Students and Teachers at the University of Paris: The Generation of 1500. A Critical Edition of Bibliothèque de l'Université de Paris (Sorbonne) Archives, Registres 89 and 90 (review)

This is a critical edition of two manuscript registers providing information about students and teachers at the University of Paris. The material in the registers was written between 23 July 1512 and 8 April 1515. Most of it refers to students and their studies between about 1490 and 1515, but occasionally there is information from the 1460s and 1470s. Since the greatest number of the entries deal with students who obtained degrees around 1500, Farge calls them the generation of 1500.

The genesis of the registers is as follows: according to practices originating in the Middle Ages and confirmed in the fifteenth century, a large number of French ecclesiastical benefices, including cathedral chapter positions and major city parishes, were reserved for university graduates. In addition, students seeking advanced degrees might hold benefices providing income to study. Graduates seeking benefices had to provide certificates documenting their studies and degrees. So they applied to the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris for the certificates. These registers, found in the archives of the Bibliothèque de l'Université de Paris (Sorbonne), do not record the certificates. Instead, they summarize the testimony provided by college principals, regents, and colleagues that the student had completed three or five years of study in grammar, logic, physics, metaphysics, or ethics, and that the supplicant had received the master of arts degree. The registers sometimes indicate the years in which the supplicant studied. The documents also normally mention where, usually one of the Paris colleges. Some students studied at other schools in Paris, while graduates taught in Parisian parish schools. The records also list many other names, including teachers, college officials, and associates of the student.

These registers provide information on 1,022 graduates of the Faculty of Arts of the University of Paris. For each graduate, they provide his diocese of origin, his college and regent master, his college principal and colleagues, the number of years that he studied or taught, and additional studies, if any, in arts, theology, law, or medicine. Many other names appear as well. In all, the registers list 2,280 individuals who were active in the University of Paris from about 1490 through 1515.

The registers do not include all the graduates of the University of Paris of those years, but only those who sought certificates in order to hold benefices. Nevertheless, it is an unparalleled source of information that will be immensely useful to historians. Important figures such as the humanist Jacques Lefèvre d'Etaples appear, as do Erasmus's critics, Noël Beda and Pierre Cousturier (Sutor). But this book should be most useful in helping scholars trace the careers of lesser individuals and in making connections between students, teachers, and colleges. Farge provides ten indices to help scholars. The first lists all the names appearing in the registers, and the second groups them by geographical origin: that is, by their French dioceses. Another index organizes all the individuals (graduates, principals, and regents) by college. Other indices list the graduates who later enrolled in the faculties of theology, canon law, and medicine. Although Paris did not teach civil law, Farge lists the graduates of Paris who obtained degrees in civil law, often at the universities of Orléans or Bourges. And there are indices providing the French equivalents of Latin place and college names. Finally, the indices are cross-referenced, and Farge indicates where further biographical information may be found for some of the graduates.

Farge noted these records in 1972 when researching his dissertation, and he used them in his important monograph, Orthodoxy and Reform in...