University of Paris

“ The absolute freedom of opinion guaranteed to professors originally, and which constituted the principal reason for an educational institution apart from the University of Paris and its trammels, has proved a precious heritage to later generations. ”

“ The lectures are public; and every one who is desirous of improving his mind in any branch of science, may attend them free of expense or trouble. It is impossible for the friend of learning to withhold his admiration from so noble an institution. What, in fact, can be more liberal than this gratuitous diffusion of knowledge?
Footnote 1: Whatever sentiment may have been preserved respecting the ancient University of Paris, every impartial person must acknowledge that it was several centuries in arrear in regard to every thing which concerns the Arts and Sciences. ”

“ The École Centrale of Paris, in which the majority of French engineers who are not employed in the government service are trained, is a rare instance of an institution for higher technical instruction which is self-supporting and independent of government aid. Other special institutions in Paris, some of which are associated with the university of Paris, are the École des Mines, the École des Ponts et Chaussées, and the Collège de France, an old foundation in which facilities are afforded for the highest scientific research. ”

“ In the Dark Age, when the dictates of reason were almost wholly disregarded, he fought fearlessly for intellectual freedom. He was practically the founder of the University of Paris, which in turn became the mother of medieval and modern universities. ”

“ Rapid growth necessitated organization. The masters and scholars, of various tongues and countries, grouped themselves into four nations; and the nations, by their own votes at first, and subsequently by those of their procurators, or representatives, elected their supreme head and governor, the rector—at that time the sole representative of the university, and a very real power, who could defy provosts interfering from without, or could inflict even corporal punishment on disobedient members within the university.
Such was the primitive constitution of the University of Paris. ”

“ THE persons organically connected with the University of Paris—the students and the professors—are only the nucleus, the rallying-point, so to speak, of the intellectual population of the Latin Quarter. ”

“ Very few of the mediæval studia possessed all the faculties of a modern university. Even Paris, in its palmiest days, had no faculty of law. The name universitas implies a general invitation to students from all over the world to seek there a place for higher education from numerous masters or teachers. The three great studia of the thirteenth century were Paris, transcendent in theology and the arts ”

“ Most likely these Universities grew as a tree grows from a seed blown by chance of the wind. It seems easy enough to understand why Paris, that great city, should have possessed a great University; yet I surmise the processes at Oxford and Cambridge to have been only a little less fortuitous. ”

“ This community of teachers of recognized fitness did not in itself suffice to constitute a university, but some time between The university formed. the years 1150 and 1170, the period when the Sentences of Peter Lombard were given to the world, the university of Paris came formally into being. Its first written statutes were not, however, compiled until about the year 1208, and it was not until long after that date that it possessed a “rector.” ”

“ But while it would be madness to abolish such an institution as our normal school, and undesirable if not impossible to graft it on the new university, our school, like its elder sister in Paris, should be enabled to gain by each increase in the teaching power of the university. ”

“ It may be well for us that at twenty we are still hobbledehoys whom serious persons are only too glad to get rid of for half the year in universities as peacefully unmoved by our turmoil as their Gothic buildings by the storms of winter; but these frenzied medievalists had no Gothic university to be engulfed in save their own dear Paris, at a time when the university of their own dear Paris was trying its hardest to withstand the new ideas with which they were aflame. ”

“ It made it possible for scholars to pursue their work unhampered by the fossilized University of Paris, which had become cramped in old-fashioned ways and for the time being was incapable of doing great intellectual work itself and yet, owing to the charters and privileges granted it in its flourishing period, was still capable of crushing out the true spirit of knowledge and preventing real development. ”

“ The building of the Institute is surmounted by a splendid dome, and it presents a striking appearance to the stranger. It immediately fronts the foot-bridge which crosses the Seine to the Louvre.
The university of France it is supposed was founded by Charlemagne. It is a magnificent and truly liberal institution, and is under the authority of the minister of public instruction. It has five departments, an immense library and funds for aged or infirm teachers.
The Academy of Paris consists of five faculties—science letters, theology, law, and medicine. ”

“ But, in fact, the term public school meant simply that they were not confined to the use of the monks of that monastery, but were open to all comers. We find in them rather the germ of the collegiate system, which was in some sense the counterpoise of the university idea. But Bulæus and Du Boulay always write with Paris University in their mind as the normal principle of education. They seem unable to conceive of any institution for teaching which was not either its copy or its anticipation. ”

“ It was largely under the influence of this emotion that the Faculty of Sciences of Paris decided to offer me the chair, as professor, which my husband had occupied only one year and a half in the Sorbonne. It was an exceptional decision, as up to then no woman had held such a position. The University by doing this offered me a precious mark of esteem and gave me opportunity to pursue the researches which otherwise might have had to be abandoned. I had not expected a gift of this kind; I never had any other ambition than to be able to work freely for science. ”

“ Colleges, in fact, had as yet no existence at Paris, and the university consisted of an assemblage, not of stately buildings, but of masters and scholars gathered out of every European land.
It is no easy matter to convey an idea of the enthusiasm with which the Paris schools were regarded at the beginning of the thirteenth century. No one, whatever might be his country, could pretend to any consideration who had not studied there in his youth ”

“ While the universities, as is typically exemplified by the histories of Bologna and Paris, and even to a noteworthy degree of Oxford, grew up around the cathedrals, they cannot be considered in any sense the deliberate creation, much less the formal invention, of any particular set of men. The idea of a university was not born into the world in full panoply as Minerva from the brain of Jove. No one set about consciously organizing for the establishment of complete institutions of learning. ”

“ It is probable that we would find fewer actual living remnants of the old institution in Paris itself than in the northern imitation. There may be yet found the offices of regent and censor, for the qualities of which one must search in the mighty folios of Bullæus. There survives the division into nations—the type of the unlimited hospitality of the university as a place where people of all nations assembled to drink at the fountain of knowledge. ”

“ The Paris University is the model of European universities. All the Academies of Science that are in the world are imitations of the French Academy. Paris is the first teacher of the founding of colonial empires. The terms used in military art in all languages are still mostly French. The style and diction of French writings are copied in all the European languages. Of science, philosophy, and art, this Paris is the mine. ”

“ 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. ”

“ College regulations in other countries add considerably to our knowledge of medieval student-life. In Paris, where the system had its humble beginning in the hire of a room for eighteen poor scholars, by a benevolent Englishman returning from a pilgrimage to Palestine in 1180, the college ideal progressed slowly and never reached its highest development. Even when most of the students of Paris came to live in colleges, the college was not the real unit of university life, nor was a Parisian college a self-governing community like Merton or Peterhouse. ”

“ Notwithstanding their apparent levity, I am told by all who are competent to form an opinion, that the Parisians study better than the provincials. The ordinary level attained in all studies is much higher in Paris than in the provincial cities. The Parisians are the most laborious and best disciplined art students in Europe. In the French University the best professors are reserved for Paris, or promoted to the capital in course of time, and they all say that the boys work better there than in the provinces. ”

“ The Parisian nations were governed by masters, not by students, and whereas, at Bologna, the artists were an insignificant minority, at Paris, the Rector became, by the end of the thirteenth century, the most powerful official of the University, and, by the middle of the fourteenth, was recognised as its Head. ”

“ Though a particular university might be strongest in a particular faculty, as Bologna was in law and Paris in theology, yet it is a traditional attribute of such a body that several different branches of higher study shall be represented in it. It is among the distinctive advantages of a university that it brings together in one place students—by whom I mean teachers as well as learners—of various subjects. By doing this the university tends to produce a general breadth of intellectual interests and sympathies ”

“ We are now in a position to approach the main part of our subject—life in a medieval University of masters—and we propose to proceed at once to its most characteristic feature, life in a medieval College. The system originated in Paris. In the early days of the University, students at Paris lived freely in private houses, which a number of "socii" hired for themselves. ”

“ In like manner, a month's flirtation in Paris, or a few games at écarté with a German baron, will teach the student of modern languages more French or German than all the philologists of Oxford, Cambridge, or Eton can impart in a year.
"Quam quisque nôrit artem, in hâc se exerceat."
If the public have mistaken the functions of the university, it is the more incumbent on her to assert them correctly. Nor is the outcry less groundless, that the universities have failed to furnish the best men in law and medicine. ”

“ Whereas the University, masters and Scholars at Paris, are under our special guardianship and protection as they—both Masters, and Scholars as well—come to their studies, stay in the said city, or return to their own places ”

“ Paris, for example, has become the greatest university in Europe, exceeding Berlin (1914) in students by approximately 25 per cent and in expenditures 40 per cent.
[5] "The rise of these great universities is the most epoch-making feature of our American civilization, and they are to become more and more the leaders and the makers of our civilization. They are of the people. When a state university has gained solid ground, it means that the people of a whole state have turned their faces toward the light ”

“ While there is a lack of co-eds there is no scarcity of ladies, who constitute a part of the course taken by many of the students, not leading to a degree, not even to matrimony. All of this, which would be regarded with horror in Lawrence, is quite the thing in Paris and seems to work out most satisfactorily to the University authorities, for even the professors do not hesitate to mingle with their students at the evening sessions in the joints of the Latin Quarter. ”

“ Each University will be composed, first, of a council, presided over by a rector; secondly, of faculties; thirdly, of colleges; fourthly, of district colleges.
3. The mode of teaching and discipline in all the Universities will be regulated and superintended by a Royal Council of Public Instruction.
4. The Normal School of Paris will be common to all the Universities; it will provide, at the expense of the State, the number of professors and masters which may be required to give instruction in science and literature.
Title II.
Respecting the Universities. ”

“ During the seventeenth [Pg 106] and eighteenth centuries, the erudition of its teachers, their excellent method and admirable discipline, made it the premier college of Paris and in the heyday of its fame five hundred scholars crowded its halls, among them the scions of the nobility of France. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the university had its seat in the college and concentrated there the endowments, or such as had escaped spoliation, of twenty-six suppressed colleges. The college of Louis le Grand and nine others of the multitude that clustered around the hill of St. ”