The religious persecution under Elizabeth and James I led to the suppression of the monastic schools in Ireland in which the clergy for the most part received their education.

It became necessary, therefore, to seek education abroad, and many colleges for the training of the secular clergy were founded on the continent, at Rome, in Spain and Portugal, in Belgium, and in France.

[3] By letters patent dated 1623, Louis XIII conferred upon the Irish priests and scholars in Paris the right to receive and possess property.

These two ecclesiastics obtained from Louis XIV authorisation to enter possession of the Collège des Lombards, a college of the University of Paris founded for Italian students in 1333.

Some years later the buildings were extended by John Farely, and all the Irish ecclesiastical students in Paris found a home in the Collège des Lombards.

[citation needed] In virtue of the papal bull of Pope Urban VIII, Piis Christi fidelium, dated 10 July 1626, and granted in favour of all Irish colleges already established or to be established in France, Spain, Flanders, or elsewhere, the junior students were promoted to orders ad titulum missionis in Hiberniâ, even extra tempora, and without dimissorial letters, on the representation of the rector of the college – a privilege withdrawn, as regards dimissorial letters, by Pope Gregory XVI.

In support of their petition, the bishops submitted a statement of the number of Irish ecclesiastics receiving education on the Continent when the French Revolution began.

During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, forty students of the Irish College in Paris were raised to the episcopal bench.

Over the period 1660 to 1730, more than sixty Irishmen held the office of procurator of the German nation —one of the four sections of the faculty of arts in the ancient university.

Michael Moore, an Irish priest, held the office of the principal of the Collège de Navarre, and was twice elected rector of the university.

From its closure following the revolution, the Irish College was leased by Patrick MacDermott who ran a lay school there up until 1800; both Napoleon's youngest brother Jérôme and his step-son studied there.

The college in Paris lost two-thirds of its endowments owing to the depreciation of French state funds, which had been reduced to one-third consolidated.

This step was followed up by a motion in the House of Commons for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the claims of the college to compensation for losses sustained during the French Revolution.

In 1858, with the sanction of the Sacred Congregation of Propaganda, and with the consent of the French Government, the bishops of Ireland placed the management of the college in the hands of the Irish Vincentian Fathers, with McNamara being succeeded in 1889 by Patrick Boyle.

In the nineteenth century, the college gave to the Catholic Church a wide array of good priests and bishops, including Fitz Patrick, Abbot of Melleray; Maginn, Coadjutor Bishop of Derry; Keane, of Cloyne; Michael O'Hea and Fitz Gerald of Ross; Gillooly of Elphin, and Croke of Cashel.

Kelly, the Bishop of Ross, and McSherry, vicar Apostolic at Port Elizabeth, South Africa, were also alumni of the college.

On that board, the Archbishop of Paris was represented by a delegate, and he was also the official medium of communication between the Irish episcopate and the French Government.

[citation needed] However, due to the exertions of its superior, Patrick Boyle, and the British ambassador in Paris the college remained open until the outbreak of World War I caused its closure.

James MacGeoghegan, Sylvester O'Hallaran, Martin Haverty, and probably Geoffrey Keating, all eminent Irish historians, were students of the college.

The Polish community having re-located in 1997, the college, including the chapel and library underwent a complete restoration funded by the Irish government,[25] and in 2002 it opened as the Centre Culturel Irlandais.

[26][27] The center appoints an artist in residence, and a number of scholars and students from Ireland stay at the college, which has 45 rooms to rent.

[28] The CCI hosts various concerts, performances, seminars, and exhibitions, and Irish Language classes are conducted in association with Maynooth University.