Part of a Series on Vincentian Heritage Places

La Sorbonne

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Between early November 1831, when he arrived in Paris, and late August 1836, when he received his law degree, Frédéric Ozanam was a university student at the Sorbonne in the famous Latin Quarter. He was one of thousands of young men who journeyed each year to Paris, the “capitol of learning,” as the famed writer Honoré de Balzac chose to describe it.

In his classes at the Sorbonne, Frédéric often encountered anti-religious sentiment. As Jean-Claude Caron points out, “Contemporary accounts agree that the majority of the bourgeois youth in colleges, lycees, and universities were hostile to the Church as an institution and indifferent to Catholicism as a religion.” Many professors shared this outlook. Frédéric eventually worked up enough courage to challenge some of his teachers. He wrote his cousin Ernest, “I have found young people here of strong conviction and full of generosity…. Every time a rationalist professor raises his voice against revelation, Catholic voices are raised in response. There are many of us joined to this end…”

By January 1833 Frédéric was also actively engaged in the intellectual meetings called the conference of law and the conference of history. These gatherings brought needed companionship and intellectual stimulation. It was out of this conference of history that the first “conference of charity”— the origin of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul— was formed in April 1833.

Later, in January of 1841, Frederic accepted a teaching position there. And he received the Chair of Foreign Literature at the Sorbonne in 1844.

Source: Antoine Frédéric Ozanam by Raymond L. Sickinger, University of Notre Dame Press

Court and Chapel at the Sorbonne

Photo of the west façade of the grand court, Sorbonne. Late 1800s.

All Vincentian Places in this Series

Red = Vincent de Paul, Blue = Frederic Ozanam

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