Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 18.djvu/309

P A K I S 287 Areopagite, who was converted by St Paul at Athens, and thus takes us back to the middle of the 1st century of the Christian era. Better founded is the opinion which dates the evangelization of the city two centuries later ; the regular list of bishops, of whom, after Denis, the most famous was St Marcel, begins about 250. Lutetia was in some sort the cradle of Christian liberty, having been the capital, from 292 to 306, of the mild Constantius Chlorus, who put an end to persecution in Brittany, Gaul, and Spain, over which he ruled. This emperor fixed his residence on the banks of the Seine, doubtless for the purpose of watching the Germans with out losing sight of Brittany, where the Roman authority was always unstable ; perhaps he also felt something of the same fancy for Lutetia which Julian afterwards expressed in his works and his letters. Be that as it may, the fact that these two princes chose to live there naturally drew attention to the city, where several buildings now rose on the left side of the river which could not have been reared within the narrow boundaries of the island. There was the imperial palace, the remains of which, a magnificent vaulted chamber, beside the Hotel de Cluny, are now known, probably correctly, as Julian s Baths. At some distance up the river, in the quarter of St Victor, excavations in 1870 and in 1883 laid bare the foundations of the amphitheatre, which was capable of holding about 10,000 spectators, and thus suggests the existence of a population of 20,000 to 25,000 souls. Dwelling-houses, villas, and probably also an extensive cemetery, occupied the slope of the hill of St Genevieve. It was at Lutetia that, in 360, Julian, already Caesar, was in spite of himself proclaimed Augustus by the legions he had more than once led to victory in Germany. The troops invaded his palace, which, to judge by various circumstances of the mutiny, must have been of great extent. As for the city itself, it was as yet but a little town (770X1^77) according to the imperial author in his Misopogon. The successive sojourns of Valentinian I. and Gratian scarcely increased its importance. The latest emperors preferred Treves, Aries, and Vienne in Gaul, and, besides, allowed Paris to be absorbed by the powerful Armorican league (c. 410). When the patricians Aetius, /Egidius, and Syagrius held almost independent sway over the small portion of Gaul which still held together, they dwelt at Soissons, and it was there that Clovis fixed himself during the ten or eleven years between the defeat of Syagrius (486) and the surrender of Paris (497), which opened its gates, at the advice of St Genevieve, only after the conversion of the Frankish king. In 508, at the return of his victorious expedition against the south, Clovis made Paris the official capital of his TQ&lmCathedram regni constituit, says Gregory of Tours. He chose as his residence the palace of the Thermae, and lost no time in erecting on the summit of the hill, as his future place of interment, the basilica of St Peter and St Paul, which became not long afterwards the church and abbey of St Genevieve. After the death of Clovis, in spite of the supremacy granted to the kingdom of Australia or Metz, Paris remained the true political centre of the various Frankish states, insomuch that the four sons of Clothaire, fearing the prestige which would attach to whoever of them might possess it, made it a sort of neutral town, though after all it was seized by Sigebert, king of Austrasia, Chilperic, king of Neustria (who managed to keep possession for some time, and repaired the amphi theatre), and Gontran, king of Burgundy. The last sovereign had to defend himself in 585 against the pre tender Gondowald, whose ambition aspired to uniting the whole of Gaul under his dominion, and marching on Paris to make it the seat of the half barbarian half Roman administration of the kingdom of which he had dreamed. Numerous calamities befell Paris from 586, when a terrible conflagration took place, to the close of the Merovingian dynasty. During a severe famine Bishop Landry sold the church plate to alleviate the distress of the people, and it was probably he who, in company with St F^loi (Eligius), founded the Hotel-Dieu. The kings in the long run almost abandoned the town, especially when the Austrasian influence under the mayors of the palace tended to shift the centre of the Frankish power towards the Rhine. Though the Merovingian period was for art a time of the deepest decadence, Paris was nevertheless adorned and enriched by pious foundations. Mention has already been made of the abbey of St Peter, which became after the death of Clovis the abbey of St Genevieve. On the same side of the river, but in the valley, Childebert, with the assistance of Bishop St Germain, founded St Vincent, known a little later as St Germain-des-Pres, which was the necropolis of the Frank kings before St Denis. On the right bank the same king built St Vincent le Rond (afterwards St Germain 1 Auxerrois), and in La Cite", beside the cathedral of St Etienne, the basilica of Notre Dame, which excited the admiration of his contemporaries and in the 12th century obtained the title of cathedral. Various monasteries were erected on both sides of the river, and served to group in thickly-peopled suburbs the popula tion, which had grown too large for the island. The first Carlovingian, Pippin the Short, occasionally lived at Paris, sometimes in the palace of Julian, sometimes in the old palace of the Roman governors of the town, at the lower end of the island ; the latter ultimately became the usual residence. Under Charlemagne Paris ceased to be capital; and when feudal France was constituted under Charles the Bald it was liberally bestowed, like any ordinary place, on mere counts or dukes. But the dangers of the Norman invasion attracted general attention to the town, and showed that its political importance could no longer be neglected. When the suburbs were pillaged and burned by the pirates, and the city regularly besieged in 885, Paris was heroically defended by its " lords," and the emperor Charles the Fat felt bound to hasten from Ger many to its relief. The pusillanimity which he showed in purchasing the retreat of the Normans was the main cause of his deposition in 887, while the courage displayed by Count Eudes procured him the crown of France. Robert, Eudes s brother, succeeded him; and, although Robert s son Hugh the Great was only duke of France and count of Paris, his power counterbalanced that of the last of the Carlovingians, shut up in Laon as their capital. With Hugh Capet in 987 the capital of the duchy of France definitively became the capital of the kingdom, and in spite of the frequent absence of the kings, several of whom preferred to reside at Orleans, the town continued to increase in size and population, and saw the develop ment of those institutions which were destined to secure its greatness. Henry I. founded the abbey of St Martin- des-Champs, Louis the Stout that of St Victor, the mother-house of an order, and a nursery of literature and theology. Under Louis VII. the royal domain was the scene of one of the greatest artistic revolutions recorded in history : the Roman style of architecture was exchanged for the Pointed or Gothic, of which Suger, in his reconstruction of the basilica of St Denis, exhibited the earliest type. The capital could not remain aloof from this movement : several sumptuous buildings were erected; the Roman choir of St Germain-des-Pre s was thrown down to give place to another more spacious and elegant; and when, in 1163, Pope Alexander had solemnly consecrated it, he was invited by Bishop Maurice de