Coffin of Renaissance poet found during excavations near Notre Dame
Kyiv • UNN
Archaeologists have identified the body of the French Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay in one of the coffins under Notre Dame Cathedral. The tests helped to identify the 37-year-old man buried in the center of the cathedral.
Scientists of the National Institute of Preventive Archaeological Research of France, who conducted excavations after the fire in Notre Dame Cathedral, identified the body of the famous French Renaissance poet Joachim du Bellay in one of the coffins. This was reported by France Info, according to UNN.
Details
It is noted that archaeologists discovered two anthropomorphic lead sarcophagi near Notre Dame in 2022. They were just a few meters from each other in the very center of the cathedral. One of them had an epitaph and was quickly identified as the sarcophagus of Antoine de La Porte, who was a canon of Notre Dame. But the identity of the second person, a man in his thirties, remained mysterious.
Analyses conducted at the Institute of Forensic Medicine in Toulouse revealed more about this unknown man. In particular, he had a deformity of the coccyx, indicating that he had been riding a lot, and a sawn skull and fractured sternum indicate that he had been subjected to an autopsy before being embalmed.
Born in Anjou around 1522, Joachim du Bellay was one of the founders of the Pleiades, a group of poets and literary movement. Du Bellay died in Paris in 1560 at the age of 37. One of the poet's uncles was a cardinal and former bishop of Paris, so the family could afford a burial in Notre Dame. But in 1758, during the search, his coffin was not found.