Faculty of Arts

The genesis of the Faculty of Letters cannot be traced without going back to the very birth of the Lausanne Academy. From the time it was founded, shortly after the Bernese invasion in 1536, the Schola Lausannensis comprised three chairs: a chair of theory, held by Pierre Viret, a chair of history and a chair of Greek. The holder of the latter, Conrad Gessner, went on to become one of the main pioneers of comparative linguistics and modern philology[1]. The courses taught at the Haute Ecole de Lausanne are nonetheless strictly thematic: they are conceived as tools for a better understanding of biblical texts. This does not prevent some teachers from taking an interest in secular works: Théodore de Bèze, holder of the chair of Greek from 1549 and first rector of the Académie, would offer translations of the écrits of Diodorus of Sicily and Dion Cassius[2], in particular.

While the study of Greek and Hebrew originals represents a novelty for the Greek-speaking world, Latin will remain, in accordance with the tradition of the Greek-speaking world;Latin was to remain the main language of instruction until the end of the 19th century. In order to provide an adequate linguistic education, courses in rhetoric and sequence were given in a fourth chair, inaugurated in 1542. The new chair of the «arts» introduced the ingenuae artes, which included mathemata (arithmetic, geography, physics, etc.) as well as the art of disputatio and philosophy. The teaching of the arts took a more philosophical direction following the appointment of Claude Aubery in 1576. A great commentator on Aristotle and defender of the doctrine of signatures, Aubery was nevertheless accused of hétérodoxie from 1588; he gave up his mission shortly afterwards.

At the beginning of the seventeenth century, the chair of liberal arts was gradually replaced by a chair of philosophy. The Reformatio und Ordnung of 1616 laid down the curriculum and duration of studies: three years of philosophy, followed by two of theory. The content of the courses was also strictly defined: For almost a century, Their Excellencies in Berne were to teach in accordance with the principles of the Dialectic of Pierre de la Ramée (1515-1572), who rejected the authority of Aristotle. Oriented principally towards theological dispute, the philosophical teaching of the period was hardly able to account for the rules of the art;By the end of the seventeenth century, the Académie was lagging far behind in most scientific disciplines. A sovereign mandate of 1698 testifies to the prevailing conservatism: Their Excellencies henceforth prohibited booksellers in Lausanne from distributing texts by Machiavelli, Hobbes or Spinoza – among other works «athéiots, déistes or mystics and phanatiques»[3].

In 1708, a new chair of law and history was nonetheless created, à the initiative of the bailiff Jean-Jacques de Sinner. Its first incumbent, Jean Barbeyrac, gave his inaugural lecture in French. In 1741, the chair of history was abolished, and only the teaching of law remained; as André Gindroz noted, &the study of history is not good for a subject people»[4]. A few history courses were nevertheless given during the rest of the eighteenth century, but they depended mainly on the occasional inclinations of certain teachers. The first Vaud law on public education was passed in 1806: none of the fourteen professorships at the Academy was yet devoted to history.

The first Vaud law on public education was passed in 1806: none of the fourteen professorships at the Academy were yet devoted to history.

For nearly three centuries, the main purpose of the Académie de Lausanne was to train pastors. With the entry into force of the Law of 21 December 1837 on the Académie, the regularisation of teaching finally began. Courses, which had previously been taught in French, were divided between three faculties: Lettres et Sciences, Droit, Théologie. The Académie then experienced an intense period of intellectual influence, particularly in the Faculty of Letters and Science: Juste Olivier was professor of history, Charles Secrétan was professor of philosophy, Adam Mickiewicz taught Latin literature and Sainte-Beuve, visiting Lausanne, gave a lecture on Port-Royal. With the exception of Mickewicz, each gave his name to a street in Lausanne. This golden era came to an abrupt end when the Radicals came to power in 1845: the Lausanne professors, most of whom were liberal, were either dismissed or resigned.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the scientific disciplines were acquiring unprecedented importance and were gradually detaching themselves from the philosophical soil in which they had been born. The law of 12 May 1869 on higher education definitively divorced the humanities from the sciences (with the exception of geography, which was not attached to the sciences until 2003): The Academy now has a separate Faculty of Arts and a separate Faculty of Science. At the same time, the gymnasium in Vaud was also divided into two sections: literature and science. From then on, teaching at the Faculté des Lettres focused mainly on philology, languages and literature. The law of 10 May 1890, which gave the Académie the status and name of Université de Lausanne, nevertheless enriched the catalogue of courses offered by the young faculty: a course in the history of the plastic arts and a course in pedagogy were introduced. Auguste André gave his first diction lessons as a reader; sensitive to the plight of non-French-speaking students, he founded the Ecole de Français moderne (EFM) around 1902. The EFM was attached to the Faculté des Lettres, and remains so to this day under the name of the Ecole de français langue étrangère» (EFLE).

New courses appeared in the first part of the 20th century, notably geography (taught from 1907) and archaeology (around 1944). However, the real structural changes did not come until after the implementation of the 1977 Law on the University of Lausanne (LUL). The 1982 regulations governing the Faculty of Arts no longer mention professorships; the Faculty is now made up of fourteen sections. The Faculty also includes three institutes - the Institut de géographie (IGUL), the Institut d’archéologie et d’Institut Benjamin Constant (IBC) – as well as a «Centre de recherche sur les lettres romandes» (CRLR). The upheavals are not just administrative: to cope with the growing number of students – the number of students in Lettres rose from 343 (1970) à 928 étudiants (1980)[5] – the sections gradually à invested the premises of BFSH 1 (from 1977) and BFSH 2 (from 1987) à Dorigny.

The configuration of the units gradually took shape, and the Faculty soon took on the face it has today: twenty-two teaching areas divided into twelve sections, two colleges (the EFLE and the Ecole du Cours de vacances), nine teaching and research centres and two interfaculty departments.

When the Académie officially took the name of «Université de Lausanne», in 1890, the Faculté des Lettres counted sixteen étudiants; in 2014 – and despiteé le départ de la section de géographie, qui a rejoint la Faculté des Géosciences et de l&&andash; en 2003 –, plus de 2'000 &eeacute;tudiants y y affichacute;s[6].

Sacha Auderset - UNIRIS 2014

[1] See in particular the opuscule published in 1555, Mithridates. De differentiis linguarum tum ueterum, tum quae hodie apud diuersas nationes in toto orbe terrarum usu sunt, Conradi Gesneri Tigurini Obseruationes, available at: http://ctlf.ens-lyon.fr/notices/notice_023.htm (accessed 9 July 2014).

[2] Anne Bielman, Histoire de l'histoire ancienne et de l'archéologie à l'Université de Lausanne, Lausanne: Université de Lausanne, 1987, p. 13.

[3] Quoted in De l'Académie à l'Université de Lausanne: 1537-1987, 450 ans l'histoire, Lausanne: Musée historique de l'Ancien-Evêché, 1987, p. 19.

[4] Quoted in Ibid, p. 88.

[5] See O. Robert and F. Panese, Dictionnaire des professeurs de l'Université de Lausanne, Lausanne: Université de Lausanne, 2000, pp. 1423-1424.

[6] https://www.unil.ch/central/page43594.html (accessed 9 July 2014).