Collège de France

Timeline

1. 1530Paris · ParisOn Budé's urging, Francis I, imitating the trilingual colleges of Alcalá and Louvain, appointed six royal lecturers: three in Hebrew (Vatable, Guerente, Pallardy), two in Greek (Daneus, Toussain), and one in mathematics (Oronce Finé). The lectures were open to the public and granted no University of Paris degrees, intended to counter the Sorbonne's scholastic monopoly with philology and mathematics.
2. 1550–1610Collèges de Tréguier and de Cambrai · ParisFrom the 1550s the royal lecturers regularly taught at the Collège de Tréguier and Collège de Cambrai in the Latin Quarter, forming the present site. Charles IX established qualification reviews, and the lectures gradually evolved from chairs privately funded by the king into permanent posts that could be added to, with Latin, medicine, Oriental languages, and other subjects successively introduced.
3. 1699Collège de France · ParisThe institution was successively called the Collège royal, Collège national, and Collège impérial, taking the name Collège de France in 1870. It maintains the tradition of public lectures, no diplomas, and professors setting up their own chairs, becoming one of France's highest academic chairs, running parallel to the University of Paris system to this day.