History

The Catholic History of Paris

Paris began with the martyrdom of Saint Denis about the year 250 and the prayers of Saint Geneviève in 451. Under the Capetians it became the theological capital of Latin Christendom, Notre-Dame was begun in 1163, and Saint Louis brought the Crown of Thorns in 1239. The 17th century gave the city Saint Vincent de Paul and the saints of charity, and the 19th the Miraculous Medal and the Sacré-Cœur. The Revolution killed priests and burned Geneviève's relics, and the law of 1905 gave most churches to the State or the city. Notre-Dame burned in 2019 and reopened in December 2024.

Before 300

Saint Denis and the First Christians

Christianity reached Lutetia, as Paris was then called, in the third century. Gregory of Tours, writing in the 500s, names Saint Denis as one of seven missionary bishops sent to Gaul about the year 250. Denis was beheaded with the priest Rusticus and the deacon Eleutherius on the hill the Parisians called the Mount of Martyrs, Montmartre. Tradition holds that he picked up his head and walked north to the place where he was buried, where the Basilica of Saint-Denis now stands.

The traditional place of the martyrdom is the small crypt of the Martyrium on Montmartre, rebuilt in 1887. The church of Saint-Denys de la Chapelle stands on the old road to his tomb. In 2023 his feast of 9 October was raised to a solemnity in Paris, and he remains patron of the archdiocese.

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