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Façade
of the Irish College, Paris
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Introduction
Located
in the heart of the Latin Quarter, the Irish College of today
promotes contemporary Irish culture by
presenting a wide range of art forms, including visual art,
film, theatre, literature and music. The residents - a blend
of students, artists, writers and musicians - create a vibrant
community where exchange and dialogue are part of daily life. |
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But
the Irish College has not always been a cultural
centre. Since the XVIth century, it was an academic and
ecclesiastical institution that welcomed Irish seminarists. Founded
in 1578 by the Reverend John Lee, it was firstly a
“college” in the sense of a collegiate grouping of
students. Then, Irish students occupied several buildings in
the capital (including the former Collège des Lombards) and
the Irish College became both a place of residence and a place
of study. In 1769, Lawrence Kelly, the prefect of the
community, bought a large house in “rue du Cheval Vert”,
now rue des Irlandais, where the Irish College still stands
today. Threatened with closure several times, particularly
during the French Revolution, the Irish College in Paris
survived, despite the vicissitudes of history, and was the
last active Irish college in France. Having housed Polish
seminarists from 1947 until the end of the 1990s, the College
closed for renovation and reopened as a cultural centre in
2002.
Today,
the resources service of the Irish College is composed of
three departments: the Médiathèque
(a multimedia library on contemporary Ireland), the Old
Library (boasting more than 8000 books from the XVth to
the XIXth centuries) and the Historical
Archives (relating
to the running of the Irish College).
Historical
Archives of the Irish College
The
Historical Archives of the Irish College date from 1316 to
1999, and consists of over 19,000 items
in total. It includes medieval documents and property deeds,
which predate the foundation of the College, and relate to Collège
des Lombards. In addition, the collection includes records
relating to buildings in and around Paris which were owned by
the Irish College, with particularly extensive records on the
Arcueil (Val-de-Marne) country house, as well as files on
members of the college administration. It also has records on
the grant foundations that funded Irish students who came to
study in Paris. The Irish College in Paris probably fulfilled
the role of "Mother House" in relation to the other
institutions based in France, which may explain why the
collection has documents concerning institutions situated in
Bordeaux, Douai, Nantes, Rouen and Poitiers. The primary role
of the College was education of priests, and the collection
includes documents on the Church and the religious community,
letters concerning ordinations and missions and official
correspondence with senior members of the clergy. Also worth
noting is the presence of over one hundred objects such as
medals, keys, boxes, cloth bags with tokens, inkpots, frames
etc.
Conservation
and Digitization Projects
In
2006
the Irish College received generous funding from the Irish
government for an ambitious conservation and classification
project.
As
successive handling of the files had disturbed the original
classification system, it was decided to create a new listing
system using a thematic organisation.
At
the same time, a procedure for removing dust, stamping and
repairing the documents was carried out. Reconditioning
with specific substances appropriate to the documents
(parchments, photographs, registers…) took place following
this work. The archives are now stored in a specially designed
room, beside the Old Library.
The
work involved was long and painstaking, and culminated with
the launch of a dedicated online catalogue in July 2008. This
catalogue can be accessed through the website of the Irish
College and more than 4,000 digitized documents will be added
by Spring 2009 to complete the online collection. The
objectives behind the digitization project are twofold: to
facilitate access for researchers by removing the geographical
barriers between France, Ireland and the rest of the world,
and also to ensure the preservation of the more fragile
documents by limiting the amount of handling and consultation
of the originals. |
back
to March 2009 index
