Her feast day is on 3 January. Recognized for her religious devotion at a young age, she met Germanus of Auxerre and Lupus of Troyes when she was a child and dedicated herself to a virginal life. Miracles and healings began to happen around her early on and she became known for changing the weather. She moved from Nanterre , her hometown, to Paris, after her parents died and became known for her piety, healings, and miracles, although the residents of Paris resented her and would have killed her if not for Germanus' interventions.
Her prayers saved Paris from being destroyed by the Huns under Attila in and other wars; her organisation of the city's women was called a "prayer marathon" and Genevieve's "most famous feat". Genevieve performed miracles both before and after her death. She was recognized as the patron saint of Paris in the 14th century.
She was "a favorite of both the humblest residents and of the Bourbon family, and was equally venerated by Erasmus and revolutionary fishwives" [ 6 ] and was considered "a cultural symbol which Parisians shared, appropriated, negotiated, and used according to specific communal assumptions and traditions". Genevieve was publicly invoked during emergencies related to the needs and expectations of the residents of Paris times between and October , ranging from spontaneous and less-ritualized invocations and processions with her reliquary during the Middle Ages to highly ritualized ones said before her unveiled reliquary in the years leading up to the French Revolution.
As times and conditions changed in Paris, so did the ways in which Genevieve was invoked and processed. As new calamities threatened the city and new intercessions to her were needed, new associations, images, and metaphors were required. Devotion to her remained popular throughout the history of Paris, although devotion to her has never returned to its pre-Revolutionary popularity and unifying status.
Genevieve was born c. Genevieve appears in the Martyrology of Jerome ; her vita appeared many centuries after her death, [ 4 ] although hagiographer Donald Attwater states that her vita claims to be written by a contemporary of Genevieve and "Its authenticity and value are the subject of much discussion". Even though popular tradition represents Genevieve's parents as poor peasants, [ 8 ] their names, which were common amongst the Gallo-Roman aristocracy, are considered evidence that she was born into the Gallic upper class.
