On 8 November 1834, on the basis of authorisation in a
papal brief of 13 December 1833, from Pope
Gregory XVI,[2] the Belgian bishops founded the Catholic University of Belgium (
Latin: Universitas catholica Belgii) in
Mechelen. About this first year, it is generally referred to as "Catholic University of Mechelen". The bishops aimed to create a university "to accommodate any doctrine from the Holy Apostolic See and to repudiate anything that does not flow from this august source".
The announcement of the bishops' founding of the new university in Mechelen was met with demonstrations and disturbances in the cities of
Ghent,
Leuven and
Liège.[3]
The university was short-lived in Mechelen, as the bishops already moved the university to Leuven on 1 December 1835, where it took the name "Catholic University of Leuven". This outraged Belgian liberal opinion, which depicted it as an attempt to usurp the past of the former
Old University of Leuven.[5] It also reinvigorated demands for the foundation of a secular university in Brussels which would lead to the foundation of the
Free University of Brussels.
An earlier
University of Leuven was founded in 1425 by
John IV, Duke of Brabant and
chartered by a
papal bull of
Pope Martin V.[6] It flourished for hundreds of years as the most prominent university in what would become Belgium, and one of the more prominent in Europe. Once formally integrated into the
French Republic, the law of 15 September 1793, had decreed the suppression of all the colleges and universities in France and it was abolished by Decree of the Departement of the Dijle on 25 October 1797.[7]
The region next became part of the
United Kingdom of the Netherlands (1815–1830), and
William I of the Netherlands founded a new university in 1816 in Leuven as a state university (
Dutch: Rijksuniversiteit) which was a secular university and where several professors from the old university continued their teaching. In 1830, the Southern Provinces of the United Kingdom of the Netherlands became the independent state of Belgium. This university was closed in 1835.
Relation to the Old University of Leuven
With the closing of the
State University of Leuven, the new Catholic University of Mechelen moved its seat to Leuven, adjusted its name and declared itself as a "re-founding" of the 1425 University of Leuven.
This claim to continuity with the older institution was challenged in the courts, with
Belgium's highest court issuing rulings (in 1844, 1855 and 1861) that as a matter of law the Catholic University of Leuven was a different institution created under a different charter.[8][9]
Nonetheless, the Catholic University of Leuven unofficially continued to claim to be a continuation of the older institution in Leuven,[10] in spite of the liberal protests of the time.[11]
Further history as unified institution (1835–1968)
On 3 November 1859, the Catholic University celebrated the silver jubilee of its foundation.[12] A banquet for more than five hundred guests offered by the students to the Rector and the faculty, took place the 23 November 1859, in the great festival hall of the Music Academy of Louvain.[13]
In the year 1884, the Catholic University of Louvain celebrated solemnly its 50th anniversary.[14]
In 1914, during
World War I, Leuven
was looted by German troops. They set fire to a large part of the city, effectively destroying about half of it, including the university library (see below). In the early stages of the war, Allied propaganda capitalized on the German destruction as a reflection on German Kultur.
Split into two officially new institutions (1962–1970)
From its beginning in 1834, the university provided lectures only in
French. Latin was sometimes used in the theology faculty, but it was essentially a French-language institution. Lectures in
Dutch, the other
official language of Belgium and the language spoken in Leuven, had begun to be provided in 1930 in the Catholic University of Leuven in the meantime.
In 1962, in line with constitutional reforms governing official language use, the French and Dutch sections of the Catholic University became autonomous within a common governing structure.
Flemish nationalists continued to demand a division of the university, and Dutch speakers expressed resentment at privileges given to French-speaking academic staff and the perceived disdain by the local French-speaking community for their Dutch-speaking neighbours. At the time, Brussels and Leuven were both part of the officially bilingual and now defunct
Province of Brabant; but
unlike Brussels, Leuven had retained its Dutch-speaking character. Tensions rose when a French-speaking
social geographer[who?] suggested in a televised lecture that the city of Leuven should be incorporated into an enlarged
bilingual 'Greater-Brussels' region.[citation needed] Mainstream Flemish politicians and students began demonstrating under the slogan Leuven Vlaams – Walen Buiten ("Leuven [is] Flemish –
Walloons out"). Student demonstrations escalated into violence throughout the mid-1960s. Student unrest fueled by the
history of discrimination against Flemings eventually brought down the Belgian government in February 1968.
The library of the Catholic University dating from 1834 was housed in the
University Hall, a building which in its oldest parts dated back to 1317. This was destroyed in August 1914 by invading German forces, with the loss of approximately 230,000 books, 950 manuscripts, and 800 incunabula.[15] Materials lost included the
Easter Island tablet bearing
Rongorongo text E and
the oldest Czech Bible.[16]
After the First World War, a new library was built on the
Mgr. Ladeuzeplein, designed by the American architect
Whitney Warren in a neo-Flemish-Renaissance style. Construction took place between 1921 and 1928.[17] Its monumental size is a reflection of the Allied victory against
Germany, and it is one of the largest university buildings in the city. The library's collections were rebuilt with donations from all around the world, outraged by the barbaric act which it had suffered. In 1940, during the second German invasion of Leuven, the building largely burnt down, with the loss of 900,000 manuscripts and books. The building was rebuilt after the war in accordance with Warren's design.
The library's tower included a 48-bell Gillett and Johnston carillon installed in 1928, and dedicated to the memory of the engineers of the United States who died in all wars. After having fallen into complete disrepair and neglect, efforts began in the early 1980s to restore the carillon. With the cooperation of the Belgian American Educational Foundation and the University, organized efforts to restore the carillon began. The restoration fell to Eijsbouts and the bell count increased to 63. The newly restored carillon was rededicated in October 1983, with a series of lectures, concerts, statements from diplomats including Ronald Reagan, and European carillon keyboard standardization agreements.[18]
The library's collections were again restored after the war, and by the time of the split in 1968 had approximately four million books. The separation of the university into distinct French-language and Dutch-language institutions in 1968 entailed a division of the central library holdings. This was done on the basis of alternate shelfmarks (except in cases where a work clearly belonged to one section or the other, e.g. was written by a member of faculty or bequeathed by an alumnus whose linguistic allegiance was clear). This gave rise to the
factoid that encyclopedias and runs of periodicals were divided by volume between the two universities, but actually such series bear single shelfmarks.
The building on the Mgr. Ladeuzeplein is now the central library of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven.
Bernard Le Grelle (Count) (born 1948), investigative journalist, political adviser, writer, and public affairs executive, known for his long term investigation into the
JFK assassination.
^Jan Roegiers et al., Leuven University, Leuven, Leuven University Press, 1990, p. 31: "With the Law of 3 Brumaire of Year IV, which reorganized higher education in the French Republic, there was no place for the University of Louvain, and it was abolished by Decree of the Departement of the Dijle on 25 October (1797)".
1975: R. Mathes, Löwen und Rom. Zur Gründung der Katholischen Universität Löwen unter besonderer Berücksichtigung der Kirchen-und Bildungspolitik Papst Gregors XVI, Essen, 1975.