Boundless merry-making
Preacher: Revd Dr Donald MacEwan, University Chaplain
Readings: Genesis 17:1-7, 15-16; Mark 8:31-38
We didn’t have a Founder’s Day at my secondary school. After all, Mearns Castle High School had only been built six years before I turned up in first year, climbing what seemed like a hundred steps from the road. Anyway I suppose its founder was Strathclyde Regional Council, and that doesn’t exist any more. And, if truth be told, many students and staff in this University, which does have a Founder’s Day, would be hard-pressed to say when it is, or who it recalls. But here we are, in chapel today to commemorate the Founders and Benefactors of the University of St Andrews. What are we doing here?
Well, we are giving thanks. We’re grateful for what the University means to us, some 610 years after its founding – the place we study and work, make friends and sometimes life-partners, discover truths about inorganic chemistry and ourselves. We’re marking that another year has passed in this extraordinary story of thriving and, for much of the University’s history, surviving. And we’re allowing ourselves to reflect on this institution to which we belong? What’s the purpose of a University? What’s the purpose of this one?
We’re doing that in a service of Christian worship. But not quite like the other services that take place here. It’s special today – there’s not one but two Principals, there’s a mace-bearer, there will be highly formal Prayers of Commemoration; we will follow the Chancellor’s piper to St Mary’s Quad where wreaths will be laid. It’s worship, but fully integrated with this institution as much as with the Christian calendar.
And some people might say – that’s a little strange. Why bring this particular, local, human establishment so front and centre into our worship? Isn’t there a danger we’re slightly pushing the true object of our worship to one side? In the words of Jesus to Peter in our New Testament reading today, are we setting our mind not on divine things but on human things? It’s a genuine danger, and we should be clear that we’re not worshipping the University, or our founders and benefactors. But perhaps, in reflecting deeply on human things, we hope to find the divine there too. For every human being is part of creation, in a unique place and time, with complicated contexts of family and society, geography and language. How can we discern the divine unless we are open to the human? As Norman Reid says in Ever to Excel, the History of the University published to celebrate the 600th anniversary, there was political, religious and academic purpose behind the project to found Scotland’s first University. Let’s see how that worked in practice, looking a little more closely at the founders and benefactors depicted on the cover of the order of service. Residents of Sallies Hall should know this stained glass well, as it’s behind the top table in the dining hall.
The central figure is Archbishop Henry Wardlaw. But let’s go back even before him. Between 1340 and 1410, there were around 400 Scottish graduates, roughly three-quarters of whom studied in France, mainly in Paris. But it became more precarious for Scots to study in Paris – in 1409 the French accepted a different Pope than did the Scots. And so a group of Scottish graduates of Paris founded a school of higher studies in St Andrews, which was a wealthy place, the seat of the greatest bishopric, the grandest cathedral, the most splendid monastery. Within two years, on 28 February 1412 the Bishop, Henry Wardlaw, himself a graduate of Paris, had granted a charter of incorporation and privileges to the young school.
Bishop, King and parliament then petitioned the Pope that this school be a University, able to award decrees. The answer came back – yes! – in the form of six papal documents called bulls, which arrived in St Andrews in February 1414. St Andrews had become the 50th University in Europe, the third in the English-speaking world, and the first in Scotland. The bulls were read in the Priory the following day, followed by the singing of the Te Deum in the Cathedral – and our choir will sing the Te Deum shortly. As the near-contemporary chronicler and St Andrews graduate Walter Bower, records, They spent the rest of this day in boundless merry-making and kept large bonfires burning in the streets and open spaces of the city while drinking wine in celebration. For any attending the DRA Ball last night, or the Madrigal Group ball last night, little perhaps has changed.
Wardlaw became the first Chancellor, and kept a watchful eye on the young University, as its first group of students graduated a month or two later. He later gave land on South Street for a place of teaching, where St Mary’s College is now. And he may have given the Canon Law mace to the University, while he lived or upon his death. Both that mace and one surviving papal bull can be seen in the University’s museum, named after Bishop Wardlaw.
To the right of Wardlaw is Bishop James Kennedy, his successor both as Bishop of St Andrews, and Chancellor of the University. By Kennedy’s day, the University was struggling for resources and cohesion. A graduate of the University, Kennedy decided it needed a new college – easier perhaps than restructuring the existing University. He founded it right where we are, with chapel, tower and domestic buildings where teachers and students would live in community. He formed the college with 13 scholars, a community deliberately modelled on Jesus and his 12 disciples, hence the name, St Salvator’s College, dedicated to the Holy Saviour. We are worshipping in his chapel consecrated in 1460. He donated St Salvator’s Mace, the most ornate of all the University’s maces, in 1461. And his bones are housed below the chapel, with his tomb’s extraordinary ornamentation above.
To the left of Wardlaw is John Hepburn, Prior of St Andrews, who jointly endowed another new college, this time St Leonard’s, in 1512, initially for the education of new members of the Augustinian order. St Leonard’s Chapel, where Compline and other services take place, survives from that time – and the name continues as the identity of our Postgraduate College, celebrating its 50th year this year. Hepburn laid down some intriguing rules for his students: I quote from John Read’s attractive brief History of the University:
The students had to wear cap and gown in the city. They were not allowed to play football, although they were permitted to visit the links in a body once a week – if in the company of a Master. Their playtime was allocated mainly to gardening. Gaudy attire was prohibited, and so was the wearing of swords and dirks. The hair had to be shorn so as not to cover the ears. Continued absence from Chapel led to expulsion from the College…
I fear we’d have very few students making it to graduation today if these were still the rules.
On the far right of the window is Archbishop James Beaton, who founded yet another new college, St Mary’s, in 1537, initially for the education of priests for his diocese. But students didn’t only study Theology – they also learned Law, Medicine and Arts.
And on the far left of the window is Mary Ann Baxter. Pressure had grown in the latter half of the 19th Century for a University in Dundee, Scotland’s largest city then without one. But it only became possible through substantial generosity from the Baxter family in Dundee, involved in the textile business, particularly Mary Ann Baxter. Aged 80 years old, she donated £120,000 for the founding of the college, on the condition that it educated men and women. Her gift enabled University College Dundee to be formed in 1881. St Andrews awarded its degrees, and eight years later the college united with St Andrews, becoming its newest college.
Political, religious and academic purpose: exemplified in these figures, and so it remains. Of course the academic purpose is first and foremost – learning, teaching, researching, discovering, publishing. But we do all this in our political environment, advocating for the common good, seeking to influence policy and practice, on everything from climate change to the importance of being informed by history. Religious purpose? That’s far less prominent today, but we have two medieval chapels for the expression of faith, hope and love; a School of Divinity which continues to ask the deepest questions of existence; active faith societies reflecting students’ significant convictions; and a Chaplaincy which supports students and staff regardless of faith and philosophy of life. And, I would argue, all our study is of God’s creation one way or another, seeking to discover the reality of nature, and the nature of reality, and the wonder of human cultures. Moreover, a University is where young people are shaped during crucial years of their lives, a crucible for the form their commitment, even their discipleship will take.
Which brings us to the words of Jesus is our gospel reading. Teaching his disciples, he shared the way they should follow him: in self-denial, in taking up their cross, in losing their life. It may seem on the surface that none of our founders and benefactors were followers of Jesus in that sense. All had power, all had wealth, all lived very much in the world. But following Jesus doesn’t mean escaping the world. Those who made the university devoted energy, argued over and over for their vision, gave generously of their resources, and brought transformation when it would have been easier to let the status quo be.
And so I am happy to commemorate founders and benefactors, and to have this first, and perhaps last chance, in the unexpected absence of the Moderator, to reflect on these questions. For us today, following Jesus also means engaging with the world, in every day of our lives, in the terrific opportunities for discovery found in these three streets, in pressures from deadlines and difficult people, in the politics of climate change, and conflict from Ukraine to Gaza, in being with people who ask for our help, to listen to them, to see things from their perspective. The academic, the political, the religious – these are inseparable in the life of a student, scholar, master or doctor who follows Jesus. It means being someone of integrity, following Christ in the complexity of life, navigating its rocks and its shallows, with faith, with love, with hope and sometimes, in boundless merry-making.
END