The first church at St-Denis was probably founded by an early (mid-third-century) Parisian bishop known by the name of Saint Denis, or St Dionysius in English. The legend goes that after he was decapitated for his beliefs at Montmartre – so called because it is the "Mount of the Martyr" – he picked up his own head and walked all the way to St-Denis, thereby establishing the abbey. It's not in fact all that far – just over five kilometres – though as a friend of Edward Gibbon's once remarked, "the distance is nothing, it's the first step that counts".
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