Medieval France. An Encyclopedia

(Darren Dugan) #1

William Chester Jordan
[See also: HOMME DE CORPS; SERFDOM/SERVITUDE/ SLAVERY]
Bernard, Pierre. Étude sur les esclaves et les serfs d’église en France du Vle au XIIIe siècle. Paris:
Société du Recueil Sirey, 1919.
Jordan, William C. From Servitude to Freedom: Manumission in the Sénonais in the Thirteenth
Century. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1986.
Mariotte-Lober, Ruth. Ville et seigneurie: les chartes de franchises des comtes de Savoie. Annecy:
Académie Florimontane, 1973.


AGDE


. Founded as a Greek colony (Agathé Tyché) by Phocaens from Marseille in the 6th
century B.C., Agde (Hérault) was later a Roman colony and an early bishopric of the
Roman church (ca. 450). Ramparts were authorized in 1173 by Louis VII to help defend
Languedoc from sea raiders. A Carolingian basilica dedicated to St. Étienne (built 848–
72) was replaced in the late 12th century by the current fortified Romanesque cathedral of
black lava. A keeplike tower, containing some of the earliest examples of machicolations,
was added to its north transept during the Gothic period. Built in the form of a capital T,
the church has a wide aisleless nave (100 feet by 50 feet) of six bays, with a transept but
no apse.
William W.Kibler/William W.Clark
Bonde, Sheila. Ecclesiae incastellatae. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Forthcoming.
de Gorsse, P. Monographie de la cathédrale Saint-Étienne d’Agde. Toulouse, 1922.


AGEN


. A Gallic oppidum, Aginnum, and capital of the Nitiobriges, Agen (Lot-et-Garonne) was
captured by Clovis I in 506. Made a bishopric in the 10th century, it passed in 1152 with
the rest of Aquitaine to Henry II Plantagenêt. After 1271, it was again nominally French
but was reoccupied by the English in 1360 and not definitively reunited with France until
1444. The Inquisition was installed in Agen in 1242, leading the new orders to establish
religious houses here: the Dominicans (1249), Franciscans (1262), Carmelites (1272),
and Augustinians (1290).
The present cathedral of Saint-Caprais, with its 12th-century apse, radiating chapels,
and transept, was a parish church until the cathedral of Saint-Étienne was destroyed in the
Revolution. Built in the shape of a Latin cross, Saint-Caprais features a broad apse with
three radiating chapels. The nearby chapter house has an impressive Romanesque façade.
The double-aisled brick church of Notre-Dame-des-Jacobins, with ogival vaulting, is an
important example of 13th-century Toulousan Dominican architecture. Like other


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