Saint-Sulpice, Paris


The Church of Saint-Sulpice is a Roman Catholic church in Paris, France, on the east side of Place Saint-Sulpice, in the Latin Quarter of the 6th arrondissement. It is only slightly smaller than Notre-Dame and thus the second largest church in the city. It is dedicated to Sulpitius the Pious. Construction of the present building, the second church on the site, began in 1646. During the 18th century, an elaborate gnomon, the Gnomon of Saint-Sulpice, was constructed in the church.

History

The present church is the second building on the site, erected over a Romanesque church originally constructed during the 13th century. Additions were made over the centuries, up to 1631. The new building was founded in 1646 by parish priest Jean-Jacques Olier who had established the Society of Saint-Sulpice, a clerical congregation, and a seminary attached to the church. Anne of Austria laid the first stone.
Construction began in 1646 to designs which had been created in 1636 by Christophe Gamard, but the Fronde interfered, and only the Lady Chapel had been built by 1660, when Daniel Gittard provided a new general design for most of the church. Gittard completed the sanctuary, ambulatory, apsidal chapels, transept, and north portal, after which construction was halted for lack of funds.
Gilles-Marie Oppenord and Giovanni Servandoni, adhering closely to Gittard's designs, supervised further construction. The decoration was executed by the brothers Sébastien-Antoine Slodtz and Paul-Ambroise Slodtz.
In 1723–1724 Oppenord created the north and south portals of the transept with an unusual interior design for the ends: concave walls with nearly engaged Corinthian columns instead of the pilasters found in other parts of the church.
He also built a bell-tower on top of the transept crossing, which threatened to collapse the structure because of its weight and had to be removed. This miscalculation may account for the fact that Oppenord was then relieved of his duties as an architect and restricted to designing decoration.

West facade

In 1732 a competition was held for the design of the west facade, won by Servandoni, who was inspired by the entrance elevation of Christopher Wren's Saint Paul's Cathedral in London. The 1739 Turgot map of Paris shows the church without Oppenord's crossing bell-tower, but with Servandoni's pedimented facade mostly complete, still lacking however its two towers.
Unfinished at the time of his death in 1766, the work was continued by others, primarily the obscure Oudot de Maclaurin, who erected twin towers to Servandoni's design. Servandoni's pupil Jean Chalgrin rebuilt the north tower, making it taller and modifying Servandoni's baroque design to one that was more neoclassical, but the French Revolution intervened, and the south tower was never replaced. Chalgrin also designed the decoration of the chapels under the towers.
The principal facade now exists in somewhat altered form. Servandoni's pediment, criticized as classically incorrect because its width was based on the entire front rather than the size of the order on which it rested, was removed after it was struck by lightning in 1770 and replaced with a balustrade. This change and the absence of the belvederes on the towers bring the design closer in spirit to that of the severely classical east front of the Louvre.
The facade is an unorthodox essay in which a double colonnade, Ionic order over Roman Doric with loggias behind them, unifies the bases of the corner towers with the façade; this fully classicising statement was made at the height of the rococo.
Its revolutionary character was recognised by the architect and teacher Jacques-François Blondel, who illustrated the elevation of the façade in his Architecture françoise of 1752, remarking: "The entire merit of this building lies in the architecture itself... and its greatness of scale, which opens a practically new road for our French architects." Large arched windows fill the vast interior with natural light. The result is a simple two-storey west front with three tiers of elegant columns. The overall harmony of the building is, some say, only marred by the two mismatched towers.
Another point of interest dating from the time of the Revolution, when Christianity was suppressed and Saint-Sulpice became a place for worship of the "Supreme Being", is a printed sign over the center door of the main entrance. One can still barely make out the printed words ‘’Le Peuple Français Reconnoit L’Etre Suprême Et L’Immortalité de L’Âme’’.

Interior

Inside the church to either side of the entrance are the two halves of an enormous shell given to King Francis I by the Venetian Republic. They function as holy water fonts and rest on rock-like bases sculpted by Jean-Baptiste Pigalle.
Pigalle also designed the large white marble statue of Mary in the Lady Chapel at the far end of the church. The stucco decoration surrounding it is by Louis-Philippe Mouchy. Pigalle's work replaced a solid-silver statue by Edmé Bouchardon, which vanished at the time of the Revolution. It was cast from silverware donated by parishioners and was known as "Our Lady of the Old Tableware".
The baroque interior of the Lady Chapel was designed by Charles de Wailly in 1774, after the chapel was badly damaged by a fire which destroyed the nearby Foire Saint-Germain in 1762. The dome, lit by natural light from hidden windows devised by de Wailly, contains a fresco by François Lemoyne depicting the Assumption of Mary, which dates from 1734, although it has been restored several times since then. De Wailly also designed the pulpit, completed in 1788. The oak canopy broadcasts sound very well and it was from here that the parish priest of Saint-Sulpice declared his refusal to accept the Civil Constitution of the Clergy. Revolutionary orators used it later also.
During the Directory, Saint-Sulpice was used as a Temple of Victory. Redecorations to the interior, to repair extensive damage still remaining from the Revolution, were begun after the Concordat of 1801. Eugène Delacroix added murals that adorn the walls of the Chapel of the Holy Angels. The most famous of these are Jacob Wrestling with the Angel and Heliodorus Driven from the Temple. A third, on the ceiling, is Saint Michael Vanquishing the Demon.

Notable events

The Marquis de Sade and Charles Baudelaire were baptized in Saint-Sulpice, and the church also saw the marriage of Victor Hugo to Adèle Foucher.
During the Paris Commune one faction, called the Club de la Victoire, chose Saint-Sulpice as its headquarters and Louise Michel spoke from the pulpit.
Louise Élisabeth de Bourbon and Louise Élisabeth d'Orléans, grand daughters of Louis XIV and Madame de Montespan are buried in the church. Louise de Lorraine, duchesse de Bouillon and wife of Charles Godefroy de La Tour d'Auvergne, was buried here in 1788.
On Sunday 17 March 2019, the church caught on fire. Spectators at an organ concert alerted firefighters. The fire badly damaged the doors, a stained-glass window, and a bas-relief; and a staircase near the doorway went up in flames. Police later confirmed the fire was an arson attack. The City of Paris is required to pay for the building's repair and restoration.
A funeral mass was held in the church for Jacques Chirac, former President of France, on 30 September 2019.

The Great Organ

The church has a long-standing tradition of talented organists that dates back to the eighteenth century. In 1862, Aristide Cavaillé-Coll rebuilt the existing organ built by François-Henri Clicquot. The case was designed by Jean-François-Thérèse Chalgrin and built by Monsieur Joudot.
Though using many materials from Clicquot's French Classical organ, it is considered to be Cavaillé-Coll's magnum opus, featuring 102 speaking stops on five manuals and pedal, and is perhaps the most impressive instrument of the romantic French symphonic-organ era.
Its organists have been renowned, starting with Nicolas Séjan in the 18th century, and continuing with Charles-Marie Widor, Marcel Dupré, and Jean-Jacques Grunenwald, organists and composers of high international reputation. For over a century, Saint-Sulpice employed only two organists, and much credit is due to these musicians for preserving the instrument in its original state. The current organists are Daniel Roth and Sophie-Véronique Cauchefer-Choplin.
Aside from a re-arrangement of the manuals in 1903, the installation of an electric blower in the 1920s, and the addition of two Pedal stops upon Widor's retirement in 1933, the organ is maintained today almost exactly as Cavaillé-Coll originally completed it in 1862.
In Saint-Sulpice, Sunday organ concerts are held on a regular basis. The Sunday Mass is preceded by a 15-minute Prelude of the Great Organ, starting at 10:45 am. The specification of the Great Organ:

List of organists

The dates indicate when the organist was titulaire.
The church is also home to a choir organ by Aristide Cavaillé-Coll from 1858. The stoplist:

The gnomon

In 1727, Jean-Baptiste Languet de Gergy, then priest of Saint-Sulpice, requested the construction of a gnomon in the church as part of its new construction, to help him determine the time of the equinoxes and hence of Easter. A meridian line of brass was inlaid across the floor and ascending a white marble obelisk, nearly eleven metres high, at the top of which is a sphere surmounted by a cross. The obelisk is dated 1743.
In the south transept window a small opening with a lens was set up, so that a ray of sunlight shines onto the brass line. At noon on the winter solstice, the ray of light touches the brass line on the obelisk. At noon on the equinoxes, the ray touches an oval plate of copper in the floor near the altar.
Constructed by the English clock-maker and astronomer Henry Sully, the gnomon was also used for various scientific measurements. This rational use may have protected Saint-Sulpice from being destroyed during the French Revolution.

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