[Footnote: From "Paris."]



About six miles north of the original Paris stands the great Basilica of
St. Denis--the only church in Paris, and I think in France, called by that
ancient name, which carries us back at once to the days of the Roman
Empire, and in itself bears evidence to the antiquity of the spot as a
place of worship. Around it, a squalid modern industrial town has slowly
grown up; but the nucleus of the whole place, as the name itself shows, is
the body and shrine of the martyred bishop, St. Denis. Among the numerous
variants of his legend, the most accepted is that in which the apostle of
Paris carries his head to this spot from Montmartre. Others say he was
beheaded in Paris and walked to Montmartre, his body being afterward
translated to the Abbey; while there are some who see in this legend a
survival of the Dionysiac festival and sacrifice of the vine-growers round
Paris--Denis--Dionysius--Dionysus.

However that may be, a chapel was erected in 275 above the grave of St.
Denis, on the spot now occupied by the great Basilica; and later, Ste.
Genevieve was instrumental in restoring it. Dagobert I., one of the few
Frankish kings who lived much in Paris, built a "basilica" in place of the
chapel (630), and instituted by its side a Benedictine Abbey. The church
and monastery which possest the actual body of the first bishop and great
martyr of Paris formed naturally the holiest site in the neighborhood of
the city; and even before Paris became the capital of a kingdom, the
abbots were persons of great importance in the Frankish state.

The desire to repose close to the grave of a saint was habitual in early