Orléans

This article is about the French city of Orléans; for other meanings see Orleans (disambiguation).

Orléans (Latin, meaning golden), is a city and commune in north-central France, about 130 km (80 miles) south-west of Paris. It is the préfecture (capital) of the Loiret département and of the Centre région. Population (1999): 113,126.

History

Orléans was founded as a Gallic civitas (city state) of the Celtic Carnutes tribe, called Cenabum (known erroneously as Genabum). It was refounded by the Roman Emperor Aurelius who gave it his name, Aurelianum, as the city of Aureliani. In 451, Attila the Hun made an attempt to capture and sack the city, only to be driven off by the last-minute arrival of an army under the combined command of Theodorid, king of the Visigoths, and the Roman general Aëtius.

It was the capital of the Merovingian king (27 November 511 - 25 June 524) Clodomir (Clodmer) (b. 495 - d. 524) of what was since known as the kingdom of Burgundy.

The Siege of Orléans in 1428 - 1429 marked a turning point in the Hundred Years' War. Joan of Arc made her reputation here by lifting the siege nine days after she arrived.

University and other education

The schools of Orléans early acquired great prestige; in the sixth century Gontran, King of Burgundy, had his son Gondebaud educated there. After Theodolfus had developed and improved the schools, Charlemagne, and later Hugh Capet, sent thither their eldest sons as pupils. These institutions were at the height of their fame from the eleventh century to the middle of the thirteenth. Their influence spread as far as Italy and England whence students came to them. Among the medieval rhetorical treatises which have come down to us under the title of "Ars" or "Summa Dictaminis" four, at least, were written or re-edited by Orléans professors. In 1230, when for a time the doctors of the University of Paris were scattered, a number of the teachers and disciples took refuge in Orleans; when pope Boniface VIII, in 1298, promulgated the sixth book of the Decretals, he appointed the doctors of Bologna and the doctors of Orléans to comment upon it. St. Yves (1253-1303) studied civil law at Orléans, and Clement V also studied there law and letters; by a Papal Bull published at Lyons, 27 January, 1306, he endowed the Orléans institutes with the title and privileges of a University (it has been founded as one of the very earliest universities outside Italy in 1235, only two years after Cambridge and Toulouse, in France only Paris's Sorbonne was even older). Twelve later popes granted the new university many privileges. In the fourteenth century it had as many as five thousand students from France, Germany, Lorraine, Burgundy, Champagne, Picardy, Normandy, Touraine, ?Guyan (Guyenne?) and Scotland. Among those who studied or lectured there are quoted: in the fourteenth century, Cardinal Pierre Bertrandi; in the fifteenth, John Reuchlin; in the sixteenth, religious reformer Calvin and Théodore de Bèze, the Protestant Anne Dubourg, the publicist François Hotmann, the jurisconsult Pierre de l'Etoile; in the seventeenth, Molière (perhaps in 1640), and the savant lexicographer Du Cange; in the eighteenth, the jurisconsult Pothier.

Miscellaneous

Friedrich Schiller gave his influential 1801 play about Joan of Arc the title The Maid of Orléans.

New Orleans (originally La Nouvelle-Orléans) is named after the city of Orléans.

Births

Orléans is the patrie (birthplace) of:

Étienne Dolet (1509-1546), scholar and printer
Isaac Jogues (1607-1646), Jesuit missionary
Robert-Joseph Pothier (1699-1772), jurist
Stanislas Julien (1797-1873), orientalist
Gustave Lanson (1857-1934), historian
Charles Péguy (1873-1914), poet and essayist
Raoul Blanchard (1877-1965), geographer
Jean Zay (1904-1944), jurist and politician

Sister towns

The city has so-called jumelages with:

Sources and External links