The mystery may have been solved. Archaeological excavations at Notre-Dame de Paris have uncovered a tomb that could be that of the poet Joachim du Bellay, who is known to have been buried in the cathedral without knowing the exact location, Inrap researchers said at a press conference on Tuesday, September 17, reports theAgence France-Presse (AFP).
In 2022, during excavations carried out as part of the reconstruction of Notre-Dame, archaeologists from the National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research found two anthropomorphic lead sarcophagi at the crossing of the transept.
Traces of an extremely rare pathology
One of the two, which bore an epitaph, was quickly identified as that of Canon Antoine de La Porte (1627-1710). The identity of the second individual, a man aged around thirty, remained unknown.
Analyses carried out at the Toulouse University Hospital’s forensic institute found a deformation of his coxal bone, indicating that he rode a horse. His sawn-off skull and fractured sternum show that he was autopsied before being embalmed, theAFPHis bones finally bear traces of an extremely rare pathology: cervical bone tuberculosis which led to chronic meningitis.
“There are still doubts”
A “robot portrait” that corresponds to that of the Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay, born in Liré, in Anjou. The co-founder of the Pléiade, a group of poets but also a literary movement, died in Paris on the night of 1er on January 2, 1560 at the age of 37 in the cloister of Notre-Dame.
His family, one of whose uncles was a cardinal, had asked that he be buried in the Saint-Crépin chapel. But in 1758, during work, his tomb was not found there. “There are still doubts”however, tempered Christophe Besnier, one of those responsible for the excavations at Notre-Dame, citing in particular “isotope analysis” Who “shows that we are dealing with a person who lived in the Paris region or in the Rhône-Alpes region until the age of ten”.
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