The life of St Genevieve of Paris
After her parents' death she moved into Paris itself, where she became known for constant fasting, prayer, and a marked care for the poor of the city.
She is remembered above all for what tradition says happened in the year 451, when Attila and the Huns were advancing toward Paris and its people prepared to flee. Genevieve urged them instead to stay and pray, promising that the city would be spared, and the invading force turned aside toward another target, sparing the city its threatened destruction. Later memory also credits her with helping the city through further sieges and hardship in the turbulent years that followed. Because her story was not written down until long after she had lived, historians today read these accounts as a blend of genuine memory and later legend grown up around her, though her long and unbroken veneration as patroness of Paris has never been in question. She died in the early sixth century, remembered as the city's steady advocate in its hour of danger.
