Life in a Medieval City Read Online Free PDF Page A

goods. Roads are actually safe enough, at least in the daytime. Besides, merchants en route to the fair enjoy extraordinary guarantees as the result of the treaties made by the counts of Champagne with neighboring princes. This very year, 1250, a merchant was robbed of a stock of cloth and squirrel skins while passing through the territory of the duke of Lorraine. Honoring his treaty obligation, the duke indemnified the merchant.

    Map of Troyes
     
     
1. CATHEDRAL OF ST.-PIERRE
2. BISHOP’S PALACE
3. COUNT’S PALACE
4. COLLEGIATE CHURCH OF ST.-ETIENNE
5. HÔTEL-DIEU-LE-COMTE
6. CASTLE OF THE COUNTS OF CHAMPAGNE
7. ABBEY OF ST.-LOUP
8. ST.-FROBERT (FORMER SYNAGOGUE)
9. PRIORY OF ST.-JEAN-EN-CHÂTEL (ST.-BLAISE)
10. PRIORY OF ST.-QUENTIN
11. CHURCH OF ST.-DENIS
12. CHURCH OF ST.-NIZIER
13. ABBEY OF ST.-MARTIN-ÈS-AIRES
14. CHURCH OF ST.-AVENTIN
15. PRIORY OF NOTRE-DAME-EN-L’ISLE
16. ABBEY OF NOTRE-DAME-AUX-NONN
17. CHURCH OF ST.-JACQUES-AUX-NONN
18. CHURCH OF ST.-RÉMI
19. CHURCH OF ST.-JEAN-AU-MARCHÉ
20. TEMPLAR COMMANDERY
21. DOMINICAN FRIARY
22. CHURCH OF STE.-MADELEINE
23. ST.-PANTALÉON (FORMER SYNAGOGUE)
24. VISCOUNT’S TOWER
25. CHURCH OF ST.-NICOLAS
26. HÔTEL-DIEU-ST.-ABRAHAM
    The countryside through which the merchants approach Troyes is heavily wooded, but the past two centuries have witnessed considerable clearing and cultivating. Castles, villages, and monasteries have multiplied, surrounded by tilled fields and pastures where sheep and cattle graze. Immediately outside the city walls lie fields and gardens belonging to the inhabitants of Troyes itself.
    An incoming visitor to the fair enters the city by one of the gates of the commercial quarter—from the west, the Porte de Paris or the Porte d’Auxerre; from the north, the Porte de la Madeleine or the Porte de Preize; from the south, the Porte de Cronciaus. The sand-colored city wall 1 is twenty feet high and eight feet thick, faced with rough-cut limestone blocks of varying sizes, around a core of rock rubble. Above it rise the roofs, chimneys, and church spires of the city. One crosses the dry moat by a drawbridge, passing through a double-leaf iron door flanked by a pair of watchtowers, powerful little forts connected by three passageways, one under the road, one directly above it and one on the level of the wall. Spiraling flights of stone steps lead from the towers to the vaulted interiors.
    A party entering the Porte de Paris finds itself in the newest part of the city, the business quarter west of the Rû Cordé, a canal created by a diversion of the Seine. A hundred yards to the right rises the Viscount’s Tower, 2 originally the stronghold of the count’s chief deputy. The Viscount’s post has gradually evolved into a hereditary sinecure, at present shared by three families. The tower is a mere anachronism. Nearby, in a triangular open space, is the grain market, with a hospital named after St.-Bernard on its northern side.

Cats’ Alley (Ruelle des Chats), Troyes’ most picturesque street, looks today much as it did in the thirteenth century, barely seven feet wide, with housetops leaning against each other.
    Two main thoroughfares run east and west in the commercial section—the Rue de l’Epicerie, which changes its name several times before it reaches the canal, and to the north the Grande Rue, leading from the Porte de Paris to the bridge that crosses into the old city. It is thirty feet wide and paved with stone. 3 The Grande Rue is appreciably broader and straighter than the side streets, where riders and even pedestrians sometimes must squeeze past each other. The Ruelle des Chats—“Cats’ Alley”—is seven feet wide. Even on the Grande Rue one has a sense of buildings crowding in, the three-and four-story frame houses and shops shouldering into the street, their corbelled upper stories looming irregularly above. Façades are painted red and blue, or faced with tile, often ornamented with paneling, moldings, and sawtooth.