To your right is a striking complex of light stone anchored by a towering octagonal spire and a main structure defined by sweeping pointed arches and an intricate tiled roof.
This is the Abbey of Saint-Germain d'Auxerre. Today, it stands as a monument to one of the city's most revered figures, but the origin of Saint Germain is anything but holy.
Long before he was a saint, Germain was a formidable Gallo-Roman aristocrat in the early fifth century. He was a highly educated lawyer and an imperial governor commanding absolute secular power over the region. He was also a passionate hunter with a rather aggressive interior design aesthetic. He made a habit of hanging the severed heads of his prized kills from the branches of a massive tree right in the center of Auxerre.
The local religious leader, Bishop Amâtre, strongly disapproved. He viewed this macabre display as a dangerous relic of a pagan past. The tension between secular power and sacred authority finally snapped when Amâtre waited for the governor to leave town, then simply chopped down the bloody trophy tree.
When Germain returned and found his precious tree destroyed, he was enraged. He publicly threatened to murder the bishop. Amâtre wisely fled the city, but he had a highly unorthodox backup plan. He traveled to Autun to secure formal, legal permission from the regional prefect to ordain the murderous governor into the church.
In the year 418, the fearsome aristocratic governor was completely ambushed. He was seized by church officials, given a tonsure... a forced shaving of the scalp to mark religious submission... and ordained against his will. In one of history's most abrupt career changes, the pagan warlord was forced to become a Christian cleric. Surprisingly, he embraced the role, radically changing his life to become the fifth bishop of Auxerre.
The abbey built to honor him grew massive over the centuries, physically shifting its boundaries as power in the city changed hands. It hid incredible secrets, like ninth-century frescoes in the crypt that remained totally concealed beneath plaster until an archaeologist scraped them uncovered in 1927. The site barely survived the sixteenth century when Huguenot troops sacked the abbey and destroyed Germain's remains.
Then, in 1810, Napoleon Bonaparte ordered the abbey converted into a hospital. To make a convenient entrance for patients, his administration simply demolished the majestic main facade and several bays of the church. Yet, this bizarre medical conversion actually saved the rest of the walls from total ruin, sheltering patients until it finally became a museum in the late twentieth century.
Would you have believed that a powerful man threatening to murder a bishop over a pagan tree would eventually become the city's most defining saint?
If you want to explore the crypts and the museum, the abbey is open daily from ten in the morning to one in the afternoon, and again from two to six.
Let us continue to our final destination, a place located a fourteen minute walk from here, whose very name tells a story of a city outgrowing its own walls, the Abbey of Notre-Dame-la-d'Hors.
