r.v/rA'A'.s7/-//:.v, sci/ooi.s, \TCDI-:.\TS. 



* 



), the Treasurer's College (f268), and, oldest of all, the College of the 

 Ki-litern, which dates from the first half of the twelfth century. 



Nothing, however, can be imagined more pitiable and more deserving of 

 sympathy than these colleges of the Middle Ages, in which, under the 

 control of a regent or priiin'/Kil, a few masters, as poor as their scholars, 

 devoted themselves to the education of a dozen or so of students, who shared 

 with them their scanty pittance. With scarcely enough money to keep 

 body and soul together, they were compelled to do some menial work, or else 

 to appeal to public charity. In the fourteenth century, as we learn from 

 the ditty called " Crieries de Paris," the scholars of the College of the Bons 

 Enfants, in the Rue St. Honore, wandered about the streets, and, holding out 

 their hands to the passers-by, exclaimed 



" Lea Bons Enfanta orrez (hear) crier : 

 Du pain 1. ..." 



Some few colleges were better off than this woe-stricken house, for, being 

 endowed with fixed revenues by their founders, encouraged and enriched by 

 the clergy and the great, they prospered and continued in existence until 

 the Revolution. 



The one which long remained the most famous of all, the Sorbonne, 

 owed its name and its origin to the liberality of the learned Robert Sorbon, 

 who, after having undergone privations of every kind in his youth, became 

 the chaplain and confessor of Louis IX. By letters patent in 1250 the 

 saintly King, himself contributing to this foundation, granted for the use of 

 the future college a house and stables adjoining, situated in the Rue Coupe- 

 Gueule, in front of the ruins of the palace of the Thermae, or of the Caesars. 

 This college was specially destined for a certain number of needy youths, who, 

 after having taken their arts degree, gave themselves up to the study of sacred 

 lore. It is needless to remind our readers that the Sorbonne, rebuilt, enlarged, 

 and richly endowed by Cardinal Richelieu, who bequeathed to it a part of his 

 property, became at last the seat of the Faculty of Theology. 



Created upon the model of Robert Sorbon's foundation, a great many 

 colleges, instituted by men of mark either in the Church or in society, were 

 erected as if by mugic no less than sixty were built between 1137 and 1360 

 in all parts of the University quarter, which extended in the shape of an 

 amphitheatre from the summit of Mount Genevieve down to the Seine, and 



B 



