sympathy for the faithful priesthood of their common country, still the religious position of Belgium at that moment was most unsatisfactory.
Mgr. Van Bommel, Bishop of Liege, tells us, that “in 1838 there were in Belgium about 100,000 pseudo-liberals, deadly enemies of the Catholic Church, and most powerful”. “And it is not hard”, continues the learned prelate, “to explain the fact. For more than forty years all who are destined to occupy positions of importance were, in general, brought up without religious principles. Under the late government the religious element had no part in university teaching; a part of this teaching had even been entrusted to men known to profess anti-religious principles. The wicked passions of men, dangerous occasions, bad example, an immoral theatre, and above all, a literature steeped in wickedness or hostile to Catholic principles;—in fine, the repeated declarations of men who, for party purposes, told the rising generation that to it alone should henceforth belong the rights of government—all resulted in raising this young generation to such a pitch of pride, independence, and licentiousness, that the sweet yoke of faith and the practices of religion became insupportable. Thus was there formed, outside of the masses, who remained faithful, a multitude of men of position and of influence, who know the religion of their fathers only from the bad books where it is attacked, from the stage where it is insulted, from the assemblies where its sacred ministers are ridiculed, from the newspapers where it is calumniated”.
Such was the religious position of Belgium when the Belgian episcopacy determined to found the Catholic University of Louvain. Public functionaries, barristers, physicians, merchants, manufacturers, nearly all the men of influence in the country, were infected with that false liberalism which, as Mgr. de Ram himself declared in November, 1830, made many who cried out most loudly for liberty, intend to use it only for self-aggrandisement and at the expense of Catholicity.
The prospect was uninviting; but the bishops were not to be daunted, although in February, 1834, on their publishing their decree establishing the university, there were disturbances in Brussels and in nearly all the episcopal cities. In December, 1833, they had obtained from Pope Gregory XVI. the sanction of their project and an apostolic brief for erecting the new university; and in June, 1834, they published in another meeting the general statutes for its government. On the same occasion the assembled prelates decided that the youthful M. de Ram—he had not yet completed his thirtieth year, and was then a canon of the Metropolitan Church of Mechlin, and professor of canon law and church history in the seminary of that diocese—should
occupy a distinguished place in the new institution. He was formally appointed, within the next few months, head of the Catholic University of Belgium, with the title which in past ages appertained to that office—Rector Magnificus, and in that capacity assisted at the solemn inauguration of the university in the Cathedral of Mechlin, on the 4th of November of the same year, 1834.
No sooner was he appointed to his high office than he set about finding professors for the faculties of theology, of science, and of philosophy and letters, which alone were to be opened the first year in the temporary home of the university in Mechlin. All the priests he selected were Belgians. Of the lay professors one was a Belgian, the rest were Dutch, French, Germans, and Danes. The following year the university was transferred to Louvain, and we have the formal act of agreement entered into in October, 1835, between Monsignor de Ram and the burgomaster of the city of Louvain, and afterwards solemnly approved by the bishops and municipality, by which on the one hand the bishops undertake to establish a full university course, and on the other hand the town council “undertakes to give gratuitously to the University the free use of the buildings des Halles (the great university lecture halls and other public buildings) du Collège du Pape, du Collège des Vétérans, du Collège du Roi, du Collège des Prémontres, du Collège de Saint Esprit, et du Theâtre Anatomique”. Mgr. de Ram had now to organise the faculties of law and of medicine, and here his difficulties increased. Where was he to find professors in whom faith and true Catholic principles were united with that profound and varied learning which would fit them to occupy chairs in the new university? When we consider the deplorable state of Catholic education among the cultivated classes in Belgium at the time we speak of, these difficulties can be better imagined than expressed; and from these difficulties we may form a judgment of the great prudence and consummate wisdom through which Monsignor de Ram raised the institution to that proud eminence which is now enjoyed by her professors among the learned bodies of Europe. In all her faculties there are among the professors not only men of extraordinary learning, who unite clearness and method with depth and extent of knowledge, but also models of every Christian virtue; so that with good reason does F. de Buck conclude this portion of his notice of the illustrious prelate by exclaiming: “Yes, the professorial staff brought together by Mgr. de Ram, and which can henceforth be easily recruited from amongst the students of the university itself, is the chief glory, the undying crown of his rectorship”. But to understand the relations of Mgr. de Ram with the professorial staff of the university, we
should read the funeral discourses which he pronounced at the obsequies of those who preceded him in death. They are published in the University Calendars from 1838 to this time, and clearly prove the esteem and affection he bore to all who were united with him in the great work of his life, the care with which he selected them, the zeal with which he promoted the honour and happiness of each, and the sincere joy with which he was filled when well-merited success crowned their literary or scientific labours.
His devotedness to the students of the University was not less than his affectionate esteem for the professors. By every means in his power he sought to promote their spiritual, their intellectual, and even their temporal interests. And this anxiety for the welfare of the youth entrusted to him was not confined to the time they spent in the university; it followed them into after life. “His fatherly solicitude”, says M. Prosper Staes, of the Brussels bar, formerly a student of the university, “his fatherly solicitude was not limited to the youths who gathered round him each year for the purposes of study. It followed the students in their several careers through life. His old students always found in their rector one to encourage them, to counsel them, to gather them about him, as a father gathers his children, to rejoice in their success—in a word, to make them his joy and his delight”.
His feelings towards the students, and theirs to him, as well as the sentiments with which he unceasingly sought to fill their minds, can well be gathered from the touching words pronounced over his lifeless remains by one of the law students of the university, M. Van Tomme:
“To-day on this solemn occasion, the remembrance of the twenty-fifth anniversary of our university, fills us with sentiments of deep emotion. Surrounded by the multitude of your students whom you loved so much, happy in being one heart and one soul with them, you then said: Ever remember our watch-word: God and our country; this word epitomizes our duties and our principles. Yes; we have taken to ourselves this word as our inheritance. It will be our comfort in this moment of sorrow, as in those days of joy it excited our enthusiasm. Wherever our students are called by duty, this noble thought will always be their motto, as it is to-day their hope.