Jesuit college (1560–1762) Jesuit students, mostly from Spain and Italy, were present in Paris immediately after the
Society of Jesus's foundation, first in 1540 at the and from 1541 at the . From 1550 on,
Guillaume Duprat, the
bishop of Clermont, who in the previous decade had met early Jesuit leaders and
Diego Laynez and corresponded with
Ignatius of Loyola, invited Jesuit students to stay in his mansion, the on
rue de la Harpe. The thus became the Jesuit order's first permanent home in Paris. Upon his death on , Duprat bequested an endowment for a new Jesuit college in Paris, as well as funds for two other colleges in the vicinity of Clermont, at
Billom and
Mauriac. The Parisian project was eagerly supported by Laynez, by then the Jesuits'
Superior General, who wanted it to become "the most celebrated college of the Society". It was delayed, however, by dilatory initiatives by the
Parlement of Paris,
University of Paris, and local clergy, all of which opposed the Jesuits' establishment. In July 1563, the Jesuits were finally able to purchase the former Parisian estate of the
bishop of Langres on
rue Saint-Jacques, where its current now stands, and started teaching there in late 1563 (
Old Style). The new institution was named , in recognition of Duprat's support but also because one of the conditions that the Jesuits accepted to overcome local opposition was not to formally name the college after the Society of Jesus as they did elsewhere. The college soon met considerable success, as it was both free and of high quality, disrupting the antiquated business models and longstanding conventions of the
University of Paris. In particular, its theology course, led from the 1564 inception by
Juan Maldonado, was so popular that the college's buildings were too small to contain the audience. Other prominent early faculty included Pierre Perpinien,
Juan de Mariana, and
Francisco Suárez. The
University of Paris had been hostile to the Jesuits from the start, in line with its general rejection of novel initiatives and long before that hostility took doctrinal undertones in the 17th and 18th centuries as the Jesuits became a key adversary for
Jansenists. In 1554, the university's
College of Sorbonne had already issued a negative opinion regarding the opening of a college in Paris. That opposition was temporarily overcome at the monarchy's initiative during the
Colloquy of Poissy on , but the university kept debating the matter after the college started teaching in 1564. On , it refused to recognize it and thereby nullified the prior favorable decision of Poissy. The multiple cases brought by the university before the court of the
Parlement of Paris, and counter-cases from the Jesuits, resulted in a stalemate that lasted over the next three decades: the was not readmitted into the university system, but the Jesuits were able to continue and expand their activities, even though Maldonado was removed from Paris in 1575 following accusations of heresy by Sorbonne theologians. While the courses were free of charge,
boarding costs for the resident students, who typically came from elite families, were covered by gifts and scholarships, and the corresponding accounts were kept separate until the Jesuits' departure in 1762. In the 1580s, the college's students numbered in the thousands, of which several hundreds were resident ( and ). The faculty included several dozen Jesuit priests. Unlike most colleges of the university, the Jesuit college remained open during the
Siege of Paris in 1590, albeit with reduced activity, and inevitably colluded with the
Catholic League, as did the university too. On , an alumnus of the college,
Jean Châtel, attempted to assassinate
King Henry IV. As a reaction, the king took the side of the Jesuits' longstanding accusers such as Parlement lawyer
Antoine Arnauld, and expelled the Jesuits from France, including those in Paris. In 1595, the
bibliothèque du roi was relocated into the college's premises and stayed there until 1603. That year, Henry allowed the Jesuits to return to France on the conditions that they be French nationals. They were allowed to retake the college building in 1606, and to fully restart their teaching in 1610. On , however, upon a new case brought by the university and in the changed political context resulting from Henry IV's assassination in May 1610 by
François Ravaillac, the
Parlement of Paris forbade the Jesuits from teaching in Paris. That ruling, in turn, was reversed by a decision of
Louis XIII on , allowing the Jesuits to resume teaching for good. Despite its near-continuous interruption between 1595 and 1618, the College de Clermont almost immediately recovered and reached an equivalent level of activity to its heyday of the 1570s and 1580s. Its adversaries made sure that it would still not obtain admission into the university, but otherwise their attempts to undermine it met with decreasing success, given the continuing support the Jesuits were able to secure from the monarchy and high nobility. The college was regularly bolstered by royal visits, including by Louis XIII in 1625 and
Louis XIV in 1674. On the latter occasion, the king donated a painting by
Jean Jouvenet,
Alexander and the family of Darius, which remains to this day in the office of Louis-le-Grand's principal. Several notable scholars were resident in the college, including mathematician Pierre Bourdin (1595–1653), historian
Philippe Labbe (1607–1667), or Latinist
Charles de la Rue (1643–1725). Other faculty included author
René Rapin (1621–1687), scientist
Ignace-Gaston Pardies (1636–1673), historian
Claude Buffier (1661–1737), theologian
René-Joseph de Tournemine (1661–1739), sinologist
Jean-Baptiste Du Halde (1674–1743), rhetorician
Charles Porée (1675–1741), and humanist
Pierre Brumoy (1688–1742). was its
music master () between 1688 and 1698. The college library had about 40,000 volumes as of 1718, and included unique manuscripts such as the
Chronicle of Fredegar (occasionally known for that reason as ) or
Anonymus Valesianus. As in other Jesuit colleges, theatrical representations became increasingly prominent during the 17th century. Also as in other colleges, in 1660 the Jesuits opened an
observatory, and in 1679 they created the elaborate
sundials, augmented in the 18th century, that survive to this day on the northern side of the thanks to preservation campaigns in 1842 and 1988. The college undertook a rebuilding campaign in 1628, on a design attributed to Paris municipal architect Augustin Guillain. It expanded by acquiring more buildings, to its northeast from the recently closed in 1641, and to its south from the in 1656 and 1660. In 1682, the college was able to expand further by acquiring the buildings of the to its east, after a century of attempts, as that college's activities were relocated elsewhere in Paris. Also in 1682,
Louis XIV formally authorized the college to change its name to '''''' (). That act confirmed its royal patronage, despite the near-simultaneous
Declaration of the Clergy of France and the kingdom's ongoing conflicts with the
Papacy, to which the Jesuits were directly tied by their vows. Already in 1674, during his visit, Louis was said to have remarked ("this is my college"). A black marble slab with the inscription COLLEGIVM LVDOVICI MAGNI (College of Louis the Great) was promptly placed on the façade, in substitution to the earlier text COLLEGIVM CLAROMONTANVM SOCIETATIS IESV, which triggered controversy.
After 1762-1804 With the
suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, the Jesuits were ordered to cease their teaching and leave the college on . The establishment was immediately nationalized and renamed ''''''. Teachers from the nearby replaced the Jesuit fathers as faculty. This change triggered a broader reform of the
University of Paris. The scholarship students () of twenty-six smaller colleges of the University of Paris, known as the , were invited to follow classes at Louis-le-Grand. By 1764, these students also boarded at Louis-le-Grand. By then, the effectively ceased autonomous activity, after which their property were gradually sold. Louis-le-Grand thus became the center of the university, even though ten other survived until 1792. The nearby buildings of the , one of the , were purchased by the monarchy in 1770 and repurposed as headquarters () of the University of Paris. Meanwhile, by 1764 the former faculty of the
Collège de Beauvais took over teaching at Louis-le-Grand from those of the . Between then and the
French Revolution, there were about 190 every year at Louis-le-Grand, and a smaller number of whose families paid for their boarding. As a broader consequence of the Jesuits' termination, the French state in 1766 initiated the
Aggregation examination to raise the standards of teaching in secondary education. Louis-le-Grand aspired to a leading position in supplying future . Its ambitions failed to materialize, however, as only nine of its succeeded in the exams between 1766 and 1792, out of a total of 206 successful candidates during that period. During and after the
French Revolution, the college was renamed several times in response to France's changing politics: '
in January 1793, in 1797, in July 1798, in 1803, in 1805, in 1814, again in 1815, modified to in 1831, in 1848, once again in 1849, ' in 1853, again in 1870, and finally again in 1873. It has kept that name ever since. Throughout the troubled 1790s, it was the only Parisian educational institution that remained continuously open, as it had been during the 1590s siege of Paris. Part of its premises, however, were used as barracks for soldiers, then as political prison and workshops. In 1796, three more opened in Paris, respectively in the former
Abbey of Saint Genevieve (, later
Lycée Henri-IV), the
Professed House of the Jesuits (, later
Lycée Charlemagne), and the
Collège des Quatre-Nations ().
1804-1900 The latter building, however, was repurposed in 1801 for artistic training, and its secondary school was relocated to the adjacent to Louis-le-Grand then known as the Prytanée (), then merged into it in 1804. In 1803, Napoleon created the
Lycée Condorcet in the former , and in 1820, another new took the premises of the former , now the
Lycée Saint-Louis. Louis-le-Grand was thus one of only five public in Paris for most of the 19th century, until
Jules Ferry's reforms greatly expanded secondary education in the 1880s. Bordering Louis-le-Grand to the north, some of the buildings of the former were partly used by the
École normale from 1810 to 1814 and again from 1826 to 1847, after which it moved to its present campus designed by architect
Alphonse de Gisors on . Others parts of the Plessis complex were temporarily awarded to the Paris University's Faculty of Letters and a section of the Faculty of Law, Louis-le-Grand eventually acquired the remaining Plessis buildings in May 1849 Meanwhile, in 1822, Louis-le-Grand had expanded southwards by taking over the former from the university. Louis-le-Grand's main buildings themselves were in an increasingly dilapidated state, implying danger for the students. From the 1840s onwards multiple attempts were made to start their reconstructions, but faltered for several decades. In the mid-1860s,
Georges-Eugène Haussmann promoted a project to move Louis-le-Grand to the premises of the on , but that initiative was short-lived and the complex on rue de Sèvres was instead repurposed a decade later as . The army intervened in the high school to 'restore order', and hundreds of students were expelled. and another left a large hole in the pavement of rue Saint-Jacques in front of the 's entrance on . During
World War II,
Jacques Lusseyran founded the resistance group
Volontaires de la Liberté, in which a number of his fellow Louis-le-Grand students participated. The last significant new building project was a new auditorium (), located in the southeastern corner of the premises and completed in the late 1950s. Louis-le-Grand had its share of
May 68 turmoil and subsequent violence between far-left and far-right student factions. On , it hosted the general assembly of the high-school students' action committees () which called for a general strike. On
Jean Tiberi, a
gaullist member of parliament who would later become the mayor of Paris, was assaulted during a visit of the . A
hand grenade exploded inside its premises in early May 1969. A collection of the school's old scientific instruments was curated from 1972 and is now managed autonomously as the . ==Operations==