The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which was the historical house of

the former University of Paris. Nowadays, it houses part or all of several higher education and
research institutions such as Panthon-Sorbonne University, Sorbonne Nouvelle University, ParisSorbonne University, Paris Descartes University, the cole Nationale des Chartes and the cole
pratique des hautes tudes.
The name is commonly used to refer to the historic University of Paris or one of its successor
institutions, but this is a recent usage. "Sorbonne" has been used with different meanings over the
centuries. For information on the historic University of Paris and the present universities which are its
successor institutions, or the older Collge de Sorbonne, please refer to the relevant articles.
Contents
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1 Collge de Sorbonne

2 Paris Faculty of Theology

3 May 1968

4 Current situation
o

4.1 Thirteen successor universities

5 See also

6 References

7 External links

Collge de Sorbonne[edit]
The name is derived from the Collge de Sorbonne, founded in 1257 by Robert de Sorbon as one of
the first significant colleges of the medieval University of Paris.[1][2] The university as such predates
the college by about a century, and minor colleges had been founded already in the late 12th
century. During the 16th century, the Sorbonne became a focal point of the intellectual struggle
between Catholicsand Protestants. The University served as a major stronghold of Catholic
conservative attitudes and, as such, conducted a bitter struggle against King Francis I's policy of
relative tolerance towards the French Protestants, except for a brief period in 1533 when the
University was placed under Protestant control.
The Collge de Sorbonne was suppressed during the French Revolution, reopened by Napoleon in
1808 and finally closed in 1882. This was only one of the many colleges of the University of Paris
that existed until the French revolution. Hastings Rashdall, in The Universities of Europe in
the Middle Ages (1895), which is still a standard reference on the topic, lists some 70 colleges of the
university from the Middle Ages alone; some of these were short-lived and disappeared already
before the end of the medieval period, but others were founded in the early modern period, like the
Collge des Quatre-Nations.

Paris Faculty of Theology[edit]

With time, the college came to be the centre of theological studies and "Sorbonne" was frequently
used as a synonym for the Paris Faculty of Theology despite being only one of many colleges of the
university.

May 1968[edit]
Following months of conflicts between students and authorities at the University of Paris at Nanterre,
the administration closed that university on 2 May 1968. Students at the Sorbonne campus in Paris
met on 3 May to protest against the closure and the threatened expulsion of several students at
Nanterre. On Monday, 6 May, the national student union, the Union Nationale des tudiants de
France(UNEF) still the largest student union in France today and the union of university
teachers called a march to protest against the police invasion of Sorbonne. More than 20,000
students, teachers and supporters marched towards the Sorbonne, still sealed off by the police, who
charged, wielding their batons, as soon as the marchers approached. While the crowd dispersed,
some began to make barricades out of whatever was at hand, while others threw paving stones,
forcing the police to retreat for a time. The police then responded with tear gas and charged the
crowd again. Hundreds more students were arrested. 10 May marked the "Night of Barricades,"
where students used cars, wood, and cobblestones to barricade the streets of the Latin Quarter.
Brutal street fighting ensued between students and riot police, most notably on Rue Gay-Lussac.
Early the next morning, as the fighting disbanded, Daniel Cohn-Bendit sent out a radio broadcast
calling for a general strike. On Monday, 13 May, over one million workers went on strike and the
students declared that the Sorbonne was "open to the public".[3] Negotiations broke down, and
students returned to their campuses after a false report that the government had agreed to reopen
them, only to discover the police still occupying the schools.
When the Sorbonne reopened, students occupied it and declared it an autonomous "people's
university!". In the weeks that followed, approximately 401 popular action committees were set up in
Paris and elsewhere to take up grievances against the government and French society, including
the Occupation Committee of the Sorbonne.

Current situation[edit]
In 1970, the University of Paris was divided into thirteen universities. These universities still stand
under the management of a common rectorate the Rectorate of Paris - with offices in the
Sorbonne. The thirteen successor universities to the University of Paris are now split over the three
academies of the le-de-France region.[4]