Collège Henri-IV de La Flèche
The Collège Henri IV de La Flèche is a former Jesuit college in the French commune of La Flèche in the Sarthe department in the region of Pays de la Loire . Founded in 1603 by Henri IV, it quickly flourished to over 1000 students. One of the most famous is the philosopher René Descartes . After the Jesuits were expelled from France in 1762, the buildings were used by various institutions. Since 1808 they house of Napoleon I , founded military school Prytanée National Militaire .
history
The Château-Neuf of La Flèche
Since the 15th century, the village of La Flèche belonged to the diocese of Angers , was thus part of the Anjou and was ruled as part of the Vice-County of Beaumont-au-Maine by members of the House of Valois-Alençon . Widowed in 1537, Françoise d'Alençon, Duchess of Beaumont , decided to withdraw from the Seigneurie of La Flèche, which she had received as a morning gift from her husband Charles de Bourbon . Since the old castle (today: Château des Carmes ) was not very comfortable, they had the Château-Neuf built outside the city walls . It was built in the years 1539–1541 according to the plans of the architect Jean Delespine. After the Duchess's death in 1550 , her son Antoine de Bourbon inherited the property. Together with his wife Jeanne d'Albret , heiress of the Kingdom of Navarre , and their son, who later became King Henri IV , he stayed several times at the Château-Neuf in La Flèche.
Foundation of the Jesuit College
Guillaume Fouquet de La Varenne , who came from a middle-class family from La Flèche, first entered the service of Catherine de Bourbon in 1578 and then in 1580 the service of the future king. He distinguished himself as a soldier and diplomat and rose to become one of the closest advisers to King Henri IV . After equipping La Flèche with a salt tax and the jurisdiction of a présidial , Fouquet de La Varenne made the plan to found a college in his hometown . As Henri IV was keen on the project, Fouquet de La Varenne presented him in 1603 in Verdun with representatives of the Jesuits who applied for their recall to France. On September 3, 1603, the Jesuits, who had been expelled from the country by the Court of Justice in Paris in 1594 after the failed assassination attempt on the king by one of their pupils, Jean Châtel , were granted a royal decree to return to France. In addition to returning to the ancestral places, the king allowed the Jesuits to establish colleges in other places as well. Without waiting for the approval of his decree by Parliament, he instructed the Jesuit Father Pierre Coton to take the necessary measures to establish a college in La Flèche. The king wanted to establish not just a college in La Flèche, but a real university to which a novitiate should be added. At the instigation of the Superior General Claudio Acquaviva , jurisprudence and medicine were removed again, as was the novitiate, since one already existed at the Jesuit college in Rouen .
The first Jesuits came to La Flèche in November 1603 under the direction of Rector Pierre Barny. In January 1604 three professors from the Jesuit University Pont-à-Mousson gave the first courses. In the first year the number of students increased to almost a thousand. The maximum was reached in 1626 with around 1,800 students.
In May 1607, Henri IV ordered the operation of a séminaire général et universel through the Edict of Fontainebleau, with which the official establishment of the Collège was established . At the same time he gave the Jesuits the building of the Château-Neuf, 300,000 livres for the construction of the complex and an annual donation of 20,000 livres, which was deducted from the income of neighboring abbeys. He promised to build a church and to bequeath it to his heart after his death, as well as the heart of Queen Maria de 'Medici after her death.
Construction of the college and death of Henri IV
.jpg)
Henri IV wanted to transfer responsibility for the construction of the college to the Jesuit priest and architect Étienne Martellange, but this did not meet with the approval of the Provincial of Lyon . The court architect Louis Métezeau won the tender for the planning . At the king's request, Martellange was not present as an architect, but as a kind of site manager when the construction work began. The contract for the construction work was awarded to Jacques Feron of the Longuemézière in August 1606. Construction began the following year. The foundation stone for the church was laid in the crypt on June 18, 1607 on behalf of the King by Jean de Beaumanoir, Marquis of Lavardin and Marshal of France , and was blessed by the priest of the Church of St. Thomas de La Flèche.
The building of the school follows a grid of five courtyards, which - laid out in a row - symbolize the various functions of the institution. In the middle is the "cour de classes", bordered by the Saint-Louis de La Flèche chapel and the hall salle des actes , whose hipped roof, which clearly towers above the rest of the building, underlines the importance. To the east is the cour des pères , also known as cour royale , which opens in front of the Château-Neuf, where the clergy are housed. To the west, on the other hand, is the cour des pensionnaires , around which the student accommodation is arranged. On the respective outer sides are the basse-cour des pères and the basse-cour des pensionnaires , which are reserved for the university's domestic functions. The building far exceeds the original Chateau Neuf; the Jesuits will gradually acquire the houses around the construction to complete.
After the death of Henri IV on May 14, 1610, Guillaume Fouquet de la Varenne reminded Queen Maria de Medici of the promise that the king had bequeathed his heart to the college. The heart of the deceased was then entrusted to the Jesuits and La Flèche was brought to La Flèche by the Duke of Montbazon , where it was handed over to the college in procession on the morning of June 4, 1610 after a ceremony in the Church of St. Thomas.
The Jesuit College in the 17th and 18th centuries
After the previous contractor Jacques Feron Longuemézière went bankrupt in 1611, construction work was initially suspended. The following year the Jesuit Father Stephen Martellange was sent to La Flèche by Maria de Medici. On arrival he wrote a manuscript entitled Mémoires de quelques fautes plus remarquables faites aux bâtiments du collège royal de La Flèche , in which he expressed a number of criticisms of the work that had already been done. Martellange stayed in La Flèche for a year, then returned again in 1614 to ensure the completion of the church, the expenses of which were paid for from the royal treasury. The construction was so advanced that Martellange could only make small changes.
In 1616 Guillaume Fouquet de la Varenne died. He was buried at his own request in the chapel below the heart of Henri IV.
The shell of the chapel, the main wing of the salle des actes and the east wing of the cour des classes were completed as the first buildings in 1621. The expansion of the cour des pères began in 1629 with the demolition of the outbuildings of the Château-Neuf and ended in 1653 with the construction of the southern wing of the courtyard, which opens onto the city through the portal royal . In the chapel, which was first opened for worship in 1622 on the occasion of the canonization of St. Ignatius and St. Francis Xavier and consecrated to Saint-Louis by the Bishop of Angers in 1637 , work began with the execution of the high altarpiece continued by Pierre Corbineau between 1633 and 1636 and the construction of the organ gallery between 1637 and 1640.
On April 12, 1643, at the request of Henri IV, the heart of Maria de Medici was brought to La Flèche and buried next to that of her husband in the church of St. Louis. In 1648, two niches were built on either side of the choir in the upper part of the transept to house the cenotaphs for the royal hearts.
Due to the increasing number of schools in the area, the number of students steadily declined in the late seventeenth century. In 1761 the university had only 550 students.
After the expulsion of the Jesuits
On August 6, 1761, a decree of the Paris Parliament closed all Jesuit schools. The Society of Jesus was banned from the kingdom, the order secularized, and the properties sold. At the beginning of April 1762, the Jesuits left the college and the city of La Flèche. In order to be able to fill the vacancies after the Jesuits left, the city government appealed to the former students of the college to continue the courses. For two years the college was headed by Abbé Donjon, a former professor of philosophy.
In April 1764, the Duc de Choiseul converted the Collège into an École de Cadets , also called École Militaire Préparatoire . The best students were sent to the École militaire in Paris . In 1776 the Minister of War Claude-Louis de Saint-Germain distributed the students to small military schools in the province. A few months later, King Louis XVI. re-establish the institution. Until the French Revolution , the Congregation of the Doctrinarians was entrusted with various renovations.
In 1793 the universities were abolished by law, the doctoral students were expelled, the students fired, and the property sold as a national property. At the same time, Didier Thirion , the representative en mission, had the urns with the hearts of Henri IV and Maria de Medici opened and burned in a public square. The surgeon Charles Boucher collected some ashes that were returned by his descendants in 1814. During the Revolution, the buildings of the Collège served various purposes, as a hospital , seat of the municipality and district of La Flèche, or were looted and damaged. From 1797 two former professors tried to maintain an école centrale supplémentaire in one part of the building .
The request of the community to rebuild the military school was approved by Emperor Napoleon . In 1808, which was the Military Academy of Saint-Cyr-l'École to La Fleche transmitted. A few months later, 300 students were already enrolled at the new facility. The Prytanée national militaire is now one of the six French military academies.
curriculum
The studies at La Flèche followed the principles of the Ratio Studiorum : three years of grammar lessons , three years of humanistic studies and three years of philosophy studies . The classes were divided into thirteen levels: six were devoted to Latin and Greek literature, three to philosophy and four to theology. Classes were given in Latin or Greek , not French . As in all other Jesuit schools, the visit was free for everyone. There were two types of students at the school: internal students, housed in the cour des pensionnaires , and external students, who lived at home or in the city.
The staff at La Flèche were numerous: 83 Jesuits in 1611 and 110 in the middle of the seventeenth century. Before it was closed in 1762, over 88 priests lived at the college, 34 of whom were professors. The school of La Flèche gradually became the most important Jesuit college after the Collège de Clermont in Paris, and the exchange of faculty between the two colleges was quite common. The most famous professors are Michel Le Tellier , the confessor of Louis XIV , and Georges Fournier, author of a treatise on hydrography , who taught the philosopher René Descartes to write in La Flèche , who later said:
"J'étais dans l'une des plus célèbres écoles de l'Europe."
Religious Influence
As a spiritual center, the Collège von La Flèche had a great missionary influence, especially in the American colonies. Many Jesuits who set out on or returned from a mission were guests at La Flèche: Jérôme Lalemant, who preached the Gospel to the Hurons , was appointed rector of the college from 1656 and 1659. Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix , the author of the history of New France, died in La Flèche in 1761. François de Montmorency-Laval , the first bishop of Québec , studied at the Collège. It was similar with the mathematicians Joachim Bouvet and Jean Fontaney, who entered the service of Emperor Kangxi and retired in La Flèche after their return from China .
This influence fueled the students' enthusiasm for the new countries and other missionary tasks. From 1651 the South American and Caribbean mission assignments were regulated directly by the rector of the college.
Personalities
Faculty
- Jérôme Lalemant, missionary, evangelizer of the Hurons , rector of the college from 1656 to 1659.
- Jean Chastelier, rector of the college in 1630.
- Joseph de Jouvancy, professor of rhetoric .
- Jacques Longueval, professor of grammar and humanistic studies.
- Étienne Noël, Catholic theologian and grammarian .
- Énemond Massé, missionary in Acadia .
- Joachim Bouvet, mathematician, missionary in China.
- Jean de Fontaney, mathematician, missionary in China.
- Georges Fournier, geographer , hydrograph and mathematician.
- Pierre François Xavier de Charlevoix , missionary in Canada .
- Michel Le Tellier , confessor of Louis XIV.
- Pierre Mousson , professor of rhetoric and tragedy poet.
- Antoine Girard, writer and translator .
- Jean-Baptiste Louis Gresset , poet and dramaturge .
- Thomas Gouye, astronomer and linguist .
- Hyacinthe Robillard d'Avrigny , historian.
- François-Joseph Terrasse Desbillons , fabulous poet .
Jean-Baptiste Gresset
Michel Le Tellier
Pierre-François-Xavier de Charlevoy
Former students
- René Descartes , philosopher, author of the Discours de la méthode .
- Jérôme Le Royer de La Dauversière, founder of the congregation of the Hospitalières de Saint-Joseph and of Ville-Marie , today's Montréal .
- Charles de Schomberg , Marshal and Peer of France .
- Pierre Séguier , Chancellor of France under Louis XIV.
- Marin Mersenne , theologian, mathematician and music theorist .
- Joseph Sauveur , scientist, is considered the founder of acoustics as a scientific discipline.
- Pierre de Marbeuf, poet .
- Julien Maunoir , missionary, apostle of Brittany .
- Jacques Vallée Des Barreaux, freedom poet and Epicurean .
- Jean Picard , astronomer.
- Jean Baptiste Budes de Guébriant , Marshal of France .
- Louis de Nogaret de La Valette d'Épernon, Archbishop of Toulouse and Lieutenant General .
- François Louis Rousselet de Chateau-Renault , Marshal of France and Vice-Admiral .
- Antoine-François Prévost , novelist.
- François de Montmorency-Laval , first bishop of Québec .
- Pierre Cholonec, Missionary, Administrator of the First Nations of Canada .
- Louis François Henri de Meno, Marquis de Turbilly, agronomist .
- James Fitzjames, 1st Duke of Berwick-upon-Tweed , illegitimate son of James II of England , Marshal and Peer of France .
- Jean-Charles de Borda , mathematician and seaman.
- Alexandre Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord , cardinal and statesman
- Charles François d'Aviau du Bois de Sanzay, Archbishop of Bordeaux and Vienne .
- Jacques Ruël, theologian .
- Claude-Emmanuel Lhuillier , poet and man of letters.
- Louis-Henri de Pardaillan de Gondrin, Archbishop of Sens .
- Gabriel Calloet-Kerbrat, agronomist.
- Jean Dussaulx, follower of Jean-Jacques Rousseau .
René Descartes
Marin Mersenne
François de Montmorency-Laval
Antoine-François Prévost
Alexandre-Angélique de Talleyrand-Périgord
literature
- Jules Clère: Histoire de l'École de La Flèche, depuis sa fondation par Henri IV jusqu'à sa réorganisation en Prytanée impérial militaire . La Flèche, Jourdain 1853. ( Online )
- Camille de Rochemonteix: Un collège de Jésuites aux xviie et xviiie siècles: Le Collège Henri IV de La Flèche . Volume 1. Le Mans, Leguicheux 1889. ( Online )
- Henri Fouqueray: Histoire de la Compagnie de Jésus en France, des origines à la suppression (1528-1762) . Volume 3: Époque de progrès (1604-1623) . Paris, Picard 1922. ( Online )
- Pierre Delattre: Les Établissements des jésuites en France depuis quatre siècles . Enghien, Institut supérieur de théologie 1953.
- Pierre Moisy: Les Églises des Jésuites de l'ancienne assistance de France . Rome, Institutum historicum Societatis Iesu 1958.
- Jacques Salbert: La Chapelle Saint-Louis du collège des Jésuites de La Flèche en Anjou . In: Annales de Bretagne . No. 68 , 1961, pp. 163-187 (French, online ).
- Pierre Schilte: La Flèche intra-muros . Cholet, Farré 1980 (French).
- Bernard Beaupère: Histoire du Prytanée national militaire . Paris, Charles-Lavauzelle 1985. ISBN 2-7025-0102-8
- François Le Bœuf; François Lasa: La Flèche. Le Prytanée. Sarthe . Nantes, Association pour le développement de l'Inventaire général des Pays de la Loire, Collection Images du Patrimoine No. 147, 1995. ISBN 2-906344-48-6
- Du Collège royal au Prytanée militaire: 1604-2004. Quatre cents ans d'éducation à La Flèche . Paris, Association Amicale des Anciens Élèves du Prytanée Militaire 2004.
- Luc Chanteloup; Claude Aubert: Les trésors du Prytanée national militaire de La Flèche . Le Mans, La Reinette 2004. ISBN 2-913566-22-7
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Pierre Schilte, Le Château-Neuf de Françoise d'Alençon , Cahiers Fléchois 1, 1979.
- ^ Jacques Salbert: La Chapelle Saint-Louis du collège des Jésuites de La Flèche en Anjou . In: Annales de Bretagne. No. 68, 1961, pp. 173-174.
- ^ François Le Bœuf; François Lasa: La Flèche. Le Prytanée. Sarthe. Nantes, Association pour le développement de l'Inventaire général des Pays de la Loire, Collection Images du Patrimonie No. 147, 1995, p. 5
- ^ Jean-Pierre Babelon, Henri IV à La Flèche, une affaire de coeur. In: Henri IV et les Jésuites. Actes de la journée d'études universitaires de La Flèche, October 2003, pp. 13-23.
- ↑ Pierre Schilte: La Flèche intra-muros . Cholet, Farré 1980, p. 80.
- ↑ René Descartes: Discours de la méthode . 1631, p. 10 (French, online ).
- ↑ Histoire et description générale de la Nouvelle France , Paris 1744 (online)