Concept
The École Nationale des Chartes (École nationale des chartes, literally National School of Charters) is a French grande école and a constituent college of Université PSL, specialising in the historical sciences. It was founded in 1821, and was located initially at the National Archives, and later at the Palais de la Sorbonne (5th arrondissement). In October 2014, it moved to 65 rue de Richelieu, opposite the Richelieu-Louvois site of the National Library of France. The school is administered by the Ministry of National Education, Higher Education and Research. It holds the status of a grand établissement. Its students, who are recruited by competitive examination and hold the status of trainee civil servant, receive the qualification of archivist-paleographer after completing a thesis. They generally go on to pursue careers as heritage curators in the archive and visual fields, as library curators or as lecturers and researchers in the human and social sciences. In 2005, the school also introduced master's degrees, for which students were recruited based on an application file, and, in 2011, doctorates. The École des Chartes was created by order of Louis XVIII on 22 February 1821, although its roots are in the Revolution and the Napoleonic period. The Revolution, during which property was confiscated, congregations were suppressed and competencies were transferred from the Church to the State, produced radical cultural changes. In 1793 the feudist Antoine Maugard approached the public instruction committee of the Convention with a proposal for a project of historical and diplomatic education. The project was never carried out, and Maugard was largely forgotten. The institution was eventually created by the philologist and anthropologist Joseph Marie de Gérando, baron of the Empire and general secretary to Champagny, the Minister of the Interior. In 1807 he submitted a proposal to Napoleon for the creation of a school to train young scholars of history. Napoleon examined the proposal and declared that he wished to develop a much larger specialist history school.
