Foucault’s pendulum beneath the dome
The first permanent occupant of the Pantheon was Voltaire, who took up residence in July 1791, thirteen years after his death in 1778. In the two centuries plus after its founding, the Pantheon has received the remains of over 75 notable Frenchmen. There are six body-less hearts and one heartless body. Three others followed Mirabeau and Marat and were moved elsewhere. The first woman interred at the Pantheon was Sophie Berthelot, who was buried with her husband, Marcellin Berthelot, in 1907. The second was Nobel Prize winner Marie Curie (1867-1934), who was moved to the Pantheon from a cemetery in Sceaux, France, in 1995. She was the first woman interred in the Pantheon based on her own achievements. A recent arrival is writer Alexandre Dumas, pere (18021870), whose remains were reinterred in 2002. A list of all the residents is available within the Pantheon.
La Convention nationale sculpture by Francois Leon Sicard
Despite the uncertainty of survival and the brevity of so many marriages, letters and journals surviving from the period indicate deep attachment between spouses. A tombstone in Essex, Massachusetts, remembers one husband’s amiable consort, an affectionate reference to a dearly loved wife. Phoenix Map Beyond this grief, the death of a spouse had very different legal and financial implications for men and women. English Colonies Most married couples divided labor between them, the man responsible for the financial support of the family, the woman attending to domestic tasks and running the household. As all property and possessions belonged to the husband, the household of a man whose wife died remained intact. There was no probate inventory, no assessment of the estate. If she had been married before and had children from that marriage, her belongings would usually go to those children. (In most cases, this was decided as part of a premarital contract.) Otherwise, all property would remain in the widower’s possession, whether the deceased wife had brought it into the marriage or not.
