Saint Denis

Today is the feast of the glorious St. Denis, Patron of France! I have always loved having him as my own Patron saint. He was a strong preacher of penance and conversion.

Denis was sent from Italy to Gaul in the third century, by Pope Fabian. He and his six companions preached fearlessly to the pagans there. Denis became the first Bishop of Paris where the persecutions under the Roman Emperor Decius had nearly crushed the small Christian community out of existence. Denis, with his faithful companions Rusticus and Eleutherius, his fellow martyrs, settled on the Isle de la Cite in the middle of the river Seine. From there they would travel the city each day preaching and teaching.

Denis was so effective in converting the people that the pagan priests began to worry at their loss of followers. They approached the Roman Governor and convinced him to arrest the missionaries. After a long imprisonment, Denis and two of his clergy were beheaded on the highest hill in Paris, which is thought to have been a druidic holy place. This location in the city of Paris, to this day, is called Montmartre, or ‘Mons Martyrum’, the martyrs’ mountain. The Druid priests wanted to show the power of their gods by humiliating St. Denis on their own ground, but they underestimated this bishop and the true God he served! After his head was cut off, Denis is said to have calmly picked it up, walking several miles from the summit of the hill, all the while preaching repentance to his people lined up on either side of the road. It was said he did not want to die at the Druid site, but on holy ground to show his people the worthlessness of the Druid idols. Now there’s a bishop!!!! He carried his head all the way down the hill to a small shrine which later became the wondrous Basilica of Saint-Denis. There he chose to die. This holy site eventually became the burial place for the future Kings of France.

There is also some lesser known, em, authenticated ‘apocrypha’ concerning St. Denis in my own family history. It’s an odd phenomenon that makes me laugh every single year, only confirming my belief that you never know what is going on in the heads of children at any given moment. I am reminded of this fact every October when St. Denis’s feast rolls around.

I’ve had a copy of this painting of St. Denis in my various apartments and homes throughout the years. It was given to me by my college friend Mark and I dearly love it. It is part of a larger painting, which depicts Christ bringing Holy Communion to St. Denis in prison before he is to be beheaded.

(St. Denis Altarpiece, completed in 1416 for the Church of the Chartreuse of Champnol. Henri Bellechose)

As a young mom, I tried to (nonchalantly) put up all kinds of artwork in the house so my kids would be exposed to it in a natural way without overtly explaining that this was Ed-u-ca-tion-al. You learn as a mom that they won’t take the bait if it even remotely smells like ‘educational’. So, up it went without an explanation unless they expressly asked; and they never expressly did, but they WERE looking. I was to discover that what adults see in a painting and what little children see can be vastly different.

Years later, my son David told me, “Yeh, I never really “got” that painting as a little kid. I was always puzzled why St. Denis would be in a washing machine.” It still makes me laugh to this day. And I am sure St. Denis had a chuckle himself. But alas, once I looked at the painting in this way, I couldn’t “un-see it”. How endlessly entertaining it is to see how children interpret the world around them....even the greatest works of the masters.

Saint Denis still reigns on my wall - I pray to him for France, especially for Paris, for bishops and …. now….for washing machine repairmen around the world!

I do not feel inclined at this time to have a paid substack. But if we were together in a cafe discussing all these thoughts, I would not be opposed to you buying me a cup of coffee - with cream, of course. In that spirit, if any of my posts resonate with you and you feel so inclined, you can donate here: buymeacoffee.com/denise_trull