A Brill Calendar: February 8

A Very Special Gift

Few citizens of Leyden surviving the dreadful siege by a Spanish army ending October 3rd 1574 will not have gratefully and admiringly watched – only some four months later - the long train of pageantry leaving City Hall at nine o’clock in the morning of February 8 1575.

After a colourful, dignified peregrination passing under some rather modest, improvised triumphal arches, the company arrived in the main building of a former Nunnery, devoted to Saint Barbara. Two hours earlier the largest local church, traditionally called St. Peter’s, witnessed a Reformed service in which Reverend Pieter Corneliszoon recommended an ‘infant born on that day’, (in this case a University), to God’s mercy.

The allegorical cavalcade, symbolizing the four Faculties of the brand-new institution, had shown that Theology deserved pride of place in the quartet, followed by Justitia and Medicina; with Minerva, representing the liberal arts, also called ‘Philosophia’; closing the ranks. In addition, the maiden academic address in the new ‘Aula’ - delivered by another Reformed Minister in Leyden and its first Theology Professor, Caspar Coolhaas – was a eulogy on theology.

It is seldom in European history that a crucial stage of struggling for an unprecedented independence from foreign influence is reflected concisely and comprehensively in the birth and ‘Dies Natalis’ of a new public body, devoted to scholarship and learning. It was Willem van Nassau, Prince of Orange, leader of the rebellion – although personally absent in Leyden on February 8, 1575 – who conceived the idea that freedom redeeming the country from oppression must needs have two aspects - one in religious matters, the other in political affairs – and that a University would be an ideal instrument to promote, sustain and foster both dimensions. The attention and care both City and its University continue to give since 1575 to this birth-day annually testify to the timeless wisdom of that Prince of Orange.