Résume de thèse (anglais)

As we focus on historical and topographical aspects at a time when the production of manuscripts enables us to write history, we realize how powerful were urban seigniories throughout 12^th and 13^th c. Troyes.

The enlargement of the urban network, the drying out of humid areas, and the development of surrounding walls for a better defence, earls, among whom Hugues and Henri I^st, gave conditions good enough for the populations to develop. We owe to fiats such a patchy aspect of the city. More, residents within the community were freed from their corporeal domination. Besides, when the nobility became scarce, all the conditions were gathered and as a result the religious establishment extended its power. The way our city developed leads us to put the stress on the vital role of the Religious, helped by juridical incitements from the Comtes de Champagne in the second half of the 12^th century. That way ecclesiastical institutions became urban seigniories that can be seen through a group or maps.

After codification at the Latran Council, priests exercised rights over parishes the extension of which was an area limited by customs deriving directly from first dotation. The parish network structured the urban environment around churches and monasteries which held control over every street and every household. The regressive approach enabled the establishment of a balancing of the said parishes, helped in this by original cartographies. With patron saints inspiring the neighbourhood and processions following a well-delimited itinerary, the priests and their parishioners sometimes joined processions led by bishops, offering thus a living spirituality which is the perfect conjunction of religious time and civic time. It seems that the parish network structured and united some areas with the population living there, and by so doing gave birth to rallies full of religious fervour in this human and divine city.