CHAPTER NINETEEN

Saint-Sulpice as Pagan Temple?

The Church of Saint-Sulpice, it is said, has the most eccentric history of any building in Paris. Built over the ruins of an ancient temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis, the church possesses an architectural footprint matching that of Notre Dame within inches.
(Chapter Nineteen, p. 88)

Precisely how Brown measures the level of a building’s ‘eccentric history’ is unclear, but his statement that Saint-Sulpice is built over the ruins of a temple of Isis is more of his fantasy.

The current church was begun in 1646 by its priest, Jean-Jacques Olier as a replacement for the greatly dilapidated Twelfth Century original. The foundations of this original medieval church have been found under the current building, but no ‘temple to the Egyptian goddess Isis’ has been found under or even near Saint-Sulpice. A sign to this effect has now been erected by the church’s custodians since, apparently, they have become weary of Da Vinci Code-reading tourists asking them about the non-existent ‘buried temple’.

Saint-Sulpice shares a general layout, style and size with a great many other churches, but it is wrong to say it matches Notre Dame’s ‘architectural footprint’ within inches. The two churches are similar in size, but Notre Dame is actually larger by a factor of several metres.