In a richly layered and beautifully illustrated narrative, Raymond Jonas tells the fascinating and surprisingly little-known story of the Sacre-Coeur, or Sacred Heart. The highest point in Paris and a celebrated tourist destination, the white-domed basilica of Sacre-Coeur on Montmartre is a key monument both to French Catholicism and to French national identity. Jonas masterfully reconstructs the history of the devotion responsible for the basilica, beginning with the apparition of the Sacred Heart to Marguerite Marie Alacoque in the seventeenth century, through the French Revolution and its aftermath, to the construction of the monumental church that has loomed over Paris since the end of the nineteenth century. Jonas focuses on key moments in the development of the cult: the founding apparition, its invocation during the plague of Marseilles, its adaptation as a royalist symbol during the French Revolution, and its elevation to a central position in Catholic devotional and political life in the crisis surrounding the Franco-Prussian War. He draws on a wealth of archival sources to produce a learned yet accessible narrative that encompasses a remarkable sweep of French politics, history, architecture, and art.

雷濛·瓊納斯（Raymond Jonas），先後獲法國巴黎大學、美國加州大學伯剋利分校博士學位，任教於美國西雅圖華盛頓大學，現為該校曆史係教授。其研究領域為現代法國史，關注法國大革命及其餘波、巴黎城市史、反革命的政治文化、聖心崇拜及其藝術等。著有《法國鄉村的工業與政治：1870至1914年間伊澤爾省的農民》（Industry and Politics in Rural France：Peasants of the Isere，1870-1914）及《法蘭西與聖心崇拜》等。