Paris in the Middle Ages

Simone Roux is Professor of History Emerita at University of Paris-X, Nantes. Jo Ann McNamara was Professor of History at Hunter College, City University of New York. She was the author of Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millennia.

• Translator's IntroductionIntroductionPART ONE: PARIS AND ITS INHABITANTS (THIRTEENTH-FIFTEENTH CENTURIES)Chapter 1: Urban Space: Designers and Occupants-The Enceinte Defined the City-Urban Growth to the Thirteenth Century-Witnesses to These Transformations-Ordinary Parisians in Urbanization-Paris, Home of the Free-The Big City at the End of the Middle Ages: Prosperity and Sorrow.-Parisians in Their CityChapter 2: Street Scenes: Marvels and Perils of Parisian Life-The Flattery of Arts and Letters-Prosaic Glimpses-Normative Documents-The Streets of Paris: Life, Crime and Punishment-The Streets of Paris: Religious Spaces and Political SpacesChapter 3: Parisians-Provincial Immigrants-A Self-Sustaining Population-Strangers Assimilated and Individuals Distinguished-Tales of Ordinary Life-Parisians Between Modernity and TraditionPART TWO: A KALEIDOSCOPE OF HIERARCHIESChapter 4: The World of Money: Haves and Have Nots-The Parisian Great Bourgeoisie-International Financiers and Royal Financial Agents-The Simple Bourgeois-From Comfort to Survival: The Poor and the ImpoverishedChapter 5: The World of Political Power-Paris, Seat of the King and his Court-In the King's Service-And the Nobility?-Agents of Power: Procurators, Sergeants, Clerks, and OthersChapter 6: The World of the Church-Church Grandees in the Capital-Ecclesiastical Seigneuries-A Clerical Patchwork Quilt-Religious Life Set the Beat for Paris Life-Scholars and Savants-The World of the Church and the World of CharityPART THREE: OF WORKS AND DAYSChapter 7: In Shop and Workroom: Bringing Home the Bacon-The House as Work Space and Living Space-The World of the Artisans-Apprentices-Valets or Wage-Earning Journeymen-Masters, JurÉs, and Gardes-Outside the Crafts: Domestics and Unskilled Labor-Disturbances in the World of LaborChapter 8: Networks of Solidarity: Obligatory Bonds and Chosen Ties-The Family Group, More Restrained Yet Less Constraining-Ordinary Parisian Women in the Time of Philip the Fair-Voluntary Attachments and Supportive Solidarities: Associations and ConfraternitiesChapter 9: Lifestyles-Intimacy: The Individual and the Community-Lodging from Palace to Cottage-Enclosed Space and Open Space, Public and Private-The Nuts and Bolts of Daily LifeConclusionAppendix: Parisian Taxpayers in 1297NotesBibliographyChronologyGlossaryIndex

"Simone Roux's new history of medieval Paris, beautifully translated by Jo Ann McNamara . . . goes far beyond cold administrative mechanics or economics, and digs down into the attitudes of workaday life. It is this anecdotal material that gives the book its human edge-too often absent from a period lacking in diaries and private letters."-TLS"One feels the city in constant motion, going from funeral to carnival, wading along streets drenched with the blood of animals flayed by butchers, applauding jongleurs and their monkeys, even watching the legal trials of beasts condemned to death."-Le Nouvel Observateur, in a review of the French edition"A wonderful and useful book for anyone who wants to know the history of the city from the inside."-H-Net