Mini-Notre-Dames: Medieval Parish Churches in the Diocese of Paris

 

 Mini-Notre-Dames

Medieval Parish Churches in the Diocese of Paris

By Marian Bleeke

The cathedral of Notre-Dame is the most obvious example of a boom in church building that took place in and around Paris in the later Middle Ages.  Less obvious is the large number of parish churches that were built during the same time period both within the city and in the surrounding towns and villages that formed part of the diocese.  These churches served different functions for a different audience than the cathedral.  Where it hosted an elaborate liturgy in honor of the Virgin and various saints and had close ties to the kings, these other churches were integral parts of local communities and were the places where ordinary people had their religious needs met.  The residents of a neighborhood in the city or of a town or village outside of it would gather at the parish church to hear mass and for weddings, baptisms, and funerals.   Nevertheless, these parish churches share some of the distinctive architectural features of the cathedral and so they also brought those aspects of the cathedral into ordinary people’s everyday lives. They continue to do so today.

 

Six-part vaults and upper walls of Notre-Dame, Paris.  Quique Olaso from Manises, Spain, CC BY-SA 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

One of the distinctive aspects of the cathedral is the six-part vaults that are used in both the central nave and its eastern extension into the choir area of the church. Other well-known Gothic cathedrals use simpler four-part vaults instead.  Each of these six-part vaults covers two sections or bays in the nave and choir.  Sens cathedral also has six-part vaults and recognizes the size and shape of those vaults on its walls and in its ground-level supports by alternating between heavily built supports at the corners of the vaults and lighter-weight supports at their mid-points.  At Paris, that alternation does not happen.  The responds that bring the ribs from the vaults down the walls and the supports at the ground-level are uniform down the nave and into the choir.  The ground-level supports at Paris are also distinctive in that they are mostly simple columns rather than compound piers, this is because the responds stop above the capitals at the top of each column rather than being brought down all the way to the ground as is more common.  The more common compound pier form can be seen in a few places at the cathedral, specifically at the western end of the nave and on the east side of the transept.  Both of these exceptions are the product of later work and were likely meant to strengthen the structure.  The use of columns instead of compound piers in the most of the nave and the choir may have been meant to emulate the look of earlier churches including one that stood on the site of the cathedral and was destroyed to make way for its construction.

West end of the nave of Notre-Dame, Paris.  Diego Delso, CC BY 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Among Paris-area parish churches,  Saint-Pierre and Saint-Paul at Montreuil-sous-Bois is most like the cathedral in sharing all of these features: it also has six-part vaults above uniform supports with responds that stop above the capitals level and simple columns below.  The church of Saint-Martin at Champeaux has six-part vaults with uniform supports in the choir, but alternates between single and double columns for supports in the nave.  In both parts of this church, however, the responds from the vaults stop above the ground-floor capitals.  More common in these parish churches are four-part vaults with responds that end above the capitals and single columns below: these appear at the churches of Saint-Denis at Arcueil, Saint-Étienne at Mareil-Marly, Saint-Germain at Vitry-sur-Seine, Saint-Germain-de-Paris at Andrésy, Notre-Dame at Bougival, and Saint-Remy at Ferrières-en-Brie.

Nave of the church of Saint-Martin at Champeaux.  P.poschadel, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

The churches on this list also share with one another a distinctive feature of the original construction at Notre-Dame Paris: a row of round or oculus windows in the upper part of their nave and choir walls.  As first built, the nave and choir at the cathedral had four stories: first the columns supporting arches at the ground level, then arches opening into a second-story gallery, then a row of round openings into the roof space above the gallery, and finally a row of windows at the top of the wall.  The oculus openings were probably filled with crosses that referred to the presence of a relic of the True Cross.  In the early 1200’s the top parts of the walls were redone and the last two levels were combined into a single story of large windows.  During his reconstructions in the 1850’s, Viollet-le-Duc found evidence of the original round openings and recreated them as windows in bays in the transept and choir.  The parish churches listed above typically have three story elevations in their nave and choir areas: the columns supporting arches at the ground level, a triforium or false gallery at a reduced scale above, and then oculus windows at the top.  It is as if they reduced the original four-story elevation of the cathedral to three by combining the oculus openings with the windows above them.

Nave elevation of Notre-Dame at Bougival.  Pierre Poschadel, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

As there is little to no surviving documentation for the construction of these parish churches, it is impossible to know how or why they came to share these features with the cathedral.  As parish churches were typically built by local communities, it is unlikely that there was a directive from the bishop that dictated their forms.  Perhaps local people traveled to Paris for major celebrations, saw the cathedral, were impressed by its features, and wanted something similar for themselves and their communities.  Maybe they wanted to use their local churches to express their ties with Paris as the center of the diocese and increasingly of the kingdom.  Perhaps workers from the cathedral became the master masons who built parish churches and reproduced features that they knew.  We will likely never know.

 

East end of Notre-Dame, Paris, showing outer ring of chapels at ground level.  William Morland, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

We are on more secure footing for understanding another feature of the cathedral that was replicated in parish churches in the city of Paris that were built or expanded in the 1400’s and 1500’s.  In the 1300’s the cathedral was expanded with the addition a row of chapels that rings the building on its ground level.  To add these chapels, builders burst through the outer walls of the cathedral and filled in the spaces in-between the existing buttress towers, bringing these spaces into the interior of the building and constructing a continuous wall around its exterior.  A similar continuous outer wall enclosing a ring of chapels was built at the parish churches of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, Saint-Germain-l’Auxerrois, Saint-Médard, Saint-Merry, Saint-Nicolas-des-Champs, and Saint-Séverin. These were all chantry chapels, where individuals could have masses said to ease their passage from purgatory into heaven – in exchange for a donation to the church.  Chantry foundations at the cathedral would have been available only to the elite.  Adding chapels to parish churches made it possible for more people to afford to establish chantries to secure their future salvation.

 

Exterior of Saint-Germain-l"Auxerrois showing continuous ring of chapels.  Miguel Hermoso Cuesta, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>,

For visitors who come to Paris while the cathedral is closed for restorations after the 2019 fire, these parish churches offer the opportunity to experience some of its distinctive architectural features.  To visit these churches, be sure to first check their websites using the hyperlinks included above.  The buildings are not necessarily open to the public except during services. 

 Sources:

Malian S. Doquang, “The Lateral Chapels of Notre-Dame in Context.”  Gesta 50/2 (2011): 137-161.

Michel Lheure, Le Rayonnement de Notre-Dame de Paris dans ses paroisses, 1170-1300.  Paris: Picard, 2010.

Anne-Marie Sankovitch, “Intercession, Commemoration, and Display: The Parish Church as Archive in Late Medieval Paris,” pp. 247-267.  In Demeures d’Éternité: Églises et chapekkes funéraires aux XVe et XVIe siècles.  Paris: Picard, 2005.

Dany Sandron and Andrew Tallon, Notre Dame Cathedral: Nine Centuries of History.  University Park, Pennsylvania, 2020.