page_title: École Nationale des Chartes
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: École Nationale des Chartes / History
caption_attribution_description: Archeological journey to Saint-Leu d'Esserent by pupils of Ecole des chartes. Standing on Rue Henri Barbusse, with the Église prieurale de Saint-Leu-d'Esserent in the background.
context_page_description: The École Nationale des Chartes is a French grande école and a constituent college of Université PSL, specialising in the historical sciences. It was founded in 1821, and was located initially at the National Archives, and later at the Palais de la Sorbonne. In October 2014, it moved to 65 rue de Richelieu, opposite the Richelieu-Louvois site of the National Library of France. The school is administered by the Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research. It holds the status of a grand établissement. Its students, who are recruited by competitive examination and hold the status of trainee civil servant, receive the qualification of archivist-paleographer after completing a thesis. They generally go on to pursue careers as heritage curators in the archive and visual fields, as library curators or as lecturers and researchers in the human and social sciences. In 2005, the school also introduced master's degrees, for which students were recruited based on an application file, and, in 2011, doctorates.
context_section_description: The École des Chartes was created by order of Louis XVIII on 22 February 1821, although its roots are in the Revolution and the Napoleonic period. The Revolution, during which property was confiscated, congregations were suppressed and competencies were transferred from the Church to the State, produced radical cultural changes. In 1793 the feudist Antoine Maugard approached the public instruction committee of the Convention with a proposal for a project of historical and diplomatic education. The project was never carried out, and Maugard was largely forgotten. The institution was eventually created by the philologist and anthropologist Joseph Marie de Gérando, baron of the Empire and general secretary to Champagny, the Minister of the Interior. In 1807 he submitted a proposal to Napoleon for the creation of a school to train young scholars of history. Napoleon examined the proposal and declared that he wished to develop a much larger specialist history school. However, Gérando was posted to Italy on an administrative mission, and the project was interrupted. At the end of 1820, Gérando convinced Count Siméon, a philosopher and professor of law who had been state councilor under the Empire and who was at that time Minister of the Interior, of the usefulness of an institution modeled on the grandes écoles, dedicated to the study of "a branch of French literature", the charters. The 1820s were a favorable period for the creation of the École des Chartes. This was firstly because the atmosphere of nostalgia for the Middle Ages created a desire to train specialists who would, by carrying out a direct study of archives and manuscripts confiscated during the Revolution, be able to renew French historiography. Secondly, the need was also felt to maintain this branch of study, which stemmed from Maurist tradition, since the field was endangered by a lack of knowledgeable collaborators in the "science of charters and manuscripts". And thirdly, during the reign of Louis XVIII, a period which saw the return of the Ultras and during which the constitutional monarchy was called into question, the political context influenced the creation of an institution whose name inevitably made explicit reference to the defense of the Charter.
  Under the order of 1821, twelve students were nominated by the Minister of the Interior, based on propositions by the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres, and they were paid during the two years of their studies. They principally studied paleography and philology, with a purely practical aim: to be able to read and understand the documents that they would be responsible for curating. The professors and students of the school were placed under the authority of the curator of medieval manuscripts of the Royal Library, rue de Richelieu, and of the general guard of the Archives of the Kingdom.
  This first experience was not very successful, mainly because no job openings were reserved for the students. The first course was implemented in two stages by the ministerial decree of 11 May (for the Royal Library course) and by the decree of 21 December 1821 (for the Archives of the Kingdom course), and was the only one run. The Académie did put forward a new list of candidates, and the course length was set at two years by the Order of 16 July 1823, but lessons had to be suspended on 19 December 1823 due to a lack of students. However, following a long period of inactivity, the Ministry of the Interior decided to re-open the school. Rives, the director of staff of the ministry, together with Dacier, drew up a report on the reorganization of the School and a draft order, proposed to Charles X by La Bourdonnaye, which resulted in the order of 11 November 1829. The school was now open to anyone who had acquired the Baccalaureate, but six to eight students were selected by competitive examination at the end of the first year. They received a salary and followed two further years of training. On completion of their studies, they received the qualification of archivist-paleographer and were reserved half of the ava
caption: Students of the École des Chartes on a study trip to Saint-Leu d'Esserent (1903).
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