By three Bulls 12 May, 27 May, and 30 September, 1339 the University of Grenoble was founded by Pope Benedict XII.
On 25 July, 1339, the Dauphin Humbert II (the counts of Dauphiné bore the title of Dauphin) drew up a charter of the privileges granted to the students at Grenoble, promulgated measures to attract them, and stipulated that the university should give instruction in civil and canon law, medicine, and the arts., whose charter of privileges stipulated that the university should give instruction in civil and canon law, medicine, and the arts.
A curious ordinance issued 10 May, 1340 by Humbert II commanded the destruction of all the forges in the vicinity of Grenoble lest they should produce an irreparable famine of wood and charcoal.
Humbert may have wished that life should be frugal where university was established. Finally on 1 August, 1340, he declared that the superior court of justice of Dauphiné (conseil delphinal), which he removed from Saint-Marcellin to Grenoble, should be composed of seven counsellors, four whom might be chosen from among the professors at Grenoble.
Humbert's projects do not appear to have been completely realized. The university lacked resources, indeed arts and medicine were not taught, and even the chairs of law seem scarcely to have survived the reign of Humbert II.
At all events, when Louis XI created the University of Valence in 1452, he declared that no institution of the kind existed at that time in Dauphiné.
This first attempt at a university had foundered, but it was re-established on sound footing in 1542 by Francois de Bourbon, Count of Saint-Pol, great-uncle of Henry IV of France, and the royal governor of the Dauphiné province.
The Italian jurist Gribaldi, the Portuguese jurist Govea, and the French jurist Pierre Lorioz, called Petrus Orioli (Pierre de Loriol)of a family originally of Pernes Les Fontaines, attracted many students thither, but the orthodoxy of these professors was suspected.
This was one of the reasons which, in April, 1565, led Charles IX of France to unite the University of Grenoble to that of Valence, for which in 1567 Bishop Montluc, well known as a diplomat and powerful at court, was able to obtain the noted jurist Cujas.
The citizens of Grenoble protested and sent delegates to Paris, but the edict of union between the universities was strengthened by the circumstance that at the very time when Charles IX published his edict, Govea and Loriol were compelled to institute a suite against the town of Grenoble in order to secure the payment of their arrears of salary.
Equally ineffectual were the efforts for the renewal of the university frequently made by the town in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
Napoleon I, on 1 November, 1805, re-established the faculty of law of Grenoble. Since 1896 the different faculties of Grenoble form the University of Grenoble.
