Description of the attraction
The Church of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Prothe is located in the Marais quarter near the City Hall of Paris. Translated into Russian, its name sounds completely in Slavic: the Church of Saints Gervasius and Protasius. The martyrs, whose names the temple is named after, are equally venerated in Catholicism and Orthodoxy.
Little is known about the life of the twins Gervasius and Protasius. The sons of the Christian Romans who died for their faith, they were thrown into prison, tortured and beheaded. It happened during the reign of either Nero or Marcus Aurelius. The relics of the saints are in the crypt of the Basilica of Sant'Ambrogio (Milan, Italy).
Saint-Gervais-Saint-Prothe was built on the foundations of an ancient Christian church that existed here since the 4th century. Construction began in 1494 and lasted a century and a half. The architecture of the church is late Gothic with layers of mannerism (the author of the facade is the architect Salomon de Bross). One of the oldest and most famous Parisian organs is installed in the temple. For a long time, organists here were representatives of the great French musical family Couperin, in whose honor one of the craters of Mercury was named. Musicians in this dynasty began to appear from the end of the 16th century. The most famous Couperins, Louis and François the Great, worked in Saint-Gervais-Saint-Prot - their harpsichord and organ works had a huge influence on French composers.
There is an unusually tragic page in the history of the church. In 1918, during the First World War, German troops were stationed near Paris. The German command used a new weapon to shell the city: the ultra-long-range "Paris Cannon", which existed in a single copy. Its 120-kilogram shells, after firing, took off to a height of 40 kilometers, into the stratosphere, and hit the target from a distance of 130 kilometers. On March 29, 1918, one of these shells hit the church of Saint-Gervais-Saint-Prothe, where the Holy Mass of Good Friday was being held at that time. The temple was full. The explosion killed, according to various sources, from 60 to 90 parishioners.
Elm grows in a granite frame right in front of the church. On this very spot, elms have been growing since about the 10th century - they are regularly renewed. Residents of the quarter at one time gave away the borrowed money under it. The Parisian saying “Wait for me under the elm tree” generally corresponds to the Russian “After a rain on Thursday”.
