{"id":6623,"date":"2006-08-02T23:29:51","date_gmt":"2006-08-02T23:29:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html"},"modified":"2006-08-02T23:29:51","modified_gmt":"2006-08-02T23:29:51","slug":"if-you-go-to-paris","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html","title":{"rendered":"If you go to Paris…"},"content":{"rendered":"

…visit Louis Pasteur’s crypt. Fascinating post from Matthew at Holy Whapping:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

The scientist’s burial site<\/span><\/a> is of great interest to both to those seeking a place of pilgrimage and a forgotten gem of Catholic architecture. I have never been there myself but was greatly struck by a number of photographs I recently came across. The French state had almost immediately set out to take the old man’s body to Paris’s sterile, secularized Valhalla at the Panth\u00e9on, to lie alongside such unlikely bedfellows as Voltaire and the original of all yuppie self-actualization gurus, Jean-Jacques Rousseau. <\/p>\n

Mrs. Pasteur thought otherwise, and had a marvelous Byzantine crypt build in the basement of the Pasteur Institute, a stunning, darkly glowing jewel-box of black-veined marble and low, looming mosaic’d vaults filled with allegorical angels holding placards for SCIENCE and CHARITE amid a profusion of neo-paleo-Christian vine leaves and odder touches such as bunny rabits and pack of slavering, chained-up dogs representing respectively the first test audience for his vaccine, and the diseases Pasteur sought to vanquish. (Incidentally, The Catholic Encyclopedia<\/em> makes the odd and rather unfortunate comparison of the shape of a streptoccocus with that of a rosary.) Under the main vault is a mirror-polished black sarcophagus, quite simple, and in the apse, under the Alpha and the Omega, is an umistakably Catholic altar with tabernacle, crucifix and six candlesticks. It took only a year to build.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…visit Louis Pasteur’s crypt. Fascinating post from Matthew at Holy Whapping: The scientist’s burial site is of great interest to both to those seeking a place of pilgrimage and a forgotten gem of Catholic architecture. I have never been there myself but was greatly struck by a number of photographs I recently came across. The…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nIf you go to Paris... - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"If you go to Paris... - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"…visit Louis Pasteur’s crypt. Fascinating post from Matthew at Holy Whapping: The scientist’s burial site is of great interest to both to those seeking a place of pilgrimage and a forgotten gem of Catholic architecture. I have never been there myself but was greatly struck by a number of photographs I recently came across. The…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2006-08-02T23:29:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"If you go to Paris... - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"If you go to Paris... - Via Media","og_description":"…visit Louis Pasteur’s crypt. Fascinating post from Matthew at Holy Whapping: The scientist’s burial site is of great interest to both to those seeking a place of pilgrimage and a forgotten gem of Catholic architecture. I have never been there myself but was greatly struck by a number of photographs I recently came across. The…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2006-08-02T23:29:51+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html","name":"If you go to Paris... - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2006-08-02T23:29:51+00:00","dateModified":"2006-08-02T23:29:51+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2006\/08\/if-you-go-to-paris.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"If you go to Paris…"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6623\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}