University of Rennes

The University of Rennes (French: Université de Rennes) is a public research university located in Rennes, Upper Brittany, France. Originally founded in 1460, the university was split into two universities in 1970: Rennes 1 University and Rennes 2 University. On 1 January 2023, the Rennes 1 University merged with five grandes écoles: EHESP, École nationale supérieure de chimie de Rennes, ENS Rennes, INSA Rennes and Sciences-Po Rennes to create the new University of Rennes.

The University of Rennes 2 with other research institutes (CNRS, INRAE, Inria, Inserm and CHU de Rennes) are associated with the 'UNIR' project. The six establishments will be grouped together in an 'Experimental Public Establishment' (EPE), weighing nearly 7,000 staff and teachers, including a thousand researchers, 156 research laboratories and 60,000 of the 68,000 students in the Breton capital, including 7,000 international students.

The Duke's University of Brittany was founded by Bertrand Milon on 4 April 1460, on the initiative of Duke Francis II of Brittany, by a papal bull from Pope Pius II, given in Siena. This embodied Francis II's wish to assert his independence from the King of France, while universities were being opened on the outskirts of the duchy in Angers in 1432, Poitiers in 1432 and Bordeaux in 1441. Created in the form of a studium generale, this university could teach all the traditional disciplines: Arts, Theology, Law and Medicine. The student population between the end of the 15th century and the following two centuries grew to a thousand or even 1,500 students, according to the highest estimates.

A first attempt to move the university from Nantes to Rennes took place at the end of the 16th century. King Henry IV sought to punish Nantes, a league town, for its support of the Duke of Mercœur. The university was ordered to move to Rennes, a city that had remained loyal to the monarchy, in a letter of patent dated 8 August 1589. However, the institution was not moved due to a lack of funding.

At the beginning of the 18th century, the university entered a phase of decline. The city of Nantes was entirely focused on commerce and its elites showed little interest in the university. In 1728, the mayor of Nantes, Gérard Mellier, wrote that the Breton university would be better placed "in Rennes, a land of letters, than in Nantes, where only commerce is breathed". Consequently, the Faculty of Law of Brittany was transferred to Rennes in 1735, where the Parlement of Rennes was established by decision of King Louis XV. The faculties of literature, theology and medicine were retained in Nantes, but the faculty of medicine was in decline. There were subsequently several attempts to transfer the rest of the faculties from Nantes to Rennes, notably in 1778. However, the three faculties in Nantes were opposed to this project, pointing out the poor treatment of the Faculty of Law after its transfer to Rennes.

In 1806, Napoleon reorganised the entire French education system by establishing the Imperial University. Rennes then became the head of an academy and as such was endowed with a faculty of law and a faculty of literature.

A short-lived faculty of letters was also created in 1810. However, it was closed by the Bourbon Restoration by a decree of 31 October 1815. The Faculty of Letters did not reopen until 1839 with the July Monarchy, and then had five chairs (French literature, Ancient literature, Foreign literature, History and Philosophy). A faculty of sciences was created one year after the faculty of letters in 1840 and also had five chairs (Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Zoology and Botany, Geology and Mineralogy). The medical school, created under the Empire, became a secondary school in 1820 and then a full school in 1895. These faculties remained without any institutional link between them until the creation in 1885 of a Council of Faculties. In 1896, the latter took the name of University of Rennes when the faculties were reformed following the application of the law of 10 July 1896. The university was then one of the sixteen universities in France, and the only one in the west apart from Caen and Poitiers.

The post-war period was marked by the development of several structures within the university. In 1945, the merger of the Faculty of Sciences and the Institut polytechnique de l'Ouest (IPO) in Nantes gave rise to the Institut de chimie de l'Université de Rennes. In 1954, the Rennes School of Medicine and Pharmacy became the Faculty of Medicine and became part of the university. The following year, Jane Krier created the Institute of Business Administration of Rennes. Until 1969, the University of Rennes thus comprised four faculties: Law, Humanities, Sciences and Medicine.