User:Tamarkot/Sorbonne

This is a translation in progress. What relates specifically to the Sorbonne and not to the University of Paris? Argh!

Draft

The name Sorbonne (La Sorbonne) is commonly used to refer to the historic University of Paris or one of its successor institutions (see below), but this is a recent usage, and "Sorbonne" has actually been used with different meanings over the centuries.

For information on the historic University of Paris, its successor institutions (of which the University of Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne, the University of Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle, and the University of Paris IV: Paris-Sorbonne are relevant in this context) or the Collège de Sorbonne, please refer to those articles.

The Sorbonne is a university in Paris. At its foundation by Robert de Sorbon in the 13th century, more precisely in 1257, it was the collegiate of Sorbonne, which would later become part of the University of Paris, one of the first European universities. This was only one of the many colleges of the University of Paris that existed until the French revolution. Hastings Rashdall, in The Universities of Europe in the Middle Ages (1895), which is still a standard reference on the topic, lists some 70 colleges of the university from the Middle Ages alone; some of these were short-lived and disappeared already before the end of the medieval period, but others were founded in the Early modern period, like the Collège des Quatre-Nations.

Since 1971, it has split into thirteen universities of which several have shared the name Sorbonne and have control of the location on the historic site of la rue des Écoles (the street of the Schools), in the fifth arrondissement of Paris.

Naming

Several universities in Paris have the name "Sorbonne" in their charter, or maintain an affiliation with the Sorbonne:

Paris I: Panthéon-Sorbonne, which also houses the observatory of the Sorbonne.
Paris III: Sorbonne Nouvelle
Paris IV: Paris-Sorbonne
Paris V: René Descartes

These four public universities are located in the historic buildings of the Sorbonne. They also house the rectorate of l'Académie de Paris, l'École des Chartes, and the School of Higher Studies (l'École pratique des hautes études).

These public universities should not be confused with:

Le Collège de Sorbon in Ardennes.
L'Ecole supérieure Robert de Sorbon, located in La Trimouille (Vienna) near Poitiers and which does not seem to offer any teaching locations or courses. This private French educational establishment is based on the principle of the Validation of acquired experience (VAE; Validation des acquis de l'expérience) and in the evaluation of foreign diplomas to award their own diplomas; the French Minister of Education allows it to grant university degrees under French Law. It has never assumed any historic or administrative ties with the Sorbonne and seems even to play on certain confusion.
L'Université francophone Robert de Sorbon, a North American university established by the legislation of the state of Maine and installed in Florida does not have any association with the school in France.

History

The Sorbonne is one of the oldest universities of Europe. It originated in the college founded in 1253 in Paris by Robert de Sorbon, chaplain and confessor of the king Saint Louis. The foundation was confirmed by the king in 1257. Theology was mostly taught to poor students there and it grew rapidly. Paris became a large cultural and scientific center in Europe in the 13th century, with the Sorbonne educating more than 20000 students. With time the college, although only one of many colleges of the university, came to be the centre of theological studies and "Sorbonne" was frequently used as a synonym for the Paris Faculty of Theology.

Soon the Sorbonne became a moral authority. The doctors of the Sorbonne stated their views on famous controversies and problems of the time, such as the taxation of the church dispensations by the Saint-Siège. They also played a large role in the Great Schism of the West (1378-1417). Jean Gerson, the chancellor of the University of Paris, led the council of Constance (1414-1418), and put an end to the schism. During the Hundred Years War, the Sorbonne supported the English and the Bourguignon, and approved the execution of Joan of Arc (1431). In 1469, the Sorbonne installed the first printing press in France, at the initiative of King Louis XI, by the prior of the Sorbonne, Jean Heynlin, and his librarian, Guillaume Fichet.

In the 15th century, the university often went on strike, notably for three months in 1443, and during six months from September 1444 until March 1445, to defend its tax exempt status. Until 1446, the students were subject to the school's law and punishment system. However, its students were regularly arrested by the provost of the king; in these cases, the rector of the university would visit the Châtelet to demand that the student be judged by the university rather than by the state. If the provost refused, the university would go on strike.

The end of the 15th century marked, for the University of Paris, the beginning of a chivalrous/delicate period. Charles VII submitted it, in 1446, to the jurisdiction of the Parliament of Paris, which gave rise to the student riots. In 1453, a student, Raymond de Mauregart, was killed by the guards of the Châtelet and the university went on strike again for several months.

The Sorbonne opposed in vain the concordat of Bologne, signed in 1516 by François I, who gave to royal power the possibility of controlling access to large dispensations. The foundation of the College of France in 1530 and the establishment of the Compagnie de Jésus in the middle of the 16th century competed with the university, until the Wars of Religion engulfed France. In 1600, Henri IV revoked the privileges of the Sorbonne.

The attitude of powers that be changed with Cardinal Richelieu who had been a student of the Sorbonne in 1606-1607 and who became the proviseur in 1622. He renovated the buildings and endowed the university with a magnificent chapel which would contain his tomb. After the vague desires of independence under la Fronde, the Sorbonne submitted to Louis XIV. The school condemned the ideas of Descartes, and then those of Enlightenment philosophers. After the expulsion of the Jesuits in 1766, it annexed the Louis-le-Grand college and a new building was constructed in place of the Pantheon for the faculty of the law school.

During the French Revolution, the buildings were closed to the students in 1791 and the Sorbonne society was dissolved with the universities of Paris and in the rest of the country as a consequence of the law by Le Chapelier which suppressed corporations and institutes. In 1794, the chapel was transformed into a temple to the goddess of Reason. Napoleon Bonaparte transformed the site into altars of artists.

In 1806, the university was reestablished under the name of the Imperial University as a public and lay institution. The duke of Richelieu, the prime minister of Louis XVIII, wanted to honor the memory of the cardinal and added all his luster to the Sorbonne. He constructed an amphitheatre which could seat 1200 people. The courses were reorganised into faculties of Theology, Letters, and the Sciences. It attracted prestigious professors, such as François Guizot and Victor Cousin.

The reconstruction of the buildings of the 17th century, a project too expensive and inconvenient, was envisioned several times in the course of the 19th century. It was finally realized by the Third Republic, by Jules Ferry. The work-site was entrusted to the architect Henri Paul Nénot. The demolition of the buildings took place between 1884 and 1894, and the first stone of the new edifice was laid in 1885. The first part of the building was inaugurated in 1889, on the centennial of the French Revolution, by the president Marie François Sadi Carnot. The entire construction and renovation was completed in 1901. Simultaneously, the teaching of theology was suppressed by law in 1885. On 23 June 1894, the baron Pierre de Coubertin founded the International Olympic Committee (CIO) in the Sorbonne, which gave rise to the modern Young Olympics.

During the latter part of the 19th century, the buildings of the Collège de Sorbonne were re-used for the Faculties of Sciences and Letters of what was at the time known as the Academy of Paris, the name used for the faculties of the former University of Paris within the centralized structure known as the University of France, created in 1808 but dissolved into its constituent universities again in 1896. As a result of this, "Sorbonne" became a colloquial term for the entire University of Paris.

The Busy/Occupied Sorbonne: a symbolic place

In May 1968, the Sorbonne was a starting point for the manifestations of students which eventually resulted in a widespread revolutionary movement in all of France. The first riot of May 1968 ended with the intervention of police in the courtyard of the Sorbonne. On 3 May, hundreds of students reassembled in the courtyard in case of an attack from the extreme right. Within the Sorbonne student and faculty body, there were many extreme leftists, including trotskyists, maoists, and anarchists. The leftist groups were prepared for a confrontation. By calling the police, the dean of the university provoked the first riots of the month of May. After 13 May, a general strike was held and the university was occupied.

After the dissolution decided by General de Gaulle in June 1968, the National Assembly initiated a reform of the university. In 1971, the University of Paris was divided into thirteen new universities of which seven were in Paris (La Sorbonne, Assas, Censier, Jussieu, Vincennes, Dauphine) and six were in the vicinity of Paris. Five remained attached to the site of the Sorbonne and three kept the name Sorbonne: Paris I Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris IV Sorbonne and Paris III Sorbonne-Nouvelle.

After the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, the Sorbonne was closed to the public; only students and faculty were allowed on the property of the Sorbonne, and only the readers of the interuniversity library of the Sorbonne could enter.

In 2006, several hundred students assembled to protest the First Employment Contract (CPE) law, and occupied the Sorbonne for three nights (from 8 March to the morning of 11 March) before being evacuated by the police in a few minutes. The university quarter was closed down for several weeks, the rue Saint-Jacques was closed, and the Sorbonne completely inaccessible. The building was closed to students for several weeks by the rectorate to remove all new risks of occupation. It was reopened 24 April 2006.

Architecture

At the start of the 17th century, the university of the Sorbonne looked like many disparate buildings erected along the rue de la Sorbonne, between the Saint-Benoît cloister to the north and the college of Calvi in the south. It also had a chapel constructed in the 14th century which faced the street.

In 1626, Cardinal Richelieu undertook the reconstruction of the collection of buildings. After 1630, the initial project was reviewed again more ambitiously. The original chapel, which initially was to be simply modernised, was destroyed and replaced by an edifice of vast proportions, conceived by the architect Jacques Lemercier, and became the mausoleum of the cardinal. Work began in May 1635 and the huge enterprise was nearly finished by the time of the cardinal's death in 1642. The work was completed by the duchess of Aiguillon, the heiress of Richelieu.

The chapel of the Sorbonne was one of the masterpieces of classic parisian architecture. It contains an organ of Dallery, which was not maintained for the last 150 years, and is actually not usuable, although largely preserved.

Note on the University of Paris

The use of Sorbonne for the Faculty of Theology is the usage still noted in the Encyclopædia Britannica, Eleventh Edition (1910–1911) and the Catholic Encyclopedia from 1913, neither of which yet indicate that the word could stand for the university as a whole. Even though neither of these early 20th century English-language encyclopedias is likely to have been up-to-date with current French usage, it still shows that this was an innovation and not yet widely spread.