Sign in with Facebook
Van Eyck cooking ware, Leuven
Leuven Great Beguinage
De Kansel Leuven, mussels in garlic
University Library - LeuvenCatholic University city from 1425
University of Louvain can claim the title of the "first University in the Netherlands", being founded in 1425 by Pope Martin V. It is the oldest Catholic university in the world still in existence.
Jan, our guide at University Library, talked about some 28.000 students, in many disciplines. Since its debut, it has attracted top-level researchers. They contributed a lot into anatomy, chemsitry, all kinds of study.
Louvain theologists had some influence on the then Catholic world. The Popes used to seek for advice here to know about works to be accepted and printed. Yet, controversial Cornelius Jansenius (1585-1638) is a Louvain Theology University product and Ypers archbishop.
What was he wrote already? A whole thesis on Grace and free will: posthumously published "Augustinus" (1640). Jansen believed in absolute predestination: humans are, for him, "incapable of doing good without God's unsollicited grace and only a chosen few are believed to receive Salvation". Smells like Calvinism. Still, Jansen, when attacked by Jesuits and popes, claimed to be tied to Rome.
Jansenism was the most divisive issue within the Roman Catholic church between the Protestant Reformation and the French Revolution (from a French point of view). It was "raised" in France quite after the release of the treatise (Jansen couldn't see the evolvement of Jansenism).
At that time (18 century), it was a Church scandal. It didn't raise unnoticed by Royal French government either. Jansen, and his "followers", had the backing of Catholic philosopher and mathematician Blaise Pascal, an ante-Jesuit hardliner. After some longlasting success (till the persecution of French jesuits), the current declined end 18 century.
Jansen was not the only character from this University. I knew about the "Jansen- gate", from an interesting French lesson in my secondary school :) I just discovered that Jansen was based here. That made me wrote it. The tips sometimes leave room for reflection, so do travelling. By the way, the University was founded as University of Louvain. Yet, when it was fashionable to categorize insitutions (19 century), it was an obvious choice that the University was a Catholic one.
More about the university history, check http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/english/about/history.htm
Writing this tip, I just realized that I've been always into Catholic educational system. First, in a French-Swiss nuns' school (primary) then within a Canadian fr?res' school (secondary). Well, those schools are all Malagasy but run by/ under influence of those foreign religious categories.
Then in Belgium, I started with a Jesuit school in Brussels to study Maths for a year, then switched to International trade in a Catholic influenced school, then a Facult?s Universitaires Catholiques de Mons (for my B. Sc.) and finally Universit? Catholique de Louvain (for some specialized studies that I left, after some months, for lacking interest in the stuff. Ooh! I found a nice job too so the choice was clear).
Yeah! all of them were catholic.. Quite strange for a rouhgly Anglican-raised-girl who turns out to be a Calvinism-influenced-adult (by conviction). I am surprised realizing this Catholic connection. Oh well! It was not that bad :)) I learnt about tolerance, for having been, for years, the one (or one of the two) Anglican student in my class.
