Academie Francaise Founded
1635
Richelieu, who believed language was a tool of state, formally chartered the Academie Francaise: forty scholars charged with purifying, regulating, and policing the French tongue. Their great project, a dictionary, would take nearly sixty years to publish. France had invented the linguistic civil servant, and the institution endures today as the self-appointed guardian of the French language.
In context
Also in 1635 (3 other events on record)
- Sakoku Edicts Tighten · East Asia · Politics
- France Enters the Thirty Years' War · Europe · War
- Van Dyck at the Stuart Court · Europe · Culture
Before and after in Europe
Before and after in Culture
- Before: 1632: Taj Mahal Begun
- After: September 1636: Harvard College Founded
Era
Renaissance (1501–1650), one of 715 events from that era on Saeculum.