558 parish
dean. This system became a model imitated all over
northern Europe. Popes tried to make the new university
doctrinal auxiliaries of their own authority, the Roman
magisterium.They watched over the orthodoxy of teach-
ings and promoted their agents from the new mendicant
orders into the system.
To the end of the Middle Ages, the University of Paris
remained the largest in the Europe. Around 1400, it had
some 4,000 masters and students, 3,000 of them in the
faculty of arts. There were also numerous supporting
occupations, such as copyists and booksellers. By 1500
there were about 60 colleges. Famous and influential mas-
ters continued to teach at Paris in the 14th century, and
later, including John BURIDAN, Nicholas ORESME, Pierre
d’AILLY, John GERSON, and WILLIAM OFOCKHAM. In the
15th century, the university did not participate in the new
humanist learning. During the GREATSCHISM, the univer-
sity unsuccessfully tried to play a decisive role. As a result,
those who disagreed with its stance on the legitimate pope
began to foster their own universities, especially in GER-
MANYand eastern Europe. The student and teaching bod-
ies changed as a result, more often from northern France,
subjects of the French crown. From the mid-15th century
and after the revival of royal power at the end of the HUN-
DREDYEARS’ WAR, the centralizing French kings imposed
much more control over university affairs.
LATER MIDDLE AGES: POLITICS AND THE CROWNIn the meantime, Paris became even more of a political
center for the French monarchy, with a population
around estimated at 200,000. More building for adminis-
trative offices and the court occurred on the island. LOUIS
IX built the SAINTECHAPELthere to house his RELICcol-
lection. In 1299 King PHILIPIV began the reconstruction
of the old royal palace and built the great hall of PAR-
LEMENT. He lived nearby with a large household, a gar-
den, and docks for boats on the river. King CHARLESV
abandoned the palace to legal and administrative offices
and moved to the Hôtel Saint-Pol on the Right Bank.
The city itself was kept under close royal control and
not allowed to form a COMMUNEor have a city council.
Several revolts and numerous riots in the city resulted,
such as those of Étienne Marcel (1356–58), the Mail-
lotins (1382–83), and the Cabochiens in 1413 and when
the Burgundians took control of the city in 1418. Paris
fell to the English in 1420, and the English king, Henry
VI (1422–61), was crowned king of France there in 1431.
In 1436 the French recaptured the city, which had not
prospered under the Anglo-Burgundian administration.
The king himself did not live there most of the time, but
the royal administration in the city slowly revived over
the course of the 15th century. Paris did, however, regain
much of its prosperity and commercial vitality and some
of its population in the second half of the 15th century.
See alsoARISTOTLE ANDARISTOTELIANISM IN THEMID-
DLEAGES; PETERLOMBARD; PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY;
UNIVERSITIES AND SCHOOLS; SCHOLASTICISM ANDSCHOLAS-
TIC METHOD.
Further reading:Pierre Couperie, Paris Through the
Ages(New York: Braziller, 1968); William J. Courtenay,
Teaching Careers at the University of Paris in the Thirteenth
and Fourteenth Centuries(Notre Dame, Ind.: University of
Notre Dame, 1988); Virginia W. Egbert, On the Bridges of
Medieval Paris (Princeton: N.J.: Princeton University
Press, 1974); Stephen C. Ferruolo, The Origins of the Uni-
versity: The Schools of Paris and Their Critics, 1100–1215
(Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 1985); Mary
Martin McLaughlin, Intellectual Freedom and Its Limita-
tions in the University of Paris in the Thirteenth and Four-
teenth Centuries (New York: Arno Press, 1977); Guy
Llewelyn Thompson, Paris and Its People under English
Rule: The Anglo-Burgundian Regime, 1420–1436(Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1991); Craig Wright, Music and Cere-
mony at Notre Dame of Paris, 500–1550 (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1989).parish The medieval parish was a local and defined
area that included a church building under the spiritual
care of a particular priest. The priest was paid out of the
income attached to the parish. There was conflict during
the Middle Ages over the right to nominate a cleric to
this position. In the mid-13th century, the canonist and
Cardinal Henry of Susa or HOSTIENSISdevised the first
definition of the parish. The church was the place of wor-
ship where most of the SEVEN SACRAMENTSand other cer-
emonies were celebrated for the faithful under the
authority of a priest. The priest sometimes levied fees or
dues connected with the administration, a practice, previ-
ously imprecise that evolved in the ninth century.ORIGINS AND CHRISTIANIZATION
In Christian antiquity, there was only one ecclesiastical
region, that of the urban cathedral church, which was the
only church for baptism and the residence of the head, or
the bishop, of the diocese. There were local chapels for
elite families. Parish churches date from the conversion of
the countryside. They became places of worship and repro-
duced the structure and functions of the old cathedral
church. The bishop was entitled to confer orders on priests
and to grant local churches some autonomy. To this net-
work of rural churches were added chapels on rural estates
and attached to monasteries that sometimes performed
religious services for the public. There was tension about
any income of these churches and who had the right of
appointment to them. Some became in effect the FIEFSof
their owner. The number of churches built to serve a grow-
ing urban population also of necessity increased.DEFINITIONS AND LATER HISTORY
The COUNCILof CLERMONTin 1095 tried to establish a
strict separation of the temporal and spiritual aspects of