![cities in 13th century medieval manuscripts cities in 13th century medieval manuscripts](https://i.pinimg.com/736x/bf/18/39/bf183960fc7547e9cabf8ea9f3ca9b17.jpg)
The nationalization of goods in the provinces included all of their manuscripts, too, and if the burning in the north was curtailed by the creation of the National Archives in 1790-with a decree to centralize all documents appearing four years later and a law mandating it only in 1796-it took longer to stop in the southern regions.
![cities in 13th century medieval manuscripts cities in 13th century medieval manuscripts](https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L331gCGhVP8/VXvjBcLy_kI/AAAAAAABt_w/wEt-qwj4xcg/s1600/Bloomsbury%2Blot%2B65.jpg)
Sooner than later, the Notre Dame de Paris, like many other churches, would be turned into temples of Reason under the Terror. This “nationalization” was not a staid, controlled affair priests were removed from their property, monasteries were turned into stables for animals that shat in the space medieval altars once occupied, filth coated frescoes made centuries before, and crowds in the grips of a secular iconoclasm tore down and burned religious items. The French Revolution is famous for its rapid and violent destruction of feudalism and “secularization.” The nationalization of churches, monasteries, properties owned by clergy, and wealth, as well as the suppression of the aristocracy and clerical system that dominated the country as of 1790 was fairly complete. From the ashes, modernity arose, but at a cost. Mobs burst into the monastery, cathedral, parish church, castle, or palace, dragged the manuscripts out of the armoires where they had been stored for centuries, piled them in a mound in a public place, and lit the patrimony of the nation on fire. For French medievalists like myself, the French Revolution represents at once a fundamental shift towards modernity and an irrevocable loss of medieval materiality. There is a moment, while contemplating gaps in the archival record as a medievalist, when we are then tempted to focus on the “bibliocide” of the past, to mourn the death of records that would have offered insight into our narrow, chosen fields.
#Cities in 13th century medieval manuscripts series#
“Revolutionary Material Culture Series” This series examines the Age of Revolutions through its material markers, reminding us that materials themselves reflected and shaped political cultures around the revolutionary Atlantic and World.