Notre-Dame de Paris. Was Joachim du Bellay really buried in the choir of the Gothic cathedral?

Scoop? At the end of a fascinating assessment of the archaeological research carried out over the last five years in the basement of Notre-Dame de Paris, Professor of Anthropobiology Eric Crubezy, Director of Research at the University of Toulouse III and the CNRS, fascinated the crowd of journalists present by explaining that he had identified the body of the famous poet of the Pléiade, Joachim du Bellay (1522-1560).

This is the unknown figure found during the excavations of 2022, at the crossing of the transept of the cathedral, in one of the two lead sarcophagi exhumed at the time. The first bore an epitaph that allowed archaeologists to immediately identify it as that of Father Antoine de La Porte (1627-1710), an important canon who financed the redevelopment of the choir in the 17th century.

But the other sarcophagus did not contain any element of identification of the deceased and was placed in the axis of the door of the rood screen, “an exceptional place” underlines Eric Crubézy who draws a robot portrait of the skeleton that he studied: “It is a young man of about 35 years old – which is rare at Notre-Dame -, an excellent horseman according to the deformation of the head of his femur, and presents the signs of bone tuberculosis which affected his neck and his meninges. He died in the 16th century and was autopsied, because his skull was clumsily sawed. He was entitled to an embalming.” Starting from there, the researcher was keen to find in the archives of the chapter, who it could well be.

Written sources indicate that Joachim du Bellay was buried next to his uncle, the Bishop of Poitiers Jean du Bellay, in the Saint-Crépin chapel of Notre-Dame. “But in 1758,” the researcher argues, “when this tomb was opened, there was no mention of Joachim’s remains! They could have been moved to a place of honor, at the crossing of the transept, in 1569 after the publication of his complete works which made him famous posthumously.” Other historical research convinced the researcher that the deceased “who complained of headaches and deafness” did indeed present the symptoms of tuberculosis and meningitis found on the skeleton.

This attractive hypothesis, which seems to have completely convinced Eric Crubézy, does not, however, rally all the archaeologists who are much more cautious about the identification of the unknown horseman. “The analysis of the composition of his teeth would tend to show that he grew up until the age of 10, rather in the Paris region than in Anjou, unlike the poet”, thus tempers Christophe Besnier, scientific director for the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (Inrap). The archaeologist believes that we must wait for a dating in progress which will specify the date of the deceased’s death “to the nearest year”.

In the meantime, her colleague, anthropologist Camille Colonna, explained that Notre-Dame probably contained thousands of graves, some reused several times between the 14th century and the Revolution. “In total,” she summarizes, “these partial excavations have made it possible to save some from the destruction linked to the work and to study eighty of them.” These are the graves of adult men (except one of a woman); the deceased are rather old and suffer from age-related pathologies, which is not very surprising if we consider that it was mainly canons who were buried in the cathedral. “Now, we are going to conduct global studies on this population, on their DNA, and we are going to analyze more closely the methods of burial used,” concludes the specialist. New surprises will therefore undoubtedly be revealed to the public during the year 2025…