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    218 EDUCATION IN FRANCE*

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    *•»- . ; No. I.

    What amount of success attended these efforts of Charlemagne cannot now be ascertained with much exactness ; but it is evident

    that nothing" like what is understood by popular education at the present day could obtain under the pressure of the social

    inequalities at that period weighing" upon the lower orders- Whatever may have been the result of these endeavors on the part of Charlemagne

    during his lifetime , the action of these schools was paralysed by the intestinal wars and divisions that followed the dismemberment of

    the Empire laboriously formed by him ; and slight trace of anything like schools or educational centres are visible for a long period

    after his death . But as the conflicts of the hostile races that had possessed themselves of the soil of Gaul gradually subsided , and the

    France of modern days was gradually formed by the merging of their independent governments in the growing power of the Prankish

    princes , various schools were founded in the old city of Paris under the auspices of the Church .

    The earliest of these were the Schools of St . Genevieve—the patron saint of the nascent metropolis—and of Saint Victor ; schools

    which were subsequently illustrated by _Guillaione de Champeaux and Abelardbut the date of whose foundation is uncertain .

    , These institutions , at a period which cannot be exactly ascertained—though by some writers attributed to tlie reign of

    Charlemagne—associated themselves together for mutual assistance and defenceand thus formedby their voluntary and spontaneous union

    the old , University of France , . The most ancient of the public docu- , ments now in existence which mention the University , is an

    ordinance of Philippe Augustus , dated a . d . 1200 , which enjoins upon any citizen who should see a scholar maltreated by a layman to bear

    testimony to the fact . But this ordinance mentions the University as an institution that had already been in existence for a

    considerable period . The Kings of France confirmed and favored this association , to

    which they granted many important privileges , but without claiming to exercise any authority or jurisdiction over it . The University

    was administered by its own chiefs , who were accountable only to the Ecclesiastical Tribunals for the management of its affairs ; and

    it remained absolutely independent of the royal power during the prevalence of the Feudal System .

    The fame of the Paris University soon attracted a considerable number of studentsnot only from the rest of France , but also from

    , every point of Europe . The earliest classification of tlie students divides them into four nationalities—viz ., French , English , Normans ,

    and picards ; and deputies , elected by the students of these four divisions , elected in their turn the chief of the University , who ,

    under the title of Hector , exercised an administrative authority over the institution .

    In the reign of Charles VI ., after the expulsion of the English

    from France , and when ages of warfare had caused them to be re-

    218 Education In France*

    218 EDUCATION IN FRANCE *

• Citation
  • English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), June 1, 1860, page 218, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01061860/page/2/