History of KU Leuven's Patron Saint’s Day

Two large celebrations have traditionally punctuated KU Leuven's academic year. At the end of September, the university observes the ceremonial opening of the academic year. On 2 February, the university holds its Patron Saint’s Day celebration, marking the transition to the second semester. The saint celebrated on this day is no one less than Mary, mother of Jesus.

KU Leuven, which was founded in its modern form in 1834 by the Belgian bishops, was immediately dedicated to Our Blessed Lady. The patron saint appeared in the form of her monogram (MR) ringed by lilies and a radiant star in the seal of the new institution. This was no ill-fated occurrence, as the cult of Mary would fly particularly high in the nineteenth century after the pronouncement of the dogma of the Immaculate Conception and the apparitions in Lourdes.

If the ancient, pre-French Revolution university had a patron saint, it was undoubtedly Saint Peter, the patron of the city of Leuven. He also appeared in the seal of the university, which was founded on the initiative of the city of Leuven and which was ingrained much more in the urban life than was the nineteenth century confessional institution.

At the same time, the feast of the birth of Mary on September 8 served as the birthday (dies natalis) of the university, which opened on the eve of this feast day in 1426, nine months after its foundation on December 9, 1425.) of the university, which opened on the eve of this feast day in 1426, nine months after its foundation on December 9, 1425.

Naturally, the university of that time participated in the local Marian celebrations, which chiefly centred around Nicolaas de Bruyne’s 1442 statue of Mary (designed after an older Romanesque original) in St. Peter’s Church. During the famous yearly procession, the professors walked directly behind the statue as a corps, while the city magistrate had to follow it from further back in the procession.

The Leuven humanist Justus Lipsius, who supported the Roman Catholic cult of Mary with historical-critical work in the controversy with the Reformation around 1600, also carried out the first scientific work on this Leuven Madonna. (He did not publish the study, which bore the title Diva Lovaniensis – it remained in autograph and has only just recently been published by Dr. Jeanine de Landtsheer).

Nevertheless, all sorts of pious legends entrenched themselves: In 1462, the opening ceremonies of the new university would probably have taken place across from the mediaeval statue of Mary in St. Peter's Church, and in the following centuries the Virgin would have spared the city and university from being besieged.

Thus was the remarkable rescue of Leuven from French and Dutch besiegement in 1635 ascribed to her supernatural intervention.

Back then, this fiercely venerated and miraculous statue was known simply as Our Blessed Lady of Saint Peter’s. According to reports, it would also become known as the Sedes Sapientiae, the Seat of Wisdom, in the eighteenth century. In the meantime, the nineteenth century would see Rector De Ram titling the statue in the St. Peter's Church with this invocation, taken from the litany of the Blessed Virgin Mary. He connected the patronage of the university with the statue after the transfer of the Catholic University from Mechelen. But the name Sedes Sapientiae is also the name for a specific type of strict, hierarchical depiction, whereby Mary is seated upon a throne in a fixed frontal pose with the infant Jesus on her lap, a type to which the Leuven statue corresponds exceptionally.

At the beginning of the twentieth century, a new tradition caught on. At the celebration of the 75th anniversary of the Catholic University in 1909, a new Neo-gothic seal was brought into use. The spool form pointed to the mediaeval seal of the faculties, but even more to the mandorla, the elliptical halo within which the Madonna is often contained. The Sedes Sapientiae of St. Peter's was effectively the model for the central image of the Virgin, and this was expressly referred to in an edge inscription. On the occasion of the five-hundred-year feast of the university in Leuven in 1927, the statue was also ceremonially crowned.

The association was now complete. Consequently, the statue, the title, and the institution became intertwined, such that in the long run it was no longer clear if the title applied to the statue or the institution, and it sometimes seemed that, in the first place, the university referred to itself as the seat of wisdom. Such arrogance could never have been the intention, but the blending was effective. The seal with the Sedes Sapientiae made progress as an emblem that unmistakably evoked the university on stationary envelopes, caps, T-shirts, and delivery vans.

Among all the feast days of Mary, the university chose one of the oldest for its Patron's Feast: the Feast of the Purification of Mary, or Our Blessed Lady Candlemas, celebrated on February 2, which is forty days after Christmas, a festive reminder of the purification ritual that Mary, as a young mother, had to fulfil according to Jewish Law (Leviticus 12, 2-4). Candlemas became the feast of the Sedes Sapientiae, the patron saint of the university. The name Candlemas refers to the dedication of candles and the procession of burning candles before the mass, for that matter a Christianisation of an old Roman light festival. In Flanders, pancakes are traditionally baked on this day.

In Leuven, there is no candle procession on February 2, but instead a procession of professors, a parade of togati – professors in their academic regalia. This garment, which dates from the sober Dutch rule from the time of the State University of Leuven (1817-1835) is of a very simple cut, in modest black, which is only interrupted by piping along with ribbons, buttons, and tassels in the colours of the various faculties. French fringing was only adopted after the First World War in imitation of the Sorbonne.

The rector in his splendid robe, black with red collar and cuffs, is preceded by the beadles, a sign of his authority, baring sceptres. One of these staves bears the image of Pallas Minerva, the ancient patron goddess from the period of the Leuven State University. Another stave was christened anew after the separation of the university when its original prototype was moved to Louvain-la-Neuve, and was crowned with the Sedes Sapientiae.

The procession moves from University Hall to St. Peter's Church, where the statue of the Sedes Sapientiae still adorns the front of the altar, and after the mass it returns to the Promotion Hall of the University Halls, or goes to the Aula Maxima for the ceremonial conferral of the honorary doctorates on figures who have distinguished themselves in academic or social respects. These honorary doctorates form a separate academic tradition and, once again, it is difficult to trace their past, which arises in the 1880s, but which is not inseparably connected to the ritual of the Patron’s Feast.

Only in the middle of the 1950s did it become tradition to bundle the conferral of honorary doctorates together on February 2, and confer the degrees of doctor honoris causa on the occasion of Patron Saint’s Day. It was also in this atmosphere, in the middle of a rich Roman Catholic life and under the rectorate of Mgr. Van Waeyenbergh, who had a nose for public relations and who was not afraid of marvellous external displays, that the Patron's Feast received its due measure of pomp and circumstance.

Mark Derez
University Archives

Timeline

• Patron’s Feast: Our Blessed Lady Candlemas, February 2.
  Observed since the foundation of the KU Leuven in 1834
• Doctorates honoris causa
  Conferred at least since 1881
• Conferral of the doctorates honoris causa on the occasion of the university's Patron Saint's Day:
  First on February 2, 1951; continually since 1954

Bibliography

• Léon van der Essen, Notre-Dame de St.-Pierre (Louvain) "Siège de la sagess" (1129-1927), Leuven 1927.
• Justus Lipsius, Diva Virgo Lovaniensis, translated with an introduction by Jeanine de Landtsheer, Wildert 1999.