NEVER in all its many troubled days has France been more in need of a wise head and a steady hand than it was when in 987 the lords gave to Hugh Capet the name of King of France. He was already Count of Paris and Duke of France, that is, of the Île de France, the district around Paris. When he was chosen king the title meant only that a few powerful nobles promised him their fidelity. Back of this insignificant fact, however, loomed the idea of kingship remembered from the Roman days of centralized power. Combined with this idea was the governing principle of the new feudalism which emphasized the duty of every man to be loyal to his superior with obedience and support, to his inferior with protection. Thus the title of king meant much or little in proportion as the holders of great possessions lived up to their oaths of allegiance. The weakness of the royal person was the foundation weakness of the feudal system which

nominally linked the whole of society in an inter-dependent chain, but really fostered the strength of the individual.

Under such conditions it was only the man of unusual force who could maintain himself at a pitch of power greater than that of subordinates who were his equals in all but name. Hugh Capet proved himself such a man, fighting, cajoling, buying his way through a reign of constant disturbance, but strong enough at its end to leave his crown to his son without opposition from the nobles.

A medieval tradition had it that Hugh was the son of a butcher of Paris. A fourteenth century chanson called “Hugh the Butcher” encouraged the bourgeois to believe in the possibility of a like elevation. Dante refers to the story in the “Divine Comedy.” He hears a shade on the Fifth Ledge of Purgatory say: “I was the root of the evil plant which so overshadows all the Christian land that good fruit is rarely plucked therefrom.... Yonder I was called Hugh Capet: of me are born the Philips and the Lewises by whom of late times France is ruled. I was the son of a butcher of Paris. When the ancient kings had all died out, save one who had assumed the gray garb, I found me with the bridle of the government of the realm fast in my hands.”

Here follows a recital of wicked deeds done by Hugh’s descendants by reason of avarice, in the midst of which is the apostrophe, “O Avarice, what more canst thou do with us since thou hast so drawn thy race unto thyself that it cares not for its own flesh?”

There is no reason to suppose that the tradition concerning Hugh’s birth rested on fact. His descent from Robert the Strong was direct and he himself was the worthy head of a family that had given to the throne of France one titled and two untitled kings.

The son who followed Hugh was Robert the Pious (996-1031) and he and his successors for a hundred and fifty years labored perseveringly toward that centralization of power in the monarch which came to definite realization in the reign of Philip Augustus (1180-1223), and to establishment under the single-hearted rule of Louis IX, the Saint (1226-1270).

Within three centuries after the accession of the new dynasty Paris attained to the position which she has held ever since—as the head of the nation, leading by virtue of her thought and will, and as the heart of the people, beating with impulses of generosity and love and passion. With Hugh Capet himself her stability began, for he was the first king to make the city his permanent home. The palace at the western end of the CitÉ had been strengthened by Eudes who made of it a square fortress with towers. Here Hugh lived when he was not in the field suppressing the uprisings of the nobles who had elected him. That they were of a spirit so independent as to need a constant curb is to be guessed from a conversation reported to have occurred between Hugh and Adelbert, one of the great lords. “Have a care,” warned Hugh. “Who made you count?” “Who made you king?” instantly retorted the lord. Perhaps it was a wish not to seem to glory over his subjects that impelled Hugh never to wear his crown after the occasion of his coronation. By having his son Robert crowned at the same time he helped secure the stability of his line.

To the west of the palace Hugh planted a garden, and he also added stables, whose care was entrusted to a comte de l’Étable, or constable, the title given later and until 1627 to the commander-in-chief of the French army. On the river side of the palace the king rebuilt the Gallo-Roman prison on the spot where now stands the Conciergerie. The keeper of this prison was a noble to whom was given the title of count of the candles, comte des cierges or concierge, the name bestowed to-day on a janitor. His pay in the olden days consisted of two fowls a day and the ashes from the king’s fireplace.

To the east of the palace on the spot where the Tribunal of Commerce now rises, there stood in Hugh’s day a Merovingian chapel dedicated to Saint Bartholomew. Legend has it that it was of ancient origin and had been sacred to pagan gods. To secure their overthrow, Saint Denis, it is said, went there to preach, and there it was that he was seized by his enemies. King Hugh enlarged the church and dedicated it not only to Saint Bartholomew but to Saint Magloire as well.

It was during the time of Robert the Pious that society, grown degenerate under the generally base or incompetent kings of the Merovingian and Carlovingian dynasties, reached its lowest ebb of hopelessness and inaction. Modern historians deny that fear of the end of the world when the year 1000 should open had anything to do with the lethargy of this period. Whether they are right or wrong, it cannot be disputed that after the year had begun there was a stirring such as had not been known for two or three generations. Only the church seems to have emerged triumphant in material things, for it now held rich possessions whose deeds of gift, beginning “Because of the approaching end of the world,” seem to hint at an attempt of former owners to be on the safe side in the event of the possible coming of the Day of Judgment. Whatever the cause, the givers, stripped stark, had to busy themselves to restore their affairs, and some new constructive impulse built noble buildings and inspired a brutalized society with ideals which devoted force to uplifting ends—the protection of the weak and the defense of the church.

Robert did not inherit his father’s energy or administrative ability. He was a handsome man, fond of appearing in public wearing his crown and flowing robes. He was something of a scholar, and so good a musician that he led the choir at Saint Denis and composed hymns which were accepted by the Church. The poor were his especial care and so traded on his good nature that they even snipped the gold tassels and fringe from his garments when he went abroad. At an open table many hundred dined daily at his expense. He was truly pious as his name declared, and, in the manner of the age, he sought to express his religious interest by the building of churches and monasteries. Paris in especial profited by his desire to win eternal favor, for he built or restored churches to the mystic number of seven and twice that number of religious establishments.

King Robert’s domestic life verged on tragedy. He married a distant cousin whom he loved devotedly, but the marriage was not approved by the pope, and when the king and queen refused to separate he excommunicated them. To be excommunicated meant not only that the offender was cut off from the sacraments of the Church, but that he was forbidden all intercourse with his fellow men. Every one fled at sight of the accursed and the few servants left to the royal pair cleansed with fire every plate and cup that they used.

Robert and Bertha finally bowed to the papal decree. Robert then married Constance, daughter of the Count of Toulouse, who proved a sufficient punishment for any and all his sins of omission and commission. In her train came troubadours and southern knights who brought to Robert’s rebuilt and enlarged Paris palace fashions of dress that were regarded as unseemly, manners that were all too frivolous, and characters unworthy of dependence. The novelty caught the fancy of the Parisians, who, according to an old chronicler, “before long reflected only too faithfully the depravity and infamy of their models.”

Constance kept a sharp eye on her husband’s charitable disbursements, and she brought up her sons so badly that Robert’s last years were embittered by their brawlings and rebellions. The king died bitterly lamented by his subjects, who knew enough of the character of his successor to feel strong apprehension concerning their fate at his hands.

The eleventh century, filled by the reigns of Robert, his son, Henry I (1031-1060) and his grandson Philip I (1060-1108), was made terrible by famines and wonderful by the opening of the great adventure of the Crusades. The famine brought to thousands a lingering death beside which the sudden departure attending the end of the world would have been peaceful translation. The Crusades, begun (1096) in exaltation but in a pitiful ignorance of ways and means, ended a hundred and seventy-five years later in selfishness and an accession of knowledge. The ignorance cost a waste of human life horrible to think of; the knowledge moved western Europe to expression in all forms of art, and brought about a feeling of unity which, in France, produced a nation bound by common interests. Beyond any calculation was the impetus given to commerce and to the intellectual life. The ordering of society, the institution of chivalry, the awakening to the vividness of mental activity and of beauty—these three influences touched life under the early Capetians until it grew and ripened into the simple, beauty-loving, God-fearing temper of the thirteenth century, the soul of the Middle Ages.

Henry I (1031-1060), no weakling but not a man of administrative ability, followed his father’s example as a builder. One of his benefactions was the Priory of Saint Martin-des-Champs which was begun in the last year of his reign on the site of a former establishment which had been destroyed by the Normans. It lay well out of the city on the old Roman road leading to the north and was a huge place, a fortified village in itself and quite independent of Paris. A wall of considerable size furnished with round towers surrounded an enclosure in which were a church, a refectory, a cloister, a chapter-house, an archive tower, a field for the pasturing of cattle, gardens for the raising of vegetables, and a cemetery for the burial of the dead. The wall has gone to-day except for one of the round towers which was preserved and rebuilt through the intercession of Victor Hugo when the straightening of a street called for its destruction. The field and gardens and the cemetery are now hidden beneath houses and pavements, but the church, whose erection lasted from the eleventh to the thirteenth century, and the refectory, finished in the thirteenth century, have been preserved as parts of the Conservatoire des Arts et MÉtiers, established by the Convention in 1794 as a technical school and museum of machines and scientific instruments. The church, secularized, serves as an exhibition hall for machinery, an incongruous and somewhat shocking combination. The refectory is put to the more suitable use of housing the technical library. Both are exquisite examples, and the church is the oldest existing instance in the city, of that Gothic architecture which sprang into being in the twelfth century as if to symbolize with its stretching height and its soaring spires, its delicate workmanship and its brilliancy of light and coloring, the aspiration toward the high and the beautiful which filled men’s desires after they came in contact with the appealing mysticism and the dazzling loveliness of the East.

Like his father Henry had trouble with his wives—there were three of them—and the marital affairs of his son, Philip I (1060-1108), were even more involved. Becoming violently infatuated with Bertrade, the fourth wife of the Count of Anjou, Philip sent away his wife, Bertha, and arranged with Bertrade during a church service that she should submit to being kidnapped. No bishop would marry them and it was only after long search that a priest was found sufficiently timid or sufficiently avaricious to yield his conscience to the royal demand. Excommunication followed promptly, and for twelve years the coming of Philip and Bertrade to a city silenced the church bells, which rang out joyfully again as they left. So bad was the effect upon his people of their king’s obstinate wrong-doing that the pope at last consented to an examination of the royal offender. All the bishops of France met in Paris on the first day of December, 1104. The Bishop of Orleans and the Bishop of Paris waited upon Philip and asked whether he were prepared to change his manner of life. He said that he was and accordingly appeared before the ecclesiastical body barefooted and seemingly penitent. Kneeling he promised atonement and swore to put aside Bertrade. Bertrade took a similar oath. Neither of them kept it, but so willing was everybody to feign blindness after this form of expiation that two years later the monks of Saint Nicholas at Angers received them both cordially, and Bertrade’s discarded husband dined at the same table with his successor and slept in the same room with him.

Philip never was a friend of the church though he did not in later life carry into effect depredations such as he planned when young, a real theft, in fact, which, through a miraculous intervention, never came to pass. Feeling a twinge of royal poverty—which does not mean that he was really very poor—he went with one of his officers to Saint Germain-des-PrÉs to take possession of some part of its riches. As they approached the treasury the king’s companion was stricken blind, a circumstance that put the thieving monarch to flight in terror. Yet the check was not lasting for he and his courtiers so corrupted some of the nunneries and monasteries of Paris that the Bishop of Paris was obliged to disperse the establishments. One of the largest, a convent, was on the CitÉ on the site of the present Prefecture of Police.

Having all this trouble with the pope and the church on his hands it is not to be wondered at that Philip was not stirred by Peter the Hermit’s preaching of the First Crusade. Indeed, no great ruler went on this first expedition, though the enlistment of many strong lords and their feudal following, and the unwise rush of whole families—women and children as well as men and youths—lost many lives to France in this most French of all the crusades.

Though not of a temper to sympathize personally with a love of learning Philip had intelligence enough and kingly pride enough to see the advantage to Paris of a concentration of schools in his capital. He never interfered with the teaching of the religious houses, and during his reign and immediately after at least four schools had obtained a more than local reputation. As the church of Saint Denis sheltered the tombs of the kings it was fitting that the abbey should instruct the sons of the nobles; the cathedral of Notre Dame stood in the heart of the CitÉ, and there the sons of the merchants were trained, one of their teachers being William of Champeaux whose eloquence knew no equal until it was matched and surpassed by one of his pupils, a young man from Brittany, AbÉlard. AbÉlard learned what many others have learned before and since, that it is both tactless and unprofitable to outshine your so-called “betters.” He was sent away from Paris. It was not long before he was summoned back by general acclaim, and joined the lecturers of the third great school of the time, the favorite of the foreign students, that of the abbey of Sainte GeneviÈve. His popularity there so displeased William of Champeaux that he severed his connection with the school of Notre Dame and founded the school and abbey of Saint Victor, on the south bank, east of the island. This abbey was suppressed during the Revolution and Napoleon built on its site the Halle aux Vins where the city’s supply of wine is stored in bond.

Of these four schools the one to which AbÉlard attached himself acquired a drawing reputation throughout all Europe, and scholars from England and Germany and Italy sought him eagerly, often enjoying the privilege of sitting under him at the expense of a long journey on foot and of a life of privation when Paris was reached. AbÉlard’s thesis was “Do not believe what you cannot understand”—the time-honored cry of the independent thinker. The conservatives bided their time; there was no use contending with a man in whom youth, beauty, learning and eloquence flowered in a magical persuasiveness.

Unfortunately for AbÉlard’s career he was invited by Fulbert, a canon of the cathedral, to enter his household as tutor of his niece, HÉloise. It was a rash experiment. In a narrow street of the CitÉ, twisting about in the space north of the cathedral, the section where the canons and canonesses used to live, there is still shown the site of the garden where tutor and pupil, soon grown lovers, met in secret and plighted a troth that was to bring upon them both suffering and shame—for AbÉlard the end of his rise in the church, for HÉloise, the cloister. They were married and lived for a time where now stands number nine on the Quai aux Fleurs, looking across the Seine to the right bank. Fulbert separated them, but even the conservatives were shocked at the hideous revenge which sent AbÉlard away from Paris only to be reunited with HÉloise after her death in a convent twenty years after the death of her lover. To-day their tomb in PÈre Lachaise is the most visited of all the resting places of the illustrious in this famous cemetery.

Louis VI (1108-1137), called “the Wideawake” and “the Fat,” was a monarch who did much and planned more. Tall, handsome, energetic, serious, he was the author of policies which in later days developed important results. His accession found his kingdom surrounded by nobles who were nominally his subjects but really enemies of uncommon vigor awaiting the first chance to take their liege lord by surprise. He needed something more than his present resources to cope with the situation, and he met it by making for his son an advantageous marriage which won him the adherence of Poitou and Guienne, and by permitting in his adversaries’ domains, but not in his own, the establishment of communes—self-governing towns which paid for their privileges by supporting him against the nobles who ordinarily would have received their feudal obedience. Both these steps proved of substantial value to the crown, the first adding a large piece of territory to the royal possessions in the next reign, and the other developing a new social class, the bourgeoisie or town dwelling class, whose democratic spirit grew so rapidly that Louis IX in the next century had to check its advance if he would have his own unchecked. It has never been long subdued, however; it smoldered until it burst into the flame of the Revolution; it persists to-day as the genius of the Third Republic.

Paris never was a commune, but, in compensation for remaining under the rulership of the king and his provost (who lived in the Grand ChÂtelet built to defend the northern end of the bridge from the CitÉ as the Petit ChÂtelet held the southern bank) it received certain unusual privileges. Among them was the monopoly of water transportation between Paris and Mantes granted by Louis VI to the Corporation of Water Merchants. This corporation was the most powerful of the merchants’ guilds in whose hands rested the municipal administration.

Louis’ methods, and those of his schoolmate and adviser, Suger, abbot of Saint Denis, encouraged the growth of the city, for in this reign it began once more to increase briskly on both banks of the river. As in the earlier centuries, the pleasant country on the left bank proved more attractive than did the rough land on the right. The south side permitted streets to wander as widely as they willed, but on the north the newcomers were pushed into a crowded section along the river. Marsh and forest behind separated this compact district from Saint Martin-des-Champs. Even at this early stage the northern settlement, grouped around the GrÈve where the shipping was concentrated, was becoming the business part of Paris. At a discreet distance outside were the markets on exactly the spot where the Halles Centrales stand to-day, and just within the settlement Louis built for the benefit of the market men and women the church of Saint Jacques-la-Boucherie, now entirely destroyed except for a sixteenth century tower which stands in ornate dignity in a leafy square around which nineteenth century steam trams and twentieth century automobiles hoot and whirl.

To Louis VI is attributed the building of the second city wall, piecing out its predecessor so as to protect the suburbs on the right bank. He was interested, too, in religious establishments. He added to the number of the clergy of the chapel of Saint Nicholas near the palace, making part of their emolument six hogsheads of wine apiece from his own vineyards. He repaired Notre Dame, already five centuries old. He was a patron of Saint Denis, where he had been educated and where he adopted as the royal banner the oriflamme of the saint. He dedicated a church of the CitÉ to Sainte GeneviÈve in gratitude for her staying an epidemic of fever. He had the heads of cattle carved over the door of the church with which he honored Saint Peter—Saint Pierre-aux-Boeufs—for the especial benefit of the butchers of the city.

On top of Montmartre, standing demurely to-day beside the glittering basilica of the Sacred Heart, is the little church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre built by Louis as the chapel of a Benedictine abbey. Its restoration has been completed within the last decade, and its cold, undecorated severity compels a realization of monastic cheerlessness and of how acceptable must have been the reaction to the colorful warmth and grace of the Gothic. Though their church was not beautiful the Benedictines had no reason to be uncomfortable, for Louis granted to them a whole village and sundry estates, and in addition such eminently secular property as a monopoly of the baking privileges of certain ovens, a slaughter-house, the confiscated house of an Italian money-changer, and the exclusive right to fish in certain parts of the Seine.

Up to this point the buildings mentioned have but little to show to modern eyes beyond their ancient character and perhaps their form. A Roman bath, a Merovingian tower on the Church of Saint Germain-des-PrÉs, a rebuilt tower of Saint Martin’s Priory, two aged columns in Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre—these are but fragments of the old constructions. From this period on, however, it will become more and more usual to find large portions of early buildings. One such is the church of Saint Julien-le-Pauvre. Its date is a little later than that of the abbey church of Saint Pierre-de-Montmartre. It is Gothic at its simplest, yet its pointed windows and arches are prophetic of the beauty to come.

The story of Saint Julien, to whom the church is dedicated, is one of tragic interest. A youth of noble family, he gave himself earnestly to all the pursuits of his time and of his class, his one fault being his love of the cruelties of the chase. One day a dying stag whose doe and fawn he had killed prophesied that he would slay his own father and mother. The prophecy came to pass and Julien, in horror at the misfortune that had befallen him, left home and wife and wealth and wandered in poverty through the world seeking whom he might help. At last he established himself on a river bank in a hut where he sheltered travelers through the night, and in the morning ferried them across the stream. There he lived a life of expiation till death took him.

It was in the sixth century that a pilgrim’s hostel was built in Saint Julien’s honor on the south side of the Seine. There Saint Gregory of Tours lodged in 580, and there the Normans came in 886 and destroyed it. In the twelfth century it was rebuilt as a part of the Abbey of Longpont. Since then the unpretentious building has had a varied history. At one time it served as the general assembly hall of the University; again it became the chapel of the hospital, the HÔtel Dieu. During the Revolution it served as a storehouse for fodder. At some time the nave was destroyed, leaving in the present courtyard a well which once was beneath the roof of the church. The existing edifice, which is merely the choir of the twelfth century building, is used for the Greek service.

Thanks to his father’s prudent arrangements Louis VII, called “the Young” and “the Pious” (1137-1180), inherited a far larger and stronger territory than had Louis VI. He was by no means his father’s equal in intelligence or energy and his reign was unmarked by events notable either for Paris or for France. His happiest days were those that he spent in the cloisters of Notre Dame, he said. His father was happiest in the field.

A few years after Louis’ accession he became involved in a quarrel with the pope over a candidate for a bishopric. When the Count of Champagne sided with the Holy Father Louis invaded his domains. During the siege of the town of Vitry no fewer than thirteen hundred people who had taken refuge in a church were burned to death with the destruction of the building. Remorse for this disaster for which he was responsible made him lend a willing ear to the exhortations of Saint Bernard, an opponent of AbÉlard’s heresies who was now preaching the Second Crusade, and when Pope Eugenius came in person to France he gave the French king the pilgrim’s equipment and the oriflamme of Saint Denis in the Saint’s own church. The crusade ended in bitter disaster, and Louis died before the Third Crusade was under way, but his interest in the Holy Wars led to his patronage of the order of Knights Templar, which had been founded to protect pilgrims to the Holy Sepulcher. At the time when Pope Eugenius went to Paris there was a mighty gathering there of Templars, and probably it was then that King Louis granted them the land not far from the Priory of Saint Martin on which they built a huge establishment, part fortification, part religious house, whose surroundings they made fair by draining the marshes and converting waste land into fruitful fields.

The king does not seem to have been the cause of much civic improvement of Paris in spite of his long reign. He built an oratory to Notre Dame-de-l’Étoile near the palace. If we may judge by his usual oath—“By the Holy Innocents of Bethlehem”—it must have been he who gave the name to the cemetery of the Holy Innocents and its chapel, though probably they were established before his day. The burying ground was near the Halles, and it was laid out when that section was far beyond the crowded part of the town. By the time of the accession of Philip Augustus (1180), however, the population had pushed northwards from the busy river bank, the marsh had been made habitable, and the quickly increasing cemetery stood on the outskirts of the town, not in the country, and needed the wall which Philip gave it.

The Pont au Change, the bridge leading from the right bank to the island near the palace—perhaps the very line which the Grand Pont drew across the river at the time of the siege by the Normans—received its name at this time. There were houses built upon it from end to end, and Louis allowed the money-changers to do business upon it along one side and permitted the goldsmiths to establish themselves on the other. For four centuries this was the fashionable promenade of Paris until Henry IV finished the Pont Neuf whose open expanse across the western tip of the CitÉ gave more space for display. When a new king made his formal entry into Paris it was customary for a huge flock of birds to be let loose from the Pont au Change that they might carry the glad news abroad.

Eleanor of Aquitaine who had brought Louis and France so handsome a dowry proved a wife whose conduct her husband could not countenance, though he loved her with a stern fondness. Their marriage was annulled. Within a few months Eleanor married Henry Plantagenet who became Henry II of England and she gave her new husband possessions in France which, added to those which he already had as lord of Normandy, Brittany, Anjou and Maine, made him richer in French lands than the king to whom he owed allegiance. Then began the friction between the two countries which it has required centuries to still. Louis was twice married after his separation from Eleanor. His last wife was Alix or Adelaide of Champagne, whose marriage, consecration and coronation on a November day in 1160 were the ceremonies of the last brilliant scene enacted within the walls of the ancient Merovingian church of Notre Dame, soon to be replaced by the building which ennobles the CitÉ to-day.

After Louis’ death there came to the throne a king for whom the bird-sellers of the Pont au Change might properly have sent forth double the usual number of feathered messengers of gladness, for Philip the Great was to make France understand for the first time the spirit of nationality, and under him Paris was to develop into the brain that ordered the members.