Le collège des bons enfants







H ere was the college and the university of Rheims. The first school received school children at the age of nine for nine years of schooling. It had inherited a Latin name from the Middle Ages, we can still read today: "Collegium Bonorum Puerorum Universitatis". The choice of the language is not due to chance, nor pedantry, because in the middle of the seventeenth century, studies were done entirely in Latin.



T ime has spared the old college door, built in the sixteenth century in a classic style of nice aspect, but devoid of any fantasy.













D e La Salle studied in this college from 1661 to 1669 (from 10 to 18):
  • For 5 years, Latin and Greek grammar.
  • Then rhetoric for 2 years (oratory, debates, plays, poems, discussions - all in Latin)
  • And 2 years of philosophy (including Aristotle, logic, ethics, botany, mathematics, astronomy and metaphysics).
    • T he lessons were given exclusively in Latin. De La Salle, when he founded schools for the ordinary people of the city, did not retain this language, preferring French.