pilgrimage route.
Even before this, even before Romans came along and built
bridges over the river, this was a well-travelled path. The
Romans, great fixers, made it a highway to 'Genabum,' or
Orléans as it is known today. Since the Romans fixed
it up before there were any saints, they called it
the Via Superior.
According to my source the Romans gave
it good, study paving and made it their standard nine
meters wide. Since good old Roman times, things have never
been quite the same and some of the Rue Saint-Jacques
has shrunk to only seven meters in width - like,
I guess, people who get smaller when they are more
than 100 years old.
After the Romans went home to
become Italians, the 'dark ages' settled on their Via Superior
until about the 12th century, when it was called the
'Grande-rue du Petit-Pont' for a time - only a hundred
years - and then it was the 'Grande-rue Saint-Jacques-des-Prêcheurs.'
These
names were followed by another seven variations, or different names
entirely, until 1806 when the nonsense stopped. Great parades
were held in the street, especially when France's kings died
out of town - plus it was used by the
Pope's various ambassadors, and Chancellor Duprat in 1530, and the
Cardinals of Florence and Barberini when they came for visits
a long time ago.
The yet-to-be cleaned house flanking Val-de-Grace
on the right.
On account of this, plus the fact
that the street seemed to be a suburb - a
'voie sublime' - for almost a dozen religious orders -
and these always wrote everything down so their histories are
long - my 'history' today would start at number 151,
where the city gate was in 1200 - extending all
the way, with moats, to number 171 - which was
outside the city limits.
As a lesson on how to
handle insurrectionists, Philippe le Bel had seven 'bourgeois' strung up
here in 1306. That the good people of Paris were
annoyed at him for devaluing the money is neither here
nor there - he had three other sets of seven
'bourgeois' strung up at each of the other city's gates
to make sure nobody overlooked the message that Philippe ran
the mint.
Nearly next door, at number 156, used to
be the location of the convent of the Dominicans. This
produced 12 Saints, four Popes, 58 Cardinals, and Jacques Clément,
who bumped off Henri III. The church of this convent
also was home to the remains of 22 kings, princes
and princesses and other luminaries. Before being demolished over a
50-year period after the Révolution, part of it was used
as a dance hall.
Okay, beyond number 171 was out
of town in the 13th century. In the 18th century
the area was reputed to be dangerous after dark. Not
only this, but the 'great' street has become narrow somehow,
which was inconvenient to the 40 wagons loaded with wine
that came this way into the city every day -
not to mention other wagons filled with salted fish, sugar,
spices, wool and other stuff from the Indies.
History's first
best-selling author lived near where number 218 is today. I
know this because a plaque on the wall says so.
It says Jean de Meung wrote the 'Roman de la
Rose' in the late 13th century, and it was popular
in the 14th and 15th centuries.
When printing was finally
invented, it was even more popular. However it seems as
if it was written by two authors. One of these,
Guillaume de Lorris, wrote 4000 verses and 40 years later,
Jean Clopinel - born at Meung-sur-Loire around 1280 - added
18,000 more, some of which were somewhat mean-spirited.
Resting between
two nearly identical buildings, with a somewhat odd number of
277-bis, is the Val-de-Grace. In the 14th century it was
the location of a set of townhouses called the 'Séjour
des Valois,' and in 1385 it became the 'Maison de
Bourbon.'
In 1621, Anne of Austria wanted a quiet place
to get away from the Louvre, and her husband, Louis
XIII - who didn't like her much either - so
she bought the 'Maison de Bourbon.' At first she
had a little weekend house built for herself, but in
1624 she laid the first stone of its monastery.
The
Val-de-Grace church, as seen from outside its iron fence.
In
her little hideaway she kept up a correspondence with her
family in Spain, with the English court and the 'Maison
de Lorraine.' In 1637 Richelieu set off the 'Scandal of
the Val-de-Grace' by ordering the premises searched for compromising letters,
and Anne had to sign a confession. She was pardoned
by her husband the king, but forbidden to stay at
her place of refuge.
Anne got revenge, by giving birth
on Thursday, 5. December 1638 - after 26 years of
marriage - to the future Louis XIV. Richelieu died four
years later and the king, Louis XIII, a few months
after. Anne was so happy that she had her modest
monastery remodelled into a 'splendid' abbey.
Formerly scatter-brained, Anne luckily
inherited Jules Marazin from Richelieu, who had nothing wrong with
him except for speaking poor French and having a great
deal of plain greed. But he played the game of
'fall guy,' and along with Anne they bested the state's
opponents - which were in disarray anyway.
This doesn't mean
Anne and little Louis XIV didn't have to flee to
Saint-Germain-en-Laye on 5. January 1649 to escape the Fronde. A
few months later she came back with the Prince of
Condé and they besieged Paris, which was full of 'Parlementaires,'
the bourgeois - still! - the 'devouts,' Anne's former allies
- and the great lords - all Frondeurs.
Marazin had
the Prince of Condé arrested the following year, then a
two-year revolt followed. Condé was finally nailed for not turning
up for Louis XIV's declaration as king in September of
1651. But the Fronde continued and foreign invasion came right
up to Paris' gates, along with famine and plague.
This
triple-blow convinced Parisians to side with the young king, and
Marazin fixed the rest by pardoning the Frondeurs, as well
as bribing them to 'be nice.' This set the stage
for local peace, Paris-style, which lasted until the Révolution. Unnoticed,
in the midst of all this, Marazin also signed
the Treaty of Westphalia, which left Spain free to concentrate
on war with France.
This ended with the 1659 Treaty
of the Pyrenees. Condé was pardoned for no good reason,
and a dowry of a half-million écus came with Marie
-Thérèse of Spain for her marriage to Louis, in return
for his renouncing any claim to Spain's throne. Spain never
paid the dowry.
The cleaned-up house flanking the right, or
north side of Val-de-Grace.
Back at the Val-de-Grace - this
was begun by Louis XIV himself, by laying the first
stone when he was seven. Mansart was the architect, but
he was replaced by Jacques Lemercier in 1647. He was
followed by Pierre Le Muet until his death in 1654,
and Le Duc finished it off in 1665, without quite
finishing it. During the Révolution it was taken over and
turned into a hospital, but without its original decorations being
altered.
When I step inside its high iron fence, I
am politely told I cannot photograph it because it is
a military installation. To me it looks like a church.
Around Malaga's airport there used to be signs forbidding photography
because there was a military airfield next to the civilian
one - but this was in Franco's time.
But I
am told I can take photos if I do it
from outside the iron fence. Otherwise, I can ask the
Minister of Defense for permission to do it inside the
fence. From both sides of the fence it looks like
a church and not a guided missile depot.
The Val-de-Grace
church is very impressive where it faces the Rue Saint-Jacques.
Behind it somewhere, is France's premier military hospital, with its
main entrance in the Boulevard de Port-Royal.
A fair amount
of traffic threads its way up the street, up from
the river. Many of the shops in the street are
unusual in one way or another. I guess the drivers
don't see many of these because of the street's varying
widths that require some extra attention.
But above, along the
roof-lines, up where the chimneys are, you can see that
the Rue Saint-Jacques - while not really looking quite as
old as it is - is not overbuilt with a
lot of faceless concrete boxes and steel-framed glass.
On one
hand, it is a narrow European street that hasn't been
carefully planned - as it is now, not as it
was when the Romans were around - and
on the other hand it is acting like an open
drainway, as an outfall for the convenience of the drivers
of tin cans on rubber tires, that runs through a
sort of inhabited monument.
An ordinary garage and an ordinary
Chinese restaurant - or are they?
Maybe Paris has so
many streets like this that one more or less doesn't
matter - in fact, other ones could be even more
annoying to motorists. Paris may not have kings anymore, but
it still has its motorists.
You might think this is
plain 'back-to-the-old-days' nonsense. But I wasn't in the Rue Saint-Jacques
today just to be in this street. I have been
using it and my legs to get myself someplace.
I
could have done it a lot quicker by taking public
transport. But today has also been perhaps one of the
best of this year's spring, so I decided to walk
instead. I do not know how much of my walking
time was spent not walking, but waiting for cars to
get out of the way. It is really tiresome.
If
you ever take yourself into the Rue Saint-Jacques for a
casual 'look around' - and it is worth it -
you'll see what I mean. This doesn't mean this street
is any more or less polluted by cars than others.
It is just that the street itself is the 'sight'
and its traffic is a blot on it.
Richard Erickson, living in Paris for the last twenty years, has been putting
Paris online as long as anyone. More of his writings can be found in
Metropole Paris
where this article first appeared.
He can be contacted via
erickso@world-net.sct.fr.
