THE CHURCH AND THE GRANDES ÉCOLES ("great schools")

CATHOLICS TOO EXPLAIN SAINT-GERMAIN'S INTELLECTUALITY, SINCE THE LEFT BANK WAS CHURCH LAND

Outside the wall was the powerful abbey of Saint-Germain. 

       Adapté d'un plan de 1550 / zoom

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All that is left is a steeple, the area's symbol...

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And the remains of a tower, hidden from the street:

    Conference room at 4 place de Saint-Germain du Prés, thanks to Pascal Payen-Appenzeller, cited on the preceding page. 

Within the wall was the Sorbonne University:

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A class in theology at the 15h-century Sorbonne

Though reactionary...

The Université of Paris was then Christendom's highest spiritual authority, after the Pope. It made up a veritable federative republic with its territory, its justice, its enormous privileges... .  

Fiercely independent, ultramontaine, conservative, the Université hater innovators. It had abandoned Joan of Arc. It had encouraged 6000 Parisian copyists and illuminators to accuse printers of sorcery. Without seriously discussing the nascent Reform, it denounced it as a crime worthy of the most extreme punishment [burning alive].

-- Le Massacre de la Saint-Barthlemy by Philippe Erlanger, 1960, p.3.

It encouraged the unity of Christendom by training most of the clergy, which gave Europe a homogenous philosophy and the literate a language to communicate.  

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The Sorbonne is still at the heart of the French university system and the country's Great Schools* cluster around it 

*Schools whose students are admitted by competitive exam after two years of special preparation. They become state officials, are paid a salary and must work for the State for two years after graduation. For other ways in which the French system is far more democratic than that of the United States, please click.

• The prestigious Lycée [high school] Saint-Louis, which Jesuits founded in the 16th century to train the sons of the elite, is across the boulevard and the Schools of Law and Medicine are steps away.

• The École Normale Supérieur, the École des Sciences Politiques, the Faculté de Jussieu and the Collège de France are in the neighborhood.

•  The École Polytechnique and École Centrale were there until moved to the suburbs (in 1964 and 2015 respectively).

The bus stop next to the Sorbonne

 is called "Les Écoles" (The Schools).

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Next,

Intellectuals, cafés and the Occupation