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This article looks into the presentation of the motherhood of the empress Valeria Messalina, the third wife of Claudius, by the ancient authors. Messalina is known for her scandalous manners and her marriage to Caius Silius even though she's still married to the emperor. She never seems concerned by her children, Octavia and Britannicus. However, it appears by the analysis of the texts at our disposal that this image is erroneous. First of all, Messalina is the mother of Britannicus, heir of Claudius and first male to be born under the principate of his father. The extreme youth of his son obliges the empress to protect his life and his claims to the imperial power. For that purpose, she prevents the potential rivals.Her power displeases the ancient authors because it embodies the excesses of the imperial power and the risks of the hereditary succession. The condemnation of the memory of Messalina and the accession of Julia Agrippina explain the negative image of the mother of Britannicus ; she becomes the meretrix Augusta, a woman who can't control her sexuality. Motherhood and sexuality characterize imperial women since most of them are wives and mothers. Authors elaborate their portrait according to these two criteria. The main feature of Messalina is to be the wife of the emperor and the mother of his natural heir ; she surpasses Livia and Agrippina the Younger, wives of the emperor, but mothers of an heir adopted by the emperor. Therefore, the motherhood of Messalina allows the authors to discredit durably her acts.The analysis of this figure on several centuries enables us to observe the evolution of the character of Messalina as mother, from a prodigal mother to an undeserving mother.

Between 1100 and 1300, medieval Paris became the largest city in the Western world. The urban space in Paris was and remained divided between large monastic institutions, who established settlements and legal structures in their urban, and especially suburban, territories, which secured their dominion over their quarters of the future metropolis. By doing so, they came into competition with the king and the bishop, who since the 12th century had also striven after ownership of urban space, judicial authority, and revenues in Paris. In this perspective the research project on Parisian towns and centres presented here raises the following questions : when does immigration begin in these areas, when do they lose their purely agrarian imprint ? How do landowners, in the case of Paris the ecclesiastical seigneuries, face the challenges posed by urbanization ? What integration mechanisms exist for the city and developing neighbourhoods ? What role does the king in Paris in particular play, as lord of the city, in this process ? And under what conditions did the city of Paris become this “incomparable” metropolis (“Paris without peer”) which, not only in quantitative terms, but also in the perception it and others had of itself, transformed itself into the largest European city ? To answer these questions, the article focuses on the example of the censive of the priory of Saint-Martin-des-Champs and its rich collection of legal and administrative documents.The preserved charters of Saint-Martin-des-Champs can, for very ancient times, give insights into the administration of the territory of the priory in Paris, which extended around the place of its foundation and along the old rue Saint-Martin to places on the right bank of the Seine. The charters indicate that the monastery began in the middle of the 12th century to sell land in its Parisian village and to bind the buyers to itself by subjecting them to cens and other seigneurial rights.

Heresy in the Middle Ages is currently at the centre of a large historiographic debate of international interest, one set in motion twenty years ago when certain French scholars posed radical questions : Is it possible that medieval heresy was at times “invented” rather than “discovered” by medieval peoples? Has the extent of medieval doctrinal deviance been exaggerated by the historians who have studied it? With these questions an argument has been ignited, with good cause : the debate does not just touch on the question of how to understand medieval heresy itself, but has implications for how we do history and how we should receive its sources.This article seeks to contribute to this debate by offering methodological reflections on approaching medieval sources which document heresy, based on a study of a number of cases attested from the twelfth to fourteenth centuries in the diocese of Lucca, Tuscany. These varying sources, some previously unpublished (trial testimony, pontifical letters, sculptures, inquisitorial documents), carry denounciations of certain heretics designated under numerous names (Patarines, Arians, the “Poor of Lyon”). Yet where historiography has invariably taken these different cases as manifestations of doctrinal deviance – one which has at times been rendered uniform and consistent by calling them “Cathars” – a fresh analysis permits us to root them in much larger political conflicts. The result is that these accusations of “heresy” were clearly far from targeting doctrinal deviance, instead feeding off of social and political issues.

Louis du Périer is a well-known French bibliophile who commissioned several manuscripts illuminated by Lyon artists. He is also the great-grandfather of François du Périer to whom the poet Malherbe addressed one of the most famous French poems. But his life is almost unknown and his charge as chief of the salt administration (Visiteur des gabelles à sel) in Provence has often misled searchers. On the contrary, this article shows its roots in Lyon and its strong and lasting links with this city. Louis' origin and the first years of his life remain mysterious. He married a woman from Lyon in 1465 and served the king for a few years. In 1484, he began to serve the city of Lyon : he carries out missions to the king and to the Estates of Languedoc for the important question of the Lyon fairs. He was first elected Consul of Lyon in 1486 for two years and then served three more terms in 1490, 1497 and 1501. At that time, he was one of the most important people in Lyon. He is one of the first in the order of consuls and is regularly consulted for the administration of the city when he is not elected. He obtained for himself and for his son many municipal honours. In addition, he became chief of the salt administration in Provence in 1489, was appointed courrier (chief for civil justice in Lyon) to the archbishop around 1493 and obtained nobility in 1498. Thanks to him, his son Gaspard du Périer became a member of the Aix parliament when it was created in 1501. This office will then lead to the relocation of the du Périer family to Provence in the 16th century. Louis du Périer died around 1506. Several of his social relationships are known. He was close to the Varey family, the most important consular family in Lyon in the 15th century. He is thus the guardian of Antoine de Varey, the heir of this family. But other elements, in particular his coat of arms, suggest a relationship with another important family in Lyon, that of the Thomassin. He is probably a cadet of this family whose members served the dauphin, the king and the city of Lyon in the 15th century. He probably has successively two or three wives and at least two sons Gaspard and François. All this information makes it possible to draw a portrait of a member of Lyon's bourgeois elite at the end of the Middle Ages.

This paper deals with the development of the academic discipline of International Relations from the 1930s to the 1970s in France. During the interwar period, pro-SDN movements and philanthropic foundations supported the creation of university institutes and think tanks. After World War II, Sciences Po (that is the Institut d'études politiques – IEP – and the Fondation nationale des sciences politiques – FNSP – an elite university) became one of the central place where the discipline thrived with the support of the French administration (Education, Foreign Affairs) and of several American philanthropic foundations (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford). The CERI (Centre d'études des relations internationales / Center for international Relation Studies), highly subsidized in the 1950s and 1960s by US-dollars, became the first research centre specialized in international relations issues – though closely collaborating with other academic and non-academic institutions, such as the Centre for Foreign Policy Studies (CEPE) and the 6e Section of the École des hautes études en sciences sociales (EHESS). Under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Duroselle, a trained historian and a go-between between the American and French academic and philanthropic worlds, the CERI has pragmatically gathered researchers from various disciplinary and expertise backgrounds and has eclectically developed different sets of methods and working practices, through a wide range of research projects – which contribute to forge the new disciplinary field.