Saint-Étienne-des-Grès, Paris

Saint-Étienne-des-Grès was a church and parish in Paris, France, formerly located in the Latin Quarter on the Rue Saint-Jacques.

[3] The Virgin wears a white veil and dark blue mantle ornamented with fleur-de-lis over a red robe.

[4] In 1703, a young seminarian named Claude Poullart des Places gathered a dozen of his companions at Saint-Étienne-des-Grès and consecrated the group to the Virgin; that act was the beginning of the Congregation of the Holy Ghost.

[5] Other notable pilgrims to the statue—some before the Revolution, some after—have included Claude Bernard, Jean-Jacques Olier, John Bosco, Prosper Guéranger, and Madeleine Sophie Barat.

[6] When the church was destroyed during the Revolution, all its contents were sold; the statue was saved by a pious rich woman named Madame de Carignan.

An exterior view of Saint-Étienne-des-Grès as it appeared before the French Revolution, taken from Book Three of Tableau historique et pittoresque de Paris by Jacques Bins, comte de Saint-Victor .