Con-artists or entrepreneurs? Fripperers and market space in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Paris

Medieval prohibitions abound against artisans selling stolen or bloodied goods, and refabricating used clothing to deceive customers. Such prohibitions have led scholars to suggest the secondhand trade in the Middle Ages was one of poverty or marginality. Yet, if we read trade regulations carefully and alongside other types of sources as well as consider the context of a late medieval economy undergirded by credit, a complex image of fripperers materialises. This was a trade populated by both men and women of various means vying with each other and other merchants and artisans for control of retail space. This paper works to uncover the economic and cultural standing of fripperers in thirteenth- and fourteenth-century Paris and the commercial space of Les Halles.     

The Panstereorama: City Models in the Balloon Era

The nineteenth-century ‘panstereorama’ was an urban relief model placed on display as a public spectacle. In this article, I consider first two affiliated forms that help to explain the genre, namely panorama paintings and plans-reliefs. I then go on to consider urban regional practices of city modelling in London and Paris before examining in detail panstereoramas representing Paris and New York. It is argued that this form of model urban cartography served as proxy for the view obtained from the increasingly popular balloon trip and that it accordingly provided virtual travel to, and a map of, the cities depicted.     

Recognizing synesthesia on the international stage: The first scientific symposium on synesthesia (at The International Conference of Physiological Psychology,Paris, 1889)

ABSTRACT

At the first ever worldwide international conference of psychology in Paris, 1889, one symposium included a round-table event devoted entirely to the neurodevelopmental condition of synesthesia. Details of this seminal gathering on synesthesia and its international reception have been lost to historical obscurity. A synesthesia study committee emerged from this meeting, as well as a new research tool. Moreover, the scientific findings discussed during this symposium would be echoed over a hundred years later, when a new wave of synesthesia research in the late-twentieth century arose. This article sheds new light on this seminal gathering and aims to answer the following historical questions: Why was synesthesia included in this conference? What science was discussed? Who were the members of the committee and how did they come to be involved? What were their contributions to synesthesia research before, during, and after the conference? What has history shown us about the impact of this symposium on the science of synesthesia?     

Ireland and the Paris Olympic Games (1924): a difficult journey successfully negotiated

ABSTRACT

Ireland first competed as an independent nation in the Olympic Games at Paris in 1924. The Irish presence in Paris was largely due to the work of J.J. Keane, who became the first Irish member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in 1922. This made it possible for Ireland to compete independently in the Olympics. As Keane lobbied for IOC membership, he also persuaded the two rival athletic controlling bodies of Irish athletics to abandon their claims and merge into a single controlling body for the sport. An Irish Olympic Council was established by Keane to manage the Irish entry for the Paris Games. Olympic recognition was achieved against a background of tumultuous political events in Ireland that included a war of independence, a civil war and partition of the island. The British Olympic Association consistently opposed demands for independent Irish Olympic representation and in 1924 attempted to limit Irish Olympic jurisdiction to the territory of the Irish Free State, an attempt that was firmly rejected and resisted by Keane on behalf of the Irish Olympic Council. This was complicated by Irish participation in the Olympic football competition.     

Eugene Romer’s 1916 Atlas of Poland: Creating a New Nation State

The work of Eugene Romer, founder of Polish geography, was framed by his involvement in the national cause. The Atlas of Poland, a key tool in his political activism, was completed during the First World War under the uncertain circumstances prevailing on the Eastern Front. It focused more on the issue of unification than on boundaries. Skilled in physical geography, Romer made use of a cartographical technique rarely applied to ethnographical maps, that of isopleths. In this article, we address the reasons for this daring innovation and consider Romer’s training in the Austrian and German schools of cartography before examining the reception of the atlas by geographers from the different academic backgrounds.     

Community regulation and its effects: the aggressive actions of parishioners against priests and women in Paris, 1483–1505

At the start of the sixteenth century, the archidiaconal court of Paris lacked centralised means of enforcement and relied heavily on parishioners to supervise one another and their priests. This article analyses cases from court registers dating from 1483 to 1505 that detail instances in which parishioners reacted aggressively to illicit contact between priests and women. It argues that the court appropriated parishioners' intimidating and sometimes violent separations of priests and women as a means to enforce ecclesiastical statutes calling for strict domestic segregation between the two. While the court relied upon the aggression of parishioners, it also protected priests, more than women, against extreme actions such as assault. The decisions made by the court created a system in which violence against women could be an acceptable means for enforcing its statutes at parish level.     

Matter over mind? The rise and fall of phrenology in nineteenth-century France

ABSTRACT

The history of phrenology in France has a number of unique features. It was in that country that F. J. Gall sought refuge; and it was, above all, in France that phrenology would subsequently attempt to establish its credentials as a new physiological science of the mind. Up until the 1840s, phrenology expanded rapidly in the country, a growth that coincided with attempts to provide this new field with the trappings of respectable scientific endeavor—courses of lectures, learned societies, journals, and so on. This ambitious intellectual project, despite its controversial nature, made a major cultural impact in the nineteenth century, both through its influence on the written word—from learned journals to the novel—and via its striking visual imagery (sculpture, anatomical diagrams and models, engravings, caricatures, and so on). However, as the scientific impact of phrenology declined, allusions to it lost much of their cultural force. On the borderline between respectable science and mere quackery, phrenology in France represented an attempt to construct a whole new intellectual universe based on scientific principles, and as such had a profound impact on its period.