464 
PARK AND CEMETERIT 
ANCIENT CEMETERl" DES INNOCENTS IN THE RUE AUX FERS, 1780. 
Showing the charniers full of skulls. After a design by Bernier. The accumulation of remains during 8 or 9 
centuries in this place had become so great an evil that in 1786 they were all transferred to the catacombs and a 
market was erected in this spot. From Paris Known and Unknown, George Barrie & Sons, Philadelphia. 
The Cemetery of the Innocents, Paris. 
The ancient church and cemetery of the Saints-In- 
nocents of Paris was one of the most celebrated monu- 
ments of the mediieval city, and in the details of its 
history may be found some of the most striking char- 
acteristics of the manners and customs of the so-called 
dark ages. The church was built by tbe king Philippe- 
Auguste, who came to the throne in ii8o, and the 
funds were supplied by tbe banishment of the Jews 
from the kingdom and the confiscation of their prop- 
erty. The site, at the corner of the Rue Saint-Denis 
and Rue Aux Fers, was said to have been selected in 
expiation of a crime there committed, the murder by 
a Jew of a young man named Richard. The church 
was probably at first only a chapel; as late as 1445, it 
was an unpretentious edifice with a gable roof and a 
small tower. Tbe cemetery, on which it faced, was, 
later, surrounded by a vaulted gallery, the famous 
Charnicr dcs Innocents. This was the earliest known 
in Paris ; the word seems to have been first used in 
the eleventh century, — an old historian, Raoul Glabier, 
tells us that, after a terrible famine, “as it was no lon- 
ger possible to inter each body separately, because of 
their great number, tbe pious people who feared God 
constructed in divers localities charniers in which 
were deposited more than five hundred corpses.” A 
dictionary of architecture, published in Paris in 1770, 
defines the word as meaning “a gallery or portico 
formerly constructed around the parish cemeteries, in 
which the catechism is taught, and in the lofts of which 
are stored the fleshless bones of the dead. They may 
be found in several parishes of Paris.” The ceme- 
teries of six important churches of the capital and at 
least eight of those of the minor parishes, were sur- 
rounded by galleries, tbe richer ones illuminated by 
windows and furnished with elaborate funerary monu- 
ments. The two most important were those of Saint 
Paul and of the Innocents, the former the aristocratic 
cemetery and the latter, the popular one. 
Even without the intervention of siege, famine or 
pestilence, the accumulation of corpses in the century- 
old cemeteries necessitated the constant removal of 
the bones to make room for new interments ; a pious 
regard for the relics of the departed led to their stor- 
ing in sheds and outhouses, chapels, the lofts of 
cloisters and churches, and the charniers. The use of 
the latter was not entirely discontinued until the end 
of the eighteenth century. Additions to them were 
constantly made, to accommodate the constantly in- 
creasing multitude of skeletons ; the funds for their 
erection were apparently provided by pious legacies 
and donations. These long galleries enclosed from 
twenty to twenty-five arcades each, the sides of which 
were open, and the imperfect, or absent, roofs left 
tbeir ghastly contents plainly visible. Fifteen of the 
arcades of the Charnier of the Innocents were decor- 
ated with paintings, a version of the Danse Macabre, 
or Dance of Death, earlier than the famous one at 
Bale, and the inscriptions of which were intended “to 
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