Paris in the Age of Absolutism. An Essay

411 Pages·2003·16.17 MB·English

by  Orest A. Ranum

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in the
Age of Absolutism
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o r e s t r a n u m
in the
A f A
ge o bsolutism
a n e s s a y
revised and expanded edition
the pennsylvania state university press
university park, pennsylvania
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Disclaimer:
Some images in the original version of this book are not
available for inclusion in the eBook.
Je voy bien que la vérité qu’on nous demande
est bien plus difficile à trouver qu’à escrire.
racine to boileau in 1687,
when both were royal historiographers
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Ranum, Orest A.
Paris in the age of absolutism / an essay
Orest Ranum.— Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-271-02221-3 (alk. paper)
1. Paris (France)—History—Louis XIII,
1610–1643. 2. Paris (France)—History—
Louis XIV, 1643–1715. I. Title.
DC729 .R3 2003
394.261—dc21 2002009846
Copyright © 2002The Pennsylvania State University
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press,
University Park, PA 16802-1003
This is a revised and expanded edition of the 1968
book Paris in the Age of Absolutism: An Essay,
published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.
It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University
Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on
uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of
American National Standard for Information
Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library
Materials,ansi z39.48–1992.
Frontispiece: The Baker’s Cart, by Jean Michelin.
The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Fletcher Fund,
1927 (27.59). Photograph © 1983The Metropolitan
Museum of Art. All rights reserved.
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1968
To the lateborghild k. sundheim
and to the latekenneth l. holmes
Scholars and Teachers at Macalester College
2002
This revised edition of a book that is
as much about New York City as about seventeenth-century Paris
is dedicated to the exemplary public spirit manifested by
New Yorkers and Mayor Rudy Giuliani in the weeks after
the events of September11, 2001.
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Contents
Introduction:
Parisian History as Part of French History 1
Chronology 13
1. the medieval burden
1 A Traveler’s View in 1600 19
2 An Explosive Political Climate 41
3 The Necessity of a Capital 57
ii. foundations of modernity
4 Early Bourbon Absolutism 69
5 The Birth of Modern Paris 87
6 The Neighborhood Builders 105
7 The First Women Writers 129
iii. medieval revival
8 A Generation of Saints 167
9 The Last Heroes 195
10 The Corporate Parisians 229
iv. urban absolutism:
the flight from modernity
11 The Frondeurs 271
12 A Generation of Tartuffes 305
13 The New Rome 329
Epilogue 375
Acknowledgments 379
Bibliography 381
Illustration Credits 391
Index 393
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Introduction:
Parisian History as Part of French History
You politely, almost fearfully, asked for another piece of bread. Your father simply
stared at you coldly. You are perhaps fifteen, maybe sixteen, you are not sure which.
The soup had been hot, but thin; the eggs watery and vaguely sulphurous, a sign that
they should have been eaten weeks earlier. The gnawing in your belly was almost as
strong after supper as before it. Your older brothers had sat in silence, not quite star-
ing the other way, but deliberately avoiding your eyes. Your exhausted mother is heavy
with yet another child.
The next morning, you packed your other shirt in a little canvas bag, put on your
hat, and set off alone on the road to Paris, some eighty miles away. A three- or four-
day walk. Finding a straw stack last night was no problem, for the harvest has just
ended. A cousin on your mother’s side of the family, who is a cook and lives with a
printer’s family on the rue Saint-Jacques, can be counted on to put you up for a few
nights when you reach Paris. Somewhere, somehow, you will find someone who needs
wood hauled to the attic, a cellar cleaned out, manure loaded onto a wagon, water car-
ried upstairs, or ashes removed from fireplaces. You walk along the dusty road in the
August sun. When the cousin had gone to Paris, they had had to find someone with
whom she could travel; for only women of ill repute, or the very poor and the aged,
walked the highroad alone. Your name is Jean.
Are you fictional? Are you historical? The answer is: A bit of both. Until you
marry, or more accurately, ifyou marry—or until you commit a major crime and get
caught—no one will ask you for your surname: Jean will suffice. You lack the cash to
be apprenticed to an artisan, so your only hope is to become a household servant,
somewhere in the capital. Work in an inn is a possibility, or work in a stable.
Are you part of history? Yes, but not the high, lofty type of history that centers on
battles and politics. Thousands of young people left their homes and villages to, as the
phrase went, “seek their fortune” in the capital. Their parents had loved them, but by
the time adolescents were fifteen or sixteen, they were considered more than grown-up;
and there simply were too many mouths to feed every night. The Parisian population
1