Troyes, Saint-Urbain, chevet.
Photograph: Clarence Ward
Collection. Courtesy of Oberlin
College.
sumed importance only after the 10th century, when its counts (of Vermandois, then
Blois) began assembling important territories to form the province of Champagne.
The city entered its heyday under Thibaut II le Grand (r. 1125–52) and Henri le
Libéral (r. 1152–81). Thibaut shifted the center of the dynasty from Blois-Chartres to
Troyes-Champagne, which at his death passed to his son Henri. Younger sons held Blois-
Chartres as a fief from the count of Champagne. Under comital protection, the great fairs
of Troyes flourished in the 12th century and stimulated the development of an extensive
suburb west of the older cité. With the wealth derived from tolls on fair business, the
counts, rather than the bishops, became the major sponsors of ecclesiastical and
charitable institutions. Henry I, for example, established the collegiate church of Saint-
Étienne adjacent to his palace, founded the Hôtel-Dieu, and supported the Benedictine
convent of Notre-Dameaux-Nonnains.
Because of its prominence as a commercial and financial center, Troyes was home to a
sizable Jewish populace, concentrated at the western edge of the suburb, as indicated by
such modern street names as the Rue de la Juiverie and Rue de la Synagogue. While the
counts governed Troyes, the Jewish community seems to have prospered in a relatively
tolerant atmosphere, engaging in active moneylending and entering other occupations as
well. A Talmudic school established by Rashi (ca. 1039–1104) flourished in Troyes from
the late 11th to the 13th century. With the advent of Capetian rule after 1284, their situa-
Medieval france: an encyclopedia 1768