'Ora pro nobis, beata virgo Genovefa': The public cult of Sainte Genevieve in late medieval and Early Modern Paris

The dissertation examines the cult of Sainte Genevieve, patron saint of Paris, from the twelfth to the 18th-century. Originally a monastic cult, it gradually evolved into a major religious and civic cult. Neighborhood-oriented veneration became a means of urban pride and royal propaganda.;The first part presents the process of the 'making of the saint'--the various associations and images which identified the saint as patron saint. Originally associated with water-related miracles, Parisians later addressed her as a military protectress, and when grain supply became a public concern, she was invoked whenever famine threatened the city. These transformations involved changing readings of the vita.;The second part examines the processional activity in Paris. It presents the incorporation of the cult into the sacralization of space and time in Paris, and then examines the public processions of the saint's reliquary, which transformed from monastic and supplicatory events into manifestations of urban self-identity, combining religious and civic elements, and unifying the city under the leadership of its elite. As the cult became a means in the elites' and the king's service, it gradually lost the strictly urban character it had previously acquired. The analysis, however, cautions against a one-dimensional understanding of the cult as a means of manipulation. Four processions (during the Reformation, the League, and the Fronde) show that the ritual activity permitted different appropriations of the cult by rival groups.;The last part discusses the Confraternity of the Bearers of the Reliquary, whose members enjoyed the privilege of carrying the reliquary during processions. The chapter presents the confraternity's rituals and traditions, and examines its role as a form of sociability and of net-working. A prosopographical study reveals the radical changes in the social composition of the group from a neighborhood-based confraternity of artisans, into a closely-knit group of mercantile elites. This process coincided, and was related to the saint's popularity and to her deployment by urban notables.