In three months, the Notre-Dame Cathedral in Paris will reopen its doors. Since its fire five years ago, reconstruction work has been progressing well. In keeping with tradition regarding historic buildings, excavations have also been carried out. The National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap) presented an initial assessment of this research on Tuesday, September 17, including a burial that could be that of the French poet Joachim Du Bellay.
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Around fifty archaeologists were mobilized with the obligation to finish in record time to return the building on time in December. It was an extraordinary project, which allows us to have a new look at the reconstructions of Notre Dame of Paris. ” The scale, variety, quality of the discoveries. [Ce sont] 2 000 years of chronology that we will revisit on Notre-Dame, on the Ile de la Cité “, says Christophe Besnier, head of excavations at the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap).
While digging the trenches to lay water and electricity at Notre-Dame, a great many graves were unearthed. Those of men of the Church, for the most part. In 2022, Inrap archaeologists notably found two anthropomorphic lead sarcophagi at the crossing of the transept.
One of the two sarcophagi, which bore an epitaph, was quickly identified as that of Canon Antoine de La Porte (1627-1710). But the identity of the second individual, a man in his thirties, was mysterious. Who was the man buried in a lead-lined coffin under the crossing of the transept? A young man, whose bones say that he was a horseman, that he suffered from tuberculosis and meningitis.
Eric Crubézy is a doctor and professor of anthropology. He is the one who identified Joachim Du Bellay. The robot portrait was created at the Toulouse University Hospital, where Joachim’s skeleton has been studied so far. [Du Bellay]which until now was called “The Rider of Notre Dame” and on which the pathology of the skeleton was studied ” he explains.
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Joachim Du Bellay, a man of importance beyond the poet
The doctor continues: “ What allowed us to identify him was a whole historical investigation. We have documents on Joachim Du Bellay, we know little about his life, but we have documents concerning his burial. So, what was done was that we completely reviewed the biography of Joachim Du Bellay to find out what he had suffered from, what he had died from, what his political support was. “, relates Éric Crubézy.
“ What emerged was that Joachim Du Bellay was very well known at the end of the 19th century because he was the poet who sang of France, who sang of Anjou and who spoke French, whereas before poets spoke Latin. “, describes Eric Crubézy. “ And besides this legend, we saw that he was a great poet, but apart from being a great poet, he was above all an important man of his time and who lived within a family which was part of the first royal entourage and the first entourage of the Pope in Rome. »
Joachim Du Bellay was therefore identified by his bones and a historical investigation concerning his burial. Co-founder of the Pléiade – a group of poets, but also a French literary movement –, he died in Paris on the night of January 1 to 2, 1560 at the age of 37 in the cloister of Notre-Dame.
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