THE WORLD'S BIGGEST MUSEUM
Welcome to the Basilica of Saint-Denis, the French kings' basilica.
Do you know who St. Denis was?
He was a Catholic from the Roman provinces
who arrived in Gaul in 250 AD
to convert the country, to convert Paris.
But the authorities saw things differently
and St. Denis went on to be beheaded by the Romans.
According to legend, St. Denis left Paris carrying his head
and he walked for four miles until he arrived here.
He followed the Rue des Martyrs and headed north.
On the site where he fell down dead,
at the time, a small chapel was erected.
You can see that the small chapel has now become a superb basilica.
Today, 43 French kings have been laid to rest here,
plus 32 queens, 63 princes and princesses
and ten great French figures like du Guesclin, for example.
It's a magnetic place and a great focus of French history
that I suggest that you come and visit today.
BASILICA OF SAINT-DENIS
I'm meeting Father Eugène Doussal.
Hello, Father. - Hello.
You're the rector of the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
Where are we?
We're in the place where St. Denis and his comrades were buried.
So, it's the archeological crypt.
The first crypt from the early days of Christianity was here.
Around 250 AD, the Christians who'd been scandalized
by the fact that St. Denis and his comrades had been beheaded,
wanted this place to be kept sacred.
The first shrine was built just above this tomb.
The first shrine was built there and we know that...
BASILICA RECTOR
… almost 200 years later, St. Genevieve made a pilgrimage here and, like others,
she said: "This place is not worthy of a great saint like St. Denis."
So, she met with some bishops
and told them to create a place worthy of St. Denis
which is, in some way, sacred.
So, you're a worker-priest.
I used to be, yes. Today I practice full-time
here in the Basilica and throughout Saint-Denis town.
The Basilica is a place where we pray every Sunday.
We celebrate the Eucharist and it's also a place where people come
to perpetuate the Basilica's tradition
which, for almost 1,800 years, has been a place of prayer and revitalization
and a place that must help people return to life
and take interest in everything happening around them.
I'm meeting Serge Santos, who is in charge of education at the Basilica.
Hello, Serge. - Hello, Eric.
How many kings and queens are there here at the Basilica of Saint-Denis?
HEAD OF THE BASILICA EDUCATION SERVICE
There are over 70 recumbent statues from between the 12th and 16th centuries.
But there were once 43 kings, 32 queens, 63 princes and princesses
and ten people from outside of the monarchy buried in this monument.
One little question: "Which king came here first?"
Dagobert was the first king buried in Saint-Denis in 639 AD.
In the 1260s, St. Louis did something incredible.
He ordered the recumbent statues of the kings that preceded him.
St. Louis really wanted to make the most of the royal necropolis.
He wanted this place to become
the place where kings were buried in an evident way.
Sixteen kings and queens were already buried in the Basilica.
They simply made a hole in the ground
and put the king's body in a lead coffin surrounded by a wooden coffin,
with a plate indicating the king's name.
St. Louis had the bodies brought here and the bones put in caskets.
Sixteen recumbent statues were ordered for these caskets.
Sixteen representations of deceased kings and queens,
who were previously buried in the monument.
So, there are still recumbent statues here today from St. Louis's time.
Exactly. They are here before us.
Who's that? - That's Clovis II, Dagobert's son.
Dagobert was the first king buried here in 639 AD and that's his son.
It's a 13th century recumbent statue.
Who's next to him there? - That's the famous Charles Martel.
He's a kind of ancestor of the Carolingians,
the father of Pepin the Short and grandfather of Charlemagne.
He is wearing a crown, even though he was only Mayor of the Palace.
This is a way of empowering a man at the roots of the Carolingian family.
Did these recumbent statues come after St. Louis?
St. Louis initially displayed the recumbent statues
as though they were standing.
See, there's a plate at their feet.
In some way, they are just like the column statues
which greet pilgrims at cathedral entrances.
In the early 14th century, this type of recumbent statue appeared.
She's quite clearly lying down. - That's Isabella of Aragon.
Isabella of Aragon. - St. Louis's daughter-in-law.
She's represented much more realistically here.
Lying down, with the folds of her clothes falling.
The previous ones still had very stiff clothes.
I've noticed several times that there were animals, namely dogs,
at the feet of the statues. Does that have a particular meaning?
It's an iconographic motif that appeared in the late 13th century.
Traditionally, the women have a dog at their feet, but sometimes the men do.
The dog symbolizes loyalty, but, according to a very old tradition,
the dog acts as a guide in the underground kingdoms.
He'll guide the deceased person's soul through death.
The lion symbolizes strength, the sun and the power of the monarchy.
But it also symbolizes resurrection, as the lion is never completely asleep
and, in a way, it represents the sign of life after death.
Who are these recumbent statues of?
Charles V.
And his wife, Joanna of Bourbon, is just next to him.
Charles V, who is depicted as though he's alive.
You can really see that it's Charles V's features.
It's probably the first sculpted portrait of the Middle Ages.
You can really see this because the veins appear on the king's hands.
His forehead is very wrinkled, even though he's only 27 years old.
This is a way of bringing the sculpture to life.
You even get the impression that it will rise up.
This is Joanna of Bourbon. He called her the sunshine of his kingdom.
This statue wasn't at Saint-Denis, it was in the Église des Célestins.
It contains entrails.
The kings and queens were buried in three pieces.
They often died far from Saint-Denis.
So, you have the entrails, the heart and the body itself.
The bones were buried at Saint-Denis.
The most important part.
What does this recumbent statue of Charles V's wife represent?
You can see from her left hand that it contains entrails,
as she is carrying a leather bag that supposedly contains her entrails.
This bag is shaped like intestines.
There are some recumbent statues without crowns.
Does this mean that they aren't kings?
That's something very new.
There are very few great servants of the monarchy buried in Saint-Denis.
There are few, including the famous, Bertrand du Guesclin.
Du Guesclin! Is he not very big? - He's tiny.
According to texts, he was very small. His recumbent statue measures 150 cm.
You can imagine he was about that size.
Why is du Guesclin buried here?
Charles V wanted Bertrand du Guesclin buried in the Basilica of Saint-Denis
because he was extremely loyal to the king.
He was to serve as an example for all the great constables to come,
that is, the army chiefs. It's was a time of extreme turmoil
and people needed to put their trust in a great military figure.
That's why du Guesclin was buried in the Basilica.
Here we are in the Bourbon crypt.
Now, I invite you to follow me into the royal ossuary.
I'm meeting Henri, Count of Paris.
Hello, my Lord. - Hello.
Thank you for accepting to meet us here.
You have known this place for a while. - Of course.
I discovered it 1947,
the first time I came to France after my exile.
COUNT OF PARIS
Oh yes, you were exiled under law. - That's right.
So, I was able to return to France.
Feeling the weight of all these people,
all these great constables and servants of the country,
the French people that France is built on,
I was speechless.
Among all these kings, there have been 34 since Hugues Capet
and they're almost all here in this ossuary,
which ones are close to your heart?
Which ones do you especially like for their part in history?
Francis I and all the innovations that he made.
The Ordinance of Villers-Cotterêts that we still live with today,
because the French language was decreed by Francis I
as the State language and Henry IV, who all the French love.
They met with quite a cruel fate,
because they were taken from their tombs to be put in mass graves
and then, a few years later, they were gathered here.
This tiny place is strange, a concentration of...
The whole history of France is here. Here and there. It's amazing.
It's quite normal
given that, in a mass grave,
with quicklime, you longer know who is who.
So, we take everything and put it in boxes
with fleur-de-lis and we put it here and there.
Here between these two walls, it is laden with
the whole history of France, right next to us.
Now, my Lord, we're arriving at the tombs
which contain Louis VII, the king and husband of Eleanor of Aquitaine,
Louise of Lorraine, the wife of King Henry III
and, I didn't know, Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette,
who are now at the Basilica.
When we conducted research at the Expiatory Chapel,
we found these two bodies, so we brought them here
and now they are resting here.
For me, Louis XVI is a great king.
He tried to bring about change,
but he perhaps didn't have enough strength of character
to see all the necessary changes through to the end back then.
France needed transforming and the French are difficult to transform.
Thanks, my Lord. - Goodbye.
Thank you.
MARIE-ANTOINETTE OF AUSTRIA QUEEN OF FRANCE AND NAVARRE
Marie-Antoinette and Louis XVI had four children, including two sons.
Their first son, Louis-Joseph, who died in 1789,
the year of the French Revolution, when he was quite young,
and his brother, Louis-Charles, whose fate you are aware of.
He was incarcerated with his parents, notably, in the Prison du Temple.
He had a very difficult time in prison.
Notably, there were six months during the Reign of Terror,
when he stayed locked up without any visitors and just sent a mess tin.
Nobody took care of him and it was a very difficult time for him.
He almost reverted back to an animalistic state.
He died a few months later from peritonitis before he was ten years old.
The convention decreed an autopsy in 1795
and the doctor who conducted the autopsy on little Louis XVII's body
removed his heart.
Over the decades, this heart wandered all over Europe
and it came back to France in 1975.
And in the year 2000,
DNA analysis was conducted on this heart
and it was established
that this heart definitely belonged to a member of Marie-Antoinette's family.
After cross-checking, it could only be little Louis XVII's heart.
So, now he's here in the Basilica of Saint-Denis.
How can you tell it's a queen? What's that?
EDUCATIONAL GROUP LEADER
It's a... - A tiara?
The women were sculpted wearing a veil, without showing their hair.
We can't really put one on her, so I'll do something like this.
Hello, Bathilde. - Hello.
Are you well? - Yes.
You're an educational group leader. - Yes.
I'll bet you're explaining to the children how it works here.
Which is the nicest? Clovis? - Clovis.
Clovis! - And Bertrand du Guesclin.
Bertrand du Guesclin is 150cm tall.
You're almost as tall as him.
We're going to see him.
Do they listen? Are they enthusiastic? - Totally.
Because people always say that
school kids are not that into history. - Here they are.
All the classes that come here are interested.
Seeing the real faces of French kings is marvelous.
You've recreated the look...
Who is it? - Philip of France.
The Philip of France look.
Was he one of St. Louis's children? - Yes, exactly.
We also have his little slippers. - Ah, there they are!
Inevitably, you don't see them because they wore such long robes
St. Louis's son's little 13th century slippers.
All the rage in the 13th century.
Bathilde, this recumbent statue is interesting
because the recumbent statues here
were colored like this. - Yes.
They were all colored like that. - Incredible.
Especially the colors. They're quite bright colors.
The famous blue that was quite rare back then.
Red used to be the royal color and then it became blue.
It was extremely multicolored. - Beautiful material.
I imagine that the inside of this building was also multi-colored.
Absolutely. I haven't told you, but the archway above your head
was painted blue.
All that was a riot of color. It was multicolored. Red, blue...
Thanks, Bathilde. I'll let you continue. - Thank you.
Goodbye.
The Middle Ages were over and the Renaissance arrived
and the classic recumbent statues were replaced by this kind of thing,
more majestic tombs. That's Francis I.
HEAD OF THE NATIONAL RENAISSANCE MUSEUM
With his first wife, Claude of France. - It was a different story.
They moved on to real monuments. An evolution in piety
meant that, instead of being clothed, the recumbent statue was naked.
The man and woman have fallen asleep in death,
but kneeling above them in display clothes,
there are living recumbent statues, living in eternal prayer.
Also here, are the predecessor and successor of Francis I,
that is, Louis XII and Henry II, his son.
They were made in the same spirit. - Exactly.
It's the new dynasty coming to the throne, the Valois.
From Francis I, Louis XII and Anne of Brittany received
a very modern tomb which still seats the virtues and apostles.
There, on the tomb of my favorite king, Henry II,
the recumbent statues aren't in duplicate, they're in triplicate.
There are multiple representations. - It was Catherine de' Medici's project.
So, you have the normal tomb
with the deceased sovereigns represented asleep and naked.
Here the sovereigns are represented praying on their knees,
Catherine is praying, Henry is turning the pages of his book.
Next to them, there's another bed with the same figures wearing sacred clothing,
like the statues of the Middle Ages. Catherine wanted these in the 1580s.
The Renaissance tombs here belong to Louis XII,
Francis I, his son, Henry II, and then it feels like it comes to a end.
Indeed, the Wars of Religion and changing mentalities
meant that Henry II's and Catherine de' Medici's tomb
was the last large royal tomb in Saint-Denis.
Either because of time, means or a change of mind,
all these kings' coffins were placed on trestles in the royal crypt,
but it ended then. Louis XIV's real tomb is at Versailles.
Thierry Crépin, I imagine that in 1789,
this essential place for the French monarchy
will have been closely watched by the revolutionaries.
Not in 1789, but later, in 1793,
when people lashed out at any reminders of the kings.
People rebelled and damaged as many tombs as possible,
coffins were removed and remains exposed, sometimes respectfully.
Henry IV, who'd been embalmed, remained intact.
A certain number of soldiers wanted to take hairs from his beard
to recover the essence of his military qualities.
By order, everyone was put into the mass grave.
During restoration, the remaining bones had to be recovered
and they were buried here again.
On September 21st, 1841, here at the Basilica of Saint-Denis,
the first ever Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ was unveiled.
He would later go on to become the greatest organ maker ever.
The first one was here. Let's talk about it right now.
I have at my disposition this great historic Aristide Cavaillé-Coll organ.
It was built and completed in 1840 and has no less than 70 stops.
and over 4,200 pipes.
ORGAN PLAYER
This noise that sounds like a 800cc motorbike is an organ pipe.
It's 10 meters high and can handle all the bass
and basic polyphonic sound.
When I use all these reed pipes, this is the level of sound I get.
Extremely powerful pipes.
The biggest pipe of the Saint-Denis organ is 10 meters high
and the smallest is no bigger than my little finger.
The bigger and higher the pipe, the lower the sound.
The smaller the pipe, the higher the sound.
This pipe is always used to play the same, single note.
That explains why we're surrounded by 4,200 pipes.
The organ takes up so much space because each pipe plays one single note.
In the 19th century, all this was a little dilapidated
and they decided to demolish this cathedral.
Fortunately, Victor Hugo, thanks to his novels,
brought the Middles Ages back in fashion and so they restored it.
Not very well, though, because the north spire eventually collapsed.
No matter, because this place is still a focus of extraordinary history,
a magnetic place where all these kings, princes and queens,
who made France what it is for 1,500 years,
will rest forever and ever. See you next week.
Subtitles Babel Subtitling - babelSUB.be