Grant Allen - Paris. Grant Allen's Historical Guides

For the general study of Christian art, alike in architecture, sculpture, and painting, no treatises are more useful for the tourist to carry with him for constant reference than Mrs. Jameson’s Sacred and Legendary Art , and Legends of the Madonna (London, Longmans). For works of Italian art, both in Italy and elsewhere, Kugler's Italian Schools of Painting is an invaluable vade-mecum . These books should be carried about by everybody everywhere. Other works of special and local importance will occasionally be noticed under each particular city, church, or museum.

I cannot venture to hope that handbooks containing such a mass of facts as these will be wholly free from errors and misstatements, above all in early editions. I can only beg those who may detect any such to point them out, without unnecessary harshness, to the author, care of the publisher, and if possible to assign reasons for any dissentient opinion.

THE portions of this book intended to be read at leisure at home, before proceeding to explore each town or monument, are enclosed in brackets [ thus ]. The portion relating to each principal object should be quietly read and digested before a visit, and referred to again afterwards. The portion to be read on the spot is made as brief as possible, and is printed in large legible type, so as to be easily read in the dim light of churches, chapels, and galleries. The key-note words are printed in bold type, to catch the eye. Where objects are numbered, the numbers used are always those of the latest official catalogues .

Baedeker’s Guides are so printed that each principal portion can be detached entire from the volume. The traveller who uses Baedeker is advised to carry in his pocket one such portion, referring to the place he is then visiting, together with the plan of the town, while carrying this book in his hand. These Guides do not profess to supply practical information .

Individual works of merit are distinguished by an asterisk ( *); those of very exceptional interest and merit have two asterisks . Nothing is noticed in this book which does not seem to the writer worthy of attention .

See little at a time, and see it thoroughly. Never attempt to “do” any place or any monument. By following strictly the order in which objects are noticed in this book, you will gain a conception of the historical evolution of the town which you cannot obtain if you go about looking at churches and palaces hap-hazard. The order is arranged, not quite chronologically, but on a definite plan, which greatly facilitates comprehension of the subject .

PARIS is not, like Rome, London, Lyons, an inevitable city. It does not owe its distinctive place, like New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Melbourne, to natural position alone. Rather does it resemble Madrid or Berlin in being in great part of artificial administrative origin. It stands, no doubt, upon an important navigable river, the Seine; but its position upon that river, though near the head of navigation, when judged by the standard of early times, is not exactly necessary or commanding. Rouen in mediæval days, Havre at the present moment, are the real ports of the Seine. The site of Paris is in itself nothing more than one among the many little groups of willow-clad alluvial islets which are frequent along the upper reaches of the river. The modern city owes its special development as a town, first to its Roman conquerors, then to its bridges, next to its mediæval counts, last of all to the series of special accidents by which those counts developed at last into kings of the nascent kingdom of France, and inheritors of the traditions of the Frankish sovereigns. It is thus in large part a royal residential town, depending mainly for prosperity upon its kings, its nobles, its courts of justice, its parliaments, its university, its clergy, and its official classes; comparatively little, till quite recent times, upon the energy and industry of its individual citizens. We say, as a rule, that Paris is the capital of France; it would be truer to say that France is the country which has grouped itself under the rulers of Paris.

The name itself points back to the antiquity of some human aggregation upon this particular spot. It is the name of a tribe, not that of their capital. The Parisii were a Celtic people of comparatively small importance, who occupied the banks of the Seine at the period of the Roman conquest. Their town or stronghold, Lutetia, called distinctively Lutetia Parisiorum (Lutetia of the Parisii), was situated, says Cæsar, “in an island of the river Sequana” – the same which is now called the Île de la Cité. Two adjacent islands of the same alluvial type have long since coalesced to form the Île St. Louis; a fourth, the Île Louviers, is at present enclosed in the mainland of the northern bank by the modern quays.

This stockaded island villageof the Parisii was conquered by the Romans in B.C. 53. Under Roman rule, it remained at first an unimportant place, the really large towns of Gaul at that time being Arles, Nîmes, Marseilles, Bordeaux, and Lyons. In the north, Treviri was the chief Roman settlement. Towards the end of the Roman period, however, Paris seems to have increased in importance, and overflowed a little from the island to the south bank. The town owed its rapid rise, no doubt, to the two Roman bridges which here crossed the two branches of the Seine, probably on the same sites as the modern Petit-Pont and Pont Notre-Dame. The river formed its highway. Constantius Chlorus, who lived in Gaul from A.D. 292 to 306, is supposed to have built in the faubourg on the south side the palace of the Thermes, which now forms a part of the Museum of Cluny. Julian certainly inhabited that palace in 360. The town was known as Lutetia almost as long as the Roman power lasted; but after the Frankish invasion (and even in late Roman times), the name of the tribe superseded that of the ancient fortress: Lutetia became known as Paris, the stronghold of the Parisii, just in the same way as the Turones gave their name to Tours, the Ambiani to Amiens, and the Senones to Sens.

After the occupation of Gaul by Clovis (Hlodwig), Paris sank for a time to the position of a mere provincial town. The Merwing (or Merovingian) kings, the successors of Clovis, resided as a rule at Orleans or Soissons. The Frankish emperors and kings of the line of Charlemagne, again (the Karlings or Carlovingians), held their court for the most part at Aix-la-Chapelle. The town by the Seine was so completely neglected under later sovereigns of the Karling line (who were practically Germans), that during the invasions of the Northmen from 841 to 885 it was left entirely to its own resources. But its count, Eudes, defended it so bravely from the northern pirates, that he became the real founder of the French State, the first inaugurator of France as a separate country, distinct from the Empire. His provincial city grew into the kernel of a mediæval monarchy. From his time on, Paris emerges as the capital of a struggling kingdom, small in extent at first, but gradually growing till it attained the size which it now possesses. The Teutonic King of the Franks was reduced for a time to the rocky fortress of Laon; the Count of Parisbecame Duke of the French, and then King of Francein the modern acceptation.