Later on, we find him labouring strenuously and successfully to obtain for the Jesuit Fathers a state subsidy to enable them to continue the stupendous undertaking of the old Bollandists, the Acta Sanctorum. Thanks in great measure to this help, the noble work is now making progress to the great glory of God, to the advantage of religion, and the honour of Belgium. And
among the first eulogists of the departed prelate, we have the great Jesuit Father de Buck, the head of the present Bollandists in Brussels, to whose notice on Mgr. de Ram we are indebted for much that appears in this sketch.
In fine, this same taste for historical research, especially in the history of his native land, made him take a most distinguished place in the Royal Academy of Belgium, of which he was for thirty-one years one of the chief members, and especially in the Royal Commission of History, founded precisely for the promotion of the study of the national annals. Indefatigable in his labours, never-failing in his attendance at the meetings of the Commission, bringing to them the rich treasures of his learning, joined to the affability and conciliatory tone which always characterised him, we are told by one who knew him there, that never during that long period was there between him and his associates in that great work the least shadow of a difference. True to the end to his work for religion and his country, one of his last public acts, two days before his death, was to assist at a meeting of the Academy; and he leaves unfinished three works undertaken in the same holy cause: the Chartulary of the Abbey of Cambron, the preparation of materials for a general and diplomatic history of the University of Louvain, and the collection and arrangement of the short Flemish chronicles scattered in manuscript through the Belgian libraries, with a view to their forming a compendium to the great chronicle of De Dynter.
But it is not with De Ram’s historical labours, great as they were, that we are chiefly interested. His great work for us has been the Catholic University of Louvain. That university was proposed by his Holiness Pope Pius IX. as the model which our bishops were to have in view in founding the Catholic University of Ireland. Over it De Ram presided for more than thirty years, in fact since its foundation; the difficulties, seemingly insuperable, with which he had to contend, were almost identical with those that press our Irish institution; the means for overcoming these difficulties in the two countries were very similar, and we may hope that the Catholic University of Belgium is but the harbinger of the success of the Catholic University of Ireland.
The University of Louvain was called into existence to meet a condition of things, the parallel of which existed in Ireland in 1850, and to cope with dangers similar to those which, at that period, impended over the Catholics of this empire. In its working it has wedded together interests which the sophistry of the day makes it fashionable to represent as antagonistic. It is eminently national, eminently scientific, eminently Catholic. It cultivates literature with a zeal which does not interfere with
its devotion to theology and other sacred studies, and pursues even the highest investigations of science in such a way as to prove that nowhere can freedom of scientific research find a more congenial home than in a Catholic university. These sentiments were eloquently expressed by one of the students of the university. M. Van Tomme, as he stood by the bier of Mgr. De Ram, spoke as follows, in the name of his fellow students who stood around him:
“The great work founded by the Belgian episcopacy has grown under the shadow of our political and religious independence, and, as our rector himself expressed it, ‘The university is not only a Catholic institution, but also a national institution’. Guided by this noble motto, he directed for thirty-one years the Catholic University, strengthening each day in our hearts the love of religion and of liberty, that two-fold foundation on which rests the glory of our past history, and which guarantees the future of our country. The care of our souls, the cultivation of our minds, these were the objects most dear to his heart as a priest; his love for us made him find in us his reward, his joy, his blessing. How can I express his fatherly tenderness, his boundless devotedness to our interests, his delicate management of our national spirit of independence? These were the principles with which he ruled over this laborious and difficult work…. You know the blessed fruits produced in the education of our country by these gifts of mind and heart. Educational liberty, rescued bleeding from stranger hands, first took refuge in the bosom of our University, where Mgr. De Ram stretched out his arms to welcome it, and from that day forward watched over it with zealous care. Our University, the heiress of a glorious name, the offspring of liberty and of faith, under Mgr. De Ram’s presidency, has nobly bound up together the past and the present. Those great works urged on with such ardour, the serried phalanx of youths who have gone forth from this Institution, the eminent men whom this University has given to our country and to the Church, all proclaim, that his devoted labours have not been vain, and point out to us unmistakeably the greatness of the loss sustained on this day by Catholic youth”.
But we are anticipating the course of events, and we must take up from the commencement the history of this great man’s connection with Louvain. We must even go back a little; for, as Father de Buck remarks, it is only thus we can correct some erroneous ideas, which have been freely circulated, and form some notion of the enormous difficulties which surrounded the foundation of the Catholic University of Belgium. Some of these erroneous ideas were thus expressed by Sir Robert Kane, President of the Queen’s College, Cork, in his inaugural address at the opening of that establishment, on the 7th November, 1849:—
“After the revolution, which rendered Belgium an independent kingdom, the question of university education occupied the attention of its government as one of the greatest moment. The heads of the Belgian Church were fully consulted, and they surely deserved to be, from their right to coöperate in every measure of public welfare. The result has been the institution of three great colleges: one at Louvain, formed in the buildings of the old university, and hence popularly called by the name of the ‘University of Louvain’; the second college situated at Liege; and the third in Ghent. Students follow their studies in any of these colleges, but they do not there get their degrees. What course did the Belgian authorities take, when, after the Revolution, they had in their own hands the power of giving to all those colleges a code of securities for faith and morals which might have served us here as a model? They demanded to have Louvain absolutely and exclusively under their own control, and consented to leave the colleges of Liege and Ghent in the hands of government absolutely, without any provision for moral discipline or religious instruction. What is the practical result? The College of Louvain contains only the university faculties, conducted on medieval models, and educating after the forms of old established universities. The Colleges of Ghent and Liege contain the practical branches, to which the majority of the young men attach themselves. The schools of mines and engineering are at Liege. The schools of mechanics and of practical chemistry are at Ghent. There are great schools of medicine at both colleges. Hence the practical education is conducted at those colleges where there is no religion and no discipline. In Belgium there are three colleges, one with ultra-ecclesiastical discipline, attended generally by Catholic foreigners, whom the traditional fame of the medieval university brings to Louvain. The other two are colleges without religion, to which the majority of Belgian students are drawn for practical education” (Inaugural Address, pages 23, 24).
In the course of the notice we shall see how many misstatements or mistakes are contained in these few sentences. In this place suffice it to say, that in the year 1864 alone, 325 students of the Catholic University of Louvain took secular Degrees, viz., 117 in Law, 125 in Medicine, 42 in Philosophy and Letters, and 41 in science; and since 1836, the large number of 6,881 took Degrees in those Faculties, viz., 2,028 in Law, the same number in Medicine, 1,838 in Philosophy and Letters, and 987 in Science. We have taken these figures from the official publication, l’Annuaire, or University Calendar, for 1865, and from it we also learn, that of 768 students, the total number in the university in the Session 1863-64, only 121 were Students of Theology. There were in the Faculty of Law 204, in that of Medicine 230, in that of Philosophy and Letters 102, and in that of Science 111.