HOME
*



picture info

Saint-Germain-des-Prés (abbey)
The Church of Saint-Germain-des-Prés () is a Roman Catholic parish church located in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés quarter of Paris. It was originally the church of a Benedictine abbey founded in the 6th century, by Childebert I, the son of Clovis, King of the Franks. It was destroyed by the Vikings, rebuilt, and renamed in the 8th century for Saint Germain, an early Bishop of the city. It is considered the oldest existing church in Paris. Originally located outside the walls of medieval Paris, in the fields and meadows of the Left Bank, known as “les Pres”, it became part of a rich and important abbey complex, famous for its illuminated manuscripts and scholarship, and was the burial place of Germanus and of Childebert and other Merovingian kings. The oldest part of the current church is the lower portion of western tower (partly restored and modified), which was built by Abbot Morard around the year 1000. It was the first church in the Ile-de-France to have flying butt ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Paris
Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. Since the 17th century, Paris has been one of the world's major centres of finance, diplomacy, commerce, fashion, gastronomy, and science. For its leading role in the arts and sciences, as well as its very early system of street lighting, in the 19th century it became known as "the City of Light". Like London, prior to the Second World War, it was also sometimes called the capital of the world. The City of Paris is the centre of the Île-de-France region, or Paris Region, with an estimated population of 12,262,544 in 2019, or about 19% of the population of France, making the region France's primate city. The Paris Region had a GDP of €739 billion ($743 billion) in 2019, which is the highest in Europe. According to the Economist Intelli ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Franks
The Franks ( la, Franci or ) were a group of Germanic peoples whose name was first mentioned in 3rd-century Roman sources, and associated with tribes between the Lower Rhine and the Ems River, on the edge of the Roman Empire.H. Schutz: Tools, Weapons and Ornaments: Germanic Material Culture in Pre-Carolingian Central Europe, 400-750. BRILL, 2001, p.42. Later the term was associated with Romanized Germanic dynasties within the collapsing Western Roman Empire, who eventually commanded the whole region between the rivers Loire and Rhine. They imposed power over many other post-Roman kingdoms and Germanic peoples. Beginning with Charlemagne in 800, Frankish rulers were given recognition by the Catholic Church as successors to the old rulers of the Western Roman Empire. Although the Frankish name does not appear until the 3rd century, at least some of the original Frankish tribes had long been known to the Romans under their own names, both as allies providing soldiers, and as e ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Philip II Of France
Philip II (21 August 1165 – 14 July 1223), byname Philip Augustus (french: Philippe Auguste), was King of France from 1180 to 1223. His predecessors had been known as kings of the Franks, but from 1190 onward, Philip became the first French monarch to style himself "King of France" (Latin: ''rex Francie''). The son of King Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne, he was originally nicknamed ''Dieudonné'' (God-given) because he was a first son and born late in his father's life. Philip was given the epithet "Augustus" by the chronicler Rigord for having extended the crown lands of France so remarkably. After decades of conflicts with the House of Plantagenet, Philip succeeded in putting an end to the Angevin Empire by defeating a coalition of his rivals at the Battle of Bouvines in 1214. This victory would have a lasting impact on western European politics: the authority of the French king became unchallenged, while the English King John was forced by his barons to ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Wall Of Philip II Augustus
The Wall of Philip Augustus is the oldest city wall of Paris (France) whose plan is accurately known. Partially integrated into buildings, more traces of it remain than of the later fortifications. History The wall was built during the struggles between Philip II of France (called Philip Augustus) and the Anglo-Norman House of Plantagenet. The French king, before leaving for the Third Crusade, ordered a stone wall to be built to protect the French capital in his absence. Origin The walls were fortified from 1190 to 1213, built under the command of Philip Augustus whom also contributed to the cost of building the wall. Any incoming attack from France's main military threat, the English, would arrive from the western end of the Seine and so the western limit of the wall was placed next to the king's royal palace, the Louvre. The building of the wall also had the intention to discourage further urban expansion and to stimulate the usage of undeveloped land within the walls. This ar ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Flying Buttress
The flying buttress (''arc-boutant'', arch buttress) is a specific form of buttress composed of an arch that extends from the upper portion of a wall to a pier of great mass, in order to convey lateral forces to the ground that are necessary to push a wall outwards. These forces arise from vaulted ceilings of stone and from wind-loading of roofs. The namesake and defining feature of a flying buttress is that it is not in contact with the wall at ground level, unlike a traditional buttress, and so transmits the lateral forces across the span of intervening space between the wall and the pier. To provide lateral support, flying-buttress systems are composed of two parts: (i) a massive pier, a vertical block of masonry situated away from the building wall, and (ii) an arch that bridges the span between the pier and the wall — either a segmental arch or a quadrant arch — the ''flyer'' of the flying buttress. History As a lateral-support system, the flying buttress was develope ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




Saint Chapelle
The Sainte-Chapelle (; en, Holy Chapel) is a royal chapel in the Gothic style, within the medieval Palais de la Cité, the residence of the Kings of France until the 14th century, on the Île de la Cité in the River Seine in Paris, France. Construction began sometime after 1238 and the chapel was consecrated on 26 April 1248. The Sainte-Chapelle is considered among the highest achievements of the Rayonnant period of Gothic architecture. It was commissioned by King Louis IX of France to house his collection of Passion relics, including Christ's Crown of Thorns – one of the most important relics in medieval Christendom. This was later held in the nearby Notre-Dame Cathedral until the 2019 fire, which it survived. Along with the Conciergerie, Sainte-Chapelle is one of the earliest surviving buildings of the Capetian royal palace on the Île de la Cité. Although damaged during the French Revolution and restored in the 19th century, it has one of the most extensive 13th-cent ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pierre De Montreuil
Pierre de Montreuil (died 17 March 1267) was a French architect. The name formerly given to him by architectural historians, Peter of Montereau (in French, Pierre de Montereau), is a misnomer. It was based on his tombstone inscription ''Musterolo natus'' ("born in Musterolo"), a place name that was mistakenly identified as Montereau-Fault-Yonne, Montereau rather than Montreuil, Seine-Saint-Denis, Montreuil. Documented work He is one of the first named architects of 13th-century Paris, and, according to Anne Prache (writing in ''The Dictionary of Art''), "there has been a tendency to attribute an immense role to him."Prache 1996. Only the refectory (1239–1244, destroyed) and chapel of the Virgin (1245–c. 1250, only fragments remain) of the former abbey of Saint-Germain-des-Prés can be definitely said to be by him. He is thought to have been a master at the Basilique Saint-Denis beginning around 1247, although his specific contributions are unknown, and it is also generally agr ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Pope Alexander III
Pope Alexander III (c. 1100/1105 – 30 August 1181), born Roland ( it, Rolando), was head of the Catholic Church and ruler of the Papal States from 7 September 1159 until his death in 1181. A native of Siena, Alexander became pope after a contested election, but had to spend much of his pontificate outside Rome while several rivals, supported by Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, claimed the papacy. Alexander rejected Byzantine Emperor Manuel I Komnenos' offer to end the East–West Schism, sanctioned the Northern Crusades, and held the Third Council of the Lateran. The city of Alessandria in Piedmont is named after him. Early life and career Rolando was born in Siena. From the 14th century, he was referred to as a member of the aristocratic family of Bandinelli, although this has not been proven. He was long thought to be the 12th-century canon lawyer and theologian Master Roland of Bologna, who composed the "Stroma" or "Summa Rolandi"—one of the earliest comment ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Gothic Architecture
Gothic architecture (or pointed architecture) is an architectural style that was prevalent in Europe from the late 12th to the 16th century, during the High and Late Middle Ages, surviving into the 17th and 18th centuries in some areas. It evolved from Romanesque architecture and was succeeded by Renaissance architecture. It originated in the Île-de-France and Picardy regions of northern France. The style at the time was sometimes known as ''opus Francigenum'' (lit. French work); the term ''Gothic'' was first applied contemptuously during the later Renaissance, by those ambitious to revive the architecture of classical antiquity. The defining design element of Gothic architecture is the pointed or ogival arch. The use of the pointed arch in turn led to the development of the pointed rib vault and flying buttresses, combined with elaborate tracery and stained glass windows. At the Abbey of Saint-Denis, near Paris, the choir was reconstructed between 1140 and 1144, draw ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Scriptorium
Scriptorium (), literally "a place for writing", is commonly used to refer to a room in medieval European monasteries devoted to the writing, copying and illuminating of manuscripts commonly handled by monastic scribes. However, lay scribes and illuminators from outside the monastery also assisted the clerical scribes. The functional outset When monastic institutions arose in the early 6th century (the first European monastic writing dates from 517), they defined European literary culture and selectively preserved the literary history of the West. Monks copied Jerome's Latin Vulgate Bible and the commentaries and letters of early Church Fathers for missionary purposes as well as for use within the monastery. In the copying process, there was typically a division of labor among the monks who readied the parchment for copying by smoothing and chalking the surface, those who ruled the parchment and copied the text, and those who illuminated the text. Sometimes a single monk wou ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Basilica Of Saint-Denis
The Basilica of Saint-Denis (french: Basilique royale de Saint-Denis, links=no, now formally known as the ) is a large former medieval abbey church and present cathedral in the commune of Saint-Denis, a northern suburb of Paris. The building is of singular importance historically and architecturally as its choir, completed in 1144, is widely considered the first structure to employ all of the elements of Gothic architecture. The basilica became a place of pilgrimage and a necropolis containing the tombs of the Kings of France, including nearly every king from the 10th century to Louis XVIII in the 19th century. Henry IV of France came to Saint-Denis to formally renounce his Protestant faith and become a Catholic. The Queens of France were crowned at Saint-Denis, and the royal regalia, including the sword used for crowning the kings and the royal sceptre, were kept at Saint-Denis between coronations. The site originated as a Gallo-Roman cemetery in late Roman times. The archa ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Droctovaeus
Saint Droctoveus (or Droctonius, Droctovée, Droctovius, Drote, Drottoveo, Drotté; ) was a Frankish abbot, the first abbot of what became Saint Germain-des-Pres in Paris. Life The oldest account of Drottoveo's life was written by his contemporary Venantius Fortunatus in chapter XI of the 1.IX of his ''Carmina'' (Songs). A ''Life'' was lost after the raids of the Normans, who set fire to the monastery of Saint Vincent in Paris in 845 and again in 857. A monk named Gislemaro of the monastery of Saint Vincent wrote an account between 841 and 847 based on oral testimony, but it has little value. Droctoveus was born around 530. He became a monk and disciple of Saint Germain of Paris. He became abbot of the Abbey of Saint-Symphorien, Autun, and was then appointed first abbot of Saint Vincent, later known as Saint Germain-des-Pres in Paris. He died around 580 of natural causes. His feast day is 10 March. Monks of Ramsgate account The monks of St Augustine's Abbey, Ramsgate, wrote in ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]