University of Douai
The University of Douai is a former university in Douai, France. The university opened in 1562 and closed in 1795. University of Lille was later established as its successor campus 27 km away.
History
Establishment
As part of a general programme of consolidation of the Spanish Low Countries, in 1560-1562, a university was first established in the town by Philip II of Spain, in some sense a sister-university to that founded at Leuven in 1426. The foundation was confirmed by a Bull of Pope Paul IV on July 31 , 1559, confirmed by Pope Pius IV on January 6, 1560. The letters patent of Philip II, dated January 19 , 1561, authorized five faculties; theology, canon law, civil law, medicine, and arts. The formal inauguration took place on October 5 , 1562, when there was a public procession of the Blessed Sacrament, and a sermon was preached in the market-place by François Richardot, the Bishop of Arras. The university's first chancellor was the Englishman Richard Smith.
Recent studies are coming to view the 16th century foundation of the University of Douai as an important institution of its time, and efforts are being made to reconstruct a portrait of the different aspects of its life, including prosopographies of its professors and students, especially for its Habsburg period.
English Participation
Although the university was founded on the model of Louvain, from which it also drew the majority of the first professors, it also felt the influence of the English in its early years, several of the chief posts being held by Englishmen, mostly from Oxford. This makes it reasonable to suppose that many of the traditions of Catholic Oxford were perpetuated at Douai. The University's first Chancellor was Dr Richard Smyth, former Fellow of Merton College, Oxford and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford. The Regius Professor of Canon Law at Douai[1] for many years was Dr Owen Lewis, a former Fellow of New College, Oxford who had held the corresponding post at Oxford. The first principal of Marchiennes College was Richard White, another former Fellow of New College, while after taking his licentiate at Douai in 1560, William Allen became Regius Professor of Divinity there.[1]
The foundation of the University of Douai coincided with the presence of a large number of English Catholics living at Douai, in the wake of the accession of Elizabeth I and the reimposition of Protestantism in England. This presence, and the role of the University prompted William Allen to found a seminary in Douai in 1569 for English Catholic priests, whose studies were in part linked to the University and who were trained their to return to their country. It was at this English College at Douai that the English translation of the Bible known as the Douay-Rheims Version was completed in 1609. The first English Catholic Bible incorporating the Rheims New Testament and the Douay Old Testament in a single volume was not printed until 1764.
Other foundations
The town was a vibrant centre of Catholic life and connected with the University were not only the English College, but also the Irish and Scottish colleges (ie seminaries), and Benedictine, Jesuit and Franciscan houses. For a time there was also a Charterhouse. The Collège d'Anchin was opened a few months after the English College, endowed by the Abbot of the neighbouring monastery of Anchin, and entrusted to the Jesuits. In 1570 the Abbot of Marchiennes founded a college for the study of law. The Abbot of Saint-Vast founded a college of that name. Later on, we find the College of St. Thomas Aquinas, belonging to the Dominicans, the Collège du Roi, and others.
The Benedictines established a college at Douai, founded by Augustine Bradshaw in 1605, in hired apartments belonging to the Collège d'Anchin, but a few years later, through the generosity of Abbot Caravel of the monastery of Saint-Vaast, they obtained land and built a monastery, which was opened in 1611. The house acquired a high reputation for learning, being rebuilt between 1776 and 1781, and many of the professors of the university were at different times chosen from among its members. (The Anglo-Benedictines went into English exile on the French Revolution and were the only Douai institution to retain their ancient monastery after it; and as the community of St Gregory was then permanently established at Downside, they handed over their house at Douai to the community of St Edmund, which had formerly been located in Paris. These Benedictines carried on a school at Douai until 1903, when Waldeck-Rousseau's 1901 Law of Associations caused them to leave France. They returned to England, and settled at Woolhampton, near Reading, founding Douai Abbey there, known for its school - Douai School - which closed in 1999.)
The Benedictine and Franciscan houses at Douai were near together and were both bound up in their history with the restoration of the respective orders in England. The Franciscan monastery was founded mainly through the instrumentality of Father John Gennings, the brother of the martyr. It was established in temporary quarters in 1618, the students for the time attending the Jesuit schools; but by 1621 they had built a monastery and provided for all necessary tuition within their own walls.
Heyday
Something of the feel of the university's quality can be gained from the work of some of its professors. Among the numerous luminaries were Estius (Willem Hessels van Est), (1542-1613), the famous commentator on the Pauline epistles. He had studied classics at Utrecht and afterwards spent some twenty years at Louvain, in the study of philosophy, theology and Holy Scripture and in 1580 received the degree of Doctor of Theology. In 1582 he became Professor of Theology at Douai, a position which he retained for thirty-one years and which he combined for the last eighteen years of his life with that of Chancellor of the University, in addition to being for many years rector of the diocesan seminary. Estius's works were written in Latin and for the greater part published posthumously.
Suppression
The university was suppressed during the French Revolution and its libraries' holdings transferred to the town's Bibliothèque Municipale (founded by Louis XV in 1767), which also received the collections of the Jesuits of the College of Anchin. A good part of these collections was however destroyed when the library was burnt as a consequence of bombardment on August 11, 1944.
Refoundation
Douai regained a Faculty of Letters in 1854,[2] but in 1887 this was transferred to Lille. Currently the Artois campus of the Université Lille Nord de France that also includes Lille 1, Lille 2, and Lille 3 regard themselves as successors to Philip II's University of Douai.
Notable students
Sources
- FASTI, a project on the history of universities
- H. de Ridder-Symoens, "The Place of the University of Douai in the Peregrinatio Academica Britannica", in Lines of Contact (nr 117) 21-34.
- Andreas Loewe, "Richard Smyth and the Foundation of the University of Douai", Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis, 79 II (1999).
- Andreas Loewe, Richard Smyth and the Language of Orthodoxy : Re-Imagining Tudor Catholic Polemicism, Brill, Leiden, 2003 (= Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions).
- Article in the public domain Catholic Encyclopedia of 1913
Notes
- ^ a b That is, the holder of a chair founded by King Philip II of Spain, and not a Regius Professor of the kind at Oxford and Cambridge.
- ^ Louis Pasteur, Discours prononcé à Douai, le 7 décembre 1854. Installation solennelle de la faculté des lettres de Douai et de la Faculté des sciences de Lille. Douai: A. d'Aubers, 1854.