Sorbonne

The college was founded in 1253 by Robert de Sorbon. Louis IX of France confirmed the foundation in 1257.[4] It was one of the first significant colleges of the medieval University of Paris. The library was among the first to arrange items alphabetically according to title.The university predates the college by about a century, and minor colleges had been founded already during the late 12th century.

During the 16th century, the Sorbonne became involved with the intellectual struggle between Catholics and Protestants. The University served as a major stronghold of Catholic conservative attitudes and, as such, conducted a struggle against King Francis I’s policy of relative tolerance towards the French Protestants, except for a brief period during 1533 when the University was placed under Protestant control. The Sorbonne, acting in conjunction with the Catholic Church, condemned 500 printed works as heretical between 1544 and 1556.

The Collège 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 during the early modern period, like the Collège des Quatre-Nations.