Аннотация:The article uses both published and archival materials to deal with several issues connected with the teaching of French in the 18th century seminaries. The data is provided on the introduction of French classes in seminaries in Moscow, and in the provinces of Russia. The main aim of the article is the analysis of the use of various French grammars available in the middle and in the second half of the 18th century in teaching. The author identifies the grammars briefly mentioned in the seminary documents. Both data published in the historical descriptions of seminaries written in the 19th century, and the surviving archival data are being analysed. In some cases, such analysis allows us to establish precisely which grammar was used. For instance, in 1769, the European edition of the Pêplier grammar was used for teaching both French and German at the Trinity Seminary. Restaut's grammar translated by V. E. Teplov was also used for teaching French. In the 1760s and 1770s, the library of the Trinity Seminary also contained other French textbooks and grammars which are sometimes impossible to identify. In the late 18th century, Sokolovsky's grammar became popular. The early 19th-century documents of the Novgorod Seminary are analysed to show that different textbooks could be used together for French classes, including Restaut's grammar (it was obviously one of the late editions of V. E. Teplov's translation). Thus, the research shows that until the early 19th century one of the most popular grammars used in the seminaries was the French grammar translated by V. E. Teplov, usually referred to in documents as “Restaut's grammar in Russian”.