THE RISE OF THE CAPETIAN KINGS AND THE GROWTH OF PARIS
From 936 to the coronation of Hugh Capet at Noyon in 987, the
Carlovingians exercised a slowly decaying power. The real rulers of
France were Hugh the Tall and Hugh Capet,[38] grandson and
great-grandson of Robert the Strong. Lay abbots of St. Martin of Tours,
St. Denis, and St. Germain, Counts of Paris and Dukes of France, they
pursued the policy of the mayors of the palace in Merovingian times,
accepting the nominal kingship of the degenerate Carlovingians--Louis
from overseas, Lothaire, and Louis the Lazy--until the time was ripe to
pick up the fallen sceptre. They founded a new line of kings of France
which stretches onward through history for a thousand years until the
guillotine of the Revolution cut it in twain. It is Hugh Capet whom
Dante, following a legend of his time, calls the son of a butcher of
Paris, and whom he hears among the weeping souls cleaving to the dust
and purging their avarice in the fifth cornice of Purgatory.
Their patrimony was a small one--the provinces of the Isle de France, La
Brie, La Beauce, Beauvais and Valois; but their sway extended over the
land of the Langue d'oil, with its strenuous northern life, _le doux
royaume de la France_, the sweet realm of France, cradle of the great
French Monarchy and home of art, learning and chivalry. The globe of the
earth, symbol of universal empire, gives way to the hand of justice as
the emblem of kingship. They were, it is true, little more than
seigneurs over other seigneurs, some of whom were almost as powerful as
they; but that little, the drop of holy chrism by which they were
consecrated of the Church, contained within it a potency of future
grandeur. They were the Lord's anointed, supported by the Lord's Vicar
on earth: to disobey them was to disobey God. Tribal sovereignty had now
given way to territorial sovereignty. Feudal lords and abbots were
supreme within their own domains. The people, long forsaken by their
emperors, had in their turn forsaken them. In order "not to be at the
mercy of all the great ones they surrendered themselves to one of the
great ones" and in exchange for protection gave troth and service.
Cities, churches and monasteries now assumed a new aspect. Paris had
demonstrated the value of a walled city, for the dread Rollo himself had
three times assaulted it in vain. During the latter part of the Norman
terror, from all parts of North France, monks and nuns and priests had
brought their holy relics within its walls as to a city of refuge. Gone
were the lines of villas from Gallo-Roman times extending freely into
the country. Fortifications were everywhere raised around the
dwelling-places of men. The ample spaces within cities were soon to give
place to crowded houses and narrow streets. The might of the
archbishops, bishops and abbots increased: they sat in the councils of
kings and dominated the administration of justice; the moral, social and
political life of the country centred around them. Armed with the sword
and the cross they held almost absolute sway over their little
republics; coined money, levied taxes, disposed of small armies and went
to the chase in almost regal state. The land bristled with castles and
fortified towns and abbeys, and was parcelled out into territories of
varying extent, from great duchies equal to a dozen modern departments,
to the small domain just enough to maintain a single knight.
The advent of the year 1000 was regarded with universal terror in
Christendom. A fear, based on a supposed apocalyptic prophecy that the
end of the world was at hand, paralysed all political and social life.
Churches were too small to contain the immense throngs of fearful
penitents: legacies and donations from conscience-stricken worshippers
poured wealth into their treasuries. But once the awe-inspiring night of
the vernal equinox that began the year 1000 had passed, and the bright
March sun rose again on the fair earth, unconsumed by the wrath of God,
the old world "seemed to thrill with new life; the earth cast off her
out-worn garments and clothed herself in a rich and white vesture of new
churches." Everywhere in Europe, and especially in France, men strove in
emulation to build the finest temples to God. The wooden roofs of the
Merovingian and Carlovingian basilicas had ill withstood the ravage of
war and fire. Stone took the place of wood, the heavy thrust of the roof
led to increased mural strength, walls were buttressed, columns
thickened. Massive towers of defence, at first round, then polygonal,
then square, flanked the west fronts, veritable keeps, where the sacred
vessels and relics might be preserved and defended in case of attack.
Soon spaces are clamant for decoration, the stone soars into the beauty
of Gothic vaulting and tracery, "the solid and lofty shafts ascend and
press onward in agile files, and in the sacred gloom are like unto an
army of giants that meditate war with invisible powers."[39]
The Capets are more intimately associated with the growth of Paris than
any of the earlier dynasties, and at no period in French history is the
ecclesiastical expansion more marked. Under the long reign of Hugh's
son, King Robert the Pious, no less than fourteen monasteries and seven
churches were built or rebuilt in or around the city. A new and
magnificent palace and hall of Justice, with its royal chapel dedicated
to St. Nicholas, rose on the site of the old Roman basilica and palace
in the Cité. The king was no less charitable than pious. Troops of the
poor and afflicted followed him when he went abroad, and he fed a
thousand daily at his table. But notwithstanding his munificent piety,
he was early made to feel the power of the Church. His union with Queen
Bertha, a cousin of the fourth degree, whom he had married a year before
his accession, was condemned by the pope as incestuous, and he was
summoned to repudiate her. Robert, who loved his wife dearly, resisted
the papal authority, and excommunication and interdict followed.[40]
Everyone fled from him; only the servants are said to have remained, who
purged with fire all the vessels which were contaminated by the guilty
couple's touch. The misery of his people at length subdued the king's
spirit, and he cast off his faithful and beloved queen.
The beautiful and imperious Constance of Aquitaine, her successor,
proved a penitential infliction second only in severity to the anathemas
of the Church. Troops of vain and frivolous troubadours from her
southern home, in all kinds of foreign and fantastic costumes, invaded
the court and shocked the austere piety of the king. He perceived the
corrupting influence on the simple manners of the Franks of their
licentious songs, lascivious music and dissolute lives, but was
powerless to dismiss them. The tyrannous temper of his new consort
became the torment of his life. He was forced even to conceal his acts
of charity. One day, on returning from prayers, he perceived that his
lance by the queen's orders had been adorned with richly chased silver.
He looked around his palace and was not long in finding a poor, tattered
wretch whom he ordered to search for a tool, and the pair locked
themselves in a room. The silver was soon stripped from the lance and
the king hastily thrust it into the beggar's wallet and bade him escape
before the queen discovered the loss. The poor whom he admitted to his
table, despite the angry protests of the queen, at times ill repaid his
charity. On one occasion a tassel of gold was cut from his robe, and on
the thief being discovered the king simply remarked: "Well, perhaps he
has greater need of it than I, may God bless its service to him." The
very fringe was sometimes stripped from his cloak as he walked abroad,
but he never could be induced to punish any of these poor spoilers of
his person. There is, however, an obverse to this ardent piety and noble
enthusiasm:--the merciless persecution and spoliation of the Jews and
the first executions of heretics[41] recorded in France.
In 1022 two priests, one of whom had been the queen's confessor, and
eleven laymen were condemned to be burnt at the stake at Orleans for
heresy. The king spent nine hours wrestling with them in prayer and
argument, but in vain. As the unhappy wretches were being led to
execution, Constance leaned forward, savagely struck at her old
confessor and gouged out one of his eyes. She was applauded for her
zeal.
The economic condition of the people was far from satisfactory. Famine
and pestilence claimed their victims with appalling frequency, and
between 970 and 1040, forty-eight famines and plagues are known to
historians; that of 1033 is recounted by the chronicler, Raoul Glaber,
with details so ghastly that the heart sickens and the hand faints at
their transcription. Slavery existed everywhere: it was regarded as an
integral part of the divine order of things. The Church aimed at
alleviating the lot of the slave, not at abolishing slavery. At a
division of serfs, held in common between the priors of two abbeys in
1087, the children were shared, male and female, without any reference
to their parents. Archbishops fulminated against serfs who tried to
escape from their lords, quoting the words of the apostle: "Serfs be
subject in all things to your masters." A serf was valued at so much
money, like a horse or an ox. The serfs of the Church at Paris were sent
to the law courts to give evidence for their bishop or prior, or to do
battle for them in the event of a judicial duel. The freemen in the
eleventh century began to rebel against fighting with a despised serf,
and refused the duel, whereupon early in the next century the king and
his court decided that the serfs might lawfully testify and fight
against freemen, and whoso refused the trial by battle should lose his
suit and suffer excommunication. The prelates exchanged serfs, used them
as substitutes in times of war, allowed them to marry outside their
church or abbey only by special permission and on condition that all
children were equally divided between the two proprietors. If a female
serf married a freeman he and their children became serfs. Serfs were
only permitted to make a will by consent of their master; every favour
was paid for and liberty bought at a great price. Whole _bourgades_ were
often in a state of serfdom. Merchants even and artizans in towns owed
part of their produce to the seigneur. In the eleventh century burgesses
as well as serfs and Jews were given to churches, exchanged, sold or
left in wills by their seigneurs. The story of mediæval France is the
story of the efforts of serf and burgess to win their economic
freedom[42] and of her kings to tame the insolence of disobedient
vassals and to make their shadowy kingship a real thing. And the story
of mediæval France is closed only by the great Revolution.
[Illustration: HOTEL GEROUILHAC]
The declining years of King Robert were embittered by the impiety of
rebellious sons, who were reduced to submission only at the price of a
protracted and bloody campaign in Burgundy. The broken-hearted father
did not long survive his victory. He died in his palace at Melun in
1031, and the benisons and lamentations of the poor and lowly winged his
spirit to its rest. If we may believe some writers, pious King Robert's
memory is enshrined in the hymnology of the Church, which he enriched
with some beautiful compositions: he was often seen to enter St. Denis
in regal habit to lead the choir at matins, and would sometimes
challenge the monks to a singing contest; once, it is said, when
importuned by his queen to immortalise her name in song, he began, "O
Constantia Martyrum!" The delighted Constance heard no further and was
satisfied.
Scarcely had the grave closed over the dead king at St. Denis when
Constance plotted with some of the nobles to place Robert, her youngest
and favourite son, on the throne in place of Henry, the rightful heir,
who fled to Normandy to implore the aid of Duke Robert. The cultivation
of the arts of peace had not enfeebled the fighting powers of the
Normans. Robert fell upon the queen's supporters with reckless[43]
bravery and crushed them in three decisive battles. Henry gained his
crown but at the cost of a big slice of territory which advanced the
Norman boundary to within twenty leagues of Paris. The queen survived
her humiliation but a short time, and her death at Melun in 1032 and
Henry's generosity to his enemies gave peace to the kingdom.
In 1053, towards the end of Henry's almost unchronicled reign, an
alarming rumour came to Paris. The priests of St. Ermeran at Ratisbon
claimed to have possession of the body of St. Denis, which they alleged
had been stolen from the abbey in 892 by one Gisalbert. The loss of a
province would not have evoked livelier emotion, and Henry at once took
measures to convince France and Christendom that the true body was still
at St. Denis. Before an immense concourse of bishops, abbots, princes
and people, presided over by the king, his brother and the archbishops
of Rheims and of Canterbury, the remains of St. Denis and his two
companions were solemnly drawn out of the silver coffers in which they
had been placed, by Dagobert, together with a nail from the cross and
part of the crown of thorns, all locked with two keys in a kind of
cupboard richly adorned with gold and precious stones, and preserved in
a vault under the high altar. After having been borne in procession they
were exposed on the high altar for fifteen days and then restored to
their resting-place. The stiff-necked priests of Ratisbon, fortified
with a papal bull of 1052, still maintained their claim to the
possession of the body, but no diminution was experienced in the
devotion either of the French peoples or of strangers of all nations to
the relics at St. Denis.
The chief architectural event of Henry's reign at Paris was the
rebuilding on a more magnificent scale of the Merovingian church and
abbey of St. Martin in the Fields (des Champs), whose blackened walls
and desolate lands were eloquent of the Norman terror. The buildings
stood outside Paris about a mile beyond the Cité on the great Roman road
to the north, where St. Martin on his way to Paris healed a leper. The
foundation, which soon grew to be one of the wealthiest in France,
included a hostel for poor pilgrims endowed by Philip I. with a mill on
the Grand Pont, to which the monks added the revenue from an oven.[44]
In the eighteenth century, when the monastery was secularised, the abbot
was patron of twenty-nine priories, three vicarates and thirty-five
parishes, five of which were in Paris. Some of the old building has been
incorporated in the existing Conservatoire des Arts et Métiers. The
Gothic priory chapel, with its fine twelfth-century choir, is used as a
machinery-room, and the refectory, one of the most precious and
beautiful creations attributed to Pierre de Montereau, is now a library.
Philip I. brought to the indolent habit inherited from his father a
depraved and vicious nature. After a regency of eight years he became
king at the age of fifteen, and lived to defile his youth and dishonour
his manhood by debauchery and adultery, simony and brigandage. Early in
his career he followed the evil counsels of his provost Etienne, and
purposed the spoliation of the treasury of St. Germain des Prés to pay
for his dissolute pleasures. "As the sacrilegious pair," says the
chronicler, "drew near the relics, Etienne was smitten with blindness
and the terrified Philip fled." Simony filled his gaping purse;
bishoprics and other preferments were openly sold to the highest bidder,
and one day when an abbot complained that he had been kept waiting while
a rich competitor for a bishopric had been admitted, the king answered:
"Wait a while until I have made my money of him; I will then accuse him
of simony, and you shall have the reversion."
Regal irresponsibility led in 1092 to a greater crime. Most popular of
the twelfth-century stories sung by the _trouvères_ of North France was
that of Tortulf, the Breton outlaw, the Robin Hood of his day, who won
by his prowess against the Normans the lordship of rich lands by the
Loire, and with his son, Ingelar, founded the famous house of Anjou. In
1092 Foulques de Réchin, lord of Anjou--whose handsome grandson
Geoffrey, surnamed Plantagenet from the sprig of broom (_genêt_) he wore
in his helmet, was to father a race of English kings--had to wife
Bertrarde, fairest of the ladies of France, whose two predecessors had
been cast off like vile courtesans. Philip, when on a visit to the count
at Tours became inflamed with passion at beholding her, and she was
easily induced to elope with him under the promise that she should share
his throne. His queen, Bertha, mother of his two children, was
pitilessly driven from his bed and imprisoned at Montreuil, and two of
his venal bishops were found to bestow the blessings of the Church on
the new union. But the thunder of Rome came swift and terrible. Philip
laid aside his crown and sceptre, grovelled before the pontiff, and
implored forgiveness, but continued to live with his mistress. Next year
a new pope excommunicated the guilty pair and laid their kingdom under
the ban. The same Council, however, of Clermont, which fulminated
against Philip, stirred Christendom to the first crusade, and in the
magnificent enthusiasm of the moment Philip was permitted to live
outwardly submissive but secretly rebellious. He crowned Bertrarde at
Troyes, and lived on his vicious life, while Bertha was dying of a
broken heart in her prison at Montreuil. Monkish legends tell of the
excommunicated king languishing, a scrofulous wretch, in a deserted
court; but there is little doubt that the impious monarch died, tardily
repentant, at his palace at Melun, after a reign of nearly half a
century. It was a reign void of honour or profit to France. He left his
son Louis VI. (the Lusty) a heritage of shame, a kingdom reduced to
little more than a baronage over a few _comtés_, whose cities of Paris,
Etampes, Orleans and Sens were isolated from royal jurisdiction by
insolent and rebellious vassals, one of whom, the Seigneur de Puisset,
had inflicted a disgraceful defeat on Philip in 1081. Many of the great
seigneurs were but freebooters, living by plunder. The violence and
lawlessness of these and other smaller scoundrels, who levied blackmail
on merchants and travellers, made commerce almost impossible.
Corruption, too, had invaded many of the monasteries and fouled the
thrones of bishops, and a dual effort was made by king and Church to
remedy the evils of the times. The hierarchy strove to centralise power
at Rome that the Church might be purged of wolves in sheep's clothing:
the Capetian monarchs to increase their might at Paris in order to
subdue insolent and powerful vassals to law and obedience.
In 1097 the Duke of Burgundy learned that Archbishop Anselm of
Canterbury was about to pass through his territory with a rich escort on
his way to Rome. The usual ambush was laid and the party were held up.
As the duke hastened to spoil his victims, crying out--"Where is the
archbishop?" he turned and saw Anselm, impassive on his horse, gazing
sternly at him. In a moment the savage and lawless duke was transformed
to a pallid, stammering wretch with downcast eyes, begging permission to
kiss the old man's hand and to offer him a noble escort to safeguard
him through his territory. It was the moral influence of prelates such
as this and monks such as St. Bernard that enabled the hierarchy to
enforce the celibacy of the clergy, to cleanse the bishoprics and
abbeys, to wrest the privilege of conferring benefices from lay
potentates and feudal seigneurs who bartered them for money, and to make
and unmake kings.
The end of the eleventh and the beginning of the twelfth centuries saw
the culmination of the power of the reformed orders. All over France,
religious houses--the Grande Chartreuse, Fontevrault, Cîteaux,
Clairvaux--sprang up as if by enchantment. Men and women of all stations
and classes flocked to them, a veritable host of the Lord, "adorning the
deserts with their holy perfection and solitudes by their purity and
righteousness." "How fair a thing it is," exclaims St. Bernard, "to live
in perfect unity! One weeps for his sins; another sings praises to the
Lord. One teaches the sciences; another prays. One leads the active;
another the contemplative, life. One burns with charity; another is
prone in humility. Nought is here but the house of God and the very gate
of heaven."
St. Bernard was the terror of mothers and of wives. His austerity, his
loving-kindness,[45] his impetuous will and masterful activity, his
absolute faith and remorseless logic, his lyric and passionate
eloquence, carried all before him. St. Bernard was the dictator of
Christendom; he it was who with pitying gesture as of a kind father, his
eyes suffused with tender joy, received Dante from the hands of Beatrice
in the highest of celestial spheres, and after singing the beautiful
hymn to the Virgin, led him to the heaven of heavens, to the very
ecstasy and culmination of beatitude in the contemplation and
comprehension of the triune God Himself. But religious no less than
seculars are subdued by what they work in. Already in the tenth century
Richer complained that the monks of his time were beginning to wear rich
ornaments and flowing sleeves, and with their tight-fitting
garments[46] looked like harlots rather than monks.
In the polluting atmosphere of Philip's reign matters grew worse. St.
Bernard denounced the royal abbey of St. Denis as "a house of Satan, a
den of thieves." "The walls of the churches of Christ were resplendent
with colour but His poor were naked and left to perish; their stones
were gilded with the money of the needy and wretched to charm the eyes
of the rich." "Bishops dressed like women; the successors of St. Peter
rode about on white mules, loaded with gold and precious stones,
apparelled in fine silk, surrounded with soldiers and followed by a
brilliant train. They were rather the successors of Constantine."
In 1095 the task of cleansing the Abbey of St. Maur des Fossés seemed so
hopeless, that the abbot resigned in despair rather than imperil his
soul, and a more resolute reformer was sought. In 1107 the bishop of
Paris was commanded by Rome to proceed to the abbey of St. Eloy and
extirpate the evils there flourishing. The nuns, it was reported, had so
declined in grace, owing to the proximity of the court and intercourse
with the world, that they had lost all sense of shame and lived in open
sin, breaking the bonds of common decency. The scandal was so great that
the bishop determined to cut them off from the house of the Lord. The
abbey was reduced to a priory and given over to the abbot of the now
reformed monastery of St. Maur, and its vast lands were parcelled out
into several parishes.[47] The rights of the canons of Notre Dame were
to be maintained; on St. Eloy's day the abbot of St. Maur was to furnish
them with six pigs, two and a half measures of wine and three of fine
wheat, and on St. Paul's day with eight sheep, the same quantity of
wine, six crowns and one obole. The present Rue de la Cité and the
Boulevard du Palais give approximately the east and west boundaries of
the suppressed abbey, part of whose site is now occupied by the
Prefecture de Police.
But the way of the reformer is a hard one. At the Council of Paris,
1074, the abbot of Pontoise was severely ill-treated for supporting,
against the majority of the Council, the pope's decrees excluding
married clerics from the churches. The reform of the canons of Notre
Dame led to exciting scenes. Bishop Stephen of Senlis was sent in 1128
to introduce the new discipline, but the archdeacons and canons,
supported by royal favour, resisted, and Bishop Stephen was stripped of
his revenues and hastened back to his metropolitan, the archbishop of
Sens. The archbishop laid Paris under interdict and the influence of St.
Bernard himself was needed to compose the quarrel.
On Sunday, August 20, 1133, when returning from a visitation to the
abbey of Chelles, the abbot and prior of St. Victor were ambushed and
the prior was stabbed. Some years later, in the reign of Louis VII.,
Pope Eugene III. came to seek refuge in Paris from the troubles excited
at Rome by the revolution of Arnold of Brescia. When celebrating mass
before the king at the abbey church of St. Genevieve the canons had
stretched a rich, silken carpet before the altar on which the pontiff's
knees might rest. When the pope retired to the sacristy to disrobe, his
officers claimed the carpet, according to usage; the canons and their
servants resisted, and there was a bout of fisticuffs and sticks. The
king intervened, and anointed majesty himself was struck. A scuffle
ensued, during which the carpet was torn to shreds in a tug-of-war
between the claimants. Here was urgent need for reform. The pope decided
to introduce the new discipline and appointed a fresh set of canons. The
dispossessed canons met them with insults and violence, drowned their
voices by howling and other indignities, and only ceased on being
threatened with the loss of their eyes and other secular penalties.
Louis the Lusty was the pioneer of the great French Monarchy. He had
none of Philip's indolence, and was ever on the move, hewing his way,
sword in hand, through his domains, subduing the violence, and burning
and razing the castles of his insolent and disobedient vassals. The
famous Suger, abbot of St. Denis, was his wise and firm counsellor, and
led the Church to make common cause with him and lend her diocesan
militia. It was a poor bald _curé_ who, when all else despaired, led the
assault on the keep of the castle of Le Puisset; he seized on a plank of
wood, assailed the palisade, calling on the hesitating royal troops to
follow him; they were shamed by his bravery and the castle was won.
The social revolution known as the enfranchisement of the commons and
the growth of towns begins in the reign of Louis VI. The king would have
the peasant to till, the monk to pray, and the pilgrim and merchant to
travel in peace. He was an itinerant regal justiciary, destroying the
nests of brigands, purging the land with fire and sword from tyranny and
oppression. Wise in council, of magnificent courage in battle, he was
the first of the Capetians to associate the cause of the people with
that of the monarchy. They loved him as a valiant soldier-king,
destroyer and tamer of feudal tyrants, the protector of the Church, the
vindicator of the oppressed. He lifted the sceptre of France from the
mire and made of it a symbol of firm and just government.
It is in Louis VI.'s reign that we have first mention of the Oriflamme
(golden flame) of St. Denis, which took the place of St. Martin's cloak
as the royal standard of France. The Emperor Henry V. with a formidable
army was menacing France. Louis rallied all his friends to withstand him
and went to St. Denis to pray for victory. The abbot took from the altar
the standard--famed to have been sent by heaven, and formerly carried by
the first liege man of the abbey, the Count de Vexin, when the monastery
was in danger of attack--and handed it to the king. The sacred banner
was fashioned of silk in the form of a gonfalon, of the colours of fire
and gold, and was suspended at the head of a gilded lance.
There was a solemn ceremony, the _Remise des corps saints_, at the royal
abbey when the king returned with his court to give thanks and to
restore the banner to the altar. He carried the relics of the holy
martyrs on his shoulders in procession, then replaced them whence they
were taken and made oblations. A yet more superb spectacle was given to
the Parisians when Pope Innocent II., a refugee from the violence of the
anti-papal party at Rome, came to celebrate the Easter mass at St.
Denis. The pope and his cardinals were mounted on fair steeds, barons
and seigneurs on foot led the pope's white horse by the bridle. As he
passed, the Jews presented him with a scroll of the law wrapped in a
veil--"May it please God to remove the veil from your hearts," answered
the pope. The solemn mass ended, pope and cardinals repaired to the
cloisters where tables were spread with the Easter feast. They first
partook of the Paschal lamb, reclining on the carpet in the fashion of
the ancients, then, rising, took their places at table. After the repast
a magnificent procession went its way to Paris, to be met by the whole
city with King Louis and Prince Philip at their head.
The manner of the young prince's tragic death gives an insight into the
state of a mediæval town. He was riding one day for amusement in the
streets of Paris, attended by one esquire, when a pig ran between his
horse's feet; the lad was thrown and died before the last sacraments
could be administered. He was only fourteen years of age, and all France
wept for him.
The strenuous reign of Louis was marked by a great expansion of Paris,
which became more than ever the ordinary dwelling-place of the king and
the seat of his government. The market, now known as Les Halles, was
established at a place called Champeaux, belonging to St. Denis of the
Prison. William of Champeaux founded the great abbey of St. Victor,[48]
famed for its sanctity and learning, where Abelard taught and St. Thomas
of Canterbury and St. Bernard lodged. At the urgent prayer of his wife
Adelaide, the king built a nunnery at Montmartre, and lavishly endowed
it with lands, ovens, the house of Guerri, a Lombard money-changer, some
shops and a slaughter-house in Paris, and a small _bourg_, still known
as Bourg-la-Reine, about five miles south of the city. Certain rights of
fishing at Paris, to which Louis VII. added five thousand herrings
yearly from the port of Boulogne, were also granted. The churches of
Ste. Geneviève la Petite, founded to commemorate the miraculous staying
of the plague of the burning sickness (_les ardents_); of St. Jacques de
la Boucherie; and of St. Pierre aux Boeufs, so named from the heads of
oxen carved on the portal, were also built.