La Madeleine

La Madeleine is a Neo-classic Roman Catholic church built by Napoleon after a few failed attempts to build a church on the site. He intended it for this victorious army, just like the Arc de Triomph, but it wasn't consecrated until 1842, quite a bit after the fall of Napoleon. It's dedicated to Mary Magdalene and has an awesome organ. Also, Chopin's funeral service was held there. Mmmm Chopin.





The interior is your basic basilica, not even any side chapels other than the apses scattered along the walls. I quite like the statue of Mary Magdalene,

who I honestly wouldn't have known from Mary mother of Jesus except she's not holding a baby or a dead Jesus. She's surrounded by angels though. That's something.

Oh hey Napoleon chilling in the middle. How you doing?

I rather preferred walking outside of La Madeleine, though, past the saints in the walls, so I figured I'd give you a little history of the saints, a little hagiograpy, if you will, or at least the interesting ones, or, really, the ones I liked, that adorn the outside of the church. So, without further ado...

1) Saint Michael

 St. Michael is the archangel Michael. Notice the wings? Michael is the guy... angel... who does most of the fighting in Christian stories, I feel like. He's a warrior angel, mentioned in Daniel and in Revelation. His name means Who is like God. He's also a patron saint of chivalry, along with St. George, dragon-killer. His feast day is September 29th. Now you know when Michaelmas is.

2) Saint Denis

Saint Denis is the patron saint of Paris as he was the bishop of the Parisii, the peeps who founded Paris. He's said to have had his head chopped off and then he proceeded to walk about ten miles to the hill of Mars, present-day Montmartre, which probably gets its name from being previously called the hill of Mars. He lived in the 3rd  century. His feast day is October 9th. So close, St. Denis. So close.

3) St. Jerome

 This is the kid that translated the Bible into Latin, giving us the Vulgate. But before he did that, he was a student in Rome and he did all the crazy things students did, you know, frat parties and the like. Actually, I think that our current day frat boys really keep up with traditions of students quite well. Anyway, Jerome would feel bad about this and go visit the catacombs and think on the tombs of the apostles and martyrs. He wandered around a lot, but he's known mostly as the scholar that gave us a version of the Bible that would be used for centuries.

4) St. Genevieve

 Saint Genevieve lived in 5th century France. She was born near Paris and met St. Germain (we'll get to him eventually, if not here) as a child. Later, she prayed and Attila the Hun decided that Paris wasn't the place he wanted to attack after all. See, she's even praying now. Sometimes you can identify her because she'll have a loaf of bread near her, a symbol of her charity to the needy.

5) Saint Luke

 This is Saint Luke, the gospel writer. All of the gospel writers have symbols associated with them, since they're so often depicted but no one knows what they looked like. Matthew has a human or an angel, Mark has a lion, John has an eagle and Luke has an ox or a bull. It's a symbol of sacrifice. Did you know Luke was supposedly tight with Paul? Make sense, since he wrote his gospel and the book of Acts. They go together. Also, this statue was beheaded by a German shell. That's what you were waiting for, wasn't it?

6) St. Cecilia

See the harp there? That means she's musical! St. Cecilia's pretty interesting- they tried to kill her by steam (suffocation, you know) and then they tried to behead her, but she refused to die until she had communion. She sang only to God and she's often depicted with an organ (not seen here, but the organ in La Madeleine is one of the best in Paris, if not the best).

There were a few more around there, but these are the ones I took pictures of. And really, I only took a picture of St. Cecilia because she got the song stuck in my head and it was quite pleasant at the time. So I strolled down by the flowers and out to the rest of Bastille Day. The end.