The Story of Paris Part 5

[Footnote 56: It was buried in the church of Monreale at Palermo.]

[Footnote 57: Joinville was a brave and tender knight; he tells us that before starting to join the crusaders at Ma.r.s.eilles he called all his friends and household before him, and declared that if he had wronged any one of them reparation should be made. After a severe penance he was a.s.soiled, and as he set forth, durst not turn back his eyes lest his heart should be melted at leaving his fair chateau of Joinville and his two children whom he loved so dearly.]

King Louis was tall of stature, with a spare and graceful figure; his face was of angelic sweetness, with eyes as of a dove, and crowned with abundant fair hair. As he grew older he became somewhat bald and held himself slightly bent. "Never," says Joinville, when describing a charge led by the king, which turned the tide of battle, "saw I so fair an armed man. He seemed to sit head and shoulders above all his knights; his helmet of gold was most fair to see, and a sword of Allemain was in his hand. Four times I saw him put his body in danger of death to save hurt to his people."

[Ill.u.s.tration: INTERIOR OF NOTRE DAME.]

CHAPTER VI

_Art and Learning at Paris_

Two epoch-making developments--the creation of Gothic architecture and the rise of the University of Paris--synchronise with the period covered by the reigns of Philip Augustus and St. Louis, and may now fitly be considered.

The memory of the Norman terror had long pa.s.sed from men's minds. The Isle de France had been purged of robber lords, and with peace and security, wealth and population had increased. The existing churches were becoming too small for the faithful and new and fairer temples replaced the old: the ma.s.sive square towers, the heavy walls and thick pillars of the Norman builders, blossomed into grace and light and beauty. Already in the beginning of the twelfth century the church of St. Denis was in urgent need of extension. On festival days so great were the crowds pressing to view the relics, that many people had been trodden under foot, and Abbot Suger determined to build a larger and n.o.bler church. Great was the enthusiasm of the people as the new temple rose. n.o.ble and burgess, freeman and serf, harnessed themselves like beasts of burden to the ropes and drew the stone from the quarry.

A profound silence reigned, broken only by the murmur of those who confessed their sins when a halt was made. A trumpet sounded, banners were unfurled, and the silent host resumed its way. Arrived at the building the whole mult.i.tude burst forth into a song of praise. All would lend their aid in raising the new house of G.o.d and of His holy martyrs, and the burial-place of their kings. In 1161 Maurice de Sully, a peasant's son, who had risen to become bishop of Paris, determined to erect a great minster adequate to the demands of his time. The old churches of Notre Dame and of St. Stephen[58] and many houses were demolished, and a new street, called of Notre Dame, was made. Sully devoted the greater part of his life and private resources to the work. The king, the pope, seigneurs, guilds of merchants and private persons, vied with each other in making gifts. Two years were spent in digging the foundations of the new Notre Dame, and in 1163 Pope Alexander III. is said to have laid the first stone. In 1182, the choir being finished, the papal legate, Henri de Chateaux-Marcay, consecrated the high altar, and in 1185 the Patriarch of Jerusalem celebrated ma.s.s in the choir. At Sully's death, in 1196, the walls of the nave were erect and partly roofed, and the old prelate left a hundred livres for a covering of lead. The transepts and nave were completed in 1235.

[Footnote 58: The relics were transferred to a new church of St.

Stephen (St. etienne du Mont), built by the abbot of St. Genevieve as a parish church for his servants and tenants.]

In 1240 an ingenious and sacrilegious thief, climbing to the roof to haul up the silver candlesticks from the altar by a noose in a rope, set fire to the altar cloth, and the choir was seriously injured.

Sully's work had been Romanesque, and choir and apse were now rebuilt in the new style, to harmonise with the remainder of the church. By the end of the thirteenth century the chapels round the apse and in the nave, the Porte Rouge and the south portal were added, and the great temple was at length completed. The choir of St. Germain des Pres and the exquisite little church of St. Julien le Pauvre were rebuilt at the end of the twelfth century, and the beautiful refectory of St. Martin des Champs was created about 1220. But the culmination of Gothic art is reached in the wondrous sanctuary that St. Louis built for the crown of thorns, "the most precious piece of Gothic," says Ruskin, "in Northern Europe." Michelet saw a whole world of religion and poetry--tears of piety, mystic ecstasy, the mysteries of divine love--expressed in the marvellous little church, in the fragile and precious paintings of its windows.[59] The work was completed in three years, and has been so admirably restored by Viollet le Duc that the visitor may gaze to-day on this pure and peerless gem almost as St. Louis left it, for the gorgeous interior faithfully reproduces the mediaeval colour and gold. During the Revolution it was used as a granary and then as a club. It narrowly escaped destruction, and men now living can remember seeing the old notices on the porch of the lower chapel--_Propriete nationale a vendre_. All that remains of the relics has long been transferred to the treasury of Notre Dame. The old Quinze-Vingts, the Chartreux, the Cordeliers, St. Croix de la Bretonnerie, St. Catherine, the Blancs Manteaux, the Mathurins and other masterpieces of the Gothic builders have all disappeared.

[Footnote 59: The early gla.s.s-workers were particularly fond of their beautiful red. "Wine of the colour of the windows of the Sainte Chapelle," was a popular locution of the time.]

Gothic architecture was eminently a product of the Isle de France.

"France not only _led_," says Mr. Lethaby, "but _invented_. In a very true sense what we call Gothic is Frenchness of the France which had its centre in Paris." The thirteenth century rivals the finest period of Greek art for purity, simplicity, n.o.bility and accurate science of construction. Imagination was chastened by knowledge, but not systematised into rigid rules. Each master solved his problem in his own way, and the result was a charm, a variety, and a fertility of invention, never surpa.s.sed in the history of art. Early French sculpture is a direct descendant of Greek art, which made its way into Gaul by the Phoenician trade route, and the Merovingian Franks were always in touch with the Eastern Mediterranean, and with the stream of early Byzantine[60] art. French artists achieved a perfection in the representation of the human form which antic.i.p.ated by a generation the work of the Pisani in Italy, for the early thirteenth-century statues on the west front of Chartres Cathedral are carved with a naturalness and grace which the Italian masters never surpa.s.sed, and the marvellously mature and beautiful silver-gilt figure of a king, in high relief, found in 1902 immured in an old house at Bourges and exhibited in 1904 among the Primitifs Francais at the Louvre, was wrought more than a century before the birth of Donatello. Some fragments of the old sculptures that adorned St. Denis and other twelfth and thirteenth-century churches may still be found in the museums of Paris. The influence of the French architects, as Emile Bertaux has demonstrated in the first volume of his _Art dans l'Italie Meridionale_, extended far beyond the limits of France, and is clearly traceable in the fine hunting-palace, erected for Frederic II. in the thirteenth century, at Castello del Monte, near Andria, in Apulia. But of the names of those who created these wonderful productions few are known; the great masterpieces of the thirteenth century are mostly anonymous. Jean de Ch.e.l.les, one of the masons of Notre Dame, has left his name on the south portal and the date, Feb. 12, 1257, on which it was begun, "in honour of the holy Mother of Christ." He was followed by Pierre de Montereau, "master of the works of the church of Blessed Mary at Paris," whose name thus appears in a deed of sale dated 1265.

The Sainte Chapelle is commonly attributed to Pierre de Montereau, but the attribution is a mere guess.

[Footnote 60: The researches of Professor Strzygowski of Gratz, and other authorities in the field of Byzantine and Eastern archaeology, tend to prove the dominant importance of the Christian East in the development of early ecclesiastical architecture and the subordinate influence of Roman models.]

Nor did the love of beauty during this marvellous age express itself solely in architecture. If we were asked to specify one trait which more than any other characterises the "dark ages" and differentiates them from modern times, we should be tempted to say, love of brightness and colour. Within and without, the temples of G.o.d were resplendent with silver and gold, with purple and crimson and blue; the saintly figures and solemn legends on their porches, the capitals, the columns, the groins of the vaultings, the very crest of the roof, were l.u.s.trous with colour and gold. Each window was a complex of jewelled splendour; the pillars and walls were painted or draped with lovely tapestries and gorgeous banners: the shrines and altars glittered like Aaron's breastplate, with precious stones--jasper and sardius and chalcedony, sapphire and emerald, chrysolite and beryl, topaz and amethyst and pearl. The Church illuminated her sacred books with exquisite painting, bound them with precious fabrics, and clasped them with silver and gold; the robes of her priests and ministrants were rich with embroideries. "People," said William Morris, "have long since ceased to take in impressions through their eyes," indeed so insensible, so atrophied to colour have the eyes of moderns grown amid their drab surroundings, that the aspect of a building wherein skilful hands have in some small degree essayed to realise the splendour of the past dazes the beholder; a sense of pain rather than of delight possesses him and he averts his gaze.

Nor were the churches of those early times anything more than an exquisite expression of what men were surrounded by in their daily lives and avocations. The houses[61] and oratories of n.o.ble and burgess were rich with ivories exquisitely carved, with sculptures and paintings, tapestry and enamels: the very utensils of common domestic use were beautiful. Men did not prate of art: they wrought in love and simplicity. The very word art, as denoting a product of human activity different from the ordinary daily tasks of men, was unknown. If painting was an art, even so was carpentry. A mason was an artist: so was a shoemaker. Astronomy and grammar were arts: so was spinning.

Apothecaries and lawyers were artists: so was a tailor. Dante[62] uses the word _artista_ as denoting a workman or craftsman, and when he wishes to emphasise the degeneracy of the citizens of his time as compared with those of the old Florentine race, he does so by saying that in those days their blood ran pure even _nell' ultimo artista_ (in the commonest workman). Let us be careful how we speak of these ages as "dark"; at least there were "retrievements out of the night."

Already before the tenth century the basilica of St. Germain des Pres was known as St. Germain _le dore_ (the golden), from its glowing refulgence, and St. Bernard as we have seen, declaimed against the resplendent colour and gold in the churches of his time. Never since the age of Pericles has so great an effusion of beauty descended on the earth as during the wondrous thirteenth century in the Isle de France and especially in Paris.[63]

[Footnote 61: Brunetto Latini, in the thirteenth century contrasted the high towers and grim stone walls of the fortress-palaces of the Italian n.o.bles with the large, s.p.a.cious and painted houses of the French, their rooms adorned _pour avoir joie et delit_ and surrounded with orchards and gardens.]

[Footnote 62: Par. XVI. 51.]

[Footnote 63: Another delusion of moderns is that there was an absence of personal cleanliness in those ages. In the census of the inhabitants of Paris, who in 1292 were subject to the Taille, there are inscribed the names of no less than twenty-six proprietors of public hot baths, a larger proportion to population than exists to-day, and Dr. Gasquet has described in his _English Monastic Life_ the admirable provisions for personal cleanliness made in mediaeval monasteries.]

We pa.s.s from the enthusiasm of art to that of learning. From earliest times, schools, free to the poor, had been attached to every great abbey and cathedral in France. At the end of the eleventh century four were eminent at Paris: the schools of St. Denis, where the young princes and n.o.bles were educated; of the Parvis Notre Dame, for the training of young _clercs_,[64] the famous _Scola Parisiaca_, referred to by Abelard; of St. Genevieve; and of St. Victor, founded by William of Champeaux, one of the most successful masters of Notre Dame. The fame of this teacher drew mult.i.tudes of young men from the provinces to Paris, among whom there came, about 1100, Peter Abelard, scion of a n.o.ble family of Nantes. By his wit, erudition and dialectical sublety he soon eclipsed his master's fame and was appointed to a chair of philosophy in the school of Notre Dame. William, jealous of his young rival, compa.s.sed his dismissal, and after teaching for a while at Melun, Abelard returned to Paris and opened a school on Mont St.

Genevieve, whither crowds of students followed him. So great was the fame of this brilliant lecturer and daring thinker that his school was filled with eager listeners from all countries of Europe, even from Rome herself.

[Footnote 64: Hence the name of _clerc_ applied to any student, even if a layman.]

Abelard was proud and ambitious, and the highest prizes of an ecclesiastical and scholastic career seemed within his grasp. But Fulbert, canon of Notre Dame, had a niece, accomplished and pa.s.sing fair, Helose by name, who was an enthusiastic admirer of the great teacher. It was proposed that Abelard should enter the canon's house as her tutor, and Fulbert's avarice made the proposition an acceptable one. Abelard, like Arnault Daniel, was a good craftsman in his mother tongue, a facile master of _versi d'amore_, which he would sing with a voice wondrously sweet and supple. Now Abelard was thirty-eight years of age: Helose seventeen. _Amor al cor gentil ratto s'apprende_,[65]

and Minerva was not the only G.o.ddess who presided over their meetings.

For a time Fulbert was blind, but scandal cleared his eyes and Abelard was expelled from the house; Helose followed and took refuge with her lover's sister in Brittany, where a child, Astrolabe, was born.

Peacemakers soon intervened and a secret marriage was arranged, which took place early one morning at Paris, Fulbert being present. But the lovers continued to meet; scandal was again busy and Fulbert published the marriage. Helose, that the master's advancement in the Church might not be impeded, gave the lie to her uncle and fled to the nuns of Argenteuil. Fulbert now plotted a dastardly revenge. By his orders Abelard was surprised in his bed, and the mutilation which, according to Eusebius, Origen performed on himself, was violently inflicted on the great teacher. All ecclesiastical preferment was thus rendered canonically impossible; Abelard became the talk of Paris, and in bitter humiliation retired to the abbey of St. Denis. Before he made his vows, however, he required of Helose that she should take the veil. The heart-broken creature reproached him for his disloyalty, and repeating the lines which Lucan puts into the mouth of Cornelia weeping for Pompey's death, burst into tears and consented to take the veil.

[Footnote 65: "Love is quickly caught in gentle heart."--Inf. V. 100.]

A savage punishment was inflicted by the ecclesiastical courts on Fulbert's ruffians, who were made to suffer the _lex talionis_ and the loss of their eyes: the canon's property was confiscated. The great master, although forbidden to open a school at St. Denis, was importuned by crowds of young men not to let his talents waste, and soon a country house near by was filled with so great a company of scholars that food could not be found for them. But enemies were vigilant and relentless, and he had shocked the timid by doubting the truth of the legend that Dionysius the Areopagite had come to France.

In 1124 certain of Abelard's writings on the Trinity were condemned, and he took refuge at Nogent-sur-Seine, near Troyes, under the patronage of the Count of Champagne. He retired to a hermitage of thatch and reeds, the famous Paraclete, but even there students flocked to him, and young n.o.bles were glad to live on coa.r.s.e bread and lie on straw, that they might taste of wisdom, the bread of the angels. Again his enemies set upon him; he surrendered the Paraclete to Helose and a small sisterhood, and accepted the abbotship of St.

Gildes in his own Brittany. A decade pa.s.sed, and again he was seen in Paris. His enemies now determined to silence him, and St. Bernard, the dictator of Christendom, denounced his writings. Abelard appealed for a hearing, and the two champions met in St. Stephen's church at Sens before the king, the hierarchy and a brilliant and expectant audience; the ever-victorious knight-errant of disputation, stood forth, eager for the fray, but St. Bernard simply rose and read out seventeen propositions from his opponent's works, which he declared to be heretical. Abelard in disgust left the lists, and was condemned unheard to perpetual silence. The pope, to whom he appealed, confirmed the sentence, and the weary soldier of the mind, old and heart-broken, retired to Cluny; he gave up the struggle, was reconciled to his opponents, and died absolved by the pope near Chalons in 1142. His ashes were sent to Helose, and twenty years later she was laid beside him at the Paraclete. A well-known path, worn by generations of unhappy lovers, leads to a monument in Pere-la-Chaise Cemetery at Paris which marks the last resting-place of Abelard and Helose, whose remains were transferred there in 1817.

It is commonly believed that Abelard's school on Mont St. Genevieve was the origin of the Latin Quarter in Paris, but the migration to the south had probably begun before Abelard came, and was rather due to the overcrowding of the episcopal schools. Teachers and scholars began to swarm to the new quarter over the bridge where quiet, purer air and better accommodation were found. Ordinances of Bishop Gilbert, 1116, and Stephen, 1124, transcribed by Felibien, make this clear. So disturbed were the canons by the numbers of students in the cloister, that _externes_ were to be no longer admitted, nor other schools allowed on the north side where the canons lodged. The growing importance of the new schools, which tended to the advantage of the abbey of St. Genevieve, soon alarmed the bishops, and the theologians were ordered to lecture only between the two bridges (the Pet.i.t and Grand Ponts.) But it was Abelard's brilliant career that attracted like a lodestar the youth of Europe to Paris, and made that city the "oven where the intellectual bread of the world was baked."

Providence, it was said, had given Empire to Germany, Priestcraft to Italy, Learning to France. What a constellation of great names glows in the spiritual firmament of mediaeval Paris: William of Champeaux, Peter Lombard, Maurice de Sully, Pierre de Chartreux, Abelard, Gilbert[66] l'Universel, Adrian IV., St. Thomas of Canterbury, and his biographer John of Salisbury. Small wonder that the youth of the twelfth century sought the springs of learning at Paris!

[Footnote 66: Afterwards bishop of London.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NOTRE DAME AND PEt.i.t PONT.]

There was no discipline or college life among the earliest students.

Each master, having obtained his license from the bishop's chancellor, rented a room at his own cost, and taught what he knew--even, it was sometimes complained, what he did not know. We read of one Adam du Pet.i.t Pont, who, in the twelfth century, expounded Aristotle in the back-room of a house on the bridge amid the cackle of c.o.c.ks and hens, and whose _clientele_ had many a vituperative contest with the fish-f.a.gs of the neighbourhood. The students grouped themselves according to nationalities, and with their masters held meetings in any available cloister, refectory, or church. When funds were needed, a general levy was made and any balance that remained was spent in a festive gathering in the nearest tavern. The aggregation of thousands of young men, some of whom were cosmopolitan vagabonds, gave rise to many evils. Complaints are frequent among the citizens of the depredations and immoralities of riotous _clercs_, who lived by their wits or by their nimble fingers, or by reciting or singing licentious ballads:--the _paouvres escolliers_, whose miserable estate, temptations, debauchery, ign.o.ble pleasures, remorse and degradation have been so pathetically sung by Francois Villon, master of arts, poet, bohemian, burglar and homicide. The richer scholars often indulged in excesses, and of the vast majority who were poor, some died of hunger. It was the spectacle of half-starving _clercs_ begging for bread that evoked the compa.s.sion of pious founders of colleges, which originally were simply hostels for needy scholars. On the return of Louis VII. from a pilgrimage to Becket's shrine, his brother Robert founded about 1180 the church of St. Thomas of Canterbury and a hostel for fifteen students, who, in 1217, were endowed with a chapel of their own, dedicated to St. Nicholas, and were then known as the poor scholars of St. Nicholas.[67] In 1171 a London merchant (Jocius de Londonne), pa.s.sing through Paris on his return from the Holy Land, touched by the sight of some starving students begging their bread, founded a hostel for eighteen poor scholars at the Hotel Dieu, who in return for lodging and maintenance were to perform the last Christian rites to the friendless dead. This, known as the college of the Dix-huit, was afterwards absorbed in the Sorbonne. In 1200 etienne Belot and his wife, burgesses of Paris, founded a hostel for thirteen poor scholars who were known as the _bons enfants_. In all, some dozen colleges were in being when St. Louis came to the throne. In 1253, St.

Louis' almoner, Robert of Cerbon or Sorbon, a poor Picardy village, founded[68] a modest college of theology, and obtained from Blanche of Castile a small house above the palace of the Thermae where he was able to maintain a few poor students of theology. Friends came to his aid and soon sixteen were accommodated, to whom others, able to maintain themselves, were added. In 1269 a papal bull confirmed the establishment of the _pauvres maistres estudiants_ in the faculty of theology at Paris. Even when enriched by later founders it was still called _la pauvre Sorbonne_. By the renown of their erudition the doctors of the Sorbonne became the great court of appeal in the Middle Ages in matters of theology, and the Sorbonne synonymous with the university. Some of the hostels were on a larger scale. The college of Cardinal Lemoine, founded in 1302 by the papal legate, housed sixty students in arts and forty in theology. Most were paying residents, but a number of bursaries were provided for those whose incomes were below a certain amount. Each _boursier_ was given daily two loaves of white bread of twelve ounces, "the common weight in the windows of Paris bakers."

[Footnote 67: The two churches still existed in the eighteenth century and stood on the site of the southern Cours Visconti and Lefuel of the present Louvre.]

[Footnote 68: The actual originator was, however, the queen's physician, Robert de Douai, who left a sum of money which formed the nucleus of the foundation.]

In 1304, Jeanne of Navarre, wife of Philip the Fair, left her mansion near the Tour de Nesle and 2000 livres annually to found the college of Navarre for seventy poor scholars, twenty in grammar, thirty in philosophy, and twenty in theology. The first were allowed four sous weekly; the second, six; the third, eight. If any were possessed of annual incomes respectively of thirty, forty and sixty livres, they ceased to hold bursaries. The maintenance fund seems, however, to have been mismanaged, for we soon read of the scholars of the college walking the streets of Paris every morning crying--"Bread, bread, good people, for the poor scholars of Madame of Navarre!"

Some forty colleges were in existence by the end of the fourteenth century and had increased to fifty by the end of the fifteenth; in the seventeenth, Evelyn gives their number as sixty-five. In Felibien's time some had disappeared, for in his map (1725) forty-four colleges only are marked. Nearly the whole of these colleges cl.u.s.tered around the slopes of Mont St. Genevieve, which at length became that Christian Athens that Charlemagne dreamt of. Each college had its own rules. Generally students were required to attend matins (in summer at 3 a.m., winter at 4), ma.s.s, vespers and compline. When the curfew of Notre Dame sounded, they retired to their dormitories. Leave to sleep out was granted only in very exceptional cases. Tennis was allowed, cards and dice were forbidden. The college of Montaigu, founded in 1314 by Archbishop Gilles de Montaigu, housed eighty-two poor scholars in memory of the twelve apostles and seventy disciples. There the rod was never spared to the _faineant_; the discipline so severe, that the college became the terror of the youth of Paris, and fathers were wont to sober their libertine sons by threatening to make _capetes_[69] of them. This was the _College de Pouillerye_ denounced by Rabelais and notorious to students as the _College des Haricots_, because they were fed there chiefly on beans. Erasmus was a poor _boursier_ there, disgusted at its mean fare and squalor, and Calvin, known as the "accusative," from his austere piety. Desmoulins, the inaugurator of the Revolution, and St. Just, its fiery and immaculate apostle, sat on its benches. To obtain admission to the college of Cluny (1269) the scholar must pa.s.s an entrance examination. He then spent two years at logic, three at metaphysics, two in Biblical studies; he held weekly disputations and preached every fortnight in French; he was interrogated every evening by the president on his studies during the day. If students evinced no apt.i.tude for learning they were dismissed; if only moderate progress were made, the secular duties of the college devolved upon them. It was the foundation of these colleges which organised themselves, about 1200, into powerful corporations of masters and scholars (_universitates magistrorum et scholiarum_) that gave the university its definite character.

[Footnote 69: The Montaigu scholars were called _capetes_ from their peculiar _cape fermee_, or cloak, such as Masters of Arts used to wear. The Bibliotheque Ste. Genevieve occupies the site of the college.]

[Ill.u.s.tration: TOWER IN RUE VALETTE IN WHICH CALVIN IS SAID TO HAVE LIVED.]

When the term "university" first came into use is unknown. It is met with in the statutes (1215) which, among other matters, define the limits of age for teaching. A master in the arts must not lecture under twenty-one; of theology under thirty-five. Every master must undergo an examination as to qualification and moral fitness at the Episcopal Chancellor's Court. Early in the twelfth century the four faculties of Law, Medicine, Arts and Theology were formed and the national groups reduced to four: French, Picards, Normans and English.

Each group elected its own officers, and in 1245 at latest the _Quatre Nations_ were meeting in the church of St. Julien le Pauvre to choose a common head or rector, who soon superseded the chancellor as head of the university. The rectors in process of time exercised almost sovereign authority in the Latin Quarter; they ruled a population of ten thousand masters and students, who were exempt from civic jurisdiction. In 1200 some German students ill-treated an innkeeper who had insulted their servant. The provost of Paris and some armed citizens attacked the students' houses and blood was shed, whereupon the masters of the schools complained to the king, who was fierce in his anger, and ordered the provost and his accomplices to be cast into prison, their houses demolished and vines uprooted. The provost was given the choice of imprisonment for life or the ordeal by water. Then followed a series of ordinances which abolished secular jurisdiction over the students and made them subject to ecclesiastical courts alone.

In the reign of Philip le Bel a provost of Paris dared to hang a scholar. The rector immediately closed all cla.s.ses until reparation was made, and on the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin the _cures_ of Paris a.s.sembled and went in procession, bearing a cross and holy water to the provost's house, against which each cast a stone, crying, in a loud voice--"Make honourable reparation, thou cursed Satan, to thy mother Holy Church, whose privileges thou hast injured, or suffer the fate of Dathan and Abiram." The king dismissed his provost, caused ample compensation to be made, and the schools were reopened.

The famous Pet.i.t Pre aux Clercs (Clerks' Meadow) was the theatre of many a fight with the powerful abbots of St. Germain des Pres.[70]

From earliest times the students had been wont to take the air in the meadow, which lay between the monastery and the river, and soon claimed the privilege as an acquired right. In 1192 the inhabitants of the monastic suburb resented their insolence, and a free fight ensued, in which several scholars were wounded and one was killed. The rector inculpated the abbot, and each appealed to Rome, with what result is unknown. After nearly a century of strained relations and minor troubles, Abbot Gerard in 1278 had walls and other buildings erected on the way to the meadow: the scholars met in force and demolished them. The abbot, who was equal to the occasion, rang his bells, called his va.s.sals to arms and sent a force to seize the gates of the city that gave on the suburb, to prevent reinforcements reaching the scholars; his retainers then attacked the rioters, killed several and wounded many. The rector complained to the papal legate and threatened to close the schools if reparation were not made and justice done within fifteen days, whereupon the legate ordered the provost of the monastery to be expelled for five years. The royal council forced the abbot to exile ten of his va.s.sals, to endow two chantries for the repose of the souls of slain _clercs_ and compensate their fathers by fines of two hundred and four hundred livres respectively, and to pay the rector two hundred livres to be distributed among poor scholars.

In 1345 another b.l.o.o.d.y fight took place between the monks and the scholars over the right to fish there.

[Footnote 70: There were two Pres, the Pet.i.t Pre roughly represented by the area now enclosed by the Rues de Seine, Jacob and Bonaparte; and the Grand Pre which extended nearly to the Champ de Mars. A narrow stream, the Pet.i.te Seine, divided them.]

Many circ.u.mstances contributed to make Paris the capital of the intellectual world in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. France has ever been the home of great enthusiasms and has not feared to "follow where airy voices lead." The conception and enforcement of a Truce of G.o.d (_Treve de Dieu_) whereby all acts of hostility in private or public wars ceased during certain days of the week or on church festivals; the n.o.ble ideal of Christian chivalry; the first crusade--all had their origin in France. The crusaders carried the prestige of the French name and diffused the French idiom over Europe.

It was a French monk preaching in France who gave voice to the general enthusiasm; a French pope approved his impa.s.sioned oration; a French shout "_Dieu le veut_" became the crusader's war-cry. The conquest of the Holy Land was organised by the French, its first Christian king was a French knight, its laws were indited in French, and to this day every Christian in the East is a Frank whatever tongue he may speak.