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 SORBONNE SORGHUM 169 cd with the king's aid a collegiate school for the gratuitous education of poor students in theology. He secured the services of three secular professors, Guillaume de Saint-Amour, Eudes de Douai, and Laurent Langlois, and formed with them, and 16 poor students under his own direction, a community which served as a model for similar collegiate schools in the universities of France and England. The charter granted in 1253 by Louis IX. was con- firmed and enlarged by Pope Clement IV. in 1268. Before 1253 theological instruction was given in the bishop's school near the cathedral of Notre Dame; thenceforward it was given exclusively at the Sorbonne. Robert also founded near the college a preparatory semi- nary called "the little Sorbonne," which was destroyed in 1635, when the present church of the Sorbonne was erected on its site. He pro- vided a library of 1,000 volumes, which was in- creased by subsequent benefactors, especially by Cardinal Richelieu. The members of the college (maison de Sorbonne) were divided into fellows (socii) and commoners (hospites). The fellows, composing the faculty, were all secu- lar priests, doctors or bachelors in divinity, selected for their eminent learning, after un- dergoing the test of a severe public examina- tion, a triple ballot, and teaching a course of mental philosophy. Besides the strict neces- saries of life provided in the college, the poor- est among them received a trifling stipend. The commoners were required to be bachelors in divinity, were chosen from among the most talented of their class after the most rigorous ordeal, and were maintained by the college, but had no voice in its government. The fel- lows were nominated for life, and were offi- cially designated " fellows or bachelors of the house and society of the Sorbonne ;" the com- moners were styled " bachelors of the house of the Sorbonne," and their membership ceased on their graduating as doctors. The college property was vested in the fellows, and all business was managed in their name. A per- fect equality reigned among them ; the holding of office implied no superiority or power of one over another. No member of a religious order was admitted into their body, and a fel- lowship was forfeited by entering such an or- der. The exceeding rigor exercised in the se- lection both of fellows and of commoners was for the purpose of maintaining a high standard of intellectual culture among the secular priest- hood. But the vast lecture halls attached to the college were open to all poor scholars in- discriminately, and the professors were pledged never to refuse to teach any such, while stu- dents who had means were required to pay the usual university fees. From 1253 to 1789 at least six doctors of the Sorbonne were con- stantly employed in giving gratuitous instruc- tion. The high standard of excellence thus maintained by the faculty, and the large num- ber of distinguished scholars who went out from the Sorbonne to fill the highest ecclesias- tical and civil offices in every European coun- try, raised this celebrated school to an unri- valled pitch of fameand influence all through the middle ages and down almost to its suppression. Its controlling power was felt in the contests between the university of Paris and the mendi- cant orders, Guillaume de Saint- Amour being the chosen advocate of the former and the un- compromising foe of the friars ; the Sorbonne was appealed to in the disputes between the civil powers and the papacy, and in the great theological controversies and long schisms that divided the church. It opposed the claims of ultramontanism, decided against the divorce of Henry VIII. from Catharine of Aragon, con- demned the docrines of Luther, Calvin, Baius, Jansenius, and Quesnel, sustained the Catholic league against Henry of Navarre, and declared in 1588 that Henry III. had forfeited the crown. The Sorbonne was specially favored by Cardinal Richelieu, who rebuilt on a mag- nificent scale the college, lecture halls, and church, besides enlarging the library. The first works printed in France were from the presses of the Sorbonne. These were estab- lished in 1469 by Jean de la Pierre, prior of the Sorbonne, and Guillaume Fichet, rector of the university. In 1470 they published Gas- parini Pergamensis Epistolaritm Liber, fol- lowed by other publications in Latin, French, Greek, and Hebrew. The Sorbonne was sup- pressed in 1789, and at the organization of the modern university of France by Napoleon I. its buildings became the seat of the faculties of science, letters, and theology of the acade- mie universitaire ; but the faculty of theolo- gy is scarcely a shadow of its predecessor. SOREL, a town and the capital of Richelieu co., Quebec, Canada, on the E. bank of the Richelieu river, at its mouth in the St. Law- rence, 45 m. below Montreal; pop. in 1861, 4,778; in 1871, 5,636. It occupies the site of a fort built by the French in 1665, and was for many years the summer residence of the governors of Canada. Nearly all the shipping plying between Quebec and Montreal winters here. Ship building is largely carried on. The town contains manufactories of engines, mill machinery, stoves, ploughs, leather, bricks, &c., several saw and grist mills, two branch banks, a tri-weekly (French) and two weekly (one French) newspapers, a monthly periodical (French), and three or four churches. SOREL, Agnes. See AGNES SOREL. SORGHUM, a genus of grasses, of the tribe andropogonece, and by some authors included in andropogon. In grasses of this genus the flowers are in open panicles, the spikelets two or three together, the lateral ones sterile, or reduced to mere pedicels, the central or ter- minal one fertile ; the otems not hollow, as in most grasses. A single species, S. nutans, known as Indian grass and wood grass, having a stalk 3 to 5 ft. high, and a panicle of shining russet-brown flowers, is common throughout most of the states. The name sorghum is in