Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes (Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes) is a Catholic chapel located at 70 rue de Vaugirard in the 6th arrondissement of Paris. It was originally built as the chapel of a convent of the mendicant order of Discalced Carmelites. It is now the church of the Catholic Institute of Paris, a university-level seminary for training priests, and is also a parish church for the neighbourhood. It is dedicated to Saint Joseph, husband of the Virgin Mary. Built between 1613 and 1620, it combines elements of Classical architecture on the exterior with a remarkable display of Baroque architecture and art in the interior. The chapel is open to the public at limited hours.
The site was a prison of the French Revolution, formed of a vast enclosure bounded by rue du Regard, rue du Cherche-Midi and rue Cassette – it was also bordered to the south by rue de Vaugirard. It was the site of one of the September Massacres in 1792 and features in the 1927 film Napoléon. It was also the home of the famed Carmelite mystic Brother Lawrence.
History In 1610, two sisters of the Discalced Carmelites (so-called because they wore sandals as a symbol of their vow of poverty) traveled from Rome to Paris to found a convent. It was a period of great religious fervour in France; seventy-seven new churches and other religious establishments were created between 1600 and 1670 in Paris alone. In 1613, the first stone of the new church was laid by the Queen-Regent Marie de Médicis, whose residence in the Luxembourg Palace was not far away. The exterior of the church was largely completed by 1620, so decoration of the interior could begin. The first mass was celebrated in that year on 19 March, the Day of Saint Joseph. The church was consecrated on 21 December 1625 by Leonor d'Étampes de Valencay, Bishop of Chartres and close collaborator with Cardinal Richelieu. it was the first church in Paris dedicated to that saint, to whom the Carmelites, led by Teresa of Ávila, expressed a particular devotion.
At the same time that the church was constructed, the adjoining convent of the Discalced Carmelites was built. It was composed of two cloisters, a smaller cloister for those coming from outside the convent and a larger one for those resident. It contained a refractory, cells for the sisters, a capitulary hall and a hall for novices. It could house between forty and sixty novices. This structure is almost entirely intact today, and was used by the seminary.
A men's community of Carmelites was also located on the property. One famous resident was Brother Lawrence of the Resurrection, whose writings later became part of the classic Christian text, The Practice of the Presence of God. St. Jean-Baptiste de La Salle famously made a retreat at the monastery as well, having had a particular devotion to St. Teresa.
French Revolution – the September Massacres In 1789, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, the new revolutionary National Assembly voted to nationalise the property of the church and clergy. The Civil Constitution of the Clergy was adopted on 12 July 1790, setting up a system for electing priests and bishops and imposing punishments, including a possible a death sentence, on priests who refused to swear allegiance to it. Some 126 of 130 bishops and 100,000 out of 130,000 priests refused to swear to it, and on 27 May 1792 a decree of the Legislative Assembly ordered them deported. Those who refused, called refractaires, became a target of the new government. About one thousand of them were arrested and imprisoned in several sites, including Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes.
On 2 September 1792, rumours reached Paris that a Prussian Army was approaching the city to rescue the king. The Revolutionary leader Georges Danton called on the sans culottes to put to death anyone who did not take up arms against the Prussians. The event known as the September Massacres ensued, taking the lives of some 1400 victims, including 223 priests, between 2 and 4 September. The largest number of priests, 115, were killed at Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes. Among the dead where Solomon Leclercq and Jacques Jules Bonnaud. They were given a last chance to take the oath to the government, then taken down the stairs to the garden before the crowd of Sans-Culottes, who were armed with axes, pikes and swords. Over the course of two hours, one hundred fifteen priests, a layman, and a religious were killed by the mob.Commemorative plaque on the stairway.
Jean Marie du Lau d'Allemans (Archbishop of Arles), his vicar general Armand de Foucauld de Pontbriand, (bishop of Beauvais) and his brother (bishop of Saintes) were shut up in the monastery church and between 2 and 5 September all three of them were killed in the monastery garden along with the priests André Grasset, Ambroise Chevreux, and Joseph-Marie Gros. The stairway is now called the Stairway of Martyrs. Those killed included the Bishops of Arles, Beauvais and Saintes, Charente-Maritime.
The monastery's household silver and library were seized and the community was forced to leave the monastery building, which was turned into a prison. 188 priests and three bishops were massacred in particularly violent conditions under commissioner Stanislas-Marie Maillard, who executed orders from the surveillance committee.Église St Joseph des Carmes At the Abbaye Prison the violence lasted until the end of the morning of 4 September, with 21 priests and 151 others killed out of a total of 29 priests and 209 other prisoners – at Carmes it only ended at 6pm, with 116 killed out of between 162 and 172 prisoners. All the monks who refused to take the oath before the tribunal at the prison were bayoneted or impaled on pikes on the threshold.Bienheureux Martyrs des Carmes The massacre at Carmes lasted all night.
The church continued to serve as a prison (Carmes Prison; French - prison des Carmes) until the end of the Revolution, and was the scene of a second massacre. On July 23, 1794, a group of forty-nine aristocrats, accused of conspiracy, were executed. They included the Count of Soyecourt, and Alexandre de Beauharnais, the first husband of Empress Joséphine, Josephine herself was also held prisoner there, but survived to become the wife of Napoleon Bonaparte,
In 1797 a Carmelite supporter, Madamoiselle de Soyecourt, bought the abandoned church and cloister and made it the home of a community of Carmelite sisters. One of the cells from this period has been preserved and can be visited.
Later years In 1841 the buildings were purchased by the Archbishop of Paris for use as a higher school of ecclesiastical studies. In 1845 the Carmelite sisters departed, In 1851 the church took on the function of a parish church. In 1867 the Dominican monks also departed. In 1875 it became the home of the Catholic University of Paris, which was in 1880 was renamed formally the Catholic Institute of Paris. The church is now used by the Seminary, but is also a parish church for the neighbourhood.
In 1867, during the construction of Rue de Rennes, the graves of the priests massacred at the church in 1792 were discovered. The remains were transferred to the church and placed in Crypt of Martyrs, which was dedicated in 1868.
The land occupied by the church and Institute today is less than half of the original land of convent and church. It was reduced by the construction of a new street, rue d'Assas, in 1798, and by a new boulevard built by Napoleon III, the Rue de Rennes, in 1866. In the 18th century, the Carmelites found a new source of income in building private houses for rental along Rue du Regard. Some of these houses, at 1,5 and 13 rue du Regard, still exist.
Exterior Facade The exterior of the church was influenced by classical architecture and particularly the Italian Baroque style, as first seen at Santa Maria Novella church in Florence in 1470, then widely copied in Rome in other cities in the late 16th century. It uses the elements of ancient Roman architecture; with three levels diminishing in size going upwards, and is and crowned by a classical triangular fronton, with a statue of the Virgin Mary, the patron saint of the Carmelites. The facade is decorated with pilasters, or simulated columns with Doric capitals appearing to be part of the structure.
The facade was considerably reworked in the 1870s by architects Louis and Lucienne Dovillard. The surviving elements of the 17th century facade are the Doric pilasters and an entablement with triglyphs and metopes.
Dome The dome was a great novelty in Paris at the time it was built; it was only the second to be built in Paris, after the dome of the convent of the Petits-Augustins; (that dome is now found at the Ecole des Beaux Arts nearby). It was designed by Louis et Lucien Dovillard. It was soon imitated by other Paris domes; at the Sorbonne (1634), Saint-Paul-Saint-Louis (1630), Val-de-Grâce (church) (1660), and the Invalides (1694).
Interior While the exterior of the church is rather formal and austere, the interior is very Baroque, full of color, illusionist effects and a sense of movement given by the architecture and the art. The nave is covered with rounded vaults, and is lined with Doric columns and pilasters, painted to resemble marble. Rounded arches, ghly decorated, separate the nave from the chapels oon either side, and from the apse. The apse, formerly the choir where the sisters of the order took their place, is now largely hidden by the altar.
The interior shows the influence of the Council of Trent, a Papal doctrine which called for churches to be more decorated and more designed to appeal to lay churchgoers. The stalls of the choir where the clergy was seated, were moved behind the altar, almost out of sight, so that the ordinary parishioners would be closer to the altar, and would have a greater sense of participation.
The Cupola interior The cupola or dome ia one of the distinctly Italian features featured in the church. It is 9.4 meters in diameter, and is placed over the crossing of the transept. It was the first dome in Paris to rest upon a drum, a cylinder of stone with a circle of windows that light the church below. It is built of wood covered with a plaster, with a framework of wood above which supports the tiles of the roof and a lantern like a crown on the top.
The interior of the cupola feature a painting of Elijah riding a chariot of fire to heaven, surrounded by angels. It painted in 1644 by Walter Damery, a painter of Liège, assisted by Bertholet Flémal. The two painters had studied together in the atelier of Peter Paul Rubens in Antwerp, and in Italy. This was the first painted cupola in Paris.
Elijah was chosen as the main figure because he was highly admired by the Carmelites. In the painting, he is wearing a costume of the Carmelites (a white cape and brown hood.
The paintings in the upper part of the dome present scenes of Elijah in the heavenly world, while those of the lower portions depict scenes in his terrestrial life.
Retable and Altar The high altar was ordered by Chancellor Pierre Séguier in 1633. The carvings were the work of Simon Guillain and François Anguier. The altarpiece was given to the convent of the Discalced Carmelites by Queen Anne of Austria in 1624; it was painted by Quentin Varin and depicts the Presentation of Christ in the Temple.
The altar It is directly below the dome, and had the function of separating the choir behind the altar, where the clergy are seated, from the nave, where the parishioners worship. It features four columns of black marble, with a statue of the Prophet Elijah by Simon Guilan on the left. The original statue to the right was of Saint Therese of Avila, but it was replaced by a statue of an unnamed saint in the 19th century.