“Menilmontant is a place where it’s so easy to find my soul, my passion, my happiness, my little church where happy weddings go,” as Charles Trenet sang about the church of Notre-Dame de la Croix (or Our Lady of the Cross), which is considered the “heart” of the Menilmontant hill in the Belleville district, 20th arrondissement of Paris.

"Little" church

The "little" church in the song is the third largest church in Paris. Its length is 97 meters, width – 38 m, height – 20 m. The bell tower of the temple rises 78 meters. There are 54 steps leading to the main entrance. The impressive building is an organic mixture of two architectural styles fashionable during the era of the Second Empire of Napoleon III - neo-Gothic and neo-Romanesque. Neo-Gothic elements were used for the vaults, but everything else was built in the neo-Romanesque style. In addition, the architect found an original technical solution - to support the roof, he used metal structures, which also became a decorative element.

History of the temple

The parish priest of the village of Belleville insisted on building a church in 1823 (some documents say 1833), explaining this need by the fact that his parish was growing, and the church of the neighboring parish of Saint-Jean-Baptiste no longer met the needs of the community. The new temple stood until 1858, when a decision was made to build a more spacious building.

The old church was destroyed and a new one was built in its place in 1863. The author of the project, architect Antoine Eret, supervised the construction. The still unfinished temple was consecrated in 1869, and work began. In 1870-1871, during the uprising of the Paris Commune, there was a club of revolutionary women here, then a food warehouse. And only by 1880 the construction was finally completed.

Church of Our Lady of the Cross

The Church of Our Lady of the Cross received its name from the statue of the Madonna belonging to the monastic order of the Brothers of the Holy Cross. Until 1789, it was located in the Church of the Holy Cross of Breton, which was destroyed during the Revolution. The statue itself was transferred to the Belleville parish. Therefore, the theme of the cross is the main one in the external and internal design of the temple. On the main and side facades there are bas-reliefs telling about the suffering of Jesus, and there are also crosses in the centers of the rosettes decorating the bell tower.

The bell tower is square in shape and topped with an octagonal roof. The belfry has 5 bells. Four of them: Henrietta Anna, Denise Maria, Louise Isabelle and C were cast in 1875 especially for this temple, and Hyacinth, the smallest and oldest (1835), still hung on the bell tower of the old, destroyed church.

Inside, the temple is decorated with real works of art, some of which were painted for Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris: “Jesus in Purgatory” by Pierre Delorme and “Jesus Healing the Sick” by Jean-Pierre Granger. The church organ is one of the most successful and is recognized as a historical monument.

Church of Notre-Dame de la Croix today

Today the Church of Notre-Dame de la Croix is ​​a pilgrimage site. The parish priest is actively working to attract believers to his church. Moreover, at the moment there are Arab neighborhoods around it. The church has its own website, and since 2004 there has been a permanent exhibition of wooden sculptures on religious themes by Joseph Pirc on its premises.


On Thursdays and Sundays, parishioners are invited to lunch after Mass, which is a place for people to socialize, find like-minded people, or simply have their say.

The church of the working-class outskirts of Notre-Dame-de-la-Croix is ​​an example of how, thanks to the work of a priest, an ordinary parish church was transformed into a place of pilgrimage.

How to get there

Address: 3 Place de Menilmontant, Paris 75020
Telephone: +33 1 58 70 07 10
Website: www.notredamedelacroix.com
Metro: Menilmontant
Bus: Julien Lacroix
Working hours: 7:00-19:00
Updated: November 25, 2016

La douleur passe, la beauté reste (c) Pierre-Auguste Renoir

Why are you, sea, so raging?
Like a coven of night witches!
Who are you talking about there?
At night, in a vat of gray waves?

Is it about Kashchei?
What, not accepted by the earth,
Waiting for the grave, orphan,
Not dead and not alive.

Contemporary of the days of Petrov,
His enemies took him prisoner,
And after death he is still a prisoner
For sins and for debts.

Tell me, will it drop soon?
He curls his wig
And wears out the earth's chain,
Calm old man?
"Night in Revel"(P. A. Vyazemsky)

Karl-Eugene de Croix(Cruy, Croy, Croy, Croy, French Charles Eugène de Croy/Croÿ, 1651-1702, Revel) - duke from the Dutch aristocratic house of Croy, served in the Danish, Austrian, Saxon and Russian armies, field marshal general.

© Yuri Nikiforov

About three hundred years ago, when the Northern War began, Duke Karl-Eugene de Croix, who had previously served in other armies, entered the Russian army. Peter I really liked him, and he, having promoted him to field marshal general, appointed him commander-in-chief of the Russian troops near Narva. The battle was lost. De Croix was captured by the Swedes. He was allowed to live in Tallinn.
De Croix's high rank, title and sociable character endeared him to people. Karl-Eugene made many wealthy and prosperous acquaintances who willingly lent him money. De Croix lived large. He gambled and loved to party. Time fled unnoticed. About two years passed like this. But one day a servant, entering de Croix’s bedroom in the morning, saw: his hand, extended to the bell, was lifeless - the owner had died.
The news of de Croix's unexpected death spread throughout the city with lightning speed. This was talked about in the markets and in the town hall, in shops and guilds, in residential buildings and baths, in churches and almshouses...
That same evening, excited lenders gathered in the Great Guild Hall. They discussed who would pay the Duke's debts... In the end they decided not to give de Croix's body to the city authorities for burial until they received all the money back in full. The Lübeck law of the Hanseatic city, which was in force in Tallinn, allowed such a resolution to be adopted.
The authorities, to everyone's surprise, took this decision calmly. Don't bury, don't bury... No hassle! They did not bury de Croix. They put the Duke in a simple spruce coffin and placed him near the Niguliste Church in von Rosen's tomb... Time passed. De Croix was remembered less and less and, finally, almost completely forgotten.
One hundred and twenty years have passed. One day a sailor arrived in Tallinn. He heard that de Croix was born in the Netherlands, that royal blood flowed in his veins. The naive sailor imagined that de Croix could be laid in a coffin with a golden crown on his head.
During the day, the sailor noticed that Rosen’s tomb, where de Croix’s coffin stood, was locked from the inside with a bolt. Late in the evening, the sailor pushed it aside with a knife and entered the tomb. The candle in the lantern illuminated the coffin on the pedestal. The sailor lifted the coffin lid, threw back the cover and saw the mustachioed face of de Croix with a frozen ironic smile.
Random passers-by, hearing a wild, heartbreaking scream in the tomb, rushed there and found a young man literally turning gray with fear.
The news that de Croix had not rotted spread first throughout Tallinn, and soon throughout Estonia. Everyone wanted to look at this miracle. The first to appear were the mayor of Tallinn and the alderman of the Great Merchant Guild. Then came a stream of curious people: merchants and clergy, artisans and sailors, monks and firefighters, soldiers and doctors... Peasants came. Felt hats were respectfully removed. Sometimes they even kissed the Duke's boot. Having overcome their fear, women and children entered the tomb... Evil tongues assured that de Croix was unharmed because he had died in alcohol during his lifetime.
An enterprising church watchman placed a piggy bank for donations near de Croix's mummy. Ancient wisdom says: “A living person knows how to do something and can earn money. A dead person cannot do anything, and therefore will never earn anything.” But it turned out that de Croix “earned” much more after his death than some living ones.
Sometimes the watchman took de Croix out of the coffin, put him against the wall and took off his wig to show that he was bald. He pulled his mustache so that everyone could see that it was real. It happened that the watchman pressed the toes of de Croix's boots, and he seemed to rise from the coffin. When the church mice began to gnaw the clothes of the deceased, a cat was brought into the church. Subsequently, when de Croix's uniform decayed, he had to sew a new one. A glass lid was made over the coffin. All those who came to Tallinn reported in their diaries, letters to relatives and friends that they had seen de Croix. Thus, the poet Vyazemsky wrote to St. Petersburg: “I saw de Croix. He looks like Uncle Pushkin, only more important...”
Tallinn residents have repeatedly appealed to both the Swedish and Russian governments with a request to bury de Croix. In vain...
But one day... In the Niguliste church, high on the balcony there was a beautiful organ, and the young organist loved to play music in the evenings, left alone. One day she heard a noise in the darkness of the church hall. The organist looked down from the balcony and was stunned. In the dim light of a lantern, lying down, de Croix “floated” through the church. The girl screamed in fear and lost consciousness. After some time, she came to her senses and found the watchman and his wife fussing around her.
From their story it became clear that the organist was afraid in vain. The roof of Rosen's tomb is leaking. During the rain, water dripped onto de Croix's mummy. The watchman and his wife decided to dry the Duke and carried him to the stove...
After this incident, it was decided to bury de Croix. Only a few people gathered for the funeral service. It seemed to them, of course, that they were the last to see de Croix’s mysterious smile before his final burial. But fate decreed otherwise. After the last war, when the destroyed Niguliste Church was being restored, de Croix's grave interfered with the reconstruction, and de Croix was reburied.
Now, when you enter the Niguliste Concert Hall-Museum, look carefully at the floor. There, near the entrance, you will see a large tombstone, under which Karl-Eugene de Croix found his next resting place. Is it forever?..

Anya de Croix

Acquaintance

Summary

Read a romantic story about Anya Pushkina, a future graduate of an ordinary Moscow school. On the eve of September 1st, the beginning of her final year, Anya encounters an unknown foreigner, whom she reminds of his deceased sister. The next day, her whole school is buzzing - the French billionaire, banker, owner of the largest modeling agency in Paris - Guy de Croix, who was nicknamed the Black Prince in his homeland because he destroyed the killers of his parents and younger sister, is supposed to arrive. Now the rich man has come to the school where his sister was killed many years ago to erect a monument to the teacher who died with her. Feelings flare up between the young people, but a chain of events prevents their happiness; in addition, the age difference interferes: De Croix is ​​17 years older than Anya.

The novel has not yet been published, so you have a unique opportunity to read it for free on the author’s page:

- Anka, as much as possible! I would have earned money for my mobile phone a long time ago! Go, Irka is calling you again!

I opened my eyes. Oh my God! It's morning already! And why can’t Ira sleep on Sunday? The last Sunday left of the summer holidays, tomorrow is already the first of September. Back to school! Why can't you just get some sleep?!

-Anka! Did you pick up the pipe? I won't answer the phone anymore! Figure it out yourself! And tell Irka not to call this early again!

I threw off the warm blanket. I tried to feel my old slippers under the bed with my foot. Horror! The floor is cold... Well, it’s still summer! Why am I cold all the time?

Having still not found the second slippers, I threw on an equally old robe, inherited from my older sister (which, by the way, hung worse on my skinny body than on a hanger; only my chest saved me, but here, on the contrary, it didn’t I wanted to button it all the way). Caramba!

After another moment, I finally reached the phone in the hallway.

“Hello...” I muttered, leaning against the wall and closing my eyes, hoping to get some more sleep.

– Are you still sleeping?! – my best, or rather only, friend Ira shouted into the phone in a shrill voice.

– In general, normal people sleep on Sunday mornings and only not very healthy girls call their friends and wake them up!

- Drop it! Tomorrow is the first day! Do you remember? We need to prepare! The class asked, have you memorized the verse? But I'm worried. You won’t believe it, for the first time I was puzzled about what dress to wear! I went through the whole closet! I have nothing to wear! Why am I such a nerd?! But tomorrow everyone will be looking at me!

“Ira, stop,” I muttered, “and that’s the only reason you got me out of bed?”

- Yes! I agreed to take money from my parents and I’ll come pick you up in fifteen minutes. Let's go to the store and you can help me choose a dress. Don't argue, I'm going.

The phone started ringing. Crazy Irka, as if I don’t know that she’s not interested in everyone, but exclusively in the handsome Roma - the star of our class, whom all the girls at school are obsessed with.

I hung up and went to the kitchen. I wanted to have something to eat until my stupefied friend pulled me out of the house. Having found yesterday’s sandwich in the refrigerator and brewed fresh coffee, I plopped down on a wobbly chair.

Well... But tomorrow the last academic year at this school begins. Graduation class. What then? Seventeen years already... It’s a nightmare, but I still feel like I’m thirty. I’m some kind of overgrown person who, even as an adult, still goes to classes at a regular school. I don’t want to... Again this hated class, this struggle for coolness. Why can't school be simple and calm?

I was also tormented by one problem. Summer is over, school is back, and I still... Yes... I still haven’t fulfilled the plan at least during the holidays. I sighed. I'm still a virgin! Maybe it's for the better? Maybe my prince will come again? Yes, and he’ll say that you’re an old lady, apparently so scary that no one wanted to go with you!

Although, here I am lying. Of course they wanted to. This summer I had, frankly speaking, an abundance of chances to lose my virginity. But somehow it didn’t work out. Well, I can’t be with just anyone! Well, there must be at least some sympathy. And when they got to the point, it made me laugh every time! Everything looked really funny. Maybe I'm frigid? Or even gay?

I thought about it. I imagined me with a girl. Brr... No, this fairy tale is not about me, that's for sure.

God, how tired of all this mess! Some constant problems. A family that doesn't need me. Mother and brother and sister, who dream that I would quickly get out of their apartment. And this apartment, where there has been no renovation for a hundred years, is my mother’s constant lovers, my brother, an eternal slacker, lying on the sofa day and night and urging me on at the first opportunity. Sister... And all because I’m younger and because my father is different, my mother’s last husband. And her first husband, the father of Ivan and Alena, left this apartment to them. And I'm redundant. God! I put the sandwich down and covered my face with my hands. If only a prince really appeared in my life who would save me from this whole oppressive nightmare. A? Please!

I looked out the window. The sun was shining, the day was just beginning. And again this horror is in school, where everyone brags about their money, their ideal family. Don't want!

I didn’t even notice how time passed. Having buried herself in one point, it was as if she had fallen into a trance. Pictures from life flashed before my eyes. A mother who yelled at me for nothing... A brother who called me names every chance he got. Ugly, fat, cow - this is the softest thing. The sister who looked at me like I was a fly and discussed with Ivan what they would do with my room when I finally left.

Something has been unlucky for me since childhood. That's why exactly their father ran away from our mother to America and left them this four-room apartment in Moscow? And what prompted her to get married again? After all, my father even broke the record - he ran away two months later. They never divorced. Although... I can understand him. My mother is a beautiful, although completely uneducated, woman. Twenty-eight years ago she came to Moscow from the outback and immediately got married. Over the years I never received an education. And now he works as an administrator in a solarium. She raised Alena, her older sister, she’s now... how old? Twenty seven. Single. She received her education and barely got a job as an accountant in a small office. She dreams of a prince or agent 007, but she doesn’t even take care of herself. Small, plump, with some kind of bird’s nest on her head... And my brother turned out the same, only he, unlike Alena, did not continue his studies, but lies on the sofa day after day in his dreams. Maybe I'm like that too? Is that why I can’t meet my love?

Karl Eugene de Croix became commander-in-chief of the Russian army under Peter I, was captured near Narva and then lived under arrest in Reval, played cards, drank and died in unpayable debts. Creditors forbade the burial of the body, the deceased was arrested until the debts were paid by relatives or friends, and for more than two hundred years the embalmed body of the field marshal was preserved in the Church of St. Nicholas, serving as a local landmark.

Delvig “wrote to Alexander Sergeevich that the late Duke de Croix’s face resembled Pushkin’s father, Sergei Lvovich, but “the appearance will only be more important.” The mummy was buried only in 1979, already under Soviet rule!

Field Marshal Croix in a glass coffin in the Church of St. Nicholas

“A subject of the French crown, Charles de Croix received his title from the French monarch Henry IV. He achieved the ranks of general while serving under the banners of the Danish king and the Holy Roman Emperor. Pyotr Alekseevich met him during his stay in Amsterdam and was fascinated by his military experience and At the same time, he invited de Croix to the Russian service, but the pragmatic duke preferred the Saxon contract, however, fate decreed that in August 1700 he ended up in the camp of the Russian army and quite unexpectedly received an offer to become commander-in-chief.

De Croix was an experienced and brave warrior, but he did not understand Russian at all and knew little about the army that he was entrusted with commanding. And that was not so bad! The main problem of Karl de Croix was chronic alcoholism - even by Russian standards, His Highness was too diligent in “putting it behind his collar.” All matters that required his orders had to be completed before lunch, because later he most often remained “incapable of doing anything.”

Before leaving for Novgorod, Tsar Peter signed a number of orders confirming the unity of command of de Croix and obliging Russian officers to obey him. The instructions left by the tsar read: “All generals, officers, even down to the soldier, have in the oblivion of his royal majesty to be under the Duke de Croix’s command in everything, like his royal majesty himself, under the same article.” However, even despite the tsar’s direct orders, this man who suddenly appeared in the camp did not have any authority among the officers subordinate to him, which resulted in open discord between them as soon as Peter left the siege camp. Busy with settling personal scores, the command staff of the siege army little by little lost control of what was happening.

A. E. Kotzebue, Battle of Narva

Meanwhile, Charles’s army was already on the way to Narva, but in the Russian camp they had no idea about this; Russian generals assumed that some troops were coming to help the besieged in order to prevent the preparation of a decisive assault. General Boris Petrovich Sheremetev, who spoke at the council, even proposed leaving the camp with the entire army to meet these detachments and eliminate the threat at once.

As surprising as it may seem, it was precisely this demarche - with complete ignorance of the real situation - that could have saved the campaign; The Swedes had fewer forces, had just completed a difficult march and, of course, were not ready for an oncoming battle with superior enemy forces. But no one wanted to take responsibility for such a decisive step - upon leaving, the tsar ordered to besiege the fortress, and there were no people willing to go out, that is, to show willfulness. Sheremetev's proposal was rejected, and the army remained in the camp, stretched out in a thin line, without a reserve and front depth.

By the evening of November 19, 1700, heavy snow fell, and with poor visibility, Russian patrols missed the approach of the Swedish army. Knowing the Russian disposition from his scouts and defectors, Karl decided to attack on the move, not at all embarrassed by the five-fold superiority of the enemy forces.

Like a ghost, the Swedish army emerged straight from the white wall of snow just twenty steps from the Russian camp; a novelty of the tactics of that time - a bayonet attack, familiar to Russian soldiers only from training - caused panic in their ranks. The officers' attempts to somehow organize the defense failed; then the foreign officers, led by the Duke de Croix, surrendered to the mercy of the king.

It was a complete victory for Swedish weapons. Peter's army was saved from absolute defeat only by the steadfastness of the Preobrazhensky, Semenovsky and Lefortovo regiments, which managed to hold their position until darkness fell, when the battle stopped for natural reasons. In memory of the heroism shown, the soldiers and officers of these regiments were henceforth ordered to wear red uniform stockings - as a sign that at Narva they fought, “standing knee-deep in blood.”

monument to fallen Russian soldiers - "Heroes-ancestors who fell in battle 19 N0 1700. Life Guards Preobrazhensky, Life Guards Semenovsky regiments, 1st battery Life Guards 1st Artillery Brigade. November 19, 1900 "

Life was very bad for the officers captured near Narva, and the saddest story happened to the Duke de Croix: he was taken to Revel and was not released anywhere; The Swedes did not accept him for boarding support, the Duke did not receive a salary and incurred debts. At the same time, His Excellency continued to drink heavily. While in captivity, he wrote to King Augustus and Tsar Peter, asking to support his existence, and they sent him some money, but all these funds, by order of the city court, were seized and used to satisfy the claims of creditors. The captured field marshal had to borrow money again, and he became so confused in his affairs that, when drunkenness finally finished him off on January 30, 1702, the lenders obtained a ban on burying the corpse until all debt obligations were satisfied. The deceased was naturally arrested, and for more than a hundred years the embalmed body of the field marshal was preserved in the basement of the Revel Church of St. Nicholas. The duke's heirs, if there were any, were in no hurry to buy his remains, and then they were conveniently forgotten.

Church of St. Nicholas or Church of Niguliste

The duke's mummified body was accidentally discovered in 1819 and, by order of the Baltic Governor General Marquis Paulucci, was placed under a glass cover in one of the chapels of the St. Nicholas Church. Visitors especially came to see this mummy and were shown local attractions. Among these tourists was Pushkin’s Lyceum friend Delvig, who, sharing his impressions of Revel, wrote to Alexander Sergeevich that the late Duke de Croix was similar in appearance to Pushkin’s father, Sergei Lvovich, but “the appearance will only be more important.”

Sergei Lvovich Pushkin, Unknown artist, 1810s

In 1870, the newly appointed Governor-General Prince Volkonsky decided to put an end to this amusing attraction, who ordered the body to be buried according to Christian rites. And then there was a fair bit of trouble! It turned out that in addition to the Saxon rank of field marshal, Tsar Peter, for the hardships that the Duke suffered in captivity, shortly before the death of de Croix, promoted him to field marshal general in the Russian service. According to the regulations, a military man of this rank was supposed to be buried with all the highest honors - in the presence of members of the imperial family, guard units and representatives of the diplomatic corps. Not knowing what to do, Mr. Governor-General submitted a report to the highest name and received a resolution from Emperor Alexander II, who wrote in his own hand: “Bury quietly.”

Field Marshal Croix in the Church of St. Nicholas

Fulfilling this command, the long-suffering remains of the Duke were placed without unnecessary pomp in the crypt of the Klodt Chapel, where they lay until the 70s of the twentieth century, when Soviet restorers who were repairing the temple stumbled upon them. And this time the discovery of de Croix’s body caused a lively discussion and correspondence, but ultimately the matter nevertheless came to its logical conclusion, and in 1979 the remains of the Duke were - finally! - consigned to the earth."

Valery Yarkho, "Foreigners in Russian service. Military men, diplomats, architects, doctors, actors, adventurers...", 2015

Why are you, sea, so raging?
Like a coven of night witches!
Who are you talking about there?
At night, in a vat of gray waves?

Is it about Kashchei?
What, not accepted by the earth,
Waiting for the grave, orphan,
Not dead and not alive.

Contemporary of the days of Petrov,
His enemies took him prisoner,
And after death he is still a prisoner
For sins and for debts.

Tell me, will it drop soon?
He curls his wig
And wears out the earth's chain,
Calm old man?

"Night in Revel" (P. A. Vyazemsky)

Francois Petit de La Croix

Thank you for downloading the book from the free electronic library http://filosoff.org/ Enjoy reading! Jean-Jacques Rousseau François Petit de La Croix French literary fairy tale of the 17th – 18th centuries. The collection, which represents an interesting and original genre of French literature, includes works by C. Perot, M. d'Aunois, A. Hamilton and other authors. The hundred-year history of the French literary fairy tale overturns the current ideas about classicism and the Enlightenment as purely rational eras, alien to fiction , a game of imagination. “Fantastic” and “plausible” works did not fight with each other, but interacted and mutually enriched. The fairy tale liberated culture, opened up new narrative possibilities for prose and poetry, and implicitly prepared the arrival of romanticism - OCR Busya French literary fairy tale XVII. –XVIII centuries The fate of the French fairy tale The time of the appearance of many literary genres can only be approximately named, but the date of birth of the French literary fairy tale is known absolutely precisely - 300 years ago, in 1690, “The History of Hypolite, Earl of Douglas”, written by Marie-Catherine Lejumel de Barneville, Countess d'Aunois. It was the most ordinary adventurous love story - dozens of them were then (and always) published - telling about two lovers struggling with the fate that always separates them. But instead of the usual insert stories, the hero decided to tell a fairy tale about the “Russian Prince Adolf”, who ended up with the fairy on the enchanted Island of Bliss, in the land of love and eternal youth. Of course, young Hipolit did not invent anything new: fairy tales were loved not only in the villages (back in 1548, Noël du Fail in “Rural Jocular Conversations” described how attentively peasants listened to magical stories), but also in the capital. They are mentioned in one of Corneille's comedies, in Boileau's satires (in his declining years he also paid tribute to the general hobby); in “The Power of Fables,” La Fontaine admitted that he would love to listen to “Donkey Skin.” Louis XIV and his entourage were fascinated by them; The Minister of Finance, the all-powerful Colbert, even wrote one fairy tale. She also had her own court storyteller, the wife of State Councilor Lecamus de Melson. At the festivities in Versailles, grandiose extravaganza performances were shown, and ballets on fairy-tale themes were performed. Opera performances - the fashion for them came from Italy in the middle of the 17th century - which used fantastic plots and amazed the audience with “magical” machinery, also offered the writers of fairy tales ready-made scenery and elements of action. And they willingly used them, describing wonderful castles and palaces, the life of fairies. The closeness of the fairy tale to the theater was well understood not only by the authors of literary fairy tales of the late 17th–18th centuries (for example, the heroes of the gallant fairy tale by the Chevalier de La Morliere “Angola”, 1746, are happy to watch in the theater a mirror reflection of their own history - a small play “in the taste of fairy tales about fairies”, telling about the awakening of love in young hearts), but also those who long before them listened and composed wonderful stories. Madame de Sevigne, in a letter to Mademoiselle de Montpensier dated October 30, 1656, entertains the princess of the blood with a story in verse and prose about a girl turned into a cane for godlessness - “not a Mother Goose fairy tale, but very similar to it.” And in a letter to her daughter dated August 6, 1677, she describes, not without irony, the newfangled court entertainments - society ladies tirelessly listen to fairy tales - and retells one of them: a beautiful princess lives on a glass island, surrounded by the constant cares of fairies, travels with her lover, Prince Pleasure, in a crystal ball, and at the sight of them, the Marquise jokingly remarks, all that remained was to sing an aria of praise from a popular opera. This interest of the nobility in the stories of the common people seems surprising and paradoxical. But the 17th century created a specific type of culture in France, which largely survived into subsequent centuries. Its focus was the salon, which gave rise to a special literary life, with its own language, elegant, gallant and ironic, with its own rules of behavior, literary masks and names. Women ran the salons; this was their social calling - to create an environment that subtly perceived and appreciated works of culture and generated new ones. Women turned their everyday life into a work of art, like Madame de Sévigné, who described it in hundreds, thousands of letters - just at the time when letters began to appear within large novels, and then turned into a separate genre - the epistolary novel (Portuguese Letters) Giyeraga, 1669, is one of its first and most striking examples). No less important than the conversation in letters was oral conversation - the quintessence of salon culture. The laws of this art: the selection of guests, numbering from six to eight, the rules of arguing, in which the main thing is not to get closer to the truth, but to show off a well-honed game of the mind, the hostess’s ability to conduct a conversation like an orchestra, changing the topics and sound of speeches - were also sacredly observed in our century. Its literary analogue was dialogue, philosophical and satirical. The tradition of dialogue, like many other genres, came from antiquity, but the 17th century actively revived them in order not only to follow the ancients, but also to enter into creative competition with them. Corneille and Racine created examples of French Tragedy, Moliere - comedy, La Fontaine revived the fable, La Rochefoucauld - aphorisms and maxims. La Bruyère, continuing Theophrastus’s “Characters,” translated into a moralistic plane the genre of literary portrait, which was actively developed in novels and memoirs of those years, in salon games, and which played a significant role in the formation of the principles of psychological analysis. Salons cultivated small, “frivolous” genres, those that could provide a pleasant time together for a select society - light poetry (epigram, madrigal, epistle, poetic short story, etc.), dramatic proverbs, fairy tales. The latter, by their nature, are oriented towards oral storytelling and improvisation; they provide a wide scope for imagination with a fairly clear plot canon, that is, they become an almost ideal genre for salon literary leisure. In the years 1690–1695, fairy tales were told in almost all secular societies (as described by Léritier de Vilandon in the introduction to the fairy tale “Marmoisan”, 1695), the salons of writers d'Aunois and Caumont de la Force, which were also visited by princes, were especially popular blood, and writers. But when at the end of the century fairy tales began to be actively published, the fashion for oral stories began to weaken. Now literature imitates the situation of salon conversation in the frame of collections of fairy tales - parodies (“The New Tradesman in the Nobility” by Madame d’Aunois, 1698). ) or serious (“Dinners in a Close Circle of the Summer of 1699, or Gallant Adventures, Which Tell the Origin of the Fairies” Catherine Bedacier, 1702). From 1704 to 1750, the literary salon of the Duchess du Maine shone, with whom Voltaire often visited (the works of the regulars were compiled in the collections “Entertainments in Sceaux,” published in 1712 and 1715). In the 1740s and 1750s, the cheerful “Indiscreet Academy, or the Society of the Edge of the Bench,” became famous, chaired by the actress Jeanne-Françoise Quinault du Fresne. Famous writers: Claude Prosper Joliot de Crebillon, Count Anne-Claude Philippe de Quelus, Charles Pinault Duclos, Abbé Claude Henri de Voisenon, Pierre Carlet de Marivaux, François Auguste Paradis de Moncrief, Pierre Claude Nivelle de La Chausse, who were later joined by philosophers: Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Denis Diderot, Jean le Rond d'Alembert, Frederic-Melchior Grimm, the Russian ambassador Prince Golitsyn - paid for dinners with magical stories. At the end of the year, the stories were collected and published as a separate book: “Gifts for Midsummer” (1742), “Collection of these gentlemen” (1745). Of course, all works of fiction are to a greater or lesser extent fictional. As the Soviet literary critic Yu. M. Lotman wittily noted, it would be very difficult for a representative of an alien civilization to explain why earthlings need a huge number of texts about events that obviously never took place. But the fairy tale - a genre by definition fantastic - was so contrary to the rationalistic aesthetics of classicism, which cared about verisimilitude, that it forced culture to discover the concept of literature. At the same time, the fairy tale, having turned into an autonomous genre in the 1690s thanks to Madame d'Aunois and her followers, was forced with great difficulty to win the rights of literary citizenship. Magic plots were found before, in a variety of works: in the le (poetic short stories) of Maria French (XII century), in medieval collections of “examples” for spiritual teachings, in the poems of Tasso, Boiardo, Ariosto, in Straparola’s “Pleasant Nights” and Basile’s “Pentameron” (XVI century). were almost no different from later literary tales (like Bonaventure Deperrier’s prose short story “Donkey’s Skin”, 1558, or La Fontaine’s poetic “On the Little Dog that Scattered Jewels”, 1671) and were called the same word “conte” (story, fairy tale ), they were perceived in a different context - funny stories, light poetry. For most of the 17th century, the purely fairy-tale tradition existed either in low-quality popular literature (for example, fairy tales were published in cheap editions of the Blue Library, published in Troyes), or in in the form of oral stories - in the village, in the nursery, in the kitchen or in the salon - but equally not intended for publication. Interest in folk culture as a full-fledged aesthetic phenomenon arose only with romanticism, and they began to professionally collect and record fairy tales in France later than in other European countries - only in the 1870s. After 1690, an underlying tendency came to the surface. Academician Charles Perrault publishes three poetic tales: “The Marquise de Salus, or the Patience of Griselda” (1691; he even read this “short story” beforehand at a meeting of the Academy), “Ridiculous Desires” and “Donkey Skin” (1693), combines them into a collection (1694), but readers do not yet separate them from the tradition of La Fontaine's short stories. In 1695, Perrault presented, on behalf of his son Pierre Darmancourt, a manuscript of five prose tales to Louis XV's niece, Elizabeth-Charlotte d'Orléans, and his own niece Marie-Jeanne Léritier de Vilandon included three tales in the collection "Mixed Works" (written in verse and prose) . In 1696, he inserts two fairy tales into the novel “Inessa of Cordoba” by Catherine Bernard; Mercure Galant magazine publishes The Sleeping Beauty. A decisive turning point came in 1697, when “Histories, or Tales of Bygone Times” by Charles Perrault (8 tales) appeared - again attributed to his son; "Fairy Tales" (4 volumes) by Countess d'Aunua; "Tales of Fairy Tales" (2 volumes) by Charlotte Rose Comon de la Force. In 1698, "New Fairy Tales, or Fashionable Fairies" (4 volumes) d'Aunois were published. “Fairy Tales” and “New Fairy Tales” by Henriette Julie de Castelnau, Countess de Murat, “Famous Fairies” by the Chevalier de Mailly, “Fairy Tales No Worse than Others” by Jean de Préchac, “The History of Melusine” by Paul-François Naudeau. But almost all of these books were published anonymously, the title pages read: Madame de ***, Mademoiselle de ***, Countess de ***, Monsieur de *** - the aristocrats were uncomfortable admitting the authorship of such “frivolous” works. The appearance of fairy tales in print immediately caused attacks: Nicolas Boileau wrote an epigram (1693) on Perrault’s Donkey Skin, reproaching it for its “exemplary dullness”; Dufresnie da la Riviere parodied in the comedy “Fairies, or Tales of Mother Goose” (1697) hackneyed magical motifs, an appeal to “low” folk culture, and colloquial style; he was supported by Dancourt with the comedy “Fairies” (1699). The polemical treatise “Conversations on fairy tales and other current writings, designed to protect against bad taste” (1699) was published by Abbot Pierre de Villiers. The authors defended their chosen genre in advance notices, dedications and