From Hugues Capet to Louis XV. most of the kings were interred at S. Denis; but it must be borne in mind that almost all the tombs of the earlier sovereigns are modern, either wholly or in part. In the 13th century the strange custom came into fashion of dividing the bodies of royal personages, and burying the parts in different places. The Benedictine monks of S. Denis protested against this division of valuable property, asserting their right to possess the entire remains of the kings; but the Dominicans and the Cordeliers contested these claims, and subsequently gained permission for their own churches to share in the spoil. Later on, other religious orders obtained the same privileges; and the ladies of Val-de-Grâce were distinguished by the possession of the hearts of nearly all the royal princes and princesses from Anne d'Autriche, the founder of the monastery. Naturally, when each defunct sovereign was divided into three portions--the body, the heart, and the intestines--great opportunities were afforded to architects and sculptors; and we thus find three marble monuments with recumbent figures erected for the remains of Charles V., that at S. Denis containing his body, while Rouen and Maubuisson respectively possessed his heart and his _et ceteras_.[19] Francis I.'s heart was placed in an exquisite urn in the church of the nuns of Haute-Bruyère; while his body was buried in the grand monument at S. Denis. The urn was the work of Pierre Bontems, and is now in the same chapel as the tomb, which was the joint work of Philibert Delorme and Bontems. The beautiful group of the _Three Graces_, by Germain Pilon, formerly in the church of the Célestins, and now in the Renaissance Museum of the Louvre, supported an urn containing the heart of Henri II.;[20] the hearts of the 13th and 14th Louis, enveloped in shrines in the form of silver Angels, being the property of the church of the Jesuits. The number of monuments erected at S. Denis to the memory of the families of the sovereigns was small; and none of them were to be compared, as works of art, to the beautiful tombs of the Dukes of Bourgogne and of Brétagne at Dijon, at Bruges, and at Nantes. Most of the princes of the different families, the Condés, the Contis, the Valois, the Bourbons, &c., had founded chapels or monasteries where they were afterwards buried; as, for instance, the Orléans chapel at the Célestins, which was celebrated for its magnificence.[21] [Illustration: THE CHOIR AND SANCTUARY.]