History of the Rise of the Huguenots, Vol. 1

by Henry Martyn Baird

If the origin of the University of Paris, like that of the greater number of human institutions, was insignificant when viewed in the light of its subsequent growth, the meagreness of the early course of instruction was almost incredible to those who, in an age of richer mental acquisitions, listened to the prelections of its numerous and learned doctors. The Trivium and the Quadrivium constituted the whole cycle of human knowledge. Grammar, logic, and rhetoric were embraced in the one; music, arithmetic, geometry, and astronomy in the other. He was indeed a prodigy of erudition whose comprehensive intellect had mastered the details of these, the seven liberal arts, or, to use a familiar line of the period,

Qui tria, qui septem, qui omne scibile novit.

But the ignorant pedagogues of the eleventh century gave place, in the early part of the twelfth, to instructors of real merit—to Peter Abelard, among others, and to his pupil Peter Lombard, the fame of whose lectures attracted to Paris great crowds of youth eager to become proficient in philosophy and

The four nations.

Hitherto there had been but one faculty—the Faculty of Arts; but among the students a distribution into four "nations" had been effected. The Nation of France embraced the students coming from the royal dominions, which then comprised a limited territory, with Paris as its capital, together with the students of Italy, Spain, and the east. The Nation of Picardy consisted of students from the province of that name and from the neighboring County of Flanders. The Nation of Normandy received youths belonging to the rich provinces of Normandy and Brittany, and to the west. The Nation of England gathered those who came from the British Isles, as well as from the extensive territories in southwestern France long held by the kings of England. After the reconquest of Guyenne, however, the German students became the controlling element in the fourth nation, and the designation was changed to the Nation of Germany. The Rector of the university and the four Procurators of the nations were entrusted with the administration of the general interests of the vast scholastic community.

The faculties.

Chancellor and rector.

With the rise of new branches of science to contest the supremacy of the old, the institution of other faculties was called for. The demand was not conceded without a determined struggle of so serious a character as to require the intervention of two popes for its settlement. Nevertheless, before the end of the thirteenth century, the three new faculties of theology, medicine, and law had assumed their places by the side of the four original nations. The faculties were represented in the rector's council by three Deans, invested with power equal to that enjoyed by the procurators of the nations. While the rector, always chosen from the faculty of arts, was the real head of this republic of letters in all that concerned its inner life and management, the honorable privilege of conferring the degrees that gave the right to teach belonged to the chancellor of the university.[40] The former, elected every three months, began and ended his office with solemn processions, the first to invoke the blessing of heaven upon his labors, the second to render thanks for their successful termination. The chancellor, holding office for life, was an ecclesiastic of the church of Paris, originally the bishop or some one appointed by him, who, if he enjoyed less direct control over the scholars in their studies, was yet the chief censor of their morals,[41] and the representative of the university in its dealings with foreign bodies, and especially with the Roman See.[42]

The Sorbonne.

No other mediæval seat of learning attained so enviable a reputation as Paris for completeness of theological training. From all parts of Christendom students resorted to it as to the most abundant and the purest fountain of sound learning. In 1250, Robert de Sorbonne, the private confessor of Louis the Ninth, emulating the munificence of previous patrons of letters, founded a college intended to facilitate the education of secular students of theology. The college took the name of its author, and, becoming famous for the ability of its instructors, the Sorbonne soon engrossed within its walls almost the entire course of theological teaching given in the University of Paris. Although the students in the colleges of Navarre and Plessis devoted themselves to the acquisition of the same science, they had little public instruction save that for which they resorted to the Sorbonne. By reason of the prominence thus gained as the seat of the principal instruction in theology, the Sorbonne became synonymous with the theological faculty itself.[43]