Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes

Église Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes (Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes) is a Roman Catholic church 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 Shoeless 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.

History
In 1610, Two sisters of the Order of Shoeless Carmelites (so -called because they wore sandals as a symbol of their vow of poverty) traveled from Rome to Paris to found  a convent in Paris. 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 Shoeless 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 is used by the seminary.

French Revolution - the September Massacres
In 1789, after the outbreak of the French Revolution, the new revolutionary National Assembly voted to nationalise all the property of the church and clergy. In 1790 the Assembly required that all the clergy take an oath to the new government. A portion of the priests refused to sign the oath, particularly after it was denounced the Pope. These so-called "refractaires" became a target of the new government. On 10 August 1792, a mob captured the Tuileries Palace and the King and his family were imprisoned, the "Refractaires" were considered suspects. Following August 10, about one thousand "refractaires" were arrested and imprisoned in several sites, including Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes.

On September 2, 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 took place between 2–4 September, taking the lives of some 1400 victims, including 223 priests. The largest number of priests, one-hundred fifteen, were killed at Saint-Joseph-des-Carmes. 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. The stairway is now called the Stairway of Martyrs. Those killed included the Bishops of Arles, Beauvais and Saintes, Charente-Maritime.

The church continued to serve as a prison 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 ve 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.

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.

The retable of the main altar displays one of the major works of art in the church, "The Presentation of Jesus in the Temple", painted by Quentin Varin (1570-1634). It is in the school of Mannerism, and is dated 1624. It was given to the church b Above the retable and painting are group of sculpted angels. The altar displays a very ornate Neo-Baroque tabernacle, made in the 19th century, which replaced the original 17th century work created by Pierre Mignard.

On the front of the main altar is a remarkable bas-relief of the Last Supper from the 14th century, vividly depicting the faces of Christ and the Apostles. It is attributed to Evrard d'Orleans (1292-1357).It originally belonged to the Abbey of Maubuisson,but was moved to Paris after the French Revolution.

In front of the main altar is a smaller modern altar of marble and gilding, made in 1991 by sculptor Philippe Kaeppelin. It illustrates his vision of a modern Apocalypse, "The Martyrs of the Grand Test", a reference to the priests killed at the church for their beliefs during the French Revolution.

The Chapels
The Chapel of Saint Anne, begun in 1620, was the first of the chapels to be completed, and has a dense and colorful arrangement of interlocking Baroque paintings, gilding, and sculpture. It was built under the patronage of Pierre Brûlard de Sillery, a wealthy nobleman who was Minister of War and Foreign Affairs of King Louis XIII. The art recounts events in the life of the Virgin Mary, and her connection with her mother, Saint Anne. The central painting over the altar, attributed to Michel Corneille, depicts "The Education of the Virgin surrounded by her parents, Anne and Joachim." The paintings are good examples of the style called Mannerism popular in the period.

The walls of the chapel are covered with a cycle of paintings in very elaborate settings illustrating scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, surrounded by painted angels, grotesques and flowers, in the French style of the early 17th century. Over the entry is a painting of the Annunciation, while the ceiling is occupied by paintings of the Four Evangelists, surrounding a painting of the Virgin, who in turn is surrounded by angels. The chapel was entirely restored in 2012 by the City of Paris, funded by private donations.

The Crypt of the Martyrs
The Crypt of the Martyrs contains a memorial to the clerics  who were killed at the church during the September Massacres (2-4 September 1792) of the French Revolution. In the 1860s, during the construction of a new street as part of Napoleon III's reconstruction of Paris, several mass graves were found in trenches close to the church; the bones showed injuries from the massacre. In 1867 the remains were transferred to the new chapel. In 1926, one hundred ninety-one were recognized as martyrs by Pope Pius IX, and were beatified. These included Jean Marie du Lau-d'Allemans, the Archbishop of Arles, two bishops, 127 priests, and fifty-six other religious and laical figures. .

The Crypt also contains several additional chambers, including the tomb of Frederic Ozanam, the founder of the Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul, who was beatified in 1997. It also holds a number of tombs of sisters of the earlier convent of the Carmelites.

The Organ
The organ was constructed by the Lorraine organ builder Henri Didier in. 1902. It was restored in 1971 and again in 1992. Ih has twenty-five stops on two keyboards and a set of pedals. The transmission from the keyboard to the pipes is mechanical rather than electronic.