Inscription over the entrance to the
Sorbonne
The front of the Sorbonne
Building
Sorbonne Square (Place de la
Sorbonne)
The name
Sorbonne (La Sorbonne) is commonly used
to refer to the historic University of Paris
in Paris
, France
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 and the present universities, which are its
successor institutions or the Collège de Sorbonne
, please refer to the relevant
articles.
The Collège de Sorbonne
The name
is derived from the Collège de Sorbonne, founded in 1253 by Robert de Sorbon as one of the first
significant colleges of the medieval University of Paris; the university as such predates the college by
about a century, and minor colleges had been founded already in the
late 12th century. The Collège de Sorbonne was suppressed
during the
French revolution,
reopened by
Napoleon in 1808
and finally closed in 1882. 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
.
The Paris Faculty of Theology
With time, the college came to be the centre of theological studies
and "Sorbonne" was frequently used as a synonym for the Paris
Faculty of Theology despite being only one of many colleges of the
university.
The entire University of Paris
During the later 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 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.
The Sorbonne today
In 1970, the University of Paris was divided into thirteen
different universities. These universities still stand under the
management of a common rectorate – the Rectorate of Paris - with
offices in the Sorbonne. Four of these universities currently
include the name "Sorbonne" in their names or are affiliated with
the Sorbonne:
These four public universities maintain facilities in the
historical building of the Sorbonne. The building also houses the
Rectorate of Paris, the
École Nationale des
Chartes, the
École pratique des
hautes études, the
Cours de
Civilisation Française de la Sorbonne and the Library of the
Sorbonne.
There are private institution that bears the name of its creator:
College de Sorbon (in the Ardennes) and the Ecole supérieure Robert
de Sorbon which is specialized in VAE Degrees.
Today the
word Sorbonne no longer refers to the University of Paris but to
the historical building located in the Latin Quarter
in the 5th arrondissement of Paris.
References
External links