Abbey of Saint Genevieve
Reportedly built by Clovis, King of the Franks in 502, it became a centre of religious scholarship in the Middle Ages.
The Abbey was said to have been founded in 502 by King Clovis I and his queen, Clotilde, in the name of the Holy Apostles, jointly dedicated to Peter and Paul.
It was built on Mount Lucotitius, a height on the Left Bank where the forum of the Roman town of Lutetia had been located.
Saint Geneviève was in the habit of coming to pray there, taking a route commemorated by the name rue de la Montagne-Sainte-Geneviève.
[1] By the 9th century, the basilica had been transformed into an Abbey church, and a large monastery had grown up around it, including a scriptorium for the creation and copying of texts.
The texts created or copied included works of history and literature, as well as theology, However, in the course of the 9th century, the Vikings raided Paris three times.
King Louis VII of France and Pope Eugene III, having witnessed some disorders, determined to restore discipline.
At the request of Absalon, Bishop of Roskilde in Denmark, who when a student at Ste-Geneviève's had known him, William was sent to that country to reform the monastery of St. Thomas on the Isle of Eskilsø.
In the early seventeenth century Cardinal de La Rochefoucauld undertook the reforms required by the Council of Trent.
Once more the Rule of St. Augustine was faithfully observed at Ste-Geneviève's which became the mother-house of the Gallican Congrégation de France, an association of the Augustinian abbeys called the Génovéfains or "Canons Regular of Ste.
Men like Fronteau, chancellor of the university and author of many works, Laleman, Chapponel, Reginier, Chengot, Beurier, du Moulinet, founder of the national library, and Augustine Hay, a Scotsman who wrote the Scotia sacra and officiated at Holyrood, Scotland, in 1687, were sons of the French congregation.
An immense abbey church over the old crypt was built, to designs by Jacques-Germain Soufflot; in part rebuilt, it serves today as the Panthéon.
Geneviève", was founded by Francesca de Blosset, with the object of nursing the sick and teaching young girls.
When in 1790 the revolutionary assembly declared all religious vows void, and evicted all of the residents of the monasteries, there were thirty-nine canons at Ste-Geneviève's.
