Only a few steps separate the crowded cathedral square from this silent street. Its name recalls that the cloister of the canons of Notre-Dame stood here, an enclosed quarter where the cathedral clergy lived under their own rules.

1A love story on record

In the early twelfth century, the canon Fulbert lived in this cloister with his niece Héloïse, a young woman of exceptional learning. Fulbert hired the philosopher Peter Abelard as her tutor, and teacher and pupil fell in love. The story ended in tragedy: Fulbert had Abelard castrated, and both ended their lives in religious orders. We know this from their own letters, one of the great texts of the Middle Ages.

2The barber and the pastry cook

The street's other story is far more doubtful. Legend has it that at the end of the fourteenth century, on the now-vanished Rue des Marmousets, a barber cut the throats of some of his customers, and his neighbour, a pastry cook, baked their flesh into much-admired pies. The crime was supposedly uncovered when a victim's dog would not stop howling.

No court record from the period confirms the case. Jacques du Breul wrote it down in 1612, and it has been retold ever since.

Rue des Marmousets disappeared in the nineteenth-century rebuilding, and tradition now places the crime on this street, around number 20. Many see it as an ancestor of Sweeney Todd.

3What to look out for

  • The houses at numbers 22 and 24, among the oldest on the island.
  • The carriage gateways of the old canons' quarter.
  • The towers of Notre-Dame rising above the rooftops.

Documented

The street occupies the former cloister of the canons of Notre-Dame, where Fulbert and Héloïse lived in the twelfth century, according to the letters of Abelard and Héloïse.

Oral tradition

The crime of the barber and pastry cook of Rue des Marmousets appears in no court records of the time: it is a legend handed down since the seventeenth century.

Sources and credits

Jacques Hillairet, ‘Dictionnaire historique des rues de Paris’ (Rue Chanoinesse); ‘The Letters of Abelard and Heloise’; Jacques du Breul, ‘Le Théâtre des antiquités de Paris’ (1612).

Photos:

  • Wisteria-covered front on the corner of Rue Chanoinesse: Chris Waits, CC BY 2.0.

Spotted a mistake? Drop us a line and we’ll look into it.