In the general decay, however, the Jesuit College of Clermont, known later as of Louis le Grand, stood forth renowned and exuberant. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the erudition of its teachers, their excellent method and admirable discipline, made it the premier college of Paris and in the heyday of its fame five hundred scholars crowded its halls, among them the scions of the nobility of France. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the university had its seat in the college and concentrated there the endowments, or such as had escaped spoliation, of twenty-six suppressed colleges. The college of Louis le Grand and nine others of the multitude that clustered around the hill of St. Genevieve, were all that survived when the Revolution burst forth, and it is not without interest to note that on 19th June 1781, the central body sitting at the famous Jesuit college unanimously awarded a prize of six hundred livres to a poor young _boursier_ of the college of Arras, named Louis Francois Maximilian Marie Robespierre, for twelve years of exemplary conduct and of success in examinations and competitions. Before we close this chapter a word of acknowledgment is due to the mediaeval church in Paris for her careful fostering of elementary education. By the Taille of 1292 already referred to, we learn that schools for children of both sexes were distributed nearly over the whole of the city radiating from the mother church of Notre Dame. At the beginning of the fifteenth century twenty-one parishes had one or two of these schools; in 1449 a thousand schoolboys took part in a procession to Notre Dame to render thanks for the recovery of Normandy. The Church inspected the sanitary condition of the schools and exacted a standard of proficiency for the qualification of masters and mistresses. CHAPTER VII _Conflict with Boniface VIII.--The States-General--The Destruction of the Knights-Templars--The Parlement_ In 1302 the eyes of Europe were again drawn to Paris where the Fourth Philip, surnamed the Fair, a prince who, in Dante's grim metaphor, scourged the shameless harlot of Rome from head to foot, and dragged her to do his will in France, was grappling with the great pontiff, Boniface VIII.--the most resolute upholder of the papacy in her claim to universal secular supremacy--and essaying a task which had baffled the mighty emperors themselves.