The Paris Pages

Celtic and Roman Paris

18th Century conception of Lutetia

Located in what is called the Ile de France (Island of France), an area of land which is delimited by five rivers, Paris and its environs was and has always been a good location for trade and communication.  This is most likely the reason that a Celtic tribe known as the Parisii established a fishing village on an island in the Seine River around 250 B.C.  The settlement was named Loukteih, meaning ‘marsh’, and its inhabitants subsisted primarily from fishing the beneficent river.  The quiet existence of the Parisii continued until the Romans under Julius Caesar defeated a collective army of Celts under the leader Vercingetorix at the battle of Alesia in 52 B.C.  Thereafter the Romans occupied the settlement and fortified the main river island (Ile de la Cite) with a defensive wall.  They also gave the settlement a Latin appellation, Lutetia Parisiorum, which many years later gave rise to the dubious legend that the Paris of Homerian fame had founded the city.  However, relations between the Romans and the native dwellers of the small settlement were generally harmonious.  Expanding the original settlement to the left bank of the Seine, henceforth known as the Latin Quarter, the Romans adorned the growing town with temples, fountains, baths, an amphitheater, a prefect’s palace, and an aqueduct.  Lutetia sat upon an important road artery running between Avignon and the English Channel.  So, naturally with time the town grew in prosperity and became an important hub of the northern part of the Roman province Gaul, which covered roughly the same area as modern day France.

Christianity and the Barbarian Invasions

St. Genevieve

In the third century the Pope sent a man named Denis to Lutetia to convert its people to Christianity.  His life-long proselytizing established firm roots for the developing religion, but his work eventually earned him martydom at the hands of Roman officials in 261 A.D.  Lutetia gained a boost in Imperial importance when Julian the Apostate, so styled because of his rejection of Christianity, was named as governor of Gaul in 357.  He established his capital there, which had been renamed Paris, and successfully spurned barbarian encroachments into Gaul.  However, it wasn’t long before the barbarians began making further incursions and within a century the Roman Empire was in general decline amidst massive invasions.  It is during these invasions that Paris was, according to legend, saved by a girl named Genevieve – the patron saint of Paris. Around 450 a large force of Huns, led by Attila, was nearing Paris and the popluace was fleeing the city in a general panic.  Genevieve is purported to have stayed the crowds from abandoning the city and exhorted them to pray instead.  She promised, according to her vision, that the Huns would not sack the city.  They followed her advice and when Attila indeed bypassed Paris without attacking Genevieve was regarded as the city’s savior.  Attila was compelled by motives that drew him to other locations within Gaul, but he was eventually defeated by a combined Roman and Germanic force.  Even so, the Roman presence and protection in Paris slowly faded away.  By 464 the Germanic king of the Franks, Childeric I, beseiged the city and in 508 his son, Clovis I, had made Paris his capital.  However, Genevieve’s pious nature garnered respect among the new Frankish overlords and she played a vital role in their conversion to the faith.

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• A History of Paris – Part 1
• A History of Paris – Part 2