rebuilding of the cathedral at Lisieux. In his last years, he lost the confidence of Henry II,
and his stance during the Becket controversy was criticized by the archbishop’s partisans.
He retired to the abbey of Saint-Victor in Paris, where he died in 1181. His letters, which
he collected, are an important source for mid-12th-century history.
Thomas G.Waldman
Arnulf of Lisieux. The Letters of Arnulf of Lisieux, ed. Frank Barlow. London: Royal Historical
Society, 1939.
ARRAS
. The city of Arras (Nord) and the surrounding region, Artois, derive their names from the
Gallic tribe known as the Atrebates. After a bishopric established in the 6th century by St.
Vaast was removed to Cambrai, a cathedral chapter remained at Arras as the nucleus of
the medieval cité. Some distance away, a monastery honoring the memory of St. Vaast
was founded in the 7th century and richly endowed by the Frankish kings. The medieval
ville developed around the monastery and grew rapidly thanks to a favorable location
near intersecting trade routes.
The Vikings seriously damaged the town in the 880s, but it recovered after the counts
of Flanders absorbed Artois in the 10th century. Arras became an important center for the
production and marketing of woolen cloth at an earlier date than the more famous
Flemish towns. This cloth was traded actively by the early 11th century. By 1137,
merchants of Arras were carrying their goods to the fairs of Champagne, and in the last
decades of the 12th century they were doing business as far afield as Genoa. Location on
the route between Flanders and Champagne favored the economy of Arras, but after ca.
1220 the Italians began to cut into the carrying trade, eventually developing a sea route to
Flanders that bypassed the town. Arras then became an important center of
moneylending, making available vast sums to towns and princes. When warfare,
economic distress, and diminished population afflicted the town in the 14th century,
Arras coped with the situation by adapting the technology of cloth production to the
manufacture of tapestries for the luxury trade. For a time, the name Arras became
virtually synonymous with tapestry.
Artois passed to the French crown as the dowry of Queen Isabelle de Hainaut in 1180.
In 1194, Philip II granted Arras a charter, under which a group of échevins (municipal
magistrates) ruled the town. It was modified in 1302 to accommodate excluded elements
that were showing discontent, but the ruling oligarchy of wealthy entrepreneurs enjoyed
remarkable continuity, with one family being represented in the urban government most
of the time between 1111 and 1450. This patriciate seems to have originated among the
petty officials of the abbey of Saint-Vaast, who gradually accumulated enough capital to
embark on large-scale cloth production, then large-scale moneylending, and finally the
production of tapestries.
In 1435, Arras was the site of a major peace conference among England, France, and
Burgundy. The result ant Franco-Burgundian treaty helped the French emerge victorious
in the Hundred Years’ War.
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