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This chapter recounts the life of Genovefa (Saint Geneviève) from her birth at Nanterre ca. 420 to her death ca. 509 in Paris, as told by her earliest 6^th-century biographer. Although a woman, and thus limited in ecclesiastical authority, Genovefa acted much like a Christian bishop. She was most famous for building the shrine of Saint Denis, supposedly the first missionary to Paris. Her building projects and her written biography taught Christians lessons about saints, bishops, and religious landscapes.

This chapter recounts the history of Genovefa’s cult after her death, as told through her written biographies, the churches built in her honor, and devotional practices of Parisian Christians. It shows how her importance as patroness of Frankish rulers diminished when later Merovingian kings chose to favor Saint Denis and his cult north of Paris. Both gender and political changes help explain this shift in allegiance. Nonetheless, Genovefa and her church remained important presences in Paris.

This chapter tracks the cults of Genovefa and Brigit up to the present day in order to account for the endurance of their cults and show what the histories of these two saints can tell us about historical connections between landscape, gender, and religious change. Conversion did not occur merely as a result of missionary preaching, but because many women and men chose to go to new kinds of religious places, use new kinds of symbolic goods, and reinterpret their daily habits in religious context. Denied episcopal office because of their sex, Genovefa and Brigit helped bring Christianity to northern Europe at the dawn of the Middle Ages by promoting such changes in lived religion and, in particular, by sponsoring religious architecture and new uses of familiar sacral places in their home territories.

This chapter explores the sound of medieval Paris as a sonic backdrop to the motet. It takes three case studies of representations of the city dating from the late thirteenth and early fourteenth century: the Vie de Saint-Denis manuscript; Guillot de Paris’s Dit des rues de Paris; Guillaume de Villeneuve’s Crieries de Paris. While previous scholars have focused on the visual representation of the city, this chapter listens to their conjuring of sound. It argues that the hubbub of the marketplace, urban clatter, and sacred chant provide an audible foil to the hubbub of the polytextual motet.

The transition of power from Louis XV to Louis XVI took place against a background of unresolved political tension over the Maupeou Coup. The funeral of Louis XV in July 1774 required the attendance of the parlement - but which one? The unpopular appointees of the Maupeou parlement? Or the exiled members of the old parlement? The princes of the blood threatened to boycott the ceremony. Ceremony and politics were inextricably linked in the first days of Louis XVI's reign.

This chapter examines the “Charlemagne and the East” narrative from the political culture of France, studying particularly the Descriptio as well as the Voyage of Charlemagne to Jerusalem and Constantinople. The Descriptio represents Charlemagne as a model defender of Christendom and conqueror of pagans. This text was popular in Saint-Denis in the twelfth century, but its function has been limited to legitimizing the abbey's holdings of relics. Meanwhile, the Voyage of Charlemagne centers on the voyage of Charlemagne to the East in order to disprove a comment made by his wife, who had publicly repeated a rumor that a certain King Hugo in the East wore his crown better than he did.

Chapter one establishes the narrative and conceptual framework necessary to interpret this crucial period of crusading. In particular, it examines the state of Capetian France on the eve of the First Crusade. While many historians have considered this period, few have done so from a non-administrative perspective. That is to say, the prevailing narrative explains the rise of Capetian power in the early twelfth century in terms of fiscal centralization and land acquisitions that began at the end of the eleventh. This is not incorrect, but neither is it the full picture. Thus, this chapter argues that this period cannot be fully understood without considering the role of prestige in the transformative process. In this way, the pre-crusading history of France is an essential component in understanding the eventual impact of the crusades of the image and practise of kingship.

Chapter three focuses on Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis’ close relationship with the French royal court and his hitherto neglected concerned for a lack of crusading prestige. Virtually none of the vast literature on the abbot has considered his attitude toward the early crusading movement, which, this chapter argues, is long overdue. In particular, this chapter focuses on Suger’s well-known biography of Louis VI, the Gesta Ludovici Grossi, a text that combined Carolingian notions of kingship with the newer crusade ideology to fashion a highly selective narrative of Louis’ reign that, at once, casts doubts on the value of many crusaders and their exploits while also asserting that the French king possessed such virtues. The text, in short, if rife with inconsistency, which has been a difficult point for scholars to reconcile. By setting the text within the context of the crusades, however, the contradictions begin to make more sense. Far from supporting an image of Suger as the quintessential ideologist and progenitor of French royalist propaganda, his attitude towards the crusade instead demonstrates the traditional and flexible way he worked to create a smooth, positive account of the Capetian dynasty as at time of major political and cultural transformation. This image was crucial in the evolution of the Capetian image and power structure, and reinforces the important connection that existed between French kings and the crusading movement, even in the years before they took the cross themselves.