Paris : The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City

Paris: The Powers that Shaped the Medieval City considers the various forces - royal, monastic and secular - that shaped the art, architecture and topography of Paris between c. 1100 and c. 1500, a period in which Paris became one of the foremost metropolises in the West. The individual contributions, written by an international group of scholars, cover the subject from many different angles.They encompass wide-ranging case studies that address architecture, manuscript illumination and stained glass, as well as questions of liturgy, religion and social life.Topics include the early medieval churches that preceded the current cathedral church of Notre-Dame and cultural production in the Paris area in the late 12th and early 13th centuries, as well as Paris’s chapels and bridges.There is new evidence for the source of the c. 1240 design for a celebrated window in the Sainte-Chapelle, an evaluation of the liturgical arrangements in the new shrine-choir of Saint-Denis, built 1140-44, and a