A Brill Calendar: January 6

Reflections on the Birth of Leyden University

Few elements of public and personal life as lived some twenty human generations ago have remained largely unchanged in this modern Kingdom of the Netherlands.

A striking example is average duration of a marriage; as shown around and about the last quarter of the 16th century, when such a legal bond presupposed property and when divorce was practically unknown. Historical demography suggests that husband and wife were allowed then some sixteen years together in their shared vale of tears; on average, of course.

Another case in point is the founding of a new public organization under a legal arrangement respected by all & sundry. According to the judgement of everyone concerned – and they were not many – Leyden’s reward for standing up against tyranny, a University, needed preliminary legal paperwork and a tripartite Charter: involving the States of County Holland. Each Province in the Habsburg Low Countries featured one, to all practical purposes fiercely independent from their counterparts. As well as the States’ assent, the City and its Council gave its blessing, and last but not least, the University itself and its Board of Curators.

The original document of this ‘Octrooi’, witnessed and signed (not in Leyden but Delft, then the residence of the Prince of Orange) by the Founding Fathers of the nascent ‘Praesidium Libertatis’, (‘Bulwark of Freedom’), is dated January 6 1575; a Holy Day, Epiphany, last day of the Christmas Season.

It is seldom that Renaissance calligraphy is applied so consciously and so conscientiously. That splendid specimen of penmanship - starting with the name ‘Philips’ (mark the ‘s’ without genitive) - has so far survived the grand total of 433 years. It was in the name of the ‘King of Castile’ that permission was given for a cultural innovation that would become an indispensable instrument in building a brand-new sovereign European State and Republic.