On your right is the site of the Church of Saint-Renobert, right here at the corner of rue Philibert Roux and rue Joubert. To understand this place, you have to understand how power works in this city. It is not enough to conquer. You have to pave over what was here before.
In the year 1206, Count Pierre the Second of Courtenay made a brutal decree. He expelled the entire Jewish population from Auxerre. Their synagogue stood right on this spot. The Count did not just seize the property. He ordered it transformed into a Catholic church, dropping two altars inside, one for Saint Nicholas and one for Saint Anthony. Shortly after, the original building was demolished entirely to make way for a brand new structure named Saint-Renobert. The message was absolute. The old sanctuary was erased to project the new secular and religious authority.
Of course, a new church needed relics. Bishop Hugues de Noyers took care of that. He went to a tomb in the nearby town of Varzy and extracted the phalanges, the finger and toe bones, to use for the church dedication. There was just one minor issue. They likely belonged to the wrong guy. Historical records frequently mixed up the names Renobert and Ragnebert, and some scholars think the bones actually belonged to a deacon named Zénon. But in thirteenth century Auxerre, any holy finger bone was apparently better than none.
The religious and ideological conflict that defined sixteenth century France eventually reached these doors. In 1567, the Huguenots, the French Protestants fighting the Catholic establishment, took the city. On the second day of the siege, they pillaged Saint-Renobert. They smashed the church bells, dragged the wooden figures out to burn in the town square, and completely destroyed the reliquary holding those questionable finger bones.
It sat desecrated for six years until the famous Bishop Jacques Amyot, who spent his free time translating the ancient Greek works of Plutarch, personally re-consecrated the church.
Still, Saint-Renobert was missing its star attraction. It took until 1642 for Bishop Pierre de Broc to travel back to Varzy and procure a replacement relic, a leg bone. Before its grand entrance, the bone was temporarily stashed at the Church of Saint-Amatre, a spot we visited earlier on this route.
The return of the relic was high theater. In April 1643, a silver reliquary was carried through these streets by cathedral canons. They were flanked by young children dressed in white surplices, the flowing white liturgical tunics worn by clergy. Each child held a blazing white wax torch. They marched right up to where you are standing now, claiming the space once again.
Eventually, a local boy turned historian named Jean Lebeuf, who was born right in this parish, served as a diplomatic courier. He took a femur from the collection and delivered it to the Cathedral of Bayeux. Just another piece of the puzzle leaving the building.
The architecture here was born from exile, destroyed by religious war, and rebuilt in a constant tug of war over who gets to call this ground holy. Let us leave this battleground of beliefs and walk toward the steady heart of medieval timekeeping. The Auxerre Clock Tower is just a three minute walk away.
