MAÎTRISE, a term formerly applied in France both to the quarters assigned in cathedrals and collegiate churches to the choristers and their master, and to the institution itself, which originally included a complete education, lay and ecclesiastical. These schools turned out many great men, several rising to be bishops and popes; among the latter Pope Urban IV, a cobbler's son, whose early years were passed in the ‘Psallette
’ at Troyes. Some centuries later, when the Maîtrises had undergone great...
