THE "COURT OF MIRACLES"

BEYOND THE CEMETERY, NEXT TO THE 13TH-CENTURY RAMPART, AN ENCLAVE OF BEGGARS AND THIEVES GREW UP

Zoom

This illustration shows people who help each other.

It was one of the Courts of Miracles that grew up in all large French towns after about 1600, with 12 in Paris.

Paris in 1530 / zoom

 Red arrow, our walk. Yellow arrow, the Court of Miracles.

The name comes from beggars dropping crutches and bandages on entering, being miraculously cured (since nothing was wrong with them in the first place):

Engraving by Jean Lagniet, 1663, zoom

They had a king, an hierarchy, an initiation, taxes and a language.*

 *Argot, which still means slang in French

Lagniet

  

The Hunchback of Notre Dame made this one famous.

Illustration by Gustave Doré / zoom

Hugo took poetic license by placing it at the end of the 15th century but his description is based on the main source, of the early 18th.*

*Read online (both in French)

•  Histoire et recherche des antiquités de la Ville de Paris by Henri Sauval, 1724.
•  Elites et gueux. Représentations des XVIe et XVIIe siècles . 

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Louis XIV established the first modern police, whose director's first act was to come to the Court with cannons. He told the crowd that he would blow up the rampart and hang anyone still present when the smoke cleared.

He shot a hole 

through which all the inhabitants fled,

putting the Court of Miracles to an end. 

(In 1676)

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