Old and New Paris: Its History, Its People, and Its Places, v. 2. Edwards Henry Sutherland

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СКАЧАТЬ the Sorbonne was the great theological authority; but it had politics of its own which, viewed in the present day, do not seem to have been always in accord with its religious teaching. It took part with Étienne Marcel in the parliamentary and almost revolutionary movement which he directed in opposition to the party of the dauphin and of the aristocracy. It was a doctor of the Sorbonne, the Franciscan friar, Jean Petit, who wrote the “apologia” for the assassination of Louis of Orleans; and another doctor of the same institution, Jean Larcher, who, with the deputies of the university, publicly accused the dauphin of the murder on the bridge of Montereau, where, on the 10th of May, 1410, the Duke of Burgundy, Jean Sans-Peur, was assassinated by men belonging to the dauphin’s suite. To avenge this crime Philippe the Good, Jean’s son, seconded by the King of England, took possession on the 20th of June, 1420, of Montereau, which remained in the power of the English until 1428.

      The Sorbonne, representing the Church, condemned Joan of Arc as a sorceress, communicated its judgment to the Duke of Bedford, and, in a petition addressed to the King of England, demanded her extradition. When the religious war was at its height this body fulminated decrees in favour of the League, the Guises, and Spain against Henry III. and Henry IV. It was to the Sorbonne that the Guises addressed themselves in order to obtain theological support for their projected usurpation. The learned assembly did not go so far as to recommend the assassination of Henry III., but it pronounced in favour of revolt, and consigned the partisans, first of Henry III. and afterwards of Henry IV., to eternal damnation, finally offering the crown of France to Philip II. of Spain. After the triumph of Henry IV. the Sorbonne continued for a time its seditious manifestations; when Cardinal de Bourbon, its “apostolic conservator,” was arrested on the denunciation of the Procurator-general, it at the same time received a reprimand from the Parliament of Paris.

      Forced to submit to the new government, it retracted its doctrine as to the lawfulness of “tyrannicide,” supported in this not very startling retractation by the authority of the court of Rome. Finally, under Marie de Médicis, Louis XIII., Richelieu, and Louis XIV., the Sorbonne was a firm supporter of the Bourbon dynasty, together with the Church of France and the University of Paris. Richelieu was its constant patron. Under Louis XIV. it took part with the Gallican Church against the pretensions of the court of Rome. As to the evil done or attempted to be done by the Sorbonne, it will be sufficient to say that besides helping to bring Joan of Arc to the block, it condemned Vanini, whom the Parliament of Toulouse ordered to be burned alive. It pronounced also against Ramus and Descartes, the adversaries of the Aristotelian philosophy; Montesquieu for his “Esprit des Lois” and Buffon for his “Natural History”; besides Rousseau, Marmontel, Helvetius, Diderot, Mably, and the whole of the Encyclopædists. Defenders of the Sorbonne point out with justice that it also condemned the absurdities of many visionaries, charlatans, and impostors, and that if it was an obstacle in the way of science, it also showed itself at times a barrier against superstition. It opposed the Jesuits; but what, after all, can this count for against its condemnation of Jeanne d’Arc, John Hus, and Vanini, to say nothing of its encouragement and justification of the Saint-Bartholomew massacre? It condemned no one to death, not having power to do so; but, like the Inquisition, it handed over to the civil power the alleged infidels, apostates, and sorcerers, whom it deemed worthy of the severest punishment. The boldest decree it ever issued was the one already referred to, which was circulated throughout France during the wars between Protestants and Catholics. After exhorting the Parisians to defend against King Henry III. the Catholic religion as menaced by him, it declared that sovereign “degraded from his royal power,” and, after his assassination, consigned to eternal death everyone who dared to recognise Henry of Navarre as his successor. In this denunciation were specially included all those who treated with him or paid taxes to him. No true Catholic, declared the Sorbonne, could recognise as king, “without offending God, a prince who had lapsed into fatal heresies, even though he might afterwards have abjured them.” This decree, as issued by the Sorbonne, was signed by the clergy of Paris and put into circulation throughout France.

      Of all the famous men connected with the Sorbonne, the most famous was the one known throughout the world as Cardinal de Richelieu, who represented politics without pity, as the Sorbonne represented theology without mercy. The tomb of the great man found its place naturally in the church of the Sorbonne, which he had himself erected. The head stolen from the coffin during the Revolution was carried back there not many years ago; his heart will follow, should it ever be discovered.

      The ancient Sorbonne came to an end, as a matter of course, at the epoch of the Revolution. It was suppressed as soon as the Revolutionists had time to attend to it, in 1790. If the Sorbonne was greatly indebted to the minister of Louis XIII., it had again to thank a Richelieu for new life and new fame when, in 1821, the minister of Louis XVIII. made it the head and centre of teaching throughout France. At the same time a body of electors was appointed who represented, not the scholasticism and theology of the middle ages, but modern literature and modern science. Among those named in 1821, the year of the Sorbonne’s resuscitation, may be mentioned Biot, Poisson, Gay-Lussac, Thénard, Haüy, Brogniart, and Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, who were to be followed by such men as Dumas (the celebrated chemist), Bulart, Dulong, Pouillet, Milne-Edwards, and Leverrier. Nor must the names of Guizot, Victor Cousin, Saint-Marc Girardin, Jules Simon, and Nisard be omitted from the list of those writers and professors who have given even greater reputation to the Sorbonne in the present day than it enjoyed of old. The Sorbonne, however, of history, the Sorbonne associated with severe theology and with still severer theological persecution, perished beneath the first blows of the Revolution; thus verifying a prophecy put forth when Richelieu, while reconstructing its walls, seemed disposed to modernise its spirit —

      Instaurata ruet jamjam Sorbona. Caduca

      Dum fuit, inconcussa stetit, renovata peribit.

      “If,” wrote Mercier at the end of the eighteenth century, “the Académie Française is the seat of literary despotism, the Sorbonne may be called the throne of ignorance, superstition, and folly. This foundation is the work of an obscure priest, whose name it retained, though it was afterwards enlarged, beautified, and amply endowed by Cardinal Richelieu, who, as we have had occasion to mention in the foregoing description, never formed an establishment which did not tend in some measure to support his favourite plan of carrying arbitrary power beyond all bounds. Whilst his politics made slaves of the subjects, he supported this kind of spiritual inquisition in order to enthral their very minds. The Sorbonne was consulted on all occasions, and the decree of a few ignorant divines respected as the oracle of the Deity himself.”

      CHAPTER XI.

      THE INSTITUTE

The Institute – Its Unique Character – The Objects of its Projectors – Its Constitution

      THE Institute – immediately facing the wayfarer who crosses by the Bridge of Arts from the right bank to the left – is, says M. Renan, who was himself a member of it, “one of the most glorious creations of the Revolution, and a thing quite peculiar to France. Many countries have academies which may rival our own by the distinction of the persons composing them, and by the importance of their labours; France alone possesses an Institute in which all the efforts of the human mind are bound together as in a sheaf; where the philosopher, the historian, the philologer, the critic, the mathematician, the physicist, the astronomer, the analyst, the economist, the jurisconsult, the sculptor, the painter, the musician, may call one another colleagues.” The simple and great men who conceived the design of this absolutely new establishment were preoccupied by two thoughts: the first, admirably true, that all the productions of the human mind have something in common and are interdependent; the second, more open to criticism, but connected in any case with all that is deepest in the French mind, that science, literature, and art are state affairs, recognisable in corporate form, which the country is bound to protect, encourage, and reward. On the last day but one of the Convention, October 25th, 1795, appeared the law destined to realise this idea, so prolific of great things. The object of the Institute was the progress of science; the general utility and glory of the Republic. Every year it renders an account to the legislative body of the progress accomplished. It has its budget, its СКАЧАТЬ