Saint-Étienne-du-Mont

Church · Latin Quarter (5th)Paris,France

The last church in Paris to keep its rood screen, a carved stone bridge crossing the nave, beside the shrine of the city's protector.

Saint-Étienne-du-Mont keeps the last rood screen in Paris, a carved stone bridge that crosses the nave high in the air. A rood screen split a church in two. Priests used the choir behind it. Everyone else stood in the nave, the long hall in front. Almost every French church pulled its own down after the Counter-Reformation, because church authorities wanted the congregation to see the altar. This parish never pulled its screen down. The building went up between 1492 and 1626, and the join between its late medieval east end and its Renaissance front was never tidied away. Stand in the nave and you can see the choir straight through the screen. The stone is cut away until there is more hole than surface left. A spiral staircase winds up around a pillar at each end. Behind the screen is the shrine of Geneviève, the fifth-century woman Paris has long counted as its protector. The hill outside the door carries her name. The Revolution destroyed both the shrine and her bones in 1793. This is still a working parish, so you will often be moving round the edge of a service rather than through an empty monument.

Worth knowing

Good to know

Early January is when the relics come out — The parish keeps nine days of masses for Geneviève around her feast day, and her reliquary is carried out of the church in procession.
Come in the morning and look at the screen from the west door — The altar end faces east, so early light arrives from behind the carving and picks out every hole.
Stand where the two arms of the church meet and look up — a carved pendant hangs below the vault with nothing under it, held only by the ribs gripping its top.
Look for the cross on top of the screen — Rood is an old word for crucifix, and one stood on the beam across the top. The English name rood screen comes from that cross.
The steps from the film are round the side — The staircase people know from Midnight in Paris runs down from the church's corner onto rue de la Montagne Sainte-Geneviève, not from the front.

Things to do

1
Walk in under the stone bridge
Go to either end of the screen, where a stone staircase spirals up around a pillar, and walk in beneath the bridge. When the choir is open you can stand right under the span and look up into the carved underside. Then turn round and look back: you see the nave through the openwork of the stone balustrade above you.
2
Read the thank-you plaques at Geneviève's shrine
Go round behind the choir to the chapel that holds the shrine, and look at the wall rather than the gilded case on it. It is tiled with small marble plaques left by people who came to give thanks. Most carry nothing but a name, a date and the word merci, thank you.
3
Find the enamel-painted windows in the old burial gallery
Walk round behind the altar into the low gallery on the east side, built where the parish burial ground was. The panels there are small scenes painted onto the glass in enamel and fired, so the colour sits on the surface rather than in the glass. They were made to be read close up, so stand in front of one.
4
Find the two writers buried inside this church
Two marble busts stand in the side chapels. Blaise Pascal, who wrote on faith and mathematics, was buried here because he died inside the parish. Jean Racine, who wrote tragedies for the French stage, was brought here in 1711 after Port-Royal abbey was pulled down.