The Sorbonne

The Sorbonne, one of the most famous of the educational institutions of Paris, is generally associated with the name of Cardinal Richelieu, its great patron. It was founded, however, in the thirteenth century, by Robert de Sorbon, the chaplain and confessor of St. Louis, and was designed to afford poor students the opportunity of perfecting themselves in science and theology. Many of the most eminent Frenchmen of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were graduates of the Sorbonne. Tradition says that when it was at the height of its celebrity, a candidate for its diploma was required to sustain himself in argument against twenty assailants, who beset him in turn from five in the morning until seven at night. When the author of Hudibras would exalt our ideas of his hero's subtlety and resourcefulness, he says:--

Richelieu was a pupil at this institution, and under his patronage, when at the head of the government, it was enlarged and completely reconstructed. Public lectures are now delivered there gratuitously by the first scholars of France, to which students, rich and poor, flock from all parts of the country.