Before the French Revolution, Beauvais, about an hour north of Paris on the train, was one of the “villes sonnantes” – the “ringing towns” – whose belfries regulated the daily rhythm of morn and eve, life and death, and everything in between. The best calculations suggest that there were 135 bells in 16th-century Beauvais, between the confraternities and canonries, parish churches and monasteries and convents.
Renaissance maps tell the full story. The Jacobins were here, along with the Ursulines, Sisters of Charity and three types of Franciscans: the Minims, Capuchins and Cordeliers. There were dozens of churches, chief among them the Cathedral of St Peter. So strategic was Beauvais that its bishops were also its counts; they later became peers of France and had the privilege of carrying the royal mantle at the coronations of its kings.
