La Chapelle () is a former commune of the Seine department, which existed from 1790 to 1860 before being incorporated into Paris, France. It was called "La Chapelle-Franciade" during the French Revolution. It is sometimes called "La Chapelle-Saint-Denis" or "La Chapelle-Sainte-Geneviève".
The village of La Chapelle lies on a natural pass between the hills of Montmartre and Belleville, on the ancient road linking Lutetia to the north, where Saint Geneviève decided to build an oratory in honor of Saint-Denis. For centuries, it was the scene of the processions of the kings of France who left to wage war in the northern lands or, later, to be buried in the abbey of Saint-Denis, as well as those of the monarchs of the north who entered Paris in peace or war. As a result, the town's commercial and craft activities turned to trades linked to this busy thoroughfare: innkeepers, wheelwrights, and blacksmiths. Beyond the road, however, the fields and plains supplied the capital with fruit and vegetables, wheat and oats, and, thanks to the few vines on the Goutte d'Or or other suitable land. This wine gave its name to this hamlet located to the southwest, outside the parish of La Chapelle. Several markets and fairs followed one another, giving the village its reputation, including the famous Lendit fair and cattle market.
The bailliage of La Chapelle, dependent on Saint-Denis, administered the seigneury from the Middle Ages until the Revolution, with rights of justice, police, and tithe collection. Often devastated by frequent assaults on Paris, both during the Wars of Religion and the Fronde, in 1429 the village was the starting point for Joan of Arc's unsuccessful attempt to liberate Paris. From the 17th century onwards, its "guinguettes" (dance halls) gave it a new appeal.
In 1790, the Convention annexed the Goutte d'Or and the faubourg de Gloire to the parish to form the commune of La Chapelle. In January 1791, the so-called Massacre de La Chapelle took place there, causing quite a stir in Paris.
In the first half of the 19th century, urban transformation began, with the massive arrival of people who had come to work in Paris but were too poor to afford housing. The new Northern and Eastern railroads built between 1843 and 1846, and their associated workshops and depots rapidly replaced the fields.
As the government could not control the spontaneous growth of the Paris conurbation, Baron Haussmann proposed the absorption of the capital's outlying communes. La Chapelle was largely integrated into the new 18th arrondissement of Paris, created in 1860, with the north divided between Saint-Denis, Saint-Ouen, and Aubervilliers, marking the end of any autonomous municipal life and the disappearance of the village as such.
Geographical location
Parish
From the beginning of the 14th century, the village of La Chapelle-Saint-Denis was concentrated around and to the south of the church of Saint-Denys. Its approximate boundaries are;:
to the north, chaussée de Montmartre (now rue Marcadet), Chemin de la Tournelle (now rue Riquet) and the neighborhood around the church; to the east, chemin des Vertus (today rue d'Aubervilliers); to the south, a line joining Chemin du Bailly (today Boulevard Barbès), leaving the Goutte-d'Or district; to the west, Chemin de la Marée (today rue des Poissonniers).
Commune The commune of La Chapelle borders Montmartre, Saint-Ouen, Saint-Denis, Aubervilliers, La Villette and two of the twelve urban arrondissements of Paris:
the former 3rd arrondissement of Paris (Faubourg-Poissonnière district); the former 5th arrondissement of Paris (Faubourg-Saint-Denis district).
It is bounded:
to the west by rue des Poissonniers, which separates it from the commune of Montmartre; to the east by rue d'Aubervilliers, which separates it from the commune of La Villette; to the north, by Chemin de la Procession and the former boundaries with the communes of Saint-Denis and Aubervilliers, which are difficult to identify today due to the development of rail and industrial infrastructures in the Plaine Saint-Denis area; to the south, the Boulevard de la Chapelle, then the Fermiers Généraux wall, connected to Paris via the Poissonnière, Saint-DenisAlso known as barrière de La Chapelle. and Vertus barriers. At the time of its construction, Thiers' enceinte divided the commune of La Chapelle from bastion no. 32 to bastion no. 34.
Toponymy What was probably originally a simple oratory dedicated to Saint Denis since the 5th century was transformed into a chapela 1 and the village took the name of Chapelle Sainte-Geneviève (Capella S Genovesae according to the Pouillé de Paris of the 13th century). As the village was at the center of a seigneury belonging to the Abbey of Saint-Denis, it was also known as Chapelle Saint-Denis, and the two names were used interchangeably until the seventeenth century.The form "La Chapelle-les-Paris" appeared in an address to the Convention by the commune's inhabitants on November 19, 1793. A document from 1351 reads Chapelle-Saint-Denis-en-Eudon, and in the 15th century, Chapelle Ostran.
After the municipality asked to be called La Réunion, or even La Réunion-Franciade, the village was finally renamed Chapelle-Franciade in 1794.Franciade was the revolutionary name given to the town of Saint-Denis at the time. The commune soon reverted to the name of La Chapelle.
History
Antiquity and the early Middle Ages This small town grew up on a pass between the hills of Montmartre and Belleville called Pasellus Sancti Martini, then Pas-de-la-Chapelle.
500 meters wide at an altitude of around 53 meters, the Col de La Chapelle was the easiest route between the Beauceron and Picardy plains. It has been an important crossing point since ancient times. The route, later known as the Estrée, is mentioned in the Peutinger Table and Antonin's Itinerary. This road followed the axis of today's Rue Marx-Dormoy and Rue de la Chapelle. The village was at the junction of this road with the old tin route linking the English Channel and the North Sea to the Rhone valley (now rue Philippe-de-Girard), without passing through Lutèce. To the north, the plain between Pas-de-la-Chapelle and Saint-Denis (today's Plaine Saint-Denis) was an important Gallic cultic center and the Druids held their summer solstice gatherings around a tumulus considered to be the tomb of the ancestor of the Gauls. It took the name of Endit, then, by agglutination of the article, Lendit. The Gallic assemblies mentioned by Julius Caesar continued to meet under Roman rule. After Caesar, who chose this sacred site to assert his domination over the Gallic tribes, several emperors understood the symbolic significance of this sanctuary: Constantine went there, convinced that he had been invested with a divine mission by Apollo, and Julian had himself proclaimed Auguste. These cult gatherings were also a commercial event, and later became the internationally renowned Lendit fair, held along the Estrée.
As far back as Roman times, there was probably a small village on the Col de La Chapelle, between the wooded hills of Montmartre and Belleville, close to a temple dedicated to Bacchus. Although no archaeological remains have been found, 9th-century documents mention the ruins of a Roman tower known as "Glaucin's prison ".Jacques-Antoine Dulaure considers the prison mentioned by Grégoire de Tours, the Carcer glaucini also mentioned by the anonymous author of Gesta Dagoberti, to be located on the Île de la Cité, on the site of the Quai des Fleurs, while Jaillot (Jean-Baptiste-Michel Renou de Chevigné dit Jaillot) places it near the Saint-Merri arch, versus sanctus Medericum. According to Hilduin, abbot of Saint-Denis, the saint was imprisoned here before his martyrdom.
The chapel of Saint Geneviève
Around 475, Saint Geneviève is said to have had the coffin of Saint-Denis transferred to build a burial site for him. Despite the reluctance of the Parisian clergy to build a church outside the city walls, she succeeded in convincing several priests, in particular a certain Genesius, who undertook the construction of the basilica on the model of a sand-and-lime, basilical-plan church, with nave and aisles separated by a double row of columns, with a structure probably of wood on masonry foundations. The tombs of the three martyrs, Denis, Rusticus and Eleuthera, were located behind the altar, which was richly decorated in the 16th century with silk, gold and jewels. The first basilica built by Geneviève over the tomb of Saint-Denis, near the site of his martyrdom, was also intended to exorcise the local paganism through Christian worship.
The village grew up around the church as early as the 6th century. Parisians organized large processions to La Chapelle, particularly during Rogations. The tomb had a great reputation: miracles were performed there, and people came to purge themselves of accusations. In 583, Dagobert, son of Chilperic I and Frédégonde, was buried here, having died in infancy - the only known princely burial at this site.
Cultural and commercial development
As in pre-Christian times, the place of worship polarized a commercial space. A market was held at Marcadus, which gave its name to rue Marcadet. The village activity around the church was linked to pilgrimages: roses were grown to make rosaries, but also vigne. Clotaire II and his son Dagobert had a particular devotion to the saint, which a ninth-century legend explains by the miracle of the stag who, during a hunt, protected the animal that had taken refuge in the church of La Chapelle, and Dagobert's dream, which prevented the young prince from being reprimanded while asleep in the chapel. Around 620-630, the relics were transferred to the royal abbey of Saint-Denis. Depending on the source, they are attributed to King Clothaire on April 22, 627, or to Dagobert I on April 22, 636. From the ninth century onwards, the abbots, by building up the legend of Saint Denis, according to which he carried his head to the town of Saint-Denis, sought to make people forget the location of the martyr's original tomb and the small church of Saint Geneviève. The precious objects that richly decorated the chapel, donated by kings and private individuals, were even moved to Saint-Denis. It was also argued, to perfect this new legend, that the building, now a "miserable little house", painstakingly erected by Saint Geneviève, had in fact been no more than a stopover on her way to pray at Saint-Denis.
But the village's prosperity was ensured by the Lendit fair, which endured, with the church remaining a rallying point for merchants, despite the absence of devotion to the relics. Another fair, known as "de Saint-Denis", was held near the Pas-de-La-ChapelleFrom the 11th to the 11th century, this church was known as Saint-Denis-de-l'Estrée before this name was applied to the church that succeeded the monastery of Saint-Denis, and then to the church built by Viollet-le-Duc in 1867. church in October, on the anniversary of the saint's death. However, the abbots of Saint-Denis succeeded in obtaining a ruling from Pepin le Bref in 759 in favor of transferring the fair to a purpose-built stone hall within the city walls of Saint-Denis, thanks to a forged document allegedly issued by Dagobert. La Chapelle was plundered, ravaged and burned several times by the Normans in the ninth century, then, in the following century, according to Flodoard's chronicle, devastated by the Hellequin mesnie, a terrible army of demons and ghosts, who threw blocks of stone at the church of La Chapelle.This troupe of fantastic spirits led by a certain Hellequin was more likely a band of looters, or even the hurricane that devastated the vineyards of Montmartre and La Chapelle in 944.