Martyrium of Saint Denis, Montmartre

[1] Construction work during the 16th century exposed a staircase leading down to a crypt with three graves marked with a cross and ancient inscriptions.

The abbesses of Montmartre Abbey erected the Sanctum Martyrium Chapel and new monastic buildings around the crypt.

On August 15, 1534, in the Martyrium, Ignatius of Loyola, Francis Xavier, Pierre Favre and four other companions pronounced their religious vows of poverty and chastity, and promised to make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.

It was built between 1884 and 1887 in the chapel of the Society of the Helpers of the Holy Souls (Sœurs Auxiliatrices du Purgatoire), a female religious congregation taking inspiration from Ignatius, founded in the nineteenth century by the Blessed Eugénie Smet (1825-1871).

This was on the site of the old buildings housing the Martyrium of the chapel in what was called, up to the French Revolution, "the Lower Abbey"; it was blessed on August 15, 1887, by the Archbishop of Paris and sustains the memory of these two events (the martyrdom of Denis and the Vow of Montmartre) which are of considerable significance for the Church.