The Only Street in Paris: Life on the Rue Des Martyrs by Elaine Sciolino Page A

the Cat Who Fishes, Street of Bad Boys, Street of the Warmed Up, Street of the White Coats). “Street of the Martyrs” fits into the last category.
    So who are these martyrs who deserved a street to be named after them? They seem to be everywhere. A pharmacy, a pastryshop, a bistro, a men’s clothing boutique, and a mom-and-pop grocery store on the rue des Martyrs all have the word “martyrs” in their name. One of the street’s most popular breads is the pain des martyrs, a large, crusty, big-holed, white-and-whole-wheat loaf that never turns moldy. The street is so proud of its identity that for Christmas 2014 its merchants invested about 14,000 euros, along with 6,000 more from the local city hall, in new decorative lights for the street, including a huge banner in white that proudly proclaims, “Rue des Martyrs.”
    The explanation about the martyrs turned out to be a long and complicated tale. The French are obsessed with history, partly out of a genuine affinity for the past, partly from a desire to cling to lost glory. Most people I asked had an answer to the question of how the rue des Martyrs got its name. And if they didn’t have an answer, they had a well-argued theory. The French learn in childhood that constructing a beautiful argument is more important than which side to take. Only the most self-confident confess to ignorance.
    About one-third of the people I have asked about the martyrs had their story down cold. The name is rooted deep in Christian history and is so fantastical that even fervent Catholics find it hard to accept. The street’s martyrs are Saint Denis and his two companions, Rusticus and Eleutherius, who lost their heads for preaching the Christian gospel.
    There are no surviving contemporary histories of Denis, only interpretations of his life over the centuries, none reliable. The dominant legend is set in the third century, when France was part of the Roman Empire. The pope sent Denis to what is now Paris to convert the pagan population to Christianity, at a time when Christians were a marginal cult. Denis built a church,hired the clergy, smashed pagan statues, preached the Gospel, and made miracles. In modern parlance, he was a rock-star missionary.
    Alarmed that they were losing ground to Jesus, pagan priests imprisoned the three Christians for refusing to accept the divinity of the Roman emperor. Many versions of what happened next appeared over the centuries. Denis and his companions refused to die, despite enduring a variety of tortures in prison. The most gruesome account of the tortures is described in an elaborate but fanciful ninth-century biography commissioned by Emperor Louis the Pious, the ruler of the Franks, and written by Hilduin, the abbot of the royal abbey of Saint-Denis, outside of Paris. Hilduin cared less about the truth and more about the creation of a cult of a patron saint to beat all others. In his telling of the tale, tabloid-style, Denis and his companions were beaten, roasted on a bed of iron, locked up with starving beasts, trapped in a blazing fire, and tortured on crucifixes. As happens with martyrdom, the trio’s luck ran out. To ready them for death, God sent Jesus and a multitude of angels to give them Holy Communion in prison. Then soldiers led them far from the city center, halfway up a hill north of the Paris city limits to Montmartre. They stopped before the Temple of Mercury at what is now the rue Yvonne-le-Tac, near the top of the rue des Martyrs. There, the executioners cut off their victims’ heads, using blunt axes to maximize their suffering.
    Still, Denis held on. In a great miracle, and despite being ninety years old, he raised himself back to life. He cradled his head in his long white beard, washed it in a fountain, and carried it four miles north, to where he wanted to be buried, all the while accompanied by a choir of singing angels. But theresurrection was only temporary. When he reached his destination, he surrendered to death