Sculpture of Guillaume Budé in the Collège de France

Maximilien Bourgeois · 1888

The study and dissemination of Greek paralleled the religious revival that characterised the first decades of the 16th century. Following the example of other cities such as Louvain and Rome, and thanks to the efforts and requests of humanists such as Guillaume Budé, chairs of "lecteurs royaux", scholars and teachers at the same time, were created in France for Greek and Hebrew in 1530, marking the birth of the future Collège de France. Applying their linguistic knowledge to biblical texts, the royal readers were confronted by theologians from the University of Paris.