This book makes use of vivid primary documents to provide a fascinating portrait of Paris in the year 1200: a key moment in its history, when the modern French capital was being born.

John Baldwin is Charles Horner Haskins Professor Emeritus of History at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Aristocratic Life in Medieval France: The Romances of Jean Renart and Gerbert de Montreuil, 1190-1230 (2000), The Language of Sex: Five Voices from Northern France Around 1200 (1994), The Government of Philip Augustus: Foundations of French Royal Power in the Middle Ages (1986), The Scholastic Culture of the Middle Ages, 1000-1300 (1971), and Masters, Princes, and Merchants:The Social Views of Peter the Chanter and His Circle (1970).