Paris, 1200 (review)

I loved this book. In it, one of the great scholars of medieval French history brings to bear a lifetime of inquiry and knowledge in a 250-page volume that is at once an introduction (in that it can be read by laymen, students, or non-French historians) and a work of consummate scholarship (in that it has nothing of a survey's simplicity or reductiveness). In his preface to the American edition, John Baldwin explains that, inspired by the millennial celebrations of 2000, he set out to write about Paris in 1200 for a French ("lay") audience. Its success in France led to this English edition. The delightful conceit of the book is to focus on the year 1200—with a decade's leeway to each side and a laser focus on Paris—and,by doing so, to strip away the accumulated layers of "backward" reading that often comes with treatments of medieval Paris that end up relying so heavily on later sources. The result, for me, was disarming. The year 1200 seems comparatively late in the great developments of medieval culture and politics. Yet, in 1200, the cathedral of Notre Dame was unfinished. The university was not yet established. The conquests against King John and his allies were in the future. The mendicants had not yet arrived. As I was reading, I felt as if I was being led, gently, through Baldwin's own scholarly career: Chapter 1 drawing on Masters, Princes, and Merchants (Princeton, 1970); chapter 3 drawing on The Government of Philip Augustus (Berkeley, 1986); chapter 5 drawing on The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages (Lexington, MA, 1971); chapter 6 drawing on The Language of Sex (Chicago, 1994). Two individuals dominate the narrative: Pierre the Chanter (as he is referred to here and whose writings are often the jumping-off point for this or that discussion) and Philip Augustus, whose reign spanned in each direction beyond the parameters established here. Baldwin even has them meet and talk in chapter 2. I recognize Baldwin's scholarship at every turn. And I was hence surprised by the impact of bringing the pieces all together, in dialogue with each other, around the table of the year 1200. I will, perforce, continue to consult his other works, but this book will be a standard reference for me henceforth, and I will certainly use it in the classroom.

Baldwin opens by looking at the events that the chronicles "like newspapers today . . . broadcast with banner headlines" (p. 2): The Interdict imposed for the marital troubles of Philip Augustus, the peace treaty between King John and Philip that followed the sudden death of Richard the Lionheart, and the skirmish between students and bourgeoisie on the left bank. Chapter 1, "The City and Its Bourgeoisie," treats the topography and social makeup of Paris, using Philip's building of the great wall as a way to unpack the different social and economic forces of the turn of the century. The second chapter, "Faces and Hidden Visages," introduces Pierre the Chanter and Philip Augustus, and discusses the role and image of women at the time (the "hidden faces"). Chapter 3, "King Philip and His Government," is a recapitulation of Baldwin's 1986 book. Chapter 4, on "The Church, Clergy, and Religious Life," takes Notre-Dame as its center and ranges from façade iconography to preaching. Chapter 5, "The Schools," offers essentially a case study on the development of the Cathedral Schools, the masters, the politics, the curriculum, and the pedagogy. Chapter 6, "Delight and Pain," treats—rapidly—royal ceremony, marriage and sex, heresy, and crusade, always through recourse to events in Paris and the writers of Parisian masters and preachers. The epilogue, "Raising the Roof" (of Notre-Dame), sweeps through the events and achievements of the thirteenth century.

I will end by quoting one of my favorite of many takeaway "tidbits," this one appearing in the epilogue: "The American medievalist Charles Homer...