Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2

The Protestant consistories were now required to admit into their assemblies representatives of the Catholic clergy, whose mission it was to read to them a so-called pastoral warning. Already the minister Louvois had attempted to enforce conversion to the Roman Catholic religion by quartering upon the unfortunate Protestants dragoons, whom, if they remained faithful to their religion, they had for an indefinite time to support. The so-called “dragonnades” were for the most part confined to the provinces. Paris was exempted from them, lest the king himself should be scandalised by the scenes they well might lead to. Louvois had sworn to extirpate the “dangerous heresy,” and he assured the king that he was doing so by peaceful means.

Four days after the signing of the edict, and on the very day of its formal registration, the Protestant temples were demolished by the mob, who could not wait for official measures to be taken against the buildings already condemned. The cemetery adjoining the temple of Charenton was profaned, and the tombs of the Protestants violated, as, a century later, were to be violated the tombs of the Catholic kings. Notices were served on the chiefs of the Protestant families, commanding them, in the name of the king, to change their religion. Of the recalcitrants large numbers were sent to the Bastille, while the members of the consistory were exiled by “lettres de cachet.” Protestants who had been domiciled in Paris for less than a year were ordered to quit the capital, and the pastors in general had a fortnight given to them in which to leave France; while Claude, the most renowned amongst them, was ordered to quit French territory within twenty-four hours, being meantime watched by one of the king’s servants. In the months of October, November, and December, 1685, no less than 1,087 members of the reformed church emigrated from Paris, 1,098 abjured their religion, while 3,823, after refusing to abjure, still remained in the city. The emigration had been arranged beforehand by Claude and his colleagues. A constant service of guides was kept up between Paris and the frontiers, though it was death for those who had once quitted Paris to return. The exiles took flight at midnight on market days, when it was easier to pass the barriers. Notwithstanding the menace of capital punishment, some half-dozen Protestant ministers returned to Paris a year after the revocation in order to do secret duty among their co-religionaries remaining in the capital. Some were sentenced to imprisonment for life in the isles of Sainte-Marguerite, others were shut up in the Bastille, and one of them, the celebrated Claude (Claude Brousson, by his full name), was hanged. Meanwhile some of the Protestants who still ventured to stay at Paris continued services at the English Embassy, or at the legation of the United Provinces. Instead of one chaplain the legation of the Dutch Republic maintained two. But an edict was soon passed forbidding French Protestants to attend worship in the chapels of any of the foreign ministers.

Protestantism was not again to be tolerated in France until 1787, two years before the Revolution, many of whose reforms (including the abolition of torture) had been anticipated by the Monarchy, already condemned.

It must be added that under the Reign of Terror Protestantism was persecuted from a new point of view. Under the ancient régime, the complaint against it had been that it rejected much which ought to be believed. The Terrorists, when public worship had been abolished in France, hated it for its persistent adherence to doctrines which the enemies of religion had proscribed.

Paris at present possesses numerous Protestant churches representing various Protestant sects. The Independents have six different places of worship, and the Wesleyans two, at one of which the service is performed in French, English, and German. There is a Baptist chapel, established some thirty years ago by Americans resident in Paris, a Scotch Presbyterian church, an American Episcopal church, an English Wesleyan church, and three Anglican churches.

CHAPTER IX.

THE UNIVERSITY OF PARIS AND THE COLLEGE OF FRANCE

The French Educational System – Lycées and Colleges – The University of Paris – The College of France

THE three principal establishments in France connected with “superior instruction” are the College of France, an independent institution where lectures free to everyone are delivered by the first literary and scientific men of the country; the University of France, whose chief function is to confer degrees; and the Sorbonne, which, when it does not mean the building of that name, is used to denote collectively the three faculties of which the Sorbonne may be considered the headquarters. As regards secondary instruction, the lyceums (

lycées

) are public schools maintained by the state; the colleges (

collèges

), public schools supported by the municipalities throughout France. In the innumerable colleges, of which every provincial town of the least importance possesses one, the studies are absolutely identical; a source of infinite satisfaction to a certain Minister of Public Instruction, who is reported one day to have exclaimed, “It is gratifying to reflect that at this moment in every college of France the opening lines of the second book of the Æneid are being construed.”

The future masters for the different lyceums and colleges are all educated in a special school known as the École Normale, founded under the First Republic, and where, according to the government order calling it into existence, the students have not only to receive instruction, but to be taught the art of imparting it.

It should be noted that all the lyceums or government schools are in Paris, with the exception only of the Lyceum of Versailles. As regards the localisation of schools and academies of all kinds, it will be observed that the French system is entirely opposed to the English. Our public schools, like our universities, are in provincial towns; those of France are all concentrated in the capital. Up to the time of the Revolution, France had universities, many of them celebrated, at Toulouse, Montpelier, Orleans, Cahors, Angers, Orange, Perpignan, Aix, Poitiers, Caen, Valence, Nantes, Basançon, Bourges, Bordeaux, Angoulême, Reims, Douai, Pont-â-Mousson, Rennes, Pau, Strasbourg, and Nancy. In the year 1794 a decree of the convention suppressed at one blow the whole of the provincial universities. The idea of one university directing all public instruction in France, and taking its orders from one central authority, the Minister of Public Instruction, suited admirably the views of the first Napoleon, who maintained, with improvements of his own, the educational system introduced by the Revolution.

There is now nothing in France corresponding to an English university, with its different colleges. Until the year 1850 a candidate for the degree of bachelor of arts, or bachelor of letters, was obliged to show that he had studied for at least one year in each of the two upper classes of a lyceum. The government lyceums thus correspond in a certain measure to the colleges of an English university. But in the year just mentioned all certificates of study were abolished, and candidates for a degree had now simply to prove themselves capable of passing the required examination. The effect of this reform, certainly favourable to students of limited means, was at the same time to call into existence a host of private establishments corresponding to those of our crammers.

The College of France, as already mentioned, is in no way connected with the modern University of Paris. It was toward 1530 that Francis I., at the solicitation of Guillaume Budé and Jean du Bellay, instituted, apart from the ancient university, two free chairs, one for Greek, and the other for Hebrew. According to a national tradition, the university dates from Charlemagne, who in any case occupied himself with educational improvements and created at Paris some important schools. But the formal privileges granted to the university by the Crown can be traced only to the reign of Philippe Augustus at the very beginning of the thirteenth century. Up to that time the schools in France were dependent on the churches and monasteries; in Paris on the metropolitan cathedral. But towards the end of the twelfth century the cathedral schools had become too small for the number of students. Thus the most celebrated masters delivered free lectures on the hill of Saint-Geneviève, where now stands the Panthéon. The students, in spite of complaints raised by the Bishop of Paris, attended the open-air lectures in crowds, and in order to regularise this relative liberation of the schools from the authority of the Church, Philippe Augustus founded, under the name of

Universitas parisiensis magistrorum et scholarum

, a teaching institution which was independent alike of the Church and of the ordinary civil and criminal jurisdiction.

The left bank of the Seine, formerly known, and with reason, as the University bank, became more and more numerously inhabited, and was soon covered with dwelling-houses, schools, and churches. The teaching of the Paris University was in a measure international, as is sufficiently indicated by its official division into four nations: nation of France, nation of Picardy, nation of Normandy, and nation of England, which became nation of Germany in 1437, when Paris was at length delivered from the English domination by Charles VII.

The liberal spirit in which the schools of the University of Paris were thrown open to foreigners could not fail to bear fruit. The students of all countries, hastening in those distant days to Paris, made it the intellectual capital, and at the same time the most popular city of continental Europe. In the course of less than a century were seen on the benches, or, to be literal, standing on the straw, of the schools of Paris, Albertus Magnus from Germany, Duns Scotus from Scotland, Raymond Lulli from Spain, Roger Bacon from England, Brunetto Latini and his pupil, Dante Alighieri, from Italy. “Eldest daughter of our Kings,” was the name given to the University of Paris throughout France.

The history of the Paris University, with its exclusive privileges and its special government by its own authorities, abounds in stories of dissensions and open combats between the students and the townspeople. These town-and-gown fights were often attended by fatal results. Occasionally too the universities had to struggle against the Church, and especially against the Order of Jesuits, the object of the Jesuits being to get everywhere into their hands the instruction of the rising generation, so that they might eradicate, at least in the future, all germs of Protestantism.

The order founded by Ignatius Loyola made every endeavour to subjugate the university, which, however, refused to admit the Jesuits, even as students. But they were allowed to establish a college of their own; and in 1564 the rector of the university, Julien de Saint-Germain, who was well-disposed towards the Jesuits, without consulting the different nations, admitted them to “letters of scholarity,” the equivalent apparently of degrees. The University of Paris protested, and brought the question before the Parliament of Paris, which, however, came to no decision; and thenceforward war between the university and the Jesuits was carried on with scarcely any intermission.

Some idea of the life led by the professors and students of the university may be gathered from the edicts of restriction from time to time issued in connection with the institution. Under Henry III., when the discipline of the university had somewhat declined, the use of any language for teaching purposes except Latin was forbidden. The members of colleges were no longer to have women in their service, and from all colleges fencing-masters were to be excluded. The university, with some hesitation, took part against the Reformation; but after the victory of Henry IV., it sent a deputation to wait upon him, and while expressing its regret for any annoyance it might have caused him, joined with him in declaring war against the Jesuits, whom he hated, regarding them as the promoters of more than one of the attempts made against his life. The Jesuits were now banished from France, but at the same time new statutes were given to the university, by one of which it was forbidden to receive any student who did not belong to the Catholic religion. Other statutes proscribed dancing, fencing, and acting.

In 1603 the king permitted the return of the Jesuits on certain conditions which they were not likely to observe. Under the reign of Louis XIV. the struggle between the university and the Jesuits was particularly severe; and to an “apologia” issued by a friend of the Order the theological faculty of the university replied in these terms: —

“The whole Church looks upon you as usurpers of the power of its pastors; all your actions are attempts against the sanctity of their character. You disparage them in the pulpit, you defame them in your books, you attack them in general, and slander them in particular. The years of your society can be counted by your continual rebellions against the successors of the apostles; you rise up against them in conspiracy and with arrogance.” Nevertheless the Jesuits, when one of them became confessor to the king, regained credit and favour, and gave to their college the name of Louis the Great.

Under Louis XIV. an edict regulated the teaching of law in the university, and ordered that Roman law and French law should be taught concurrently. Already, however, the history of this institution was drawing to a close; the “Eldest daughter of the Kings” was destined not to survive the fall of the monarchy. A decree of the Convention dated March 20, 1794, suppressed the University of Paris, together with the numerous provincial universities which had existed up to this time.

Of France’s three great teaching institutions, the Collège de France is the youngest. To return for a moment to this establishment. Its professors, to the number of twenty-eight, teach the language and literature of mediæval France, the Greek language and literature, Latin prose and Latin verse, the Hebrew, Chaldaic, Syriac, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish literatures, the Sanscrit and Chinese languages and literatures, the language and literature of the Slavonians, the modern languages and literature of Western Europe; history, morality, and the law of nations; comparative legislation and political economy, archæology, mathematics, astronomy, general and experimental physics, medicine, chemistry, the natural history of organic and inorganic bodies, and comparative embryogeny. Among the celebrated lecturers of the College of France may be mentioned, in modern times, Michelet, Quinet, Mickiewicz, the Polish poet (who here delivered an admirable, if at times somewhat mystical, series of lectures on the Slavonians), and finally Renan.

Just opposite the College of France is the Collège du Plessis. “From my window at the College of France,” says M. Renan, in the preface to his “Abbesse de Jouarre,” “I witness daily the fall, stone by stone, of the last walls of the Collège du Plessis, founded by Geoffroi du Plessis, secretary to King Philippe the Long in 1517, enlarged in the seventeenth century by Richelieu, and in the eighteenth one of the centres of the best philosophical culture. There Turgot, the greatest man in our history, received his education from the Abbé Sigorgne, the first in France to grasp perfectly the ideas of Newton. The Collège du Plessis was closed in 1790. In 1793 and 1794 it became the saddest of the Paris prisons. There the “suspects” were confined, condemned in a sense beforehand; whence they only issued in order to go to the revolutionary tribunal or to death. I often try to imagine the language these walls, now torn open by the builders engaged in reconstruction, must have heard; those grassplots whose last trees have just been cut down. I think of the conversations which must have been held in those large halls of the ground floor during the hours immediately preceding the summons; and I have conceived a series of dialogues which, if I wrote them, I should call ‘Dialogues of the Last Night.’ The hour of death is essentially philosophical; at that hour everybody speaks well, everyone is in the presence of the Infinite, and is not tempted to make phrases. The condition of good dialogue is the sincerity of the personages. Now, the hour of death is the most sincere – when one approaches death in happy circumstances, entirely oneself, that is to say; sound in mind and body, without previous debilitation. The work I now offer the public is probably the only one of this series that I shall execute.”

CHAPTER X.

THE SORBONNE

Robert de Sorbonne – The Sorbonne, its Origin and History – Richelieu – The Revolution – The New Sorbonne – Mercier’s Views

THE Sorbonne owes its origin and its name to Robert de Sorbonne, chaplain and confessor to Louis IX. Like so many other scholars of the same period, this priest had been compelled to rely on alms to defray the expenses of his education. Touched by miseries which he himself had shared, he established a society of secular ecclesiastics, whose function it was to give gratuitous instruction; and he petitioned the king to endow the charitable enterprise with a dwelling for those pupils who could not pay for their lodging. Nor was his request unheeded. Thanks to royal patronage he was able, in 1253, to open his college. Indigent scholars were taught for nothing; those not quite destitute of means paid five sous and a half weekly. The institution was directed by the associates, who had neither superiors nor principals. The Sorbonne, as the new College was soon to be called, was attached, like all other establishments of the kind, to the University of Paris, and the connection, throughout its long and brilliant history, never ceased. But the ties which bound it to this central institution became looser and looser as the Sorbonne increased in importance. The provisor, who after a time made the appointments in the Sorbonne, was himself elected by a jury composed of the local archdeacon, the great chancellor, the masters and the faculty of theology, the deans of law and medicine, the rector of the university, and the procurators of the “four nations” into which the university was divided. The election took place in this manner until 1524, after which the provisor was elected by the members of the college, the former jury of election being now only called upon to confirm the choice.

If the Sorbonne was the great school of theology in the middle ages, it was not its cradle; theology was born with scholasticism in the ninth century. It had already nourished with Longfranc, Saint-Anselme, Abailard, and Pierre Lombard before bearing riper fruits with Albertus Magnus and Saint Thomas Aquinas. Already the court of Rome submitted questions of pure dogma to the theologians of the University of Paris, while reserving to itself all questions of canonical law. But the college founded in so humble a manner by Robert de Sorbonne was soon to become the official organ of scholastic theology; and in its bosom were discussed questions which embarrassed the Church of France and even the court of Rome. From its walls went forth the sentences, decrees, and censures which were to have force of law throughout the Catholic world.

The Sorbonne was not only a teaching establishment, it conferred degrees. The theses of the Sorbonne acquired particular celebrity, the “Sorbonic thesis” being regarded as the ideal of the theological essay. During the middle ages and even to the end of the seventeenth century the Sorbonne was the great theological authority; but it had politics of its own which, viewed in the present day, do not seem to have been always in accord with its religious teaching. It took part with Étienne Marcel in the parliamentary and almost revolutionary movement which he directed in opposition to the party of the dauphin and of the aristocracy. It was a doctor of the Sorbonne, the Franciscan friar, Jean Petit, who wrote the “apologia” for the assassination of Louis of Orleans; and another doctor of the same institution, Jean Larcher, who, with the deputies of the university, publicly accused the dauphin of the murder on the bridge of Montereau, where, on the 10th of May, 1410, the Duke of Burgundy, Jean Sans-Peur, was assassinated by men belonging to the dauphin’s suite. To avenge this crime Philippe the Good, Jean’s son, seconded by the King of England, took possession on the 20th of June, 1420, of Montereau, which remained in the power of the English until 1428.

The Sorbonne, representing the Church, condemned Joan of Arc as a sorceress, communicated its judgment to the Duke of Bedford, and, in a petition addressed to the King of England, demanded her extradition. When the religious war was at its height this body fulminated decrees in favour of the League, the Guises, and Spain against Henry III. and Henry IV. It was to the Sorbonne that the Guises addressed themselves in order to obtain theological support for their projected usurpation. The learned assembly did not go so far as to recommend the assassination of Henry III., but it pronounced in favour of revolt, and consigned the partisans, first of Henry III. and afterwards of Henry IV., to eternal damnation, finally offering the crown of France to Philip II. of Spain. After the triumph of Henry IV. the Sorbonne continued for a time its seditious manifestations; when Cardinal de Bourbon, its “apostolic conservator,” was arrested on the denunciation of the Procurator-general, it at the same time received a reprimand from the Parliament of Paris.

Forced to submit to the new government, it retracted its doctrine as to the lawfulness of “tyrannicide,” supported in this not very startling retractation by the authority of the court of Rome. Finally, under Marie de Médicis, Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Louis XIV., the Sorbonne was a firm supporter of the Bourbon dynasty, together with the Church of France and the University of Paris. Richelieu was its constant patron. Under Louis XIV. it took part with the Gallican Church against the pretensions of the court of Rome. As to the evil done or attempted to be done by the Sorbonne, it will be sufficient to say that besides helping to bring Joan of Arc to the block, it condemned Vanini, whom the Parliament of Toulouse ordered to be burned alive. It pronounced also against Ramus and Descartes, the adversaries of the Aristotelian philosophy; Montesquieu for his “Esprit des Lois” and Buffon for his “Natural History”; besides Rousseau, Marmontel, Helvetius, Diderot, Mably, and the whole of the Encyclopædists. Defenders of the Sorbonne point out with justice that it also condemned the absurdities of many visionaries, charlatans, and impostors, and that if it was an obstacle in the way of science, it also showed itself at times a barrier against superstition. It opposed the Jesuits; but what, after all, can this count for against its condemnation of Jeanne d’Arc, John Hus, and Vanini, to say nothing of its encouragement and justification of the Saint-Bartholomew massacre? It condemned no one to death, not having power to do so; but, like the Inquisition, it handed over to the civil power the alleged infidels, apostates, and sorcerers, whom it deemed worthy of the severest punishment. The boldest decree it ever