From Sainte Chapelle to the Bibliothèque nationale de France

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From Sainte Chapelle to the Bibliothèque nationale de France
Philosophy professor John Eigenauer shares fascinating and unknown histories of Paris in “The Smart Side of Paris” series By all accounts, Baldwin of Courtenay was a less than effective ruler, his incompetence reflected by the handful of living people who have heard his name. How many kings have Wikipedia entries shorter than this article? In his defense, he governed a once proud but dying city, living in isolation in Constantinople. There, poverty was inevitable, as was losing his precious lands without the money to pay his armies.   Being a long way from Western Europe, he had few ways to raise the funds he needed to sustain his image so, he begged. He made several trips to wealthy royal courts to raise cash, with little success. He was so desperate for money that he pawned the Crown of Thorns — or what people believed was the Crown of Thorns — in 1238 to a representative of the wealthy and powerful Doge of Venice. Later, the inordinately pious Louis IX just had to have it; he purchased it for 10,000 livres (despite claims that the price was 135,000 livres) and had it transported to Paris where he had Sainte-Chapelle built to house it. Nobody would blame you if you read that last sentence again.   The apse of the upper chapel, Sainte Chapelle. Photo credit: Oldmanisold / Wikimedia commons Baldwin’s luck never changed much, nor did his fundraising strategy. Having pawned the crown of the Son of God, he next used his own son as collateral to obtain loans from Venetian merchants. (The Castilian king, Alfonso X, eventually posted bail, at the behest of his mother, who was Baldwin’s wife and Alfonso’s cousin —thank goodness for nepotism.) In 1245 or 1246, Baldwin traveled to France and sold more “relics” to king Louis IX. Some 30 years later, in 1279, one of those “relics” appears in an inventory of Sainte Chapelle’s treasury. It was a large piece — a cameo to be exact — that, seen through the biblical myopia of the day, was called the “Triumph of Joseph at the Court of the Pharaoh.” There it languished for more than 60 years until Philip VI, who was also in financial trouble, hocked it to Pope Clement VI, the Avignon Pope, back when the Holy See was in France.  Thirty years later, another Avignon pope, Clement VII, returned this cameo to the Crown of France and it was shuttled back to Sainte Chapelle. And there it would have sat — misidentified — were it not for one of the most remarkable minds of the early 17th century, the now nearly forgotten Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc.  Portrait of Nicolas-Claude Fabri de Peiresc, attributed to Finson Ludovicus (vers 1580-1617). Public domain In his lifetime Peiresc was called “The Prince of the Republic of Letters.” Those who knew him “thought him to be among the most virtuous and benevolent men who had ever lived,” as I stated in the book Paris and the Birth of Public Knowledge. “His reputation for honesty and generosity were such that books were written holding him up as the model of a good life.” When Galileo ran afoul of the Church in 1633 and was tried by the Inquisition, European scholars called on Peiresc to intervene on his behalf with the Pope. Galileo was condemned to house arrest, but we do not know if Peiresc helped lighten the sentence. (A beautiful example of a letter from Galileo to Peiresc can be found online at the Morgan Library and Museum.) 
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Lead photo credit : The Great Cameo of France, Photo: Bibliothèque nationale de France. Wikimedia Commons

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John Eigenauer is an intellectual historian and professor of philosophy at Taft College in California. He holds a doctorate in Interdisciplinary Studies from Syracuse University. His work has been published in variety of publications including the International Journal of Educational Reform, The Historian, The Harvard Theological Review, History of Intellectual Culture, American Atheist Magazine and The Huntington Library Quarterly. He has spoken internationally on human rationality and offers workshops and seminars in the pedagogy of critical thinking. His book, 'Paris and the Birth of Public Knowledge,' is available online. John spends his summers in Paris and has fallen in love with Vincennes, often visiting the Chateau de Vincennes, where his hero, Denis Diderot was imprisoned for writing about forbidden topics.