Collège de France
Collège de France (formerly Collège Royal). In 1530 Guillaume Budé persuaded François Ier to found a humanist centre of learning in Paris, a ‘collège des trois langues’, first projected in 1517, which would be able to stand side by side with the conservative Sorbonne and challenge its intellectual leadership. In spite of subsequent objections the king stood firm. The guiding principles were freedom of research and teaching and free access to all. At the first foundation there were two professors of Greek (Toussaint and Danès), two of Hebrew (Vatable and Guidacerio), one of Latin (Latomus), and one of mathematics (Fine), soon followed by Postel (oriental languages). Vicomercato (Greek and Latin), and Vidius and Dubois (medicine). The initial programme is reflected in Rabelais's letter of Gargantua to Pantagruel (1532), which features the same forward-looking spirit of enquiry and encyclopedic aim in its ‘abîme de science’. The second generation of teachers under Henri II included Ramus, Turnèbe, Dorat, and other close associates of the Pléiade. In 1566 lettres patentes of Charles IX formally established the statutes.
Under various names the Collège Royal (Collège de France since the Restoration) has successfully traversed 460 years; it was respected by the Revolution and survived unchanged. Among its many prominent members we find in the 17th c. especially philosophers, mathematicians, and orientalists, and in the 18th, scientists. In the following century science, history, Egyptology, and medicine were notable areas of research, and in the 20th c. it has continued to be progressive, above all in new disciplines and in crossing intellectual boundaries. Today it is under the control of the Ministère de l'Éducation Nationale and there are just over 50 professors.
For centuries the college existed only in name and in the person of its teachers, lacking premises and financial security. At first lectures took place either in university colleges or even in the open air, in the rue du Fouarre, and for decades payment was either delayed or non-existent. A sumptuous building was planned on the site of the Institut de France but never built; in 1610 building began on the present site, next to the Sorbonne, but the work was not completed until 1774, and there has been much alteration since then.
[Peter Sharratt]
