Jim Bugslag wrote:
>As Chedeville [_Chartres et ses campagnes_] points out, although the
city of Chartres gave its name to the county, it was really in a marginal
position of political importance ([the center of ?] which lay further east, I
believe)
One reason I'm not qualified to discuss this is, for instance, that I've never
actually been able to get through Chédeville; I keep getting hung
up in the footnotes, which I've found to be full of errors, great and small.
And this weak foundation makes me distrust venturing into the
above-ground parts.
Probably just a foolish prejudice on my part.
But: East??
What do you/he have in mind?
Étampes (Royal stronghold)?
Or Troyes/Provins, the Champagne holdings of the family.
South, perhaps: Blois? (though in the diocese until the 17th c., a "separate"
county, and perhaps the more important seat of the Comtal [is that at a word?]
family.)
>and in fact, Chartres was not even incorporated as a city until near the end
of the 13th century
I'm not sure that this--I assume, the granting of a communal charter--is all
that significant re Gary's point.
*Lots* of towns got (and lost) communal charters in the 12th-13th cc, and I
would agree with your implication that this may suggest something of a
communal "spirit" along the lines of what we might find in the Italian
communes/city-states.
But: I know of nothing approaching the kind of civic history from N. France
which Gary seems to have in mind from Genoa or Piacenza (or, a bit later,
Florence??).
Seems like the genre just didn't catch on in the North until the
16th-17th cc., when you had quite an explosion of local histories--some quite
good, all worth looking at (notably Challine and Souchet at Chartres).
Galbert of Bruges (_The Murder of Charles the Good_) might be a sort of civic
historian; or even parts of Guibert of Nogent (for Laon), I
suppose, but... is this really the sort of history you meant, Gary?
My memory is much too shakey to dredge up what little I may have known in
another incarnation about the history of communes in the Royal Domain,
but I do seem to recall that they (almost?) all were failures--the King came
in an bailed them out, sometimes in rather short order, after only a few
decades.
Perhaps there is a correlation between the reasons why they failed and
the lack of civic narratives; though, I repeat, I'm curious to know what sort
of institutional affiliations these Eyetalian guys had--the
patronage of a Prince??
The whole point of French communes (I suppose) was for the Fat Cats to buy
off the Prince and become oligarchs in their own "republics", which seem to
have gone broke through incompetance(?) or slovenly French housekeeping, or
somesuchlike arcane reason.
>And despite what little, to my mind, has been done on Chartres as a
pilgrimage centre, it would appear that it was on the wane.
When?
I assume you mean by the time of the commune--end of the 13th c.?
>I am more than a bit sceptical of Chedeville's claim that the pilgrimage was
largely quite local;
Operative words: "largely" and "local".
Surely *most* pilgrims came from the region--a few days travel, Sens, Paris,
even Soissons, Normandy, the middle Loire.
"Local"...
Which one of those words don't I understand?
Would Peter of Blois, coming from England, count as a "local" pilgrim?
He *used* to be local, but he moved away, taking his reverance for the relics
of the Virgin at Chartres with him.
And, surely, spread the word to the heathen Angle-Norsemen.
>his argument appears to hinge on a statistical analysis of pilgrims' medals
(a total of something like 2)
I know not from pilgrimages, but this sounds like a typical Chédeville-isme.
Massive and very impressive bit of work, that book, but, like I said:
Must be read closely and with caution.
*Lots* of careless errors and, perhaps like this one, some which one is just
hard-pressed to characterize as merely "careless".
Bordering on the dishonest, might be a charitable way of putting it.
>but there does not appear to be a lot of documentary evidence for pilgrimage
at Chartres, outside of the miracle collections sponsored by the chapter.
If you say so.
>Another factor that puzzles me more than somewhat is the fate of the
cathedral school.
You are not alone:
"It went out in a blaze of glory. There was no slow decline from height
to height, but after standing on a pinnacle for fifty years, it suddenly sank
into obscurity, and was never heard of again, except by diggers for curious
facts."
So ruminates an ironic Southern ("Humanism and the School of Chartres",
in _Medieval Humanism_, 1970).
>Even if the 12th-century School of Chartres has been debunked
I was modestly understating the case when I said Southern "debunked" it:
obliterated would be more like it.
In methodologically paradigmatic fashion he demonstrates that it was
originally the inspiration of R.L. Poole and the embroidered elaboration of
l'abbé Clerval, who, in his _Les écoles de Chartres_--surely a great monument
of erudition in its own right, btw--ripped off and expropriated for Chartres
about every 11th-13th c. thinker in N. France who wasn't already nailed down.
>and even de-debunked
As I said, I believe that the revisionists have been at Southern--particularly
the quite excellent theologian N. Häring (somewhere: in his _Clarenbaldus of
Arras_??).
But the problem is essentially an *historical*, not a theological one.
And Southern is a hellofa good historian, with a different set of skills and a
different methodological approach than Häring.
>it disappears virtually without a trace in the 13th century.
Not according to Clerval!!!
>What happened to this once great (or even not-so-great) school?
Read Clerval.
(With caution!)
Of course, as Southern implies, there is a difference between a school
and a School.
There was always, from time out of mind til yesterday, a school at Chartres.
But the School--which, if indeed it ever existed, depended upon this modest
town's ability to attract and keep a certain quality of teacher and
student--clearly couldn't hold up under the competition which the metropolis
of Paris could put up.
All roads eventually led to Paris.
And, still do.
>...there must be more reasons why civic identity was not as prominent here as
in northern Italian "city states"; perhaps humanist literary
forms have something to do with it, as well.
mmmm.
Stronger survival of the classical historical tradition, perhaps.
Ask somebody who knows.
>Perhaps someone else can see further. Where are those giants, anyway?
Well, that's the thing about Giants, see: you can never find one of the
bastards when you need him.
Rough on us nanically challenged groundlings.
Best to all from here,
Christopher
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