The first Carolingian, Pippin the Short, occasionally lived at Paris, sometimes in the palace of Julian, sometimes in the old palace of the Roman governors of the town, at the lower end of the island; the latter ultimately became the usual residence. Under Charlemagne Paris ceased to be capital; and under Charles the Bald it became the seat of mere counts. But the invasions of the Northmen attracted general attention to the town, and showed that its political importance could no longer be neglected. When the suburbs were pillaged and burned by the pirates, and the city regularly besieged in 885, Paris was heroically defended by its “lords,” and the emperor Charles the Fat felt bound to hasten from Germany to its relief. The pusillanimity which he showed in purchasing the retreat of the Normans was the main cause of his deposition in 887, while the courage displayed by Count Odo, or Eudes, procured him the crown of France; Robert, Odo’s brother, succeeded him; and, although Robert’s son, Hugh the Great, was only duke of France and count of Paris, his power counterbalanced that of the last of the Carolingians, shut up in Laon as their capital.
With Hugh Capet in 987 the capital of the duchy of France definitively became the capital of the kingdom, and in spite of the frequent absence of the kings, several of whom preferred to reside at Orleans, the town continued to increase in size and population, and saw the development of those institutions which were destined to secure its greatness. Henry I. founded the abbey of St Martin-des-Champs, Louis VI. that of St Victor, the mother-house of an order, and a nursery of literature and theology. Under Louis VII. the royal domain was the scene of one of the greatest artistic revolutions recorded in history: the Romanesque style of architecture was exchanged for the Pointed or Gothic, of which Suger, in his reconstruction of the basilica of St Denis, exhibited the earliest type. The capital could not remain aloof from this movement; several sumptuous buildings were erected; the Romanesque choir of St Germain-des-Prés was thrown down to give place to another more spacious and elegant; and when, in 1163, Pope Alexander III. had solemnly consecrated it, he was invited by Bishop Maurice de Sully to lay the first stone of Notre Dame de Paris, a cathedral on a grander scale than any previously undertaken. Paris still possesses the Romanesque nave of St Germain-des-Prés, preserved when the building was rebuilt in the 12th century; the Pointed choir, consecrated in 1163; and the entire cathedral of Notre Dame, which, completed sixty years later, underwent various modifications down to the beginning of the 14th century. The sacristy is modern; the site previous to 1831 was occupied by the episcopal palace, also built by Maurice de Sully, who by a new street had opened up this part of the island. It was Louis VII. also who granted to the Templars the piece of marshland on the left bank of the Seine on which the Paris Temple,[1] the headquarters of the order in Europe, was built (see Templars).
Philip Augustus may be considered the second founder of Paris. He seldom quitted it save for his military expeditions, and he there built for himself, near St Germain l’Auxerrois, the Louvre, the royal dwelling par excellence, whose keep was the official centre of feudalism. He created or organized a regular system of administration, with its headquarters at Paris; and under his patronage the public lectures delivered at Pré-aux-Clercs were regulated and grouped under the title of a university in 1200.
This university, the most famous and flourishing in Christendom, considerably augmented the local population, and formed as it were a new town on the left side of the river, where the great fortified precincts of the Templars, the important abbeys of Ste Geneviève, St Germain-des-Prés and St Victor, and a vast Carthusian monastery already stood. Colleges were erected to receive the students of the different countries, and became the great meeting-place of the studious youth of all Europe.
The right side of the river, where commerce and industry had taken up their abode, and where the Louvre, the abbey of St Martin, and a large number of secondary religious establishments were already erected, became a centre of activity at least as important as that on the left. The old suburbs, too, were now incorporated with the town and enclosed in the new line of fortifications constructed by Philip Augustus, which, however, did not take in the great abbeys on the left side of the river, and thus obliged them to build defensive works of their own.
Philip Augustus issued from the Louvre a celebrated order, that the streets of the town should be paved. Not far from his palace, on the site of the present Halles Centrales, he laid out an extensive cemetery and a market-place, which both took their name from the Church of the Innocents, a building of the same reign, destroyed at the Revolution. Fountains were placed in all the quarters. As for the lighting of the town, till the close of the 16th century the only lamps were those in front of the madonnas at the street corners. But the first “illumination” of Paris occurred under Philip Augustus: on his return from a victorious expedition to Flanders in 1214 he was welcomed by the Parisians as a conqueror; and the public rejoicings lasted for seven days, “interrupted by no night,” says the chronicler, alluding to the torches and lamps with which the citizens lighted up the fronts of their houses. Ferrand, count of Flanders, the traitor vassal, was dragged behind the king to the dungeons of the Louvre.
In 1226 there was held at Paris a council which, by excommunicating Raymond VII., count of Toulouse, helped to prepare the way for the most important treaty which had as yet been signed in the capital. By this treaty (April 12, 1229) the regent, Blanche of Castile, the widow of Louis VIII., obtained from Raymond VII. a great part of his possessions, while the remainder was secured to the house of Capet through the marriage of Alphonse of Poitiers, brother of St Louis, with Jeanne, the heiress of Languedoc.
In affection for his capital St Louis equalled, or even surpassed, his grandfather Philip, and Paris reciprocated his goodwill. The head of the administration was at that time the provost of Paris, a judiciary magistrate and police functionary whose extensive powers had given rise to the most flagrant abuses. Louis IX. reformed this office and filled it with the judge of greatest integrity to be found in his kingdom. This was the famous Étienne Boileau, who showed such vigilance and uprightness that the capital was completely purged of evildoers; the sense of security thus produced attracted a certain number of new inhabitants, and, to the advantage of the public revenue, increased the value of the trade. It was Étienne Boileau who, by the king’s express command, drew up those statutes of the commercial and industrial gilds of Paris which, modified by the necessities of new times and the caprice of princes, remained in force till the Revolution.
St Louis caused a partial restoration of St Germain l’Auxerrois, his parish church (completed in the 15th century, and deplorably altered under Louis XV.); and besides preferring the palace of La Cité to the Louvre, he entirely rebuilt it, and rendered it one of the most comfortable residences of his time. Of this edifice there still remain, among the buildings of the present Palais de Justice, the great guard-room, the kitchens with their four enormous chimneys, three round towers on the quay, and; one of the marvels of the middle ages, the Sainte Chapelle, erected in 1248 to receive the crown of thorns sent from Constantinople. This church, often imitated during the 13th and 14th centuries, is like an immense shrine in open work; its large windows contain admirable stained glass of its own date, and its paintings and sculptures (restored in the 19th century by Viollet-le-Duc) give a vivid picture of the religious beliefs of the middle ages. It has a lower storey ingeniously arranged, which served as a chapel for the palace servants. The Sainte Chapelle was designed by Pierre de Montereau, one of the most
- ↑ After the suppression of the Templars in 1312 the Temple was assigned to the Knights of St John. It was used as a state prison in the 14th century, and as barracks in the 16th. The church and the greater part of the other buildings survived in the 17th century. At the Revolution the keep (1265 or 1270) alone survived of the Templars’ buildings. It was here that Louis XVI. and the royal family were imprisoned. It became a place of pilgrimage for the Royalists, and was, in consequence, pulled down under the Empire in 1811. Its site is occupied by the Place du Temple.
