1.
Picardy
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Picardy is a historical territory and a former administrative region of France. Since 1 January 2016, it is now part of the new region of Hauts-de-France and it is located in the northern part of France. The historical province of Picardy stretched from north of Noyon to Calais, via the whole of the Somme department, the province of Artois separated Picardy from French Flanders. From the 5th century the area was part of the Frankish Empire, and in the period it encompassed the six countships of Boulogne, Montreuil, Ponthieu, Amiénois, Vermandois. According to the 843 Treaty of Verdun the region part of West Francia. The name Picardy was not used until the 12th or 13th century, during this time, the name applied to all lands where the Picard language was spoken, which included all the territories from Paris to the Netherlands. In the Latin Quarter of Paris, people identified a Picard Nation of students at Sorbonne University, during the Hundred Years War, Picardy was the centre of the Jacquerie peasant revolt in 1358. From 1419 onwards, the Picardy counties were gradually acquired by the Burgundian duke Philip the Good, in 1477, King Louis XI of France led an army and occupied key towns in Picardy. By the end of 1477, Louis would control all of Picardy, in the 16th century, the government of Picardy was created. This became a new region of France, separate from what was historically defined as Picardy. The new Picardy included the Somme département, the half of the Aisne département. In 1557, Picardy was invaded by Habsburg forces under the command of Emmanuel Philibert, after a seventeen-day siege, St. Quentin would be ransacked, while Noyon would be burned by the Habsburg army. In the 17th century, a disease similar to English sweat originated from the region. It was called Suette des picards or Picardy sweat, the sugar industry has continued to play a prominent role in the economy of the region. One of the most significant historical events to occur in Picardy was the series of battles fought along the Somme during World War I. From September 1914 to August 1918, four major battles, including the Battle of the Somme, were fought by British, French, and German forces in the fields of Northern Picardy. In 2009, the Regional Committee for local government reform proposed to reduce the number of French regions, Picardy would have disappeared, and each department would have joined a nearby region. The Oise would have incorporated in the Île-de-France, the Somme would have been incorporated in the Nord-Pas-de-Calais
2.
Laon Cathedral
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Laon Cathedral is a Catholic church located in Laon, Picardy, France. The cathedral is the seat of the Bishop of Laon and it has been listed among the Monuments Historiques since 1840. The current cathedral is built on the site of an earlier edifice commenced under the episcopacy of Gerfrid and that Carolingian cathedral was consecrated on 6 September 800 in the presence of the emperor himself. The Carolingian building was replaced under Bishop Élinand, the present new building was inaugurated with the second coronation of the future King Philip I. This cathedral was torched during the Easter Insurrection on 25 April 1112, during the revolt Laons unpopular Bishop Waldric was killed, despite taking the precaution of hiding in a barrel in the cellar of the episcopal palace. The cathedral was not destroyed, however, and after a repair programme lasting two years it was rededicated in 1114 under Bishop Barthélemy de Jur. The present Laon Cathedral dates from the 12th and early 13th centuries, built half a century after the first example of Gothic architecture, the Abbey Church of St. Denis, was erected. The former cathedral was burned out and damaged during the insurrection in 1112. The present reconstruction began with a choir in about 1160 and was finished as far as the east side of the transept by 1174, in a second campaign, which started about 1180, the nave was built, and completed after 1205. Then the choir was replaced by the greatly lengthened present choir in 1215, the building is cruciform, and the choir terminates in a straight wall instead of in an apse. There are two towers, one at each end of the transept, and a square central crossing tower that forms a lantern illuminating the crossing. If all seven towers were completed, at the time of construction, Laon would have more towers than any other cathedral built at the time. The ambition of the planners of Laon Cathedral gave some insight on what cathedral planners of the time were aiming for - a new take on space. The west front, then with three porches, the centre one surmounted by a rose window of 1210, ranks next to that of Notre Dame de Paris in the purity of its Gothic style. Because of the use of stone in the interior, however. The cathedral has stained glass of the 13th century and a screen of the 18th century. Although the cathedral suffered damage during the French Revolution and the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. On June 25,1940, Laon Cathedral was visited by Adolf Hitler, the famous medieval artist Villard de Honnecourt made detailed drawings of one of the towers of Laon, ca
3.
Reims Cathedral
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Notre-Dame de Reims is a Roman Catholic church in Reims, France. It is the seat of the Archdiocese of Reims, where the kings of France were crowned. The cathedral replaced a church, destroyed by fire in 1211. That original structure had itself been erected on the site of some Roman baths, a major tourism destination, the cathedral receives about one million visitors annually. Excavations have shown that the present building occupies roughly the site as the original cathedral. That church was rebuilt during the Carolingian period and further extended in the 12th century, on 19 May 1051, King Henry I of France and Anne of Kiev were married in the cathedral. Whilst conducting the Council of Reims in 1131, Pope Innocent II anointed and crowned the future Louis VII in the cathedral, on May 6,1210 the cathedral was damaged by fire and reconstruction started shortly after, beginning at the eastern end. In 1233 a long-running dispute between the chapter and the townsfolk boiled over into open revolt. Several clerics were killed or injured during the violence and the entire cathedral chapter fled the city. Work on the new cathedral was suspended for three years, only resuming in 1236 after the clergy returned to the city and the interdict was lifted following mediation by the King and the Pope. The area from the crossing eastwards was in use by 1241, work on the west facade took place in several phases, which is reflected in the very different styles of some of the sculptures. The upper parts of the facade were completed in the 14th century, unusually the names of the cathedrals original architects are known. The labyrinth itself was destroyed in 1779 but its details and inscriptions are known from 18th century drawings, the clear association here between a labyrinth and master masons adds weight to the argument that such patterns were an allusion to the emerging status of the architect. The cathedral also contains evidence of the rising status of the architect in the tomb of Hugues Libergier. Not only is he given the honor of a slab, he is shown holding a miniature model of his church. The towers,81 m tall, were designed to rise 120 m. The south tower holds just two great bells, one of them, named “Charlotte” by Charles, Cardinal of Lorraine in 1570, following the death of the infant King John I, his uncle Philip would be hurriedly crowned at Reims,9 January 1317. During the Hundred Years War the cathedral and city were under siege by the English from 1359 to 1360, but the siege failed
4.
Cambrai Cathedral
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Cambrai Cathedral is a Roman Catholic church located in Cambrai, France. It is a monument, and is the seat of the Archbishop of Cambrai. It was built between 1696 and 1703, on the site of a former 11th century building, as the church of the Abbey of St-Sulpice. During the French Revolution the old cathedral of Cambrai was destroyed, Cambrai was again constituted an archbishopric in 1841. The cathedral was damaged by fire in 1859, but at length restored, with advice from Viollet-le-Duc. The cathedral was badly damaged in World War I and, not so seriously. It contains the tomb, by David dAnger, of François Fénelon, the Cathedral is a minor pilgrimage site because of the noted Italo-Byzantine painting called Our Lady of Cambrai or the Cambrai Madonna in a side chapel. The cathedral now takes its name from this, Notre-Dame de Grâce or Virgin of Tenderness. In the same chapel is a memorial erected by Hilaire Belloc to commemorate his son who was killed nearby in the last days of World War I
5.
Elizabeth of Hungary
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Francis, by which she is honored as its patroness. Elizabeth was married at the age of 14, and widowed at 20, after her husbands death she sent her children away and regained her dowry, using the money to build a hospital where she herself served the sick. She became a symbol of Christian charity after her death at the age of 24 and was quickly canonized, Elizabeth was the daughter of King Andrew II of Hungary and Gertrude of Merania. Her mothers sister was St. Hedwig of Andechs, wife of Duke Heinrich I of Silesia and her ancestry included many notable figures of European royalty, going back as far as Vladimir the Great of Kievan Rus. According to tradition, she was born in Kingdom of Hungary, possibly in the castle of Sárospatak, on 7 July 1207. A sermon printed in 1497 by the Franciscan friar Osvaldus de Lasco, the veracity of this account is not without reproach, Osvaldus also transforms the miracle of the roses to Elizabeths childhood in Sárospatak, and has her leave Hungary at the age of five. According to a different tradition she was born in Pozsony, Kingdom of Hungary and she was raised by the Thuringian court, so she would be familiar with the local language and culture. In 1221, at the age of fourteen, Elizabeth married Louis, the year he was enthroned as Landgrave. After her marriage, she continued her charitable practices, which included spinning wool for the clothing of the poor, in 1223, Franciscan friars arrived, and the teenage Elizabeth not only learned about the ideals of Francis of Assisi, but started to live them. It was also about time that the priest and later inquisitor Konrad von Marburg gained considerable influence over Elizabeth when he was appointed as her confessor. Elizabeth assumed control of affairs at home and distributed alms in all parts of their territory, even giving away state robes, below Wartburg Castle, she built a hospital with twenty-eight beds and visited the inmates daily to attend to them. Elizabeths life changed irrevocably on 11 September 1227 when Louis, en route to join the Sixth Crusade, died of a fever in Otranto, on hearing the news of her husbands death, Elizabeth is reported to have said, He is dead. It is to me as if the world died today. His remains were returned to Elizabeth in 1228 and entombed at the Abbey of Reinhardsbrunn, after Louis death, his brother, Henry Raspe, assumed the regency during the minority of Elizabeths eldest child, Hermann. About 1888 various investigators asserted that Elizabeth left the Wartburg voluntarily and she was not able at the castle to follow Konrads command to eat only food obtained in a way that was certainly right and proper. Following her husbands death, Elizabeth made solemn vows to Konrad similar to those of a nun and these vows included celibacy, as well as complete obedience to Konrad as her confessor and spiritual director. Konrads treatment of Elizabeth was extremely harsh, and he held her to standards of behavior which were almost impossible to meet, among the punishments he is alleged to have ordered were physical beatings, he also ordered her to send away her three children. Her pledge to celibacy proved a hindrance to her familys political ambitions, Elizabeth was more or less held hostage at Pottenstein, the castle of her uncle, Bishop Ekbert of Bamberg, in an effort to force her to remarry
6.
Apse
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In architecture, an apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an Exedra. Smaller apses may also be in other locations, especially shrines, an apse is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault. Commonly, the apse of a church, cathedral or basilica is the semicircular or polygonal termination to the choir or sanctuary, in relation to church architecture it is generally the name given to where the altar is placed or where the clergy are seated. An apse is occasionally found in a synagogue, e. g. Maoz Haim Synagogue, the apse is separated from the main part of the church by the transept. Smaller apses are sometimes built in other than the east end. The domed apse became a part of the church plan in the early Christian era. In the Eastern Orthodox tradition, the apse is known as diaconicon. Various ecclesiastical features of which the apse may form part are drawn here, The chancel, directly to the east beyond the choir contains the High Altar. This area is reserved for the clergy, and was formerly called the presbytery. Hemi-cyclic choirs, first developed in the East, came to use in France in 470, famous northern French examples of chevets are in the Gothic cathedrals of Amiens, Beauvais and Reims. The word ambulatory refers to an aisle in the apse that passes behind the altar and choir. An ambulatory may refer to the passages that enclose a cloister in a monastery, or to other types of aisles round the edge of a church building
7.
Renaissance
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The Renaissance was a period in European history, from the 14th to the 17th century, regarded as the cultural bridge between the Middle Ages and modern history. It started as a movement in Italy in the Late Medieval period and later spread to the rest of Europe. This new thinking became manifest in art, architecture, politics, science, Early examples were the development of perspective in oil painting and the recycled knowledge of how to make concrete. Although the invention of movable type sped the dissemination of ideas from the later 15th century. In politics, the Renaissance contributed to the development of the customs and conventions of diplomacy, the Renaissance began in Florence, in the 14th century. Other major centres were northern Italian city-states such as Venice, Genoa, Milan, Bologna, the word Renaissance, literally meaning Rebirth in French, first appeared in English in the 1830s. The word also occurs in Jules Michelets 1855 work, Histoire de France, the word Renaissance has also been extended to other historical and cultural movements, such as the Carolingian Renaissance and the Renaissance of the 12th century. The Renaissance was a movement that profoundly affected European intellectual life in the early modern period. Renaissance scholars employed the humanist method in study, and searched for realism, however, a subtle shift took place in the way that intellectuals approached religion that was reflected in many other areas of cultural life. In addition, many Greek Christian works, including the Greek New Testament, were back from Byzantium to Western Europe. Political philosophers, most famously Niccolò Machiavelli, sought to describe life as it really was. Others see more competition between artists and polymaths such as Brunelleschi, Ghiberti, Donatello, and Masaccio for artistic commissions as sparking the creativity of the Renaissance. Yet it remains much debated why the Renaissance began in Italy, accordingly, several theories have been put forward to explain its origins. During the Renaissance, money and art went hand in hand, Artists depended entirely on patrons while the patrons needed money to foster artistic talent. Wealth was brought to Italy in the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries by expanding trade into Asia, silver mining in Tyrol increased the flow of money. Luxuries from the Eastern world, brought home during the Crusades, increased the prosperity of Genoa, unlike with Latin texts, which had been preserved and studied in Western Europe since late antiquity, the study of ancient Greek texts was very limited in medieval Western Europe. One of the greatest achievements of Renaissance scholars was to bring this entire class of Greek cultural works back into Western Europe for the first time since late antiquity, Arab logicians had inherited Greek ideas after they had invaded and conquered Egypt and the Levant. Their translations and commentaries on these ideas worked their way through the Arab West into Spain and Sicily and this work of translation from Islamic culture, though largely unplanned and disorganized, constituted one of the greatest transmissions of ideas in history
8.
Paris
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Paris is the capital and most populous city of France. It has an area of 105 square kilometres and a population of 2,229,621 in 2013 within its administrative limits, the agglomeration has grown well beyond the citys administrative limits. By the 17th century, Paris was one of Europes major centres of finance, commerce, fashion, science, and the arts, and it retains that position still today. The aire urbaine de Paris, a measure of area, spans most of the Île-de-France region and has a population of 12,405,426. It is therefore the second largest metropolitan area in the European Union after London, the Metropole of Grand Paris was created in 2016, combining the commune and its nearest suburbs into a single area for economic and environmental co-operation. Grand Paris covers 814 square kilometres and has a population of 7 million persons, the Paris Region had a GDP of €624 billion in 2012, accounting for 30.0 percent of the GDP of France and ranking it as one of the wealthiest regions in Europe. The city is also a rail, highway, and air-transport hub served by two international airports, Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly. Opened in 1900, the subway system, the Paris Métro. It is the second busiest metro system in Europe after Moscow Metro, notably, Paris Gare du Nord is the busiest railway station in the world outside of Japan, with 262 millions passengers in 2015. In 2015, Paris received 22.2 million visitors, making it one of the top tourist destinations. The association football club Paris Saint-Germain and the rugby union club Stade Français are based in Paris, the 80, 000-seat Stade de France, built for the 1998 FIFA World Cup, is located just north of Paris in the neighbouring commune of Saint-Denis. Paris hosts the annual French Open Grand Slam tennis tournament on the red clay of Roland Garros, Paris hosted the 1900 and 1924 Summer Olympics and is bidding to host the 2024 Summer Olympics. The name Paris is derived from its inhabitants, the Celtic Parisii tribe. Thus, though written the same, the name is not related to the Paris of Greek mythology. In the 1860s, the boulevards and streets of Paris were illuminated by 56,000 gas lamps, since the late 19th century, Paris has also been known as Panam in French slang. Inhabitants are known in English as Parisians and in French as Parisiens and they are also pejoratively called Parigots. The Parisii, a sub-tribe of the Celtic Senones, inhabited the Paris area from around the middle of the 3rd century BC. One of the areas major north-south trade routes crossed the Seine on the île de la Cité, this place of land and water trade routes gradually became a town
9.
Parchment
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Parchment is a writing material made from specially prepared untanned skins of animals—primarily sheep, calves, and goats. It has been used as a medium for over two millennia. Vellum is a finer quality parchment made from the skins of kids, lambs and it may be called animal membrane by libraries and museums that wish to avoid distinguishing between parchment and the more restricted term vellum. Today the term parchment is often used in non-technical contexts to refer to any animal skin, particularly goat, sheep or cow, that has been scraped or dried under tension. Vellum in theory refers exclusively to calfskin, and is used to denote a quality of material. The term parchment originally referred only to the skin of sheep and, occasionally, the word parchment evolved from the name of the city of Pergamon which was a thriving center of parchment production during the Hellenistic period. This account, originated in the writings of Pliny the Elder, is dubious because parchment had been in use in Anatolia, in the 2nd century BC a great library was set up in Pergamon that rivaled the famous Library of Alexandria. Writing on prepared animal skins had a history, however. H. Ibscher, and preserved in the Cairo Museum, a roll of the Twelfth Dynasty now in Berlin, the text now in the British Museum. Though the Assyrians and the Babylonians impressed their cuneiform on clay tablets, early Islamic texts are also found on parchment. In the later Middle Ages, especially the 15th century, parchment was largely replaced by paper for most uses except luxury manuscripts, new techniques in paper milling allowed it to be much cheaper than parchment, it was still made of textile rags and of very high quality. With the advent of printing in the fifteenth century, the demands of printers far exceeded the supply of animal skins for parchment. Although most copies of the Gutenberg Bible are on paper, some were printed on parchment,12 of the 48 surviving copies, in 1490, Johannes Trithemius preferred the older methods, because handwriting placed on parchment will be able to endure a thousand years. But how long will printing last, which is dependent on paper and it lasts for two hundred years that is a long time. In fact high quality paper from this period has survived 500 years or more very well, the heyday of parchment use was during the medieval period, but there has been a growing revival of its use among artists since the late 20th century. Although parchment never stopped being used it had ceased to be a choice for artists supports by the end of 15th century Renaissance. This was partly due to its expense and partly due to its working properties. When the water in paint media touches parchments surface, the collagen melts slightly, forming a bed for the paint
Media related to Villard de Honnecourt at Wikimedia Commons
