GENEVIEVE, or Genovefa, St, patroness of Paris, flourished during the latter half of the 5th century. She was born about 425 at Nanterre near Paris, or according to another tradition at Montriere; her parents were called Severus and Gerontia, but accounts differ widely as to their social position. According to the legend, she was only in her seventh year when she was induced by Bishop (afterwards Saint) Germain d’Auxerre to dedicate herself to the religious life. On the death of her parents she removed to Paris, where she distinguished herself by the activity of her benevolence, as well as by the austerity of her sanctity. She is said to have been the recipient of supernatural revelations, and to have predicted the invasion of the Huns; and when Attila with his army was threatening the city, she gave courage to the panic-stricken inhabitants by an assurance, justified by subsequent events, to the effect that the attack would come to nothing (451). In the year 460 she caused a church to be built over the tomb of St Denis, where the abbey was afterwards raised by Dagobert I. Her death occurred in 500, or according to another account in 512, and her remains were ultimately laid in the chapel bearing her name, which has now become merged in the Pantheon or Eglise St Geneviève. Charpentier published in 1687 a life of the saint based upon the statements of an anonymous author who is alleged to have written her biography only eighteen years after her death. The legends, miraculous and other, are also given in the Bollandist Acta Sanctorum and in the great work of Tillemont. Her festival is celebrated on the 3d of January....