INTERIOR OF THE ROMAN PALAIS DES THERMES.
INTERIOR OF THE ROMAN PALAIS DES THERMES.
INTERIOR OF THE ROMAN PALAIS DES THERMES.
AMPHITHEATER OF LUTETIA AT PRESENT TIME.
AMPHITHEATER OF LUTETIA AT PRESENT TIME.
AMPHITHEATER OF LUTETIA AT PRESENT TIME.
years ago to permit an adequate idea of the original appearance.
To Julian has been attributed the rebuilding of the Cité, and excavations at different points have unearthed remains unmistakably of Roman workmanship, which show that the island was completely surrounded by a wall. Probably some of the stones of the amphitheater went into it. This fortification has been related to the fourth century, and it is known that on the spot in the Cité where the Palais de Justice now houses the law courts, an administrative building of some kind has stood since this same early date. One of Julian’s successors, Maximus, erected a triumphal arch near the cathedral in 383, and it is probable that other pretentious structures justified the erection of the protecting wall.
The cathedral was a church dedicated to Saint Étienne, modest as compared with its medieval successor, Notre Dame, whose sacristy is placed on the same spot, yet showing that concentration of the arts in their expression of religious spirit which has made the churches of Europe at once the treasure-house of the student and the devotee, the inspiration of the poet, and the joy of the lover of color and of line. Both of these Christian churches have stood on ground already dedicated to religion, for under the choir of NotreDame there was discovered in 1711 a pagan altar, now the chief relic of the museum in the Thermes. The inscription on the stone places it in the reign of the emperor Tiberius (14-37A.D.), the successor of the great Augustus. Its inscription reads: “When Tiberius was emperor the Parisian Watermen publicly raised this altar to Jupiter, best and greatest.”
The Nautæ Stone.
The Nautæ Stone.
The Nautæ Stone.
These Watermen (Nautae) seem from early days to have been an important guild, first as carriers of merchandise and later as an administrative body. In the twelfth century the band was called the Brotherhood of Water Merchants, and its head the Provost of the Water Merchants, a name given in shortened form—Provost of the Merchants—to the first magistrate of the city up to the time of the Revolution at the end of the eighteenth century. Even to-day such of the duties of the Prefect of the Seine as applynot to the Department of the Seine but to the city of Paris alone are comparable to those of the Provost of the Merchants. From the seal of the Nautae, a boat, has developed the present coat of arms of the City of Paris.
It was about the middle of the third century that the altar to greatest Jupiter began to be deserted by its worshipers, for it was then that Saint Denis came to Paris to preach the new religion, and with his coming and the Emperor Constantine’s conversion Christian churches began to be built. Even the martyrdom of Saint Denis, who, according to Gregory of Tours, “ended his earthly life by the sword,” was no check to believers. Legend has it that his head was stricken off on Montmartre, the hill towering above Paris on the north, and to-day crowned by the pearl-white dome of the basilica of the Sacré Coeur gleaming, mysterious, through the city’s eternal haze. The hill’s name has been said to mean “Mount of Mars,” because of a pagan altar raised upon its summit, or “Mount of the Martyr,” referring to the death of Saint Denis. Either derivation may be defended, and neither contradicts the story that the holy Bishop of Paris, decapitated, picked up his head and carried it for several miles before a kindly-disposed woman offered him burial. Over his remains a chapel wasraised, restored about two centuries later by Sainte Geneviève, and replaced in 630 by the basilica which Dagobert I (602-638) erected to house fittingly that most holy relic, the head of the saint. The existing church was begun about five hundred years later by Suger, the minister of Louis VI who adopted theoriflammeof Saint Denis as the royal standard of France. The flag hung above the altar and was used only when the king went into battle himself. Since the English victory on the field of Agincourt (1415) it has not left the church. The banner (in replica) stands to-day in the choir behind and to the left of the high altar. Throughout the church are the tombs of the Kings of France from Dagobert to Louis XVIII—twelve centuries of royal bones.
The canonization of Martin, bishop of Tours, the soldier saint who did not hesitate to divide his cloak with the shivering poor, received early recognition in Paris, where, indeed, he has always been popular. In what was in Roman days the country but is now well within the city limits a chapel was reared in his honor on the spot where he stopped to cure a leper when he was on his way to Paris. In the eleventh century it was replaced by the Priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs, which developed into one of the huge monastic establishments which wereeach a little world in itself during the middle ages. Another chapel to Saint Martin rose at the mainland end of the bridge leading from the island to the right bank.
It was a fair and prosperous city that the world conquerors had nursed beside the Seine; it remained for time to prove whether its five centuries of growth had made it strong and sound or whether its heart was rotten and its roots uncertain of their hold.
THE reading of Cæsar’s “Commentaries” makes us know that the Gauls with whom he contended were worthy opponents, ingenious in planning warfare and enthusiastic in fighting. Even the trained Roman legions had to work for their victories. Granting possible exaggeration, which is a sore temptation to a conqueror, eager to magnify the difficulties of his conquest, it is nevertheless clear that a radical change had transformed these fierce Gauls and irresistible Romans of a half century before Christ when, five hundred years later, a band of less than 10,000 “barbarians”, led by Clovis, swept across a comparatively unresisting Gaul.
What had happened in Gaul was what had happened in other parts of the Roman Empire. Money had concentrated in the hands of an insatiable few. To supply them and the government every stratum of society was squeezed of its smallest coin, until good men of middle-class position were willing to sell themselves into slavery to avoid the insistent demands of self-seeking tax collectors, and the government was meanly willing to accept the sacrifice because the supply of slaves was not being kept up since the victorious eagles had ceased to perch upon Rome’s banner.
In Paris conditions were not different from those in other parts of the province. The town was good to look upon with handsome Roman buildings, and it was ordered with due respect to the laws for whose making Rome had undoubted genius; but beneath this fair outside there shivered the soul of the dependent grown cowardly from abuse, lacking loyalty for what was unworthy of loyalty. The Gauls, who had adopted the language and manners of their conquerors, had become weak from overmuch reliance on the stronger power; the Romans had softened during years of peace. So it happened that when the barbarians from the north and east threatened Gaul they were bought off with gifts of land, and when, in 451, Attila, the Scourge of God, led into the north his fierce and hideous Huns whose only joy was bloodshed, the people of Paris prepared themselves for flight when he was still a long way off.
For every vital crisis in the life of the individual there is given a counterbalancing power of endurance; to groups this power is taught by the man or woman whom the circumstancesdevelop as a leader. In this emergency, when the dreaded shadow of the hawklike Hun fluttered the citizens, and they were making preparations for deserting the town and taking into hiding such of their goods and chattels as they could, the leader developed in the unexpected form of a woman—Sainte Geneviève. Some say that Geneviève was, like Jeanne Darc a thousand years later, a peasant girl. Saint Germain of Auxerre, the story goes, on his way to “quenche an heresye” across the Channel, chanced to visit Nanterre where his prophetic eye espied the divine spirit in the little maid and his holy hand sealed her unto God. Another version insists that Geneviève belonged to a prominent family in Paris and that her family’s influence accounted for her sway over the people.
For sway them she did. At her bidding the women of the city fasted and fell on their knees and assailed God with prayer. Nearer and nearer came the foe, and the unbelieving reviled the maiden; but Saint Germain reproached them for their lack of faith and the miracle came to pass—the “tyrantes approachyd not parys.”
All quarrels were lost in the apprehension of this attack of a common enemy, and by the united effort of Gauls and Romans, of Burgundians, Visigoths and Franks, the dreaded Attilawas defeated near Châlons in a battle so determined that the very ghosts of the slain, it was declared, continued the fight.
Freed of this menace to the whole country the victorious tribes again fell to quarreling among themselves. The Franks proved sturdiest and most persistent. Descended from Pharamond, who, perhaps, was legendary, their king, Mérovée, had led them against Attila. Now his son, Childéric, attacked Paris. Again Geneviève rescued her townsmen from famine, herself embarking upon the Seine, which probably was beset by the enemy along the banks, and returning with a boatload of provisions which, by miraculous multiplication, revictualed the whole hungry and despairing garrison.
Childéric’s son, Clovis, leading about 8000 men, in 481 made himself king of northern France with Paris as his capital, thus establishing the line of monarchs who called themselves Merovingians. “Paris,” he wrote in 500A.D., “is a brilliant queen over other cities; a royal city, the seat and head of the empire of the Gauls. With Paris safe the realm has nothing to fear.”
Clovis had married an orthodox Catholic wife, Clotilde, who was eager for his conversion. Her arguments are said to have been far from gentle, but they seem to have been suited to herhusband’s nature, for he was almost persuaded to make the great change at the time of the birth of his eldest child. The baby died within the week, however, and the king looked upon his loss as an act of vengeance on the part of his deserted gods. When the second child recovered from a serious illness he was convinced that Clotilde’s intercessions had saved its life, and again he inclined toward Christianity. An incident determined his acceptance of his wife’s faith. In the battle of Tolbiac against the Germans Clovis begged the aid of “the God of the Christians” to determine in his favor a wavering victory. He won the fight, and it is easy to believe the joy of Sainte Geneviève, when the monarch was baptized in the cathedral at Rheims. He seems to have been of simple mind. The fittings and the ceremonies of the vast church touched his spirit to submission. “Is not this the kingdom of heaven you promised me?” he asked of the bishop. Again, when he listened to the story of the crucifixion, he is said to have cried with an elemental desire for vengeance, “Oh, had I been there with my Franks I would have avenged the Christ!”
Sainte Geneviève died in 509 and the citizens of grateful Paris over which she had watched in wise tenderness for fourscore years, made her their patron saint. The hill that had been knownas Mons Lucotetius they called Mont Sainte Geneviève, and on it they built a chapel to honor and protect her grave. Clovis replaced the little oratory by a church as long as the mighty swing of his battle-axe, dedicated to Saint Peter and Saint Paul and serving as the abbey church of a religious establishment which bore Sainte Geneviève’s name. Except for a dormitory and refectory this monastery was torn down in the middle of the eighteenth century to give place to a new church of Sainte Geneviève, secularized to-day and known as the Pantheon. The abbey church, built and rebuilt, was destroyed during the Revolution, the tower (called the Tower of Clovis, but really belonging to a later period) being all that is left of these historic structures. The reaction against religion in those turbulent revolutionary years made it no sacrilege to burn the good saint’s bones on the Grève, but some of the devoted preserved the ashes which rest now in a stone sarcophagus, elaborately canopied, in the neighboring church of Saint Étienne-du-Mont built in the twelfth century as a church for the dependents of the Abbey.
The comparatively peaceful and prosperous Roman period of five hundred years was followed by five centuries of strife and disaster at the hands of the northern tribes. The Roman Empire had found in Gaul the last stronghold of itscivilization. There were large cities, fine buildings, public utilities, institutions of learning. To the barbarians, a youthful race at the destructive stage, these represented but so many things to be destroyed. Terrible and repeated onslaughts ousted the Romans, and then the victors became embroiled with new tribes who sought to drive them out. Palaces and houses were destroyed, fields and vineyards were laid waste. Paris, the stronghold of the early Merovingians, suffered less than the other important towns of Gaul, but the Franks had no standards of fair living, and they did not build up where time or their own ferocity had cast down. Tottering walls were bolstered with rough buttresses, new dwellings were square hovels of the same heavy stonework, farming languished, commerce died.
The successors of Clovis for one hundred and fifty years tricked their wives, murdered their rivals, and assassinated their nearest of kin if they stood in their way. Clovis divided his kingdom among his four sons. One of them was killed in battle soon after and left his three children to the care of their grandmother, Clotilde, with whom they lived in the great palace on the left bank. Just like the wicked uncles in many a fairy tale two of Clovis’s surviving sons obtained possession of the little boys by stratagem and took them away to the palace on the Cité.Then they sent to Clotilde a messenger who bade her choose between the shears and the sword—the shears which should clip the children’s locks and thereby sever their claims to the throne and send them into the Church, and the sword of death. In a passion of indignation Clotilde exclaimed that she would rather see them dead than shorn. Claiming this cry as their authorization the two men set about the murder of their nephews. Childebert, king of Paris, proved somewhat less brutal than his brother (he loved flowers enough to plant a garden at the Roman palace) and would have saved the children—they were hardly more than babies—but Clotaire stabbed two of them with his own hand. Then he married their mother. The third boy escaped, came under the tutelage of Saint Séverin and entered a Benedictine monastery. When he was a man grown he established a religious house at a spot a few miles from Paris called Saint Cloud from his name, Clodoald. Here, on a height above the river, stood thechâteauwhere Napoleon effected thecoup d’ étatthat made him First Consul, and whence Charles X issued the decrees that brought about the Revolution of 1830. The building was burned during the troubles of 1870, but the park with its finealléesof trees and its fountains is one of the playgrounds of modern Paris.
Clotaire had done away with the possible rivalry of his nephews but he had a bitter enemy in his brother Thierry. This amiable relative plotted his assassination. He invited him to a feast and stationed his desperadoes behind a curtain whence they should spring out upon their victim. Some friend of Clotaire’s, chancing to pass by, noticed below this apparently innocent screen a row of feet unaccounted for, and guessed the project of their owners. Warned of his danger Clotaire came amply guarded and caused his brother extreme annoyance by his evident knowledge of his plan and its consequent frustration. Thierry gave him a silver dish by way of souvenir of this pleasant occasion, but he repented him of this generosity as soon as Clotaire was out of sight and sent his son to replevin the gift.
One of Clotaire’s sons, Chilpéric I (who died in 584) gave his daughter in marriage to the son of the king of the Visigoths in Spain. A great train came to Paris to fetch the bride, and the appearance of these rough Goths and the thought of her approaching separation from her parents and friends so afflicted the young girl that her father determined to secure companionship for her. He commanded some chosen young people—girls and youths of her own age—and also some entire families to go with her into Spain.So great was the opposition to this high-handed proceeding that it became necessary forcibly to seize the unwilling recipients of the honor in order to be sure of their presence when the expedition started. Some of those who were to be separated from their kindred committed suicide in despair over their banishment. “In Paris there reigned a desolation like Egypt,” says sympathetic Gregory of Tours. Robbed of their children the rich Parisians found the country also robbed of gold and silver vessels and of handsome raiment, for the queen heaped into her daughter’s bridal coffers the treasures that she had obtained from the nobles in the course of years under the guise of revenue. So loath were the princess’s attendants to follow her fortunes and so lacking were they in loyalty that her retinue on arriving in Spain was lessened not only by the daily desertions of all who could manage to escape, but by the defection in a body of no less than fifty men.
Frédégonde, the bride’s mother, was a woman of forceful will and of unbridled passions. The list of deaths for which she was responsible reads like a roster of the royal family. Although of low birth she attracted the attention of the king, Chilpéric, and induced him to put aside his wife, Audovère. Chilpéric then married Galsuinthe, sister of Brunehaut, wife of his brother Sigebert.Frédégonde soon compassed Galsuinthe’s death and then achieved her ambition and became queen herself. Brunehaut naturally was indignant as well as sorrowful at her sister’s death, clearly the work of an assassin. She urged her husband to vengeance and he declared war against Chilpéric. His activity was not of long duration, however, for he, too, fell a victim to Frédégonde’s ferocity. Brunehaut saved her life only by claiming the asylum of the cathedral of Paris. Not long after she married Mérovée, a son of Chilpéric and Audovère. Then Frédégonde disposed of her by inducing Sigebert’s subjects to claim their queen and by insisting that Chilpéric should deliver her over to them. Mérovée, at her command, was shorn and imprisoned and hounded until he sought death at the hands of a servant. His brother was stabbed. Their mother, Audovère, was not safe even in the cloister, for she was murdered in her retreat. Chilpéric himself was the next victim, killed by a knife-thrust as he returned from the chase. He was succeeded by an infant son, Clotaire II (613-628), and Frédégonde spent the rest of her life in alternations of affectionately fierce devotion to his interests and in scheming against the authority of his guardians.
Brunehaut outlived her enemy, Frédégonde, by many years and finally met her death at theorder of Frédégonde’s son. After a stormy career during which she compassed much good for the subjects of her son and grandsons and earned her share of hatred from the nobles whom she opposed, she was captured by Clotaire. Her extreme age—she was eighty—did not save her from a brutal end. She was stripped and displayed to his army, then bound by a foot, an arm and her hair to a wild horse which kicked her to death. This hideous deed was done in Paris where now the rue Saint Honoré crosses the rue de l’Arbre Sec, and not far from the site of the house wherein Admiral Coligny was slain, the first victim of the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew.
Of all the Merovingian kings only Dagobert I (628-638), son of Clotaire II, proved himself a man of strength, incongruously fighting and praying, massacring captives and building churches, living a vicious life in private and governing with justice and intelligence. “Great king Dagobert” he was called, and he was regarded impartially as a “jolly good fellow” and as a saint. He lived in the palace on the Cité, and he rebuilt the abbey of Saint Denis, invited distant merchants to visit Gaul, dealt out justice to poor and rich alike in unconventional and hearty fashion, and hammered his enemies with the same vigor and enthusiasm.
In the century following his the Merovingian line degenerated into a race of “Rois Fainéants” (“Do-nothing Kings”), dissolute, lazy, leaving the task of government to their Mayors of the Palace while they rolled slothfully in ox-carts from the debaucheries of one country house to the coarse pleasures of another.
The only upbuilding accomplished during the Merovingian two centuries and a half was the establishment of churches and religious houses. The Frank was not aggressive in the less active relations of his duties as a victor. He was content to learn the language of the conquered race and the mysticism of religion spoke to him winningly. Throughout the years when nothing that fell was restored and the hand was busy striking, at least one kind of constructive impulse was manifest when Clovis built the church in which he was buried on Mons Lucotetius, when his son, Childebert, reared an abbey on the south bank to protect the tunic of Saint Vincent, when on the north bank a church was dedicated to the same saint and another to Saint Laurent, while the south side was further enriched by edifices sacred to Saint Julien and to Saint Séverin, the tutor of Clodoald. It is not the original buildings that we see on these sites to-day, but it is a not uninteresting phase of the French spirit that has reared one structure after another uponground once consecrated, so that a church stands to-day where a church stood fifteen hundred years ago.
The story of the foundation of the church of Saint Vincent is interesting from several points of view. Clovis divided his possessions among his four sons, giving Paris to Childebert. Childebert had no notion of staying cooped up in this northern town, and he went as far afield as Saragossa in search of war. During the course of his siege of that city he beheld its citizens marching about bearing what seemed to be a relic of especial sanctity. It proved to be the cloak of Saint Vincent in which they were trusting to save them from their assailants. It did not betray their trust, for Childebert became filled with eagerness to possess a relic which could inspire such confidence, and offered to raise the siege if they would give him the tunic. When he returned to Paris Saint Germain of Autun persuaded him to build a church for its protection and to establish an abbey whose members should make it their first duty to pay honor to the relic. This abbey was called later Saint Germain-des-Prés, the name which the abbey church bears to-day. It stands no longer in the meadows, but raises its square Merovingian tower above one of the busiest parts of Paris. Except for this tower the church was burned in the ninth century, but it was rebuilt in the eleventh and twelfth centuries and the nave with its semi-circular arches is one of the few remaining examples in the city of the Romanesque architecture of which this was a characteristic. The choir shows in its arches and windows the hand of a later builder who was inclining toward the pointed Gothic.
The Merovingian kings were buried here. After the founding of Saint Denis the royal remains were removed to that abbey church.
The north bank church of Saint Vincent also received the name of Saint Germain, but this was to honor Saint Germain l’Auxerrois, the friend of Sainte Geneviève. This early edifice also was destroyed, but was rebuilt by Robert the Pious, and the later building held the bell which rang for the massacre of Saint Bartholomew a thousand years later.
These churches and monasteries were the means of preserving whatever of learning persisted through this period of return to primitive living. Every one of them was a center of information, and every one of them taught freely what it knew of agriculture and of the homely arts. Further the Church was thoroughly democratic. A bishop’s miter lay in every student’s portfolio, as a marshal’s baton hid in the knapsack of each one of Napoleon’s soldiers.
SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS.
SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS.
SAINT GERMAIN DES PRÉS.
Of larger government, however, the bishops had small knowledge, and Paris, left to their guidance while the kings roamed abroad, lost her high prestige. She did not regain it under the next dynasty.
WHILE the nominal kings were losing their powers through inaction, activity was developing a race of strong rulers in the Mayors of the Palace—originally the royal stewards. Pépin d’Héristal (who died in 714) is accounted the founder of the family which was to oust the Sluggard Kings from the throne that they disgraced. Pépin’s son, Charles Martel—the Hammer—(715-741) stayed the advance of the Saracens in the fiercely fought battle at Tours where he earned not only his nickname but the gratitude of the Christian world, threatened by the Mohammedan invasion. Charles’s son, Pépin le Bref (752-768), thought that the time had come when the achievements of the Mayors of the Palace should receive recognition—when the king in fact should be the king in name. He appealed to Pope Zachary to sanction his taking the title. The pope was glad of the support of the Franks, and approved. Childéric III became the last of the Merovingian line when he was shorn of the long locks which symbolized his regal strength, and Pépin,anointed king in his stead, became the first of those monarchs who have been called Carolingians or Carlovingians from the name of his son, Charlemagne (Carolus Magnus, Charles the Great.)
Pépin was anointed first at Soissons by the Bishop of Mayence who used in the ceremony the flask from which Saint Rémi had anointed Clovis. Later the new king was anointed again, this time at Saint Denis, by Zachary’s successor, Stephen III, who was the first pope to visit Paris. The Frankish nobles paid for the honor to their city by being forced by the Holy Father to swear allegiance to Pépin and his sons.
There was much in Paris to interest the pope. The Cité was rich in churches and religious establishments. The cathedral now was a church dedicated to Notre Dame, built by Childebert in gratitude for a recovery from illness. It stood beside the one-time cathedral dedicated to Saint Étienne; smaller churches honored Saint Gervais, Saint Nicholas and Saint Michel. Eloy, the jovial goldsmith saint, was the protector of a convent raised to his name. Saint Landry, a bishop of Paris in the seventh century, had founded a hospital on the very spot where Saint Louis and his mother, Blanche of Castile, were to build the Hôtel Dieu in the thirteenth century, and but the width of the presentsquare from the new Hôtel Dieu, built since the Third Republic came into being. Together with religion and good works justice held sway on the island. In the Roman palace judges interpreted the laws gathered and summarized by Dagobert. In a building near by whose site is covered by the enlarged palace was housed the first organ known in Europe, a gift to Pépin. So mysterious seemed its working that a woman is said to have fallen dead when she heard it.
On the Cité dwelt the merchants, too, for the right bank of the river had not yet become the business section of Paris, although the Grève always was busy with the loading and unloading of boats. The shops in the Cité held stocks of rich stuffs and of gold and silver vessels and ornaments, chiefly of home manufacture, for the trade that had grown up in Gallo-Roman days was rapidly dying out in the unsympathetic atmosphere of constant strife.
Back from the river on the right bank were monasteries in whose great size the papal visitor must have delighted as he did in the establishment dedicated to the patron saint of Paris on the hill now called by her name, the Mont Sainte Geneviève, and in the abbey of Saint Germain-des-Prés, rich in lands and serfs and so gorgeous with Spanish booty that its church was called Saint Germain-le-Doré—The Gilded.
Charlemagne (768-814), son of Pépin le Bref, saw a splendid vision of a united Gaul, but his plan was not suited to a period when the German belief in the might of the strong-armed individual was laying the foundations of the feudal system. He himself was German and established his capital not at Paris, but nearer the German boundary, where he felt more at home. He visited Paris, however, lending the splendor of his presence to the services of dedication which marked the completion of the church of Saint Denis. Under the emperor’s direction his adviser, Alcuin of York, established in Paris the first of those schools which have made the city through the centuries one of the chief educational centers of the world. Charlemagne himself never learned to write, it is said, but his intelligence appreciated the value of learning and he first offered to the students of Europe the hospitality which Paris has given them with the utmost generosity ever since. To-day foreign students are admitted to the University of France on exactly the same terms as native students.
An equestrian statue of the Emperor, his horse led by Roland and Oliver, stands before the cathedral of Notre Dame.
Not only was Charlemagne’s kingdom divided after his death, but his strength as well seemedto have shared the shattering. His descendants were men of small force. Louis le Débonnaire, (814-840) succeeded the great king. Louis’ three sons, Lothair, Louis, and Charles the Bald divided the vast possessions into three parts.
The oath by which Louis pledged himself to support Charles against Lothair has an especial interest for scholars because it is the oldest known example of the Romance tongue which succeeded the Low Latin of the Gallo-Romans. The oath was given at Strasburg, the armies of Louis and Charles witnessing, in March, 842.
The weakness of Charlemagne’s successors helped the growth in power of the individual nobles. The feudal system developed without check. Families made themselves great by their fighting strength. Dukes and counts held sway without hindrance in their own dominions. Much as this added to their importance it was a disadvantage to them when there was need for concerted action against an enemy. Once Charlemagne saw the piratical crafts of the Northmen enter one of his harbors and he prophesied that they would bring misfortune to his people when he was no longer living to guard them. His prophecy came true, and when the sea robbers penetrated into the country by way of the big northern rivers and attacked the cities on the Seine and the Loire, sacking the churches andcarrying away the riches of the monasteries, there was no concerted action among the nobles, and destruction and loss went on little hindered by the inadequate efforts of this or that feudal lord. Paris itself was pillaged more than once, and the abbeys of Saint Denis and Saint Germain-des-Prés paid unwilling tribute to the boldness of the invaders.
Charlemagne’s grandsons were not of the mettle to deal sharply with the Northmen. Charles the Bald preferred diplomacy to fighting. His nephew, Charles the Fat, once more united the great king’s possessions, but he was no warrior and when the terrible foes appeared in the Seine he was not ashamed to buy them off. Again and again they came, each time ravaging more fiercely, each time approaching nearer and nearer to Paris which they now threatened to destroy. It was in 885 that Rollo or Rolf, called the Ganger or Walker, because he was so huge that no horse could carry him, led a persistent band before whom the Parisians abandoned their suburbs and withdrew behind the walls of the Cité. They fortified the bridges leading to the northern and southern banks, and under their protection sustained a siege of a year and a half. Abbo, one of the monks of the monastery of Saint Germain-des-Prés, has told us about it in a narrative poem of some 1,200 lines. It all sounds as if thedays of Cæsar had come again. The Northmen used machines for hurling weapons and fireballs into the city, and floated fireboats down the river to destroy the bridges. The Parisians retaliated from the wall and the towers. The leaders were Eudes, count of Paris and of the district around the city, and Gozlin, bishop of Paris, both of whom fought manfully, and also took intelligent care to foster the courage of their people. Not a day passed without fighting, and although success usually rested with the practised Northmen the Parisians did not become discouraged or demoralized. The most dramatic episode of the siege came at a time when the swollen Seine swept away the Petit Pont leading to the southern bank, and cut off from their friends the defenders of the Petit Châtelet on the mainland. The garrison numbered but a dozen men and they fought with superb courage until every one of them was killed.
Abbo’s story tells of sorties to secure food, of negotiations that fell through, of a journey made by Eudes to seek help from the Emperor and of the suspicion of treachery that his long absence cast upon him until he banished it by cutting his way through his foes into the town again. His return heartened the besieged, but the besiegers were not disheartened. Hot weather lowered the Seine and an attacking party found footingoutside the walls of the island and built a fire against one of the gates. Then in truth the very saints were called on to give aid. Holy Sainte Geneviève’s body had been in some way brought into the Cité from its resting place on the southern hill, and now it was carried about the town that she had succored three centuries before. The trusting declared that they saw Saint Germain in spirit-guise upon the wall encouraging the defenders.
At last Charles appeared upon the hill of Montmartre, but while the plucky fighters in the beleaguered city were preparing to go forth to meet him they learned that once again he had bought off the invading army.
The fat king was deposed and died soon after and again the regal possessions were divided. Paris and its surroundings, the Île de France, fell (887) to Eudes, the candidate of a party of independent nobles who admired his fine work in the defense of the city.
The end of the siege did not mean the end of the new king’s troubles with Rollo. That sturdy opponent never ceased his fighting though his invasions became in time not ravages but reasonably ordered campaigns, since he did not destroy what he gained, and sometimes even repaired the damage he had done. Fortune was impartial. Now Rollo defeated Eudes, now Eudes defeatedRollo. The king’s most famous success was at Montfaucon, then northeast of Paris, but now within the fortifications. For five hundred years before the Revolution there stood on this spot a gibbet three stories high on which one hundred and twenty criminals could be hung at once. The man who built it was one of its victims.
Loyalty to the royal family led to the restoration of the Carlovingian line after the death of Eudes. Charles, called the Simple, a youth of nineteen, was set upon the throne and found himself faced at once by the problem of crushing or checking the perpetual invasion. When no solution had been found after thirteen years the king attempted conciliation. He offered Rollo his daughter in marriage and a considerable piece of territory provided that the rover should acknowledge himself Charles’s vassal and should become a Christian. Rollo considered this proposition for a period of three months and then consented to parley with the king over details. They went with their followers to a town not far from Paris where they ranged themselves on opposite sides of a stream and communicated by messenger. Rollo seems to have made no difficulty on the subject of his bride or of his religion, but he was fastidious as to the land he should receive. No one knew better than he the character and condition of northern France, and he rejected one proposed section after another on the plea of its being too swampy or too close to the sea or—brazenly enough—too seriously hurt by the harrying of the Northmen! When at last he deigned to accept what came to be called Normandy a further difficulty arose because he refused to acknowledge his vassalship by kneeling before the king and kissing his foot. He had never bent the knee to any one, he said, and he never would. He was willing to do it vicariously, however, and he directed one of his followers to offer the feudal salute. But his proxy had been trained in the same school. Stooping suddenly he seized Charles’s foot and raised it to his lips, oversetting the king and provoking bursts of laughter from the Northmen and of indignation from the Franks.
Charles found it prudent to swallow his rage and he was rewarded by gaining an admirable colony. The Northmen or Normans became excellent settlers and their coming invigorated a people whose feeble monarchs had represented only too well their own characteristics. It was largely through this vigorous northern influence that, when a break occurred in the Carlovingian line, Hugh Capet, duke of France and count of Paris, a descendant of Eudes’ brother Robert, was elevated (987) by the barons to the throne which his descendants in the direct line occupiedfor some three hundred years. The family never has died out. Louis XVI in prison was called “Citizen Capet;” the duke of Orleans, pretender to the non-existent French throne, is a twentieth century representative.
The tenth century found Paris reduced to practically its size when Cæsar sent Labienus to attack it. The Northmen had destroyed thefaubourgson the once flourishing left bank, and it was only by degrees that the abbeys of Sainte Geneviève and of Saint Germain-des-Prés replaced their buildings to meet the needs of the population slowly growing around them once more.
The northern bank was even more forlorn, with but a chapel or two to lighten its waste places, and an insignificant blockhouse, perhaps built by the Northmen, where to-day the Louvre stands magnificent.
Packed into the Cité were the houses and the public buildings of such population as the wars had left. A street led across the island from north to south, connecting the two bridges; another from east to west between the cathedral and the palace. Around the open square made by their crossing clustered the shops and markets. Wooden dwellings filled every alley and even crouched against the huge encircling wall. Nobles in armor, their servitors in leather, ecclesiastics with mail beneath their robes, merchants in more peaceful guise, peasants in walking trim—all these carried on the every-day life of this city which is seemingly immortal since fire and sword and flood have laid it low repeatedly but only for such brief time as it takes for it to grow again.
NEVER in all its many troubled days has France been more in need of a wise head and a steady hand than it was when in 987 the lords gave to Hugh Capet the name of King of France. He was already Count of Paris and Duke of France, that is, of the Île de France, the district around Paris. When he was chosen king the title meant only that a few powerful nobles promised him their fidelity. Back of this insignificant fact, however, loomed theideaof kingship remembered from the Roman days of centralized power. Combined with this idea was the governing principle of the new feudalism which emphasized the duty of every man to be loyal to his superior with obedience and support, to his inferior with protection. Thus the title of king meant much or little in proportion as the holders of great possessions lived up to their oaths of allegiance. The weakness of the royal person was the foundation weakness of the feudal system which
France at Time of Hugh Capet.(At the dates indicated the provinces came under the French crown)
France at Time of Hugh Capet.(At the dates indicated the provinces came under the French crown)
France at Time of Hugh Capet.
(At the dates indicated the provinces came under the French crown)
nominally linked the whole of society in an inter-dependent chain, but really fostered the strength of the individual.
Under such conditions it was only the man of unusual force who could maintain himself at a pitch of power greater than that of subordinates who were his equals in all but name. Hugh Capet proved himself such a man, fighting, cajoling, buying his way through a reign of constant disturbance, but strong enough at its end to leave his crown to his son without opposition from the nobles.
A medieval tradition had it that Hugh was the son of a butcher of Paris. A fourteenth centurychansoncalled “Hugh the Butcher” encouraged thebourgeoisto believe in the possibility of a like elevation. Dante refers to the story in the “Divine Comedy.” He hears a shade on the Fifth Ledge of Purgatory say: “I was the root of the evil plant which so overshadows all the Christian land that good fruit is rarely plucked therefrom.... Yonder I was called Hugh Capet: of me are born the Philips and the Lewises by whom of late times France is ruled. I was the son of a butcher of Paris. When the ancient kings had all died out, save one who had assumed the gray garb, I found me with the bridle of the government of the realm fast in my hands.”
Here follows a recital of wicked deeds done by Hugh’s descendants by reason of avarice, in the midst of which is the apostrophe, “O Avarice, what more canst thou do with us since thou hast so drawn thy race unto thyself that it cares not for its own flesh?”
There is no reason to suppose that the tradition concerning Hugh’s birth rested on fact. His descent from Robert the Strong was direct and he himself was the worthy head of a family that had given to the throne of France one titled and two untitled kings.
The son who followed Hugh was Robert the Pious (996-1031) and he and his successors for a hundred and fifty years labored perseveringly toward that centralization of power in the monarch which came to definite realization in the reign of Philip Augustus (1180-1223), and to establishment under the single-hearted rule of Louis IX, the Saint (1226-1270).
Within three centuries after the accession of the new dynasty Paris attained to the position which she has held ever since—as the head of the nation, leading by virtue of her thought and will, and as the heart of the people, beating with impulses of generosity and love and passion. With Hugh Capet himself her stability began, for he was the first king to make the city his permanent home. The palace at the western end ofthe Cité had been strengthened by Eudes who made of it a square fortress with towers. Here Hugh lived when he was not in the field suppressing the uprisings of the nobles who had elected him. That they were of a spirit so independent as to need a constant curb is to be guessed from a conversation reported to have occurred between Hugh and Adelbert, one of the great lords. “Have a care,” warned Hugh. “Who made you count?” “Who made you king?” instantly retorted the lord. Perhaps it was a wish not to seem to glory over his subjects that impelled Hugh never to wear his crown after the occasion of his coronation. By having his son Robert crowned at the same time he helped secure the stability of his line.
To the west of the palace Hugh planted a garden, and he also added stables, whose care was entrusted to acomte de l’étable, or constable, the title given later and until 1627 to the commander-in-chief of the French army. On the river side of the palace the king rebuilt the Gallo-Roman prison on the spot where now stands the Conciergerie. The keeper of this prison was a noble to whom was given the title of count of the candles,comte des ciergesorconcierge, the name bestowed to-day on a janitor. His pay in the olden days consisted of two fowls a day and the ashes from the king’s fireplace.
To the east of the palace on the spot where the Tribunal of Commerce now rises, there stood in Hugh’s day a Merovingian chapel dedicated to Saint Bartholomew. Legend has it that it was of ancient origin and had been sacred to pagan gods. To secure their overthrow, Saint Denis, it is said, went there to preach, and there it was that he was seized by his enemies. King Hugh enlarged the church and dedicated it not only to Saint Bartholomew but to Saint Magloire as well.
It was during the time of Robert the Pious that society, grown degenerate under the generally base or incompetent kings of the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, reached its lowest ebb of hopelessness and inaction. Modern historians deny that fear of the end of the world when the year 1000 should open had anything to do with the lethargy of this period. Whether they are right or wrong, it cannot be disputed that after the year had begun there was a stirring such as had not been known for two or three generations. Only the church seems to have emerged triumphant in material things, for it now held rich possessions whose deeds of gift, beginning “Because of the approaching end of the world,” seem to hint at an attempt of former owners to be on the safe side in the event of the possible coming of the Day ofJudgment. Whatever the cause, the givers, stripped stark, had to busy themselves to restore their affairs, and some new constructive impulse built noble buildings and inspired a brutalized society with ideals which devoted force to uplifting ends—the protection of the weak and the defense of the church.
Robert did not inherit his father’s energy or administrative ability. He was a handsome man, fond of appearing in public wearing his crown and flowing robes. He was something of a scholar, and so good a musician that he led the choir at Saint Denis and composed hymns which were accepted by the Church. The poor were his especial care and so traded on his good nature that they even snipped the gold tassels and fringe from his garments when he went abroad. At an open table many hundred dined daily at his expense. He was truly pious as his name declared, and, in the manner of the age, he sought to express his religious interest by the building of churches and monasteries. Paris in especial profited by his desire to win eternal favor, for he built or restored churches to the mystic number of seven and twice that number of religious establishments.
King Robert’s domestic life verged on tragedy. He married a distant cousin whom he loved devotedly, but the marriage was not approved by the pope, and when the king and queen refused to separate he excommunicated them. To be excommunicated meant not only that the offender was cut off from the sacraments of the Church, but that he was forbidden all intercourse with his fellow men. Every one fled at sight of the accursed and the few servants left to the royal pair cleansed with fire every plate and cup that they used.
Robert and Bertha finally bowed to the papal decree. Robert then married Constance, daughter of the Count of Toulouse, who proved a sufficient punishment for any and all his sins of omission and commission. In her train came troubadours and southern knights who brought to Robert’s rebuilt and enlarged Paris palace fashions of dress that were regarded as unseemly, manners that were all too frivolous, and characters unworthy of dependence. The novelty caught the fancy of the Parisians, who, according to an old chronicler, “before long reflected only too faithfully the depravity and infamy of their models.”
Constance kept a sharp eye on her husband’s charitable disbursements, and she brought up her sons so badly that Robert’s last years were embittered by their brawlings and rebellions. The king died bitterly lamented by his subjects, who knew enough of the character of his successor to feel strong apprehension concerning their fate at his hands.
The eleventh century, filled by the reigns of Robert, his son, Henry I (1031-1060) and his grandson Philip I (1060-1108), was made terrible by famines and wonderful by the opening of the great adventure of the Crusades. The famine brought to thousands a lingering death beside which the sudden departure attending the end of the world would have been peaceful translation. The Crusades, begun (1096) in exaltation but in a pitiful ignorance of ways and means, ended a hundred and seventy-five years later in selfishness and an accession of knowledge. The ignorance cost a waste of human life horrible to think of; the knowledge moved western Europe to expression in all forms of art, and brought about a feeling of unity which, in France, produced a nation bound by common interests. Beyond any calculation was the impetus given to commerce and to the intellectual life. The ordering of society, the institution of chivalry, the awakening to the vividness of mental activity and of beauty—these three influences touched life under the early Capetians until it grew and ripened into the simple, beauty-loving, God-fearing temper of the thirteenth century, the soul of the Middle Ages.
Henry I (1031-1060), no weakling but nota man of administrative ability, followed his father’s example as a builder. One of his benefactions was the Priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs which was begun in the last year of his reign on the site of a former establishment which had been destroyed by the Normans. It lay well out of the city on the old Roman road leading to the north and was a huge place, a fortified village in itself and quite independent of Paris. A wall of considerable size furnished with round towers surrounded an enclosure in which were a church, a refectory, a cloister, a chapter-house, an archive tower, a field for the pasturing of cattle, gardens for the raising of vegetables, and a cemetery for the burial of the dead. The wall has gone to-day except for one of the round towers which was preserved and rebuilt through the intercession of Victor Hugo when the straightening of a street called for its destruction. The field and gardens and the cemetery are now hidden beneath houses and pavements, but the church, whose erection lasted from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and the refectory, finished in the thirteenth century, have been preserved as parts of the Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers, established by the Convention in 1794 as a technical school and museum of machines and scientific instruments. The church, secularized, serves as an exhibition hallfor machinery, an incongruous and somewhat shocking combination. The refectory is put to the more suitable use of housing the technical library. Both are exquisite examples, and the church is the oldest existing instance in the city, of that Gothic architecture which sprang into being in the twelfth century as if to symbolize with its stretching height and its soaring spires, its delicate workmanship and its brilliancy of light and coloring, the aspiration toward the high and the beautiful which filled men’s desires after they came in contact with the appealing mysticism and the dazzling loveliness of the East.
Like his father Henry had trouble with his wives—there were three of them—and the marital affairs of his son, Philip I (1060-1108), were even more involved. Becoming violently infatuated with Bertrade, the fourth wife of the Count of Anjou, Philip sent away his wife, Bertha, and arranged with Bertrade during a church service that she should submit to being kidnapped. No bishop would marry them and it was only after long search that a priest was found sufficiently timid or sufficiently avaricious to yield his conscience to the royal demand. Excommunication followed promptly, and for twelve years the coming of Philip and Bertrade to a city silenced the church bells, which rangout joyfully again as they left. So bad was the effect upon his people of their king’s obstinate wrong-doing that the pope at last consented to an examination of the royal offender. All the bishops of France met in Paris on the first day of December, 1104. The Bishop of Orleans and the Bishop of Paris waited upon Philip and asked whether he were prepared to change his manner of life. He said that he was and accordingly appeared before the ecclesiastical body barefooted and seemingly penitent. Kneeling he promised atonement and swore to put aside Bertrade. Bertrade took a similar oath. Neither of them kept it, but so willing was everybody to feign blindness after this form of expiation that two years later the monks of Saint Nicholas at Angers received them both cordially, and Bertrade’s discarded husband dined at the same table with his successor and slept in the same room with him.
Philip never was a friend of the church though he did not in later life carry into effect depredations such as he planned when young, a real theft, in fact, which, through a miraculous intervention, never came to pass. Feeling a twinge of royal poverty—which does not mean that he was really very poor—he went with one of his officers to Saint Germain-des-Prés to take possession of some part of its riches. As theyapproached the treasury the king’s companion was stricken blind, a circumstance that put the thieving monarch to flight in terror. Yet the check was not lasting for he and his courtiers so corrupted some of the nunneries and monasteries of Paris that the Bishop of Paris was obliged to disperse the establishments. One of the largest, a convent, was on the Cité on the site of the present Prefecture of Police.
Having all this trouble with the pope and the church on his hands it is not to be wondered at that Philip was not stirred by Peter the Hermit’s preaching of the First Crusade. Indeed, no great ruler went on this first expedition, though the enlistment of many strong lords and their feudal following, and the unwise rush of whole families—women and children as well as men and youths—lost many lives to France in this most French of all the crusades.
Though not of a temper to sympathize personally with a love of learning Philip had intelligence enough and kingly pride enough to see the advantage to Paris of a concentration of schools in his capital. He never interfered with the teaching of the religious houses, and during his reign and immediately after at least four schools had obtained a more than local reputation. As the church of Saint Denis sheltered the tombs of the kings it was fitting that theabbey should instruct the sons of the nobles; the cathedral of Notre Dame stood in the heart of the Cité, and there the sons of the merchants were trained, one of their teachers being William of Champeaux whose eloquence knew no equal until it was matched and surpassed by one of his pupils, a young man from Brittany, Abélard. Abélard learned what many others have learned before and since, that it is both tactless and unprofitable to outshine your so-called “betters.” He was sent away from Paris. It was not long before he was summoned back by general acclaim, and joined the lecturers of the third great school of the time, the favorite of the foreign students, that of the abbey of Sainte Geneviève. His popularity there so displeased William of Champeaux that he severed his connection with the school of Notre Dame and founded the school and abbey of Saint Victor, on the south bank, east of the island. This abbey was suppressed during the Revolution and Napoleon built on its site the Halle aux Vins where the city’s supply of wine is stored in bond.
Of these four schools the one to which Abélard attached himself acquired a drawing reputation throughout all Europe, and scholars from England and Germany and Italy sought him eagerly, often enjoying the privilege of sitting under him at the expense of a long journey onfoot and of a life of privation when Paris was reached. Abélard’s thesis was “Do not believe what you cannot understand”—the time-honored cry of the independent thinker. The conservatives bided their time; there was no use contending with a man in whom youth, beauty, learning and eloquence flowered in a magical persuasiveness.
Unfortunately for Abélard’s career he was invited by Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral, to enter his household as tutor of his niece, Héloise. It was a rash experiment. In a narrow street of the Cité, twisting about in the space north of the cathedral, the section where the canons and canonesses used to live, there is still shown the site of the garden where tutor and pupil, soon grown lovers, met in secret and plighted a troth that was to bring upon them both suffering and shame—for Abélard the end of his rise in the church, for Héloise, the cloister. They were married and lived for a time where now stands number nine on the Quai aux Fleurs, looking across the Seine to the right bank. Fulbert separated them, but even the conservatives were shocked at the hideous revenge which sent Abélard away from Paris only to be reunited with Héloise after her death in a convent twenty years after the death of her lover. To-day their tomb in Père Lachaise is the most visited of allthe resting places of the illustrious in this famous cemetery.
Louis VI (1108-1137), called “the Wideawake” and “the Fat,” was a monarch who did much and planned more. Tall, handsome, energetic, serious, he was the author of policies which in later days developed important results. His accession found his kingdom surrounded by nobles who were nominally his subjects but really enemies of uncommon vigor awaiting the first chance to take their liege lord by surprise. He needed something more than his present resources to cope with the situation, and he met it by making for his son an advantageous marriage which won him the adherence of Poitou and Guienne, and by permitting in his adversaries’ domains,but not in his own, the establishment of communes—self-governing towns which paid for their privileges by supporting him against the nobles who ordinarily would have received their feudal obedience. Both these steps proved of substantial value to the crown, the first adding a large piece of territory to the royal possessions in the next reign, and the other developing a new social class, thebourgeoisieor town dwelling class, whose democratic spirit grew so rapidly that Louis IX in the next century had to check its advance if he would have his own unchecked. It has never been long subdued, however; it smoldered until it burst into the flame of the Revolution; it persists to-day as the genius of the Third Republic.
Paris never was a commune, but, in compensation for remaining under the rulership of the king and his provost (who lived in the Grand Châtelet built to defend the northern end of the bridge from the Cité as the Petit Châtelet held the southern bank) it received certain unusual privileges. Among them was the monopoly of water transportation between Paris and Mantes granted by Louis VI to the Corporation of Water Merchants. This corporation was the most powerful of the merchants’ guilds in whose hands rested the municipal administration.
Louis’ methods, and those of his schoolmate and adviser, Suger, abbot of Saint Denis, encouraged the growth of the city, for in this reign it began once more to increase briskly on both banks of the river. As in the earlier centuries, the pleasant country on the left bank proved more attractive than did the rough land on the right. The south side permitted streets to wander as widely as they willed, but on the north the newcomers were pushed into a crowded section along the river. Marsh and forest behind separated this compact district from Saint Martin-des-Champs. Even at this early stage thenorthern settlement, grouped around the Grève where the shipping was concentrated, was becoming the business part of Paris. At a discreet distance outside were the markets on exactly the spot where the Halles Centrales stand to-day, and just within the settlement Louis built for the benefit of the market men and women the church of Saint Jacques-la-Boucherie, now entirely destroyed except for a sixteenth century tower which stands in ornate dignity in a leafy square around which nineteenth century steam trams and twentieth century automobiles hoot and whirl.
To Louis VI is attributed the building of the second city wall, piecing out its predecessor so as to protect the suburbs on the right bank. He was interested, too, in religious establishments. He added to the number of the clergy of the chapel of Saint Nicholas near the palace, making part of their emolument six hogsheads of wine apiece from his own vineyards. He repaired Notre Dame, already five centuries old. He was a patron of Saint Denis, where he had been educated and where he adopted as the royal banner theoriflammeof the saint. He dedicated a church of the Cité to Sainte Geneviève in gratitude for her staying an epidemic of fever. He had the heads of cattle carved over the door of the church with which he honored Saint Peter—Saint Pierre-aux-Boeufs—for the especial benefit of the butchers of the city.
On top of Montmartre, standing demurely to-day beside the glittering basilica of the Sacred Heart, is the little church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre built by Louis as the chapel of a Benedictine abbey. Its restoration has been completed within the last decade, and its cold, undecorated severity compels a realization of monastic cheerlessness and of how acceptable must have been the reaction to the colorful warmth and grace of the Gothic. Though their church was not beautiful the Benedictines had no reason to be uncomfortable, for Louis granted to them a whole village and sundry estates, and in addition such eminently secular property as a monopoly of the baking privileges of certain ovens, a slaughter-house, the confiscated house of an Italian money-changer, and the exclusive right to fish in certain parts of the Seine.
Up to this point the buildings mentioned have but little to show to modern eyes beyond their ancient character and perhaps their form. A Roman bath, a Merovingian tower on the Church of Saint Germain-des-Prés, a rebuilt tower of Saint Martin’s Priory, two aged columns in Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre—these are but fragments of the old constructions. From this period on, however, it will becomemore and more usual to find large portions of early buildings. One such is the church of Saint Julien-le-Pauvre. Its date is a little later than that of the abbey church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre. It is Gothic at its simplest, yet its pointed windows and arches are prophetic of the beauty to come.
The story of Saint Julien, to whom the church is dedicated, is one of tragic interest. A youth of noble family, he gave himself earnestly to all the pursuits of his time and of his class, his one fault being his love of the cruelties of the chase. One day a dying stag whose doe and fawn he had killed prophesied that he would slay his own father and mother. The prophecy came to pass and Julien, in horror at the misfortune that had befallen him, left home and wife and wealth and wandered in poverty through the world seeking whom he might help. At last he established himself on a river bank in a hut where he sheltered travelers through the night, and in the morning ferried them across the stream. There he lived a life of expiation till death took him.
It was in the sixth century that a pilgrim’s hostel was built in Saint Julien’s honor on the south side of the Seine. There Saint Gregory of Tours lodged in 580, and there the Normans came in 886 and destroyed it. In thetwelfth century it was rebuilt as a part of the Abbey of Longpont. Since then the unpretentious building has had a varied history. At one time it served as the general assembly hall of the University; again it became the chapel of the hospital, the Hôtel Dieu. During the Revolution it served as a storehouse for fodder. At some time the nave was destroyed, leaving in the present courtyard a well which once was beneath the roof of the church. The existing edifice, which is merely the choir of the twelfth century building, is used for the Greek service.
Thanks to his father’s prudent arrangements Louis VII, called “the Young” and “the Pious” (1137-1180), inherited a far larger and stronger territory than had Louis VI. He was by no means his father’s equal in intelligence or energy and his reign was unmarked by events notable either for Paris or for France. His happiest days were those that he spent in the cloisters of Notre Dame, he said. His father was happiest in the field.
A few years after Louis’ accession he became involved in a quarrel with the pope over a candidate for a bishopric. When the Count of Champagne sided with the Holy Father Louis invaded his domains. During the siege of the town of Vitry no fewer than thirteen hundred people who had taken refuge in a church wereburned to death with the destruction of the building. Remorse for this disaster for which he was responsible made him lend a willing ear to the exhortations of Saint Bernard, an opponent of Abélard’s heresies who was now preaching the Second Crusade, and when Pope Eugenius came in person to France he gave the French king the pilgrim’s equipment and theoriflammeof Saint Denis in the Saint’s own church. The crusade ended in bitter disaster, and Louis died before the Third Crusade was under way, but his interest in the Holy Wars led to his patronage of the order of Knights Templar, which had been founded to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher. At the time when Pope Eugenius went to Paris there was a mighty gathering there of Templars, and probably it was then that King Louis granted them the land not far from the Priory of Saint Martin on which they built a huge establishment, part fortification, part religious house, whose surroundings they made fair by draining the marshes and converting waste land into fruitful fields.
The king does not seem to have been the cause of much civic improvement of Paris in spite of his long reign. He built an oratory to Notre Dame-de-l’Étoile near the palace. If we may judge by his usual oath—“By the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem”—it must have been he whogave the name to the cemetery of the Holy Innocents and its chapel, though probably they were established before his day. The burying ground was near the Halles, and it was laid out when that section was far beyond the crowded part of the town. By the time of the accession of Philip Augustus (1180), however, the population had pushed northwards from the busy river bank, the marsh had been made habitable, and the quickly increasing cemetery stood on the outskirts of the town, not in the country, and needed the wall which Philip gave it.
The Pont au Change, the bridge leading from the right bank to the island near the palace—perhaps the very line which the Grand Pont drew across the river at the time of the siege by the Normans—received its name at this time. There were houses built upon it from end to end, and Louis allowed the money-changers to do business upon it along one side and permitted the goldsmiths to establish themselves on the other. For four centuries this was the fashionable promenade of Paris until Henry IV finished the Pont Neuf whose open expanse across the western tip of the Cité gave more space for display. When a new king made his formal entry into Paris it was customary for a huge flock of birds to be let loose from the Pont auChange that they might carry the glad news abroad.
Eleanor of Aquitaine who had brought Louis and France so handsome a dowry proved a wife whose conduct her husband could not countenance, though he loved her with a stern fondness. Their marriage was annulled. Within a few months Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet who became Henry II of England and she gave her new husband possessions in France which, added to those which he already had as lord of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou and Maine, made him richer in French lands than the king to whom he owed allegiance. Then began the friction between the two countries which it has required centuries to still. Louis was twice married after his separation from Eleanor. His last wife was Alix or Adelaide of Champagne, whose marriage, consecration and coronation on a November day in 1160 were the ceremonies of the last brilliant scene enacted within the walls of the ancient Merovingian church of Notre Dame, soon to be replaced by the building which ennobles the Cité to-day.
After Louis’ death there came to the throne a king for whom the bird-sellers of the Pont au Change might properly have sent forth double the usual number of feathered messengers ofgladness, for Philip the Great was to make France understand for the first time the spirit of nationality, and under him Paris was to develop into the brain that ordered the members.