Church Saint Severin (Paris)

While leaving the Saint-Julien-the-Poor street for the Galande street , some steps bring back for custom to the Saint-Jacob street, the outlet of the Saint-Severin street, which skirts the septentrional wall of the church of this name.

It is placed and have choked in the center of has network extremely curious butt narrow and tortuous streets, remain  by miracle between the broad ways of left bank.The narrow place in front of the gate is strangled to the left in A lane which is called the street of the Priests.

St Severin is the senior of the parish churches of left bank of the the Seine.   

Saint-Severin church, merovingian origin, was built towards 650 by the Saint-Severin hermit monk, named the recluse. Closed It had been withdrawn to the southernmost door, At the time of Childebert the first, near year oratory dedicated to saint Martin.

It had have has disciple Clodoald, the future Saint Cloud, the last small its of Clovis who had escaped with the massacre of his family by his uncles. The small oratory which honoured Severin became has vault thereafter then has basilica there because the women of kings of France who lived the Thermal baths then took the practice to come to make their devotions.

The church will Be rebuilt in XIth century after being burned and being plundered with many recoveries by Norman the two centuries earlier. The priest Foulques de Neuilly will preach the fourth Crusade there in face of important year crowd the faithful ones.

The church will Be rebuilt in XIIIth century, under Philippe-Auguste, in the Gothic style blazing which we know today. The unquestionable frontage preserved vestiges of the Lovesong period.

St Severin became also the church of the travellers because it is located near the Small Bridge, the individual bridge which connected to the Average Age the island of the City to left bank of the Seine. Those took the practice to come to dedicate to their horseshoes to St Martin before leaving one has journey.

In the church of the XIIth century,the vault of the virgin was coupled with the bedside, with the current junction of the entry of the chorus and the sacristy. There was set up in 1311 the first brotherhood established in France in the honor of the very Blessed Virgin under the immaculate design. The students of the college of Norman seem to cuts been At the origin of this new devotion. The builders of the XVth century perpetrated of it the memory in the keystone: the kiss of Anne and Joachim, the parents of Marie, expresses the pure design of the child.

Always with the XIIIth century, the students put on oath in front of Notre-Dame of good hope, nothing to say gold Write which could offend the very Blessed Virgin. The Wood rules disappeared in the XVIIIth century.

Knowing the students and the brotherhoods, under this ritual surely another thing hides. Its remind me cuckolds of Le Puy gold troubadours and them trobar clus.

The church is today robust has 38 meters of width, 58 meters length, and 17 meters height Gothic monument located in the middle of the Latin Quarter. Capital It contains one of the bells oldest of the which bears the name of Macée, melted in 1412.

Surrounded by waste-gas hands which dominate the frontage of the vaults of the sides, the church is surmounted by a public garden, and a bell-tower. The aspect of the lanes surround the old town.

The current church present, seen side of the frontage, has high triangular pinion, accosted of has bell-tower in the shape of public garden tower, of elegant and fine structure, bored of two training courses of long ogival bays, furnished with delicate posts in splayings.

This leaves of the building goes up in XIIth century; its crowning, its pinnacles and its balustrade are two centuries younger. The tower ends in A very acute arrow, decorated with attic Windows and capped with has skylight, whose not, exceeding the high houses of the old working, is let see of all the line of the quays of the the Seine.

The church included/understood has nave with six spans, has flat bedside and thewith dimensions ones without ornaments. The second side aisle, with southern dimensions, date from XIVth century and side chapels from the end of XVth.

The nave with the shape of has parallelogram finished by has semicircular apse. It does not cuts has transept. It, like that of Notre-Dame, collateral doubled, five naves in width, surrounded of has center of vaults, provision which gives year astonishing size to all the building. Those are decorated with marble platings, which wrap the pillars and transform the warheads into curved arcades; this decoration, strong rich, goal which denature the style of this share of the church, was carried out in 1684, have well have the small baldachin of the high altar, At the expenses of Miss of Montpensier, that which one called the Broad Miss, the German cousin of Louis XIV.

This church has the oldest triforium of Paris, a very beautiful déambulatoire composed of 10 double spans of pillar-palm trees.

The sacristy, built in 1540, will be increased six years later. The architects will adopt a triangular structure comprising a central pillar to solve the problem of voûtement which was to take support on narrow bases because of the width of the building. The companion of Purple the Duke, Lassus, will graft in 1839 the gate of XIIIth century of the church Saint-Pierre-with-Oxen of the island of the City, recently demolished during the boring of the street of Arcole.

This monument comprises many medieval sculptures as well as busts of Pierre Saint and Paul Saint, carried out at the XVIIth century. The Virgin with the child was carved by Joseph Marius Ramus in 1839.

The external garden, curiously called cloister, and whose sides consist of curious niches of Gothic architecture, is an old cemetery. In fact, they are the notable Parisian tombs built starting from XVth century. In the center were buried in a common grave the skins of disinherited.

Mass grave in the beginning, this cemetery was not less one place of life. It is here that in 1474 the first surgical operation was carried out on one condemned to death suffering from renal calculi. The operation having succeeded, the man was pardonned. In addition, as of the XVIIth century, the niches were closed to be used as dwellings to the priests of Saint Severin . It had to be waited until 1920 so that they are restored.

http://www.paris-pittoresque.com/monuments/27b.htm
http://www.insecula.com/salle/MS01901.html
http://www.uquebec.ca/musique/orgues/france/sseverinp.html