The university was endowed with a handsome revenue, principally derived from the ancient abbey of Egmont, and was provided with a number of professors, selected for their genius, learning, and piety among all the most distinguished scholars of the Netherlands. The document by which the institution was founded was certainly a masterpiece of ponderous irony, for as the fiction of the King's sovereignty was still maintained, Philip was gravely made to establish the university, as a reward to Leyden for rebellion to himself. "Considering," said this wonderful charter, "that during these present wearisome wars within our provinces of Holland and Zealand, all good instruction of youth in the sciences and liberal arts is likely to come into entire oblivion. . . . . Considering the differences of religion—considering that we are inclined to gratify our city of Leyden, with its burghers, on account of the heavy burthens sustained by them during this war with such faithfulness—we have resolved, after ripely deliberating with our dear cousin, William, Prince of Orange, stadholder, to erect a free public school and university," etc., etc., etc. So ran the document establishing this famous academy, all needful regulations for the government and police of the institution being entrusted by Philip to his "above-mentioned dear cousin of Orange."
The university having been founded, endowed, and supplied with its, teachers, it was solemnly consecrated in the following winter, and it is agreeable to contemplate this scene of harmless pedantry, interposed, as it was, between the acts of the longest and dreariest tragedy of modern time. On the 5th of February, 1575, the city of Leyden, so lately the victim of famine and pestilence, had crowned itself with flowers. At seven in the morning, after a solemn religious celebration in the Church of St. Peter, a grand procession was formed. It was preceded by a military escort, consisting of the burgher militia and the five companies of infantry stationed in the city. Then came, drawn by four horses, a splendid triumphal chariot, on which sat a female figure, arrayed in snow-white garments. This was the Holy Gospel. She was attended by the Four Evangelists, who walked on foot at each side of her chariot. Next followed Justice, with sword and scales, mounted; blindfold, upon a unicorn, while those learned doctors, Julian, Papinian, Ulpian, and Tribonian, rode on either side, attended by two lackeys and four men at arms. After these came Medicine, on horseback, holding in one hand a treatise of the healing art, in the other a garland of drugs. The curative goddess rode between the four eminent physicians, Hippocrates, Galen, Dioscorides, and Theophrastus, and was attended by two footmen and four pike-bearers. Last of the allegorical personages came Minerva, prancing in complete steel, with lance in rest, and bearing her Medusa shield. Aristotle and Plato, Cicero and Virgil, all on horseback, with attendants in antique armor at their back, surrounded the daughter of Jupiter, while the city band, discoursing eloquent music from hautboy and viol, came upon the heels of the allegory. Then followed the mace-bearers and other officials, escorting the orator of the day, the newly-appointed professors and doctors, the magistrates and dignitaries, and the body of the citizens generally completing the procession.
Marshalled in this order, through triumphal arches, and over a pavement strewed with flowers, the procession moved slowly up and down the different streets, and along the quiet canals of the city. As it reached the Nuns' Bridge, a barge of triumph, gorgeously decorated, came floating slowly down the sluggish Rhine. Upon its deck, under a canopy enwreathed with laurels and oranges, and adorned with tapestry, sat Apollo, attended by the Nine Muses, all in classical costume; at the helm stood Neptune with his trident. The Muses executed some beautiful concerted pieces; Apollo twanged his lute. Having reached the landing-place, this deputation from Parnassus stepped on shore, and stood awaiting the arrival of the procession. Each professor, as he advanced, was gravely embraced and kissed by Apollo and all the Nine Muses in turn, who greeted their arrival besides with the recitation of an elegant Latin poem. This classical ceremony terminated, the whole procession marched together to the cloister of Saint Barbara, the place prepared for the new university, where they listened to an eloquent oration by the Rev. Caspar Kolhas, after which they partook of a magnificent banquet. With this memorable feast, in the place where famine had so lately reigned, the ceremonies were concluded.
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS:
Crescents in their caps: Rather Turkish than Popish
Ever-swarming nurseries of mercenary warriors
Weep oftener for her children than is the usual lot of mothers
ETEXT EDITOR'S BOOKMARKS, THE DUTCH REPUBLIC 1566-74, Complete
1566, the last year of peace
Advised his Majesty to bestow an annual bribe upon Lord Burleigh
Age when toleration was a vice
An age when to think was a crime
Angle with their dissimulation as with a hook
Beggars of the sea, as these privateersmen designated themselves
Business of an officer to fight, of a general to conquer
Conde and Coligny
Constitutional governments, move in the daylight
Consumer would pay the tax, supposing it were ever paid at all
Crescents in their caps: Rather Turkish than Popish
Cruelties exercised upon monks and papists
Deeply criminal in the eyes of all religious parties
Dissenters were as bigoted as the orthodox
Enthusiasm could not supply the place of experience
Envying those whose sufferings had already been terminated
Ever-swarming nurseries of mercenary warriors
Financial opposition to tyranny is apt to be unanimous
For faithful service, evil recompense
Furnished, in addition, with a force of two thousand prostitutes
God Save the King! It was the last time
Great transactions of a reign are sometimes paltry things
Great battles often leave the world where they found it
Hair and beard unshorn, according to ancient Batavian custom
Hanged for having eaten meat-soup upon Friday
Having conjugated his paradigm conscientiously
He had omitted to execute heretics
He came as a conqueror not as a mediator
Holy Office condemned all the inhabitants of the Netherlands
Hope deferred, suddenly changing to despair
If he had little, he could live upon little
Incur the risk of being charged with forwardness than neglect
Indignant that heretics had been suffered to hang
Insane cruelty, both in the cause of the Wrong and the Right
Leave not a single man alive in the city, and to burn every house
Luther's axiom, that thoughts are toll-free
Meantime the second civil war in France had broken out
Not for a new doctrine, but for liberty of conscience
Not to let the grass grow under their feet
Not strong enough to sustain many more such victories
Oldenbarneveld; afterwards so illustrious
Only kept alive by milk, which he drank from a woman's breast
Only healthy existence of the French was in a state of war
Pathetic dying words of Anne Boleyn
Provided not one Huguenot be left alive in France
Put all those to the torture out of whom anything can be got
Questioning nothing, doubting nothing, fearing nothing
Saint Bartholomew's day
Scepticism, which delights in reversing the judgment of centuries
Science of reigning was the science of lying
Sent them word by carrier pigeons
Seven Spaniards were killed, and seven thousand rebels
Sick and wounded wretches were burned over slow fires
Slender stock of platitudes
So much responsibility and so little power
Sometimes successful, even although founded upon sincerity
Spendthrift of time, he was an economist of blood
The time for reasoning had passed
The calf is fat and must be killed
The perpetual reproductions of history
The greatest crime, however, was to be rich
The faithful servant is always a perpetual ass
The tragedy of Don Carlos
The illness was a convenient one
Three hundred fighting women
Time and myself are two
Tyranny, ever young and ever old, constantly reproducing herself
We are beginning to be vexed
Wealth was an unpardonable sin
Weep oftener for her children than is the usual lot of mothers
Who loved their possessions better than their creed
Wonder equally at human capacity to inflict and to endure misery
MOTLEY'S HISTORY OF THE NETHERLANDS
THE RISE OF THE DUTCH REPUBLIC, VOLUME III.
By John Lothrop Motley