In the ninth arrondissement of Paris, between the Cadet and Poissonnière metro stations, there is a lovely green corner planted with lawns, flowers and trees – blue irises flying between their branches, overlooked by luxurious bourgeois, Haussmannian buildings on all sides. This is the Square Montholon. Two oriental plane trees, over a century old, rise to a height of 30 meters from the central lawn.
On fine days, shouts of joy and laughter rise from the children's playground and the table tennis court for adults. A Louis-Philippe-style lattice surrounds the complex, which is 4,571 square meters. An installation featuring a group of sculptures of five young women, rejoicing and embracing, in their best clothes, with decorated hairstyles and fancy hats, enriches the square. From the back, the installation is also a feast for the eyes: the curves of the young women, which seem to move gracefully, are carefully chiseled.
Square Montholon – the residence of the executioners of Paris
Construction of the square began in 1863, when the rue La Fayette, where the Galeries Lafayette, the famous and prestigious department store, is located, was paved. A year later, the square was completed by the engineer Jean-Charles Alphand, who was called to assist Baron Haussmann in creating the green areas of Paris (Alphand designed many of the city's parks such as the gardens of the Champs Elysees, Ranelagh Garden and the Bois de Boulogne), and opened to the public.
In 1981, extensive renovation work was carried out and since then it has been regularly maintained and cared for. The square is named after Nicolas de Montholon, 1736-1809, a statesman and judge, who lived in a municipal mansion next to it. The nearby rue de Montholon is also named after him.
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Square Montholon belonged to the garden of the municipal estate of The official executioner of ParisCharles Sanson, the second in line, at a time when this quarter of Paris, which was outside its gates, was still called La Nouvelle France, “New France.” Charles Sanson was a member of the famous family of executioners who operated in Paris from 1688 to 1847. He was the one who purchased the estate of which today’s Square Montholon was a part for himself and for his family who lived there for about seventy years.
The father of Charles Sanson, also called Charles Sanson, the first of the dynasty, was an officer from the city of Rouen, inNormandy, who married the daughter of the city hangman, Marguerite, and became his assistant. A few years after the birth of his son, with the death of his wife Marguerite, Charles Sanson moved to Paris where he continued his work as assistant to the chief hangman. After the latter was dismissed for pimping, a year later, Charles Sanson was appointed to the post of hangman in his place and thus became the first in the dynasty. Starting in 1688, when he was 15, Charles Sanson II assisted his father, Charles Sanson I, in the work of hangings.
In 1699, Charles I Sanson resigned from his post and married the elder sister of the hangman of the city of Melun. His son continued as an assistant hangman until he came of age, at the age of twenty, in 1701, when he was appointed hangman, but he did not receive the official letter of appointment until after his father's death, in 1707. In the same year, he married the sister of his stepmother, his father's second wife (the second sister of the hangman of the city of Melun).
After his death in 1726, and his burial with great pomp and ceremony in the Church of Saint-Laurent, his widow married his successor, the “Regent.” This continued until her seven-year-old son, Charles Jean-Baptiste Sanson, came of age, in which year his stepfather handed him the post of executioner. And so the family tradition continued until 1847, when the Minister of Justice dismissed the last and sixth in the line, Henri-Clément Sanson, who was listed as a homosexual at the police headquarters. Paris.
Henri-Calman Sanson was a gambler and a regular visitor to casinos. Unable to pay his many debts, he was imprisoned and pawned… his work tool, the guillotine. With the intervention of the then Minister of Justice, who showed kindness to Henri-Calman Sanson, he was released from prison and continued in his position. However, the Minister of Justice, who apparently shared Henri-Calman's sexual orientation, was forced to resign. The new Minister of Justice, who took his place, quickly dismissed Henri-Calman from his position and appointed a new executioner in his place, who was not a member of the famous family.
The memoirs of the last of the Sanson executioners, who was so different from the rest of his family, were written by two shadowy writers, including Honoré de Balzac, and included a moving speech against the death penalty. This is a photo of the cover of the book attributed to Henri-Clément Sanson.
Henri-Célman Sanson (1799-1889) is buried in Montmartre Cemetery, plot 20, along with his father, Henri Sanson (1767-1840), and his grandfather, Charles-Henri Sanson (1739-1806). The grandfather was the first to use the whip but also managed to participate in the official torture of criminals considered particularly great that had been customary before, in the Place de la Ville.
Charles-Henri Sanson was the one who executed Louis XVI and many others, including some of the best revolutionaries. As for Marie-Antoinette, opinions differ. According to the accepted version, Charles-Henri, the father, who led the unfortunate queen to her death, signaled to his son, Henri, to hurry up and carry out the task so as not to prolong the torment of the famous condemned woman (it is not for nothing that father and son are buried together).
The Sanson Dynasty, One Hundred and Fifty Years of Executions:
Charles Sanson 1635-1707
Charles Sanson II 1681-1726
Charles-Jean-Baptiste Sanson 1719-1778
Charles-Henri Sanson 1806-1739
Henri Sanson 1767-1840
Henri-Célène Sanson 1799-1889
Want to know more about the Sanson family and executions in Paris?
Zvi Hazanov has released a new lecture titled “Seeing Paris and Dying,” which deals with the Sanson family and the custom of executions in Paris. The lecture will present you with a completely different Paris than the one you know and tell you about the secret lives of the people who, for seven generations, touched history and beheaded it.
In the lecture you will receive details about the Sanson family, how Charles Sanson I came to be an executioner, what the rights of executioners were, how the Sansons ended their careers, and many more details, some of them very spicy, and necessarily macabre, about this special family. The lecture presents the story of the Sanson family in detail and thus complements this article, which only briefly touches on it.
Link to a lecture on the Sanson family
Saint Catherine or the medieval dating site
And more from the family history: Henri had a brother, Gabriel, a sworn pride, who, when he raised the head of one of the beheaded before the crowd of spectators, stumbled, fell, broke his wrist and died on the spot, with his hand still clutching the loot. The motif of the severed head connects like a hidden thread between the executioner family, the former owners of the square, and the figure of Saint Catherine, immortalized through the statues of the “little Catherines,” her protégés. In 1913, the city of Paris acquired the marble installation that adorns the Square of Montholon, Saint Catherine, sculpted in 1908 by the artist Julien Lorieux. At the base of the statue is written: Saint Catherine, homage to the Parisian worker (Sainte Catherine, hommage à l'ouvrière parisienne).
Five young, single Parisian workers are about to go to the Saint Catherine's Ball on November 25th, dressed in suits and hats. Many of the workers were still single at the age of 25, and so the custom became entrenched and strengthened among seamstresses and milliners - the modest strata of society who had not yet married - to leave the shops and workshops and go dancing on Saint Catherine's Day, an opportunity to finally meet a suitable husband.
The dances began in the workplace, continued in the street, and ended with a ball. The beginnings of the custom date back to the Middle Ages and are associated with the veneration of single women for Saint Catherine, the patron saint of unmarried women, whose role was to protect them from harm to their innocence (Catherine, from catharsis, meaning pure, in Greek, from which catharsis also means purification). Saint Catherine of Alexandria was executed, according to tradition, when she was 18, by Emperor Maxentius on November 25, 307, by beheading, because she refused his advances.
Legend has it that Catherine, the daughter of the governor of Alexandria, saw Jesus in a vision and he, impressed by her wisdom and innocence, married her in a mystical marriage (that is, a spiritual marriage - the bride shares in Jesus' suffering and dedicates her life and death to him).
The beautiful Princess Catherine was also wise and learned, and defeated the opponents of Christianity with her reasoning and arguments. Emperor Maxentius invited fifty philosophers and intellectuals from around the world to confront the wise girl, but they fell into the hands of the Hygdeans and the Hyksos and converted to Christianity. Maxentius brought them to the stake and offered Catherine the opportunity to move into his palace as his second wife. She refused, of course, and then the emperor beat her with an iron rod and threw her into a dark dungeon without food for twelve days.
The emperor's wife and the commander of the armies, Mehabara, visited the prisoner and saw how ministering angels dressed her wounds with a bright light. The queen, Mehabara and his soldiers converted to Christianity. A white dove fed Catherine with divine food throughout her days in the dungeon. When the emperor returned from his travels, he found Catherine blooming and flourishing and again offered her to be his second wife.
Catherine refused, of course, on the grounds that Jesus was her only beloved. Four jagged, spiked wheels were about to tear her flesh apart, but an angel from heaven broke them all with such force that four thousand pagans were killed in the storm. The queen, her lover, the general, and his soldiers, who all confessed to their conversion to Christianity, were executed. The widower Maxentius again offered Catherine marriage, and this time also the vacant imperial throne.
She refused again and was sentenced to be beheaded. To her prayer, a voice answered: Come, my beloved, my bride, my fair one, the gates of heaven are open before you! A jet of milk, instead of blood, flowed from her slain neck. Ministering angels descended from above, carried her body to Mount Sinai, a distance of more than twenty days' journey, and buried it with honor and splendor. And the legend continues, telling that from her bones a fresh and miraculous oil flows incessantly, bringing balm and healing to the bodies of all the sick.
The Monastery of Saint Catherine, founded in the 6th century, in the center of the Sinai Peninsula, her burial place, according to tradition, bears her name and exists to this day. Its monks are the faithful guardians of the tomb of the holy princess.
Every year, on the patron saint's feast day, starting in the 10th century, young single women would come in procession to her statues to decorate them with hats, ribbons, and flowers in a festive ceremony. Those who married would leave the association of single women, leaving their friends the right to wear hats on the statue of Saint Catherine and ask her for the right to love and marry.
Saint Catherine, we have seen, was married in a spiritual, that is, ideal, marriage to the suffering Jesus, and in this respect she serves as a role model for all married women. A model that cannot be reached, of course, but this unattainable purity must, in the Christian view, serve as a lamp to the feet of the spouses, an example and a model.
The young women would arrive at the ball wearing original hats decorated with green and yellow ribbons to attract the attention of the available young men. Starting in the 1920s, a festive ceremony was held every year on the feast of Saint Catherine at the Church of Notre Dame de Bonne Nouvelle in the second arrondissement of Paris, in the neighborhood of Le Sentier, where seamstresses and milliners worked at their craft. They would also decorate the statue of Saint Catherine in a niche on La rue Poissonnière with flowers and put a hat on it.
Parties and parades were also organized by fashion houses, which gave gifts, cakes, and drinks to their single employees. The young designers competed in their creativity by creating colorful and unusual outfits and hats, as their imaginations allowed, and a panel of judges awarded prizes and marks to the most outstanding ones.
The statues in the Square Montholon
The custom of formal ceremonies diminished over time, but the expression “to put on a Saint Catherine’s hat” (Coiffer Sainte Catherine), referring to a young woman aged 25 to 30 who was not yet married, remained in the French language. The statues of the five “Little Catherines,” an installation dedicated to Parisian women artists, were placed in the Place de Montholon in 1923.
Julien Laurier, the sculptor, who was born in 1876 in Paris and died in 1915 in Toul (Havel Alsace-Lauren) at only 38 years old, did not get to participate in the happy ceremony. The artist, who was also known for his engravings on medals and gemstones, participated in many exhibitions and won a host of awards, was destined for a bright future. But in 1914 he was drafted, and on April 20, 1915, he was hit in the head by a shell fragment. Ten days later he breathed his last in a hospital where the battle wounded were treated.
World War II and the Nazi occupation left an even more significant mark on the Place de Montgolfier. Two bronze statues placed there at the end of the 19th century were sent to be melted down in 1942: Eagle and Vultures Fighting over a Dead Bear (Aigle et vautours se disputant un ours mort) by Auguste Nicolas Cain, 1821-1894. This is a huge installation above a fountain (which no longer exists, like the statue itself) by the sculptor Cain, who specialized in monumental animal sculptures.
The second sculpture, which no longer exists, is called Monnaie de singe (Monkey Coin) by François-Laurent Rolard, 1842-1912. The sculpture depicts a street performer holding a hoop with a monkey hanging from its neck with a catharsis. In the juggler's left hand is a conch shell for collecting money.
In the 13th century, those crossing the Le Petit Pont bridge, called Le Petit Pont Cardinal Lustiger since 2013, were required to pay a tax. Only the monkeys who performed tricks were exempt from it. Hence the French expression “to pay in monkey money” (Payer en monnaie de singe), which originally meant to pay in favors but now means to cheat, to evade payment. Fortunately, there are many other versions of the same work on the art market, as well as other works by François-Laurent Roller.
The attentive visitor to the Square Montholon cannot help but come across a sign, caught in a lattice, from the City of Paris, commemorating other victims of human madness, the children of France The Jews who were murdered in the death camps. The sign addresses the local resident or passerby and reminds them that more than eleven thousand Jewish children who lived in France were arrested by the police of the Vichy government that collaborated with the Nazi occupier in 1942-1944, sent to the death camps and murdered. Thirty of the murdered children from the ninth arrondissement did not even reach school age.
The babies' names are engraved on the sign, which asks its reader to engrave them in his memory. They will have no other burial place.
In this link You can see the giant statue of Kaan, an eagle, and a Persian fighting over a dead bear, which, as mentioned, no longer exists.
Thank you very much for a wonderful article that sheds a lot of knowledge. I wish I could return with French-speaking tourists to the Church of St. Catherine of Alexandria, in Bethlehem. Note – Votour eagle in Hebrew. Aigle eagle in Hebrew. Apparently they don't indicate on the statue which species of eagle and which species of eagle. Is the tree Platane or Maronnier d'Inde?
The sculpture you asked about is called in French.
Aigle et vautours se disputant un ours mort
The trees are named in French.
Oriental plane trees
Another exciting addition regarding the August Nicolas Kahn statue that I found in the book
The Works and the Men
The works and the people, of
Jules BARBEY D’AUREVILLY.
The sculptor died at the age of 72 from a throat infection from which he had been suffering for some time, and before his death he asked his sons to bequeath his last work, an eagle and a falcon fighting over a dead bear, to the city of Paris to place it in the Place de la Montholon, where he used to play as a child. The sons complied with their father's wishes and the statue was indeed placed there.
Before that, the work had already been sent to the Salons of 1890 and 1891 and then to an exhibition in Chicago, where it was a great success.
Caen enjoyed increasing success over a forty-year career. Gardeners in the gardens and parks of Paris and the surrounding area know his huge and impressive animal sculptures in the Tuileries Garden, the Luxembourg Garden, the park of the Château de Chantilly and many more (also abroad, Philadelphia, Oren).
That's all I found, and I'd like to add that it's a shame that the work no longer exists. It's so moving to know that before his death, the sculptor thought about his childhood and his memories of Square Montholon and wanted to express his gratitude to the place.
And here is the link to the book
The Works and the Men
by Jules BARBEY D'AUREVILLY
Link to the book
Orna, an intriguing and fascinating article! I enjoyed every paragraph, whether it is legend and fiction or fact and fiction.
The comment above posted by Zvi Hazanov was written by photographer Drew Tal.
And now I would like to present the response of Amiram Tzabari, one of the three managers of the Athenaeum Group, a tourist guide:
I loved the story of the executioners! And the Catherines. If my memory serves me correctly, Catherine also had an influence on Joan of Arc. Thanks Orna, great article.
End of quote. I was amazed by Amiram's knowledge and checked. Joan of Arc did indeed hear the voices and see the apparitions of two virgins: Saint Catherine of Alexandria and Saint Margaret of Antioch. A book was published about the influence of the two saints on Joan of Arc's path.
What I didn't write in the article is that in the Square Montholon, which I happened to stumble upon while wandering through the 9th arrondissement, I had a mystical experience and perhaps heard voices and saw in my mind's eye sights in the footsteps of Joan of Arc...
Noga Menachem
Wow, Orna's article is fascinating!! I learned so many new things from her. For example, the story about Saint Catherine, who is buried according to tradition in Santa Caterina, the expressions she explained so clearly, the broad general knowledge she has and the knowledge of French history, culture and art…..a world in itself!!! And thank you, Zvi, for giving a platform to quality people who share their knowledge with us and make it accessible at such a level.
Suddenly, names of metro stations in Paris came to mind, like,
Bonnes nouvelles, poissonnière …..
Orna Lieberman
Thousands of thanks for the generous and rare support.
Noga Menachem
Congratulations, Orna. You deserve it so much!!! You are full of knowledge and a genuine desire to share from the bottom of your heart, and that in itself is a special thing that I greatly appreciate!!
Zvi Chazanov
Thank you very much for your support of Orna and I. We are happy to have readers like you!
Rony Mula
Interesting article. Thank you very much for sharing your extensive knowledge of French culture and history. Especially in a time like this, it gives some breathing space and a break from what is happening in Israel for a while. Thank you.
Thank you very much, Orna and Zvi. Your articles are simply fascinating and make me want to return to Paris again and again.
Thank you!