University of Paris

University of Paris at Paris, France; founded 12th cent., confirmed 1215 by papal bull. It was suppressed during the French Revolution and replaced in 1808 by an academy of the Université Impériale. In 1890 it was reestablished as a university. The student riots of 1968, which paralyzed Paris for weeks, centered around the university and led to radical changes. In 1970 the university was divided into 13 universities, and further reforms followed under the Higher Education Act of 1983. The new universities are state institutions enjoying academic and financial autonomy, operated under the jurisdiction of the minister of education and financed by the state. Each institution has a different focus and scale, appropriate to its status as an autonomous "unit of teaching and research." Paris IX, for example, which focuses on business and computer sciences, has some 6,000 students, while Paris I, with a more general curriculum, enrolls over 35,000. Traditionally, the Univ. of Paris accounts for one third of France's entire university population.

Paris. The city was a centre of Christianity at an early date. According to St Gregory of Tours, St Denis (Dionysius (3)), its first bishop, was one of those sent out by Pope Fabian c.250, and the Christian cemetery on the road to Sens and the episcopal buildings on the Île de la Cité date from the late 3rd to early 4th cent. Clovis made it his capital in 507, but its importance diminished before it revived in the 11th and 12th cents. The beginnings of the university date from the 12th cent.; it received its statutes from Innocent III in 1215. The early 13th cent. saw the foundation of colleges, which originally provided lodging and food for poor students; the most famous was the Sorbonne. In the 13th cent. Paris was the chief centre of Scholasticism. It played an important part in the time of the Great Schism and of the Reform Councils, when some of its most learned men favoured the Conciliar party. Paris became an archdiocese in 1622. During the 17th cent. it witnessed a religious regeneration brought about by the activities of St Francis de Sales, St Vincent de Paul, P. de Bérulle, and P. Olier, who counteracted Jansenism and Gallicanism, which numbered many adherents in the capital. In the Revolution of 1789 the old university was abolished; a new one was established in 1806 by the combination of the faculties of arts, medicine, and law, but without theology, which, since 1875, has been represented by the Institut Catholique. The Orthodox Institut St-Serge (founded in 1925) has attracted a succession of distinguished Russian scholars. See also NOTRE-DAME, PORTROYAL, ST-DENIS, ST-GERMAIN-DES-PRÉS, SAINTE-CHAPELLE, VICTORINES.