Under Notre Dame, a 'dig of the century' unearths 1,700 years of history
apnews.com
apnews.com
> Paris in 1200 was a city in transition. The great cathedral of Notre Dame was halfway through its construction and walls were being built to enclose the new, larger limits of the city. Pope Innocent III ordered all French churches closed to punish King Philip Augustus for his remarriage; the king himself negotiated an unprecedented truce with the English; and the students of Paris threatened a general strike, punctuated with incidents of violence, to protest infringements of their rights. John W. Baldwin brilliantly resurrects this key moment in Parisian history using documents only from 1190 to 1210—a narrow focus made possible by the availability of collections of the Capetian monarchy and the medieval scholastic thinkers. This unique approach results in a vivid snapshot of the city at the turn of the thirteenth century. Paris, 1200 introduces the reader to the city itself and its inhabitants. Three "faces" exemplify these that of the celebrated scholar Pierre the Chanter, of King Philip Augustus, and of the more deeply hidden visages of women. The book examines the city's primary the royal government, the Church, and its celebrated schools that evolved into the university at Paris. Finally, it offers an account of the delights and pleasures, as well as the fears and sorrows, of Parisian life in this period.
Paris in 1200 was at least somewhat recognizable.
> (the cleric students were) marked by the tonsure, which granted them two major privileges:
> the privilegium canonis, protected their persons, which were regarded as sacred. Any physical violence against them entailed excommunication, which could only be lifted after severe penance. One did not mistreat a cleric without exposing oneself to serious consequences.
> The second was the privilegium fori, which placed clerics under the sole jurisdiction of ecclesiastical courts... Philip Augustus is said to have observed the boldness of clerics who rushed into the fray brandishing swords, yet wearing neither armour nor helmets. Hardly surprising, when a shaved head offered better protection than a helmet.
1. A World Lit Only by Fire — William Manchester
2. One Summer: America, 1927 — Bill Bryson
I loved this book in my high school AP Euro class. I revisited it much later in my studies, and was dismayed to realize how lacking in proper research and citation it was. Manchester makes numerous bold claims without mentioning resources, many of which were directly contradicted by the more thoroughly-established works I was then reading. I had learned a lot of "facts" that turned out to be inaccurate, imprecise, or speculative.
I'll let others with more knowledge correct me, but my overall impression is that he was pushing sensational narratives rather than advancing historical knowledge.
> One Summer: America
I haven't heard of this and will take a look. Thanks for the recommendation.
One always wonders which incredible books we lost, from amazing mysterious old philosophers. The burning of the library of Alexandria is such an incredible sadness
You might be interested in The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco, a historical novel about such a lost work.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/474030/The_Abbey_of_Crime...
In some places in Italy, Greece, Malta, probably others I don't know, people always joke that you shouldn't try to ever do any renovations lest you end up finding something and lose your house. Some places you're almost guaranteed to find stuff if you just dig once or twice.
https://www.museofaggiano.it/en/home/
And that's just one house in one city in one country!
Edit: I strongly recommend the museum, Lecce and indeed all of Puglia!
We've also been to Bari as well - which has a lovely old town as does Otranto - where the town centre is basically one large fortress.
One very pleasant surprise we had was using the Frecciarossa express train - we had two business class seats for a journey of a couple of hours and it was less than 50 euros and it was extremely comfortable!
- We stayed a few nights in an _Agroturismo_ near Cisternino that makes olive oil, our room was actually a _Trullo_ [1], a type of building typical of the area. There are many such places.
- If you want to see lots of Trulli in a picturesque town, Alberobello is beautiful but quite touristy. Still worth the visit imo.
- In Cisternino, they have these amazing restaurants (that is, if you eat meat) that are basically butcher shops where you choose the meat you want and they grill it for you. One of the specialties are "bombettes". The town itself is pretty.
- In Martina Franca, you have to try (again meat) "Capocollo di Martina Franca", which is like the Parma ham of the region. You can probably find it throughout Puglia, but the town is nice.
- Ostuni is a very beautiful white washed town.
- Lecce is well worth the visit, I can't really remember all the restaurants we visited, just one for seafood "Il Vico Del Gusto", we liked it a lot.
- Coming from Lecce but you can probably find them in other places in Puglia are the pastries "pasticciotto", which is a shortcrust pastry filled with custard cream, (sometimes they add other ingredients). Yum.
- Another typical dish of the region is the pasta "orecchiette con le cime di rapa", which is this ear-shaped little pasta with broccoli rabe, garlic, chili flakes, olive oil, and sometimes anchovies. Simple but very nice.
Hope that helps/convinces you to go!
There's a very good reason for that: archaeological techniques improve all the time. The idea here is to leave something for future archaeologists.
We should only excavate what is about to be destroyed.
( And we shouldn't destroy stuff just to put up yet another shitty modern building. )
It's not a building.
So I'm unclear on exactly what this dig is. I get the impression that it's around the edge of the plaza. Perhaps it will be incorporated into the The Crypte Archéologique de l'İle de la Cité?
To my mind, all of the best stuff in the Louvre is in the basement: the Codex Hammurabi, Babylonian artifacts, etc. Yeah, it's all just as stolen as the artifacts in the British Museum that get more attention, but it's more significant than their art collection that are "the greatest" because they said so.
(Not that they aren't also great works. But there are many great works, and the distinction of these has more to do with French nationalism than any serious consideration of artistic merit.)
Way to get history wrong in your story about history.
That said, the dig itself is pretty cool and I’m excited to see what they’ll unearth. I’m pretty interested in Roman history but haven’t gone as deep into the history of the provinces.
Semi-related to that, if someone reading this is in the Toronto area, the bata shoe museum has an exhibit (Vindolanda) about unearthed Roman footwear in England
Or almost exactly one Companhia worth of Tauri stacked on top of each other.
(there's a programming joke in there btw)
Napoleon was not shorter than average.
-> Bad History.