University of Paris - Sorbonne

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The University of Paris (French: L'Université de Paris), often known as the Sorbonne or la Sorbonne, was noted as one of the first universities to be established in Europe. It was founded in the mid-12th century in Paris, France, officially recognized between 1160 and 1250.[1] Following the French Revolution, its activities were suspended from 1793 to 1896. With the growth of higher education in the postwar years in France, in 1970 the university was divided into thirteen autonomous institutions. The university is often referred to the Sorbonne after the collegiate institution (Collège de Sorbonne) founded around 1257 by Robert de Sorbon, but it was always larger than the Sorbonne. Of the thirteen current successor universities, four have premises in the historical Sorbonne building, and three of them include "Sorbonne" in their names.

The universities in Paris are independent from each other. Some of them fall within the Créteil or Versailles education authorities instead of the Parisian one. Some residual administrative functions of the thirteen universities are formally supervised by a common chancellor, the rector of the Paris education authority, whose offices are at the Sorbonne. Recently, those universities have coalesced as two university groups: Sorbonne Paris Cité and Sorbonne University.


Like other medieval universities (Bologna, Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge, Padua), the University of Paris was well established by the time it was formally founded by the Catholic Church in 1200.[2] The earliest historical reference to the university as such is found in Matthew of Paris' reference to the studies of his own teacher (an abbot of St. Albans) and his acceptance into "the fellowship of the elect Masters" at the university of Paris in about 1170.[3] Additionally, it is known that Pope Innocent III had completed his studies at the University of Paris by 1182 at the age of 21. The university developed as a corporation around the Notre Dame Cathedral, similar to other medieval corporations, such as guilds of merchants or artisans. The medieval Latin term, universitas, had the more general meaning of a guild. The university of Paris was known as a universitas magistrorum et scholarium (a guild of masters and scholars), in contrast with the Bolognese universitas scholarium.

The university had four faculties: Arts, Medicine, Law, and Theology. The Faculty of Arts was the lowest in rank, but also the largest, as students had to graduate there in order to be admitted to one of the higher faculties. The students were divided into four nationes according to language or regional origin: France, Normandy, Picardy, and England. The last came to be known as the Alemannian (German) nation. Recruitment to each nation was wider than the names might imply: the English-German nation included students from Scandinavia and Eastern Europe.

The faculty and nation system of the University of Paris (along with that of the University of Bologna) became the model for all later medieval universities. Under the governance of the Church, students wore robes and shaved the tops of their heads in tonsure, to signify they were under the protection of the church. Students followed the rules and laws of the Church and were not subject to the king's laws or courts. This presented problems for the city of Paris, as students ran wild, and its official had to appeal to Church courts for justice. Students were often very young, entering the school at age 13 or 14 and staying for 6 to 12 years.