Du Boulay, in his “History of the University of Paris,” adopts the old, uncertain, not to say fabulous tradition, which carries its origin to the time of Charlemagne. It is true that such is the opinion of Guagin and of Gilles de Beauvais; but in addition to the fact that contemporary authors, as Eginhard, Almon, Reginon, and Sigebert make no mention of this establishment; Pasquier and Du Tillet expressly assert that it commenced in the twelfth century under the reigns of Louis the Young and of Philip Augustus.

Moreover, the first statutes of the university were drawn up by Robert de Coceon, legate of the pope, in the year 1215, which proves that it received from the first the form it retains at present; because a bull of Gregory IX., of the year 1231, makes mention of masters of theology, masters of law, physicians, and lastly, artists. The name “university” originated in the supposition that these four bodies, termed faculties, constituted a universality of studies; that is to say, that they comprehended all which could be cultivated.

The popes, by the means of these establishments, of the decisions of which they made themselves judges, became masters of the instruction of the people; and the same spirit which made the permission granted to the members of the Parliament of Paris to inter themselves in the habits of Cordeliers, be regarded as an especial favor — as related in the article on “Quête”— dictated the decrees pronounced by that sovereign court against all who dared to oppose an unintelligible scholastic system, which, according to the confession of the abbé Triteme, was only a false science that had vitiated religion. In fact, that which Constantine had only insinuated with respect to the Cum?an Sibyl, has been expressly asserted of Aristotle. Cardinal Pallavicini supported the maxim of I know not what monk Paul, who pleasantly observed, that without Aristotle the Church would have been deficient in some of her articles of faith.

Thus the celebrated Ramus, having composed two works in which he opposed the doctrine of Aristotle taught in the universities, would have been sacrificed to the fury of his ignorant rival, had not King Francis I. referred to his ............