Paris in the Middle Ages
In the 10th century Paris was a provincial cathedral city of little political or economic significance, but under the kings of the Capetian dynasty who ruled France between 987 and 1328, it developed into an important commercial and religious center and the seat of the royal administration of the country. The Île de la Cité became the site of the royal palace and the new cathedral of Notre-Dame, begun in 1163. The Left Bank was occupied by important monasteries, including the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés and the Abbey of St Genevieve. In the late 12th century, the collection of colleges on the left bank became one of the leading universities in Europe. The Right Bank, where the ports, central markets, artisans and merchants were located, became the commercial center of the city, and the merchants assumed an important role in running the city. Paris became a center for the creation of illuminated manuscripts and the birthplace of Gothic architecture. Despite civil wars, the plague, and foreign occupation, Paris became the most populous city in the Western world during the Middle Ages.
Geography
The location of Paris was an important factor in its growth and strategic importance during the Middle Ages. Due to its position at the confluence of the Seine and the rivers Oise, Marne and Yerres, the city was abundantly supplied with food from the surrounding region, which was rich in grain fields and vineyards. The rivers also offered access for trading by boat with other cities in France and locations as far away as Spain and Germany. The Seine, without its stone embankments, was about twice as wide as it is today, and a tributary, the river Bièvre, entered the Seine about where the Jardin des Plantes is today. The largest island in the river, the Île de la Cité, was the easiest place to build bridges across the Seine; it became the crossing point on the important north-south trade route between Orléans and Flanders. The island was also the easiest place to defend; it gave the Parisians a sanctuary when the city was attacked by the Huns in the 5th century and Vikings in the 9th century. The Roman prefects had built their residences on the west end of the island; the first royal palace was built on the same site in the early Middle Ages. The first cathedral and the residence of the bishop were built on the east end of the island at about the same time.The Romans had built their city on the Left Bank, because it was of higher elevation and less prone to flood; the forum was located on a hill about high, later called the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève after the patron saint of the city. In the early Middle Ages, the hill became the site of two important monasteries, the Abbey of Saint-Victor and the Abbey of St Genevieve, while another large and prosperous monastery, the Abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés, was built in the fields along the Seine farther west. In the Middle Ages, the monasteries attracted thousands of scholars and students who formed colleges that became the University of Paris in the beginning of the 13th century.
The Right Bank was swampy, but it was also the best place for landing boats. The gravel beach in which the Hôtel de Ville stands today became the port and the commercial center of the city, where the central market was located. The trade route from Orléans to Flanders passed between two large buttes on the Right Bank; the same route is followed today by the trains to Brussels and Amsterdam. The Romans probably built a temple to Mercury on the highest point at, which they called "Mount Mercury". It was the site of the martyrdom of Saint Denis and two other missionaries and thereafter was known as the "Mountain of Martyrs" or "Montmartre". During the Middle Ages, it lay outside the city walls, and was the site of a large convent and a pilgrimage church. During the course of the Middle Ages, the swampy land on the Right Bank was filled in and most of the city's growth took place there. This geographic distribution, with the administration and the courts on the island, the merchants on the Right Bank, and the University on the Left Bank, remained largely the same throughout the history of the city down to the present day.
Population
There are no reliable figures for the population of Paris from before 1328, when an official count was made of the number of parishes in the kingdom of France and the number of feux, or households, in each parish. Paris was reported to contain thirty-five parishes and 61,098 households: estimating three and a half people per household, the population of the city would have been at least two hundred thousand persons. Other historians, using the same data, have estimated the population at between 220,000 and 270,000.The bubonic plague struck Paris for the first time in 1348 and returned frequently. Due to the plague and the outbreak of the Armagnac–Burgundian Civil War in 1407, the population fell to about one hundred thousand by 1422. Following the end of the wars, the population increased quickly; by 1500, the population had reached about 150,000.
In the Middle Ages, Paris was already attracting immigrants from the provinces of France and other countries of Europe. A study of the names in the Livres des Tailles, or parish records, between 1292 and 1313 showed 155 persons listed as L’Anglois ; 144 called Le Breton, plus forty-seven from Burgundy, forty-four from Normandy, forty-two from Picardy, thirty four from Flanders, and twenty-eight from Lorraine. In addition, there were many more from the cities and towns of the Paris basin.
The city walls
The borders of Paris were defined in the Middle Ages by a series of walls. During the Merovingian era of Frankish rule, the Île de la Cité had ramparts, and some of the monasteries and churches were protected by wooden stockades walls, but the residents of the Left and Right Banks were largely undefended. When Vikings and other invaders attacked, the residents of Paris took sanctuary on the island. The first city wall was built on the Right Bank in the 11th century; it was about 1,700 meters long and protected an area of the Right Bank from about the modern Hôtel de Ville to the Louvre. It had about thirty towers and four to six gates. The much smaller population of the Left Bank was unprotected.By 1180, the city had grown to 200 hectares. To give all Parisians a sense of security, King Philip II decided to build a new wall entirely around the city. Work began between 1190 and 1208 on the Right Bank and 1209 and 1220 on the Left Bank. The new wall was 5,400 meters long, with ten gates and seventy-five towers, and surrounded about 273 hectares, including much land that was still gardens and pastures. Portions of this wall can still be seen in the Le Marais district and other neighborhoods today.
The city continued to grow rapidly, particularly on the Right Bank to fill in the vacant tracts within the new wall and spill beyond it. Between 1358 and 1371, Charles V built another new wall 4,900 meters long to enclose 439 hectares. Most of this wall was on the Right Bank; on the slower-growing Left Bank, the king simply repaired the old wall of Philip II. This new wall included a powerful new fortress at the eastern edge of the city at the Porte Saint-Antoine called the Bastille. These walls were modified to make them more resistant to a new strategic weapon of the Middle Ages, the cannon, and no new walls were built until the 16th century.
As the city pressed against the city walls, it also grew vertically. The streets were very narrow, averaging only four meters wide. The average house in the 14th century had a ground floor, two floors of residential space, and another smaller residential space under the roof on the third floor, but there were also a large number of houses with four floors on the Rue Saint-Denis, the Rue Saint-Honoré and other streets, and a five-story house is recorded on the Rue des Poulies. Given that the area of Paris within the city walls in 1328 was 439 hectares, and the population was two hundred thousand, many of those counted probably lived outside the city walls. It remained very high in the heart of the city, except during times of war and the plague, until the reconstruction by Napoleon III and Haussmann in the mid-19th century.
Royal Palaces in France
The Palais de la Cité
The Roman governors of Lutetia, the ancient predecessor of modern Paris, maintained their residence on the western end of the Île de la Cité, where the Palais de Justice stands today. A castle was built on the same site in the early Middle Ages. After Hugh Capet was elected King of the French on 3 July 987, he resided in this castle, but he and the other Capetian kings spent little time in the city, and had other royal residences in Vincennes, Compiegne and Orléans. The administration and archives of the kingdom travelled wherever the king went.Robert the Pious, who ruled from 996 to 1031, stayed in Paris more often than his predecessors. He rebuilt the old castle, making it a walled rectangle 110 by 135 meters in size, with numerous towers and massive central tower, or donjon, and added a chapel named for Saint Nicholas. However, it was not until the 12th century and the reigns of Louis VI and Louis VII of France that Paris became the principal residence of the kings, and the term Palais de la Cité was commonly used. Philip II placed the royal archives, the treasury and courts within the royal palace, and thereafter the city functioned, except for brief periods, as the capital of the kingdom of France.
File:Louvre - Les Très Riches Heures.jpg|thumb|left|300px|The fortress of the Louvre, begun in 1190, as it appeared in 1412–1416 in the Très Riches Heures du Duc de Berry, month of October
Louis IX, or Saint Louis, the grandson of Philip II, gave the palace a new symbol that combined royal and religious symbolism. Between 1242 and 1248, on the site of the old chapel, he built the Sainte-Chapelle shortly before he departed for the Seventh Crusade. It housed the sacred relics Louis had acquired, which were believed to be the crown of thorns and wood from the cross of the Crucifixion of Christ, purchased in 1238 from the governor of Constantinople. These symbols allowed Louis to present himself not just as the king of France, but as the leader of the Christian world. The chapel had two levels, the lower level for ordinary servants of the king, and the upper level for the king and royal family. Only the king was allowed to touch the crown of thorns, which he took out each year on Good Friday.
King Philip IV reconstructed the royal residence on the Île de la Cité, transforming it from a fortress into a palace. Two of the great ceremonial halls still remain within the structure of the Palais de Justice. The palace complex included the residence of the king, with a private chapel, or oratory; a building for the law courts; a large hall for ceremonies; and a donjon, or tower, which was still standing in the mid-19th century. The palace also had a private walled garden at the end of the island and a private dock, from which the king could travel by boat to his other residences, the Louvre fortress on the Right Bank and the Tour de Nesle on the Left Bank.
In the later Middle Ages, the Palais de le Cité was the financial and judicial center of the kingdom; the home of the courts of justice and the Parlement de Paris, a high court composed of nobles. The royal offices took their names from the different chambers, or rooms, of the palace; the Chambre des Comptes, was the treasury of the kingdom, and the courts were divided between the Chambre civile and the Chambre criminelle. The tangible symbol of royal power was the large black marble table in the hall of the king, which was used for royal banquets, and also for ceremonial events, the taking of oaths and sessions
of the military high courts.
Once Paris became the permanent seat of the government, the number of officials began to grow. This created a demand for educated lawyers, clerks and administrators. This need was met by the incorporation of the many small colleges on the Left Bank into the University of Paris. Also, since the king had a permanent residence in Paris, the members of the nobility followed his example and built their own palatial town houses. The presence of the nobles in Paris created a large market for luxury goods, such as furs, silks, armor and weapons, causing the merchants of the Right Bank to thrive. It also created a need for money-lenders, some of whom became the richest individuals in Paris.