Cambrai et le Cambrésis au XVe siècle

Abstract

H. Platelle, Cambrai and the Cambrai region in the XVth century. This study, written on the occasion of the five hundredth anniversary of the death of the famous Cambrai musician Guillaume du Fay, aims at providing a concrete and precise picture of Cambrai and its region in the XVth century. The first part - the places - deals with the natural and architectural environment in wich men lived. From the natural and historical region (which counted about a hundred villages in the XVth century) the reader is led into the city itself whose maximum extension seems to have been reached as early as the XIth century. The Cambrai house, the parish churches, the chapter houses and monasteries, the cathedral - a half-Gothic architectural jewel - the civil monuments are successively described. The town yet is deprived of a belfry and of a municipal bell, because of an imperial decision of 1226. The second part - the powers - tries to disentangle the network of authorities which govern the lives of men and city. In principale the bishop is endowed with the sovereignty over the city under the theoritical dependence of the Emperor, and the law of the city is entirely in his hands ; but the actual situation is thoroughly different. The bischop musy stand the competition with the cathedral chapter ans the Magistrate, whereas, at a higher level, the principality is tossed between the adverse influences of the dukes of Burgundy and of the King of France. The third part focuses especially on the men of that period full of brightness and faith, of sound and fury. Two famous "Cambrésiens" may symbolize the two opposite tendencies of the time : the chronicler MONSTRELET whose chronicles (1400-1453) reflect a "heroical and brutal" world, and the musician Guillaume du FAY who lets us hear in his works the song of Botticelli's angels.