Medieval and Renaissance Paris

The city was renamed Paris in the early 4th century.

In 360 Roman commander Julian the Apostate was proclaimed emperor of Paris and set up his residence on the site of the present-day Palais de Justice.

In 451 the Huns under Attila invaded what is now France with a 700,000-strong army and appeared to be preparing to sack Paris.

Geneviève, a young Christian girl, preached to frightened Parisians that God would intervene on the city’s behalf.

The city was spared when the Huns, at the gates of Paris, altered their course. Geneviève later became the patron saint of Paris.

At the end of the 5th century the Franks conquered Paris. Clovis I, the Frankish king and the founder of the Merovingian dynasty, established Paris as his capital in 508.

Clovis became a Christian under the influence of his wife, Clotilda, and Saint Geneviève.

Clovis was the first to unite France, as a Christian kingdom, and with Paris as its capital.

The Merovingian royal court moved its capital to another part of France in the late 6th century and Paris’s prominence declined.

The Carolingian dynasty (founded by Pepin the Short in 751) left Paris mainly to the control of vassals, counts subject to the king.

After marauding Vikings destroyed the Left Bank in the 9th century, Carolingian rulers undertook an effort to strengthen the city’s defenses.

~~~ Development under the Capetians
In 987 Hugh Capet, the count of Paris, became king of France and founded the Capetian Dynasty.

Hugh Capet declared Paris his capital, and under his centralizing rule the city became a prestigious metropolis once more.

In the early 13th century the University of Paris was formally recognized. Peter Abelard was the university’s most noted early scholar.

With his help, it became Europe’s most prestigious university and attracted students from far and wide.

During the reign of Louis VII’s son Philip Augustus (Philip II, 1180-1223), Paris developed into the most important city in Europe.

Philip Augustus constructed new city walls enclosing the Right and Left banks, a fortress on the site of what would become the Louvre, and the central market of Les Halles. He also expanded the University of Paris and made it autonomous of the cathedral.

Under Philip Augustus, Paris was divided into three sections: the commercial Right Bank, which was called La Ville; the academic Left Bank, which was called L’Université; and the central island, the seat of power, which was called La Cité.

By the end of the 13th century several communities had developed on the periphery of the city, often gravitating around abbeys. These included Saint-Germain, Sainte-Geneviève, and Saint-Victor on the Left Bank, and Saint-Antoine and Montmartre on the Right Bank.

The community of Saint-Martin-des-Champs and members of the Knights Templars drained the marshy Marais and settled there.

The Knights Templars’ fortified stronghold, l’Enclos du Temple, was built on the northeastern edge of the Marais.


~~~ War and Instability
In 1357, during the Hundred Years’ War (1337-1453) between France and England, French king John II was captured and imprisoned by the English. His 18-year-old son, the future Charles V, took over as regent.

Taking advantage of the confused political situation, Étienne Marcel, the leader of the Parisian merchants’ guild and head of the municipality, ignited a revolt against the royal authorities in an attempt to establish an autonomous government in Paris.

The revolt quickly lost popularity with Paris’s citizens when Marcel attempted to ally the city with the English, and Marcel was murdered by one of the city’s aldermen in 1358.

Although the city now firmly allied itself with Charles against the English, the cautious regent decided to move his residence to the less conspicuous Marais area of Paris.

The royal family would reside in the Marais for the next 200 years, first at the Hôtel Saint-Pol and later at the Hôtel des Tournelles.

To protect Paris from the English, Charles V rebuilt the Left Bank wall and in 1370 built a new wall (now traced by the Grands Boulevards) on the Right Bank.

This wall extended Paris to the west, up to the Louvre, and defended its eastern flank with the new fortress of the Bastille.

At the same time, the Louvre fortress was turned into a royal residence, though Charles V never made it his permanent home.

Paris experienced political instability again in the early 15th century under the rule of the insane king Charles VI (1380-1422).

Two rival aristocratic factions, the Armagnacs and the Burgundians, sought to dominate the weak-minded king, and their clashes verged on civil war.

The English king Henry V, taking advantage of the dissension, invaded and defeated French forces at the Battle of Agincourt in 1415.

The Burgundians subsequently allied themselves to the English, who occupied Paris in 1420. English officer John of Lancaster, Duke of Bedford, became the regent of Paris and took up residence in the royal palace.

Charles VI’s son, the future Charles VII, received backing in his claim as the rightful king from Joan of Arc, who rallied military support behind him.

The English occupation of Paris ended in 1436, when the victorious Charles VII entered the city. Much of Paris remained in ruins for several decades, and only after 1480 were new mansions and churches built.

~~~ Renaissance
In 1515 Francis I, a patron of the arts, acceded to the French throne and promoted the new cultural and intellectual ideals of the Renaissance.

In order to boost the economic prosperity of Paris, the king supported the city’s bourgeoisie (middle-class people, mainly merchants and artisans) and the municipal authorities.

In this period, the Marais became the seat of the upper classes, as aristocrats bought up land and built grand mansions.

The only mansion that remains is the Hôtel Carnavalet, which was decorated by Jean Goujon, the king’s sculptor.

In 1528 Francis set out to transform the medieval Louvre into a Renaissance palace, a gigantic task that would only be completed by Henry IV at the end of the century.

The medieval tower was demolished and Francis’s architect, Pierre Lescot, built a new western wing around the courtyard of the old Louvre.

Francis established the Louvre’s collection of paintings, the nucleus of the future museum, composed of the works of the Italian masters, notably Leonardo da Vinci’s Mona Lisa (1503-1506).

He also founded the Collège du Roi, next to the Sorbonne, for the promotion of classical studies. The Collège du Roi was the predecessor of the present-day Collège de France, still standing on the same site.

The reign of Francis’s son Henry II (1547-1559) saw the ascendancy of Catherine de Médicis, Henry’s queen.

Catherine wielded a great deal of power during Henry’s reign and the successive reigns of three of their sons: Francis II (1559-1560), Charles IX (1560-1574), and Henry III (1574-1589).

Catherine had the Hôtel des Tournelles demolished following Henry II’s death in a tournament, and moved the royal residence to the Louvre.

She commissioned architect Philibert Delorme to design the Palace of the Tuileries, west of the Louvre; the palace was completed in the early 17th century.

~~~ Wars of Religion
In the second half of the 16th century, religious strife between Roman Catholics and French Protestants (known as Huguenots) halted the city’s urban renaissance.

Political rivalry between the two sides culminated in the 1572 Massacre of Saint Bartholomew's Day, in which thousands of Huguenots were slain.

A Catholic, Catherine de Médicis likely instigated the massacre because she feared the growing power of the Huguenots.

The strife continued throughout the reign of Henry III. In 1584 the childless king designated his Protestant brother-in-law Henry, the king of Navarre (see Henry IV), as his successor.

This decision prompted a popular Catholic revolt in 1588 led by Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre conspirator Henri I de Lorraine, 3rd Duc de Guise.

Guise secured control of the city, but in the subsequent upheaval both Guise and the king were assassinated.

Upon the king’s death in 1589, Henry of Navarre nominally succeeded to the French throne.

However, the largely Catholic population of Paris resisted the idea of a Protestant king.

In order to appease the city, he converted to Catholicism in 1593 with the famous words “Paris vaut bien une messe” (“Paris is well worth a mass”).

In 1594, after a five-year siege, he captured Paris and the throne. He also reached out to the Protestant population, issuing the 1598 Edict of Nantes, which gave partial religious freedom to the Huguenots.