Leiden University: Its Foundation and Early Operation

Leiden University emerged during the Dutch revolt against Spanish rule. After the siege was lifted in 1574, the city still faced reconstruction, but William of Orange was eager to establish an educational institution. In his letter of December 28 to the States of Holland and Zeeland, he linked the training of people versed in religion, the liberal arts, and the sciences with the maintenance of political order. The university was intended both to train people for the church and to support local government.

On February 8, 1575, the opening celebrations began with a service in St. Peter’s Church, followed by a procession through the city and addresses in St. Barbara’s Convent on the Rapenburg, the university’s first premises. Although the founding charter bears the date January 6, Otterspeer’s history notes that the burgomasters were still asking William for the document on February 11: it was produced later and backdated. The date on the charter must therefore be distinguished from the actual opening.

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Early governance centered on two bodies. The academic senate comprised the rector, professors, and, nominally, doctors resident in the city, although the latter participated little in practice. The board of curators and burgomasters consisted of three representatives of the States of Holland and Leiden’s four burgomasters. Academic matters were thus closely connected with provincial finances and municipal administration, rather than managed entirely by a single founder.

The two governing bodies left different kinds of records. Academic meetings used Latin, while resolutions of the curators and burgomasters were mainly in Dutch; budget proposals, letters, declarations, and statutes were preserved as appendices. These materials make it possible to trace faculty appointments and efforts to secure funds in detail, as well as tensions between the university, the church, and local authorities. Slaman emphasizes that early references to freedom concerned regional political and religious order above all, and did not mean individual academic freedom in today’s sense.

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On June 2, 1575, the initial budget set expenditure at 5,000 guilders, with planned chairs in theology, law, medicine, mathematics, languages, and other subjects. Funding was to come from the rents and revenues of former monasteries, but previous administrators were reluctant to hand over their account books. Existing debts and maintenance payments to members of the religious houses also absorbed income. A statement for 1576 recorded income of 4,981 guilders and expenditure of 4,728, leaving little for the university; unpaid faculty salaries became a recurring problem.

Storms’s study of estate maps shows that in 1581 the States assigned the lands of Egmond Abbey and several religious houses outside the city to support the university. Some land was sold in 1591–1592, and the proceeds supported the States College, providing bursaries and accommodation for poor theology students, with investment income sustaining its finances. Maps, rent collection, and land transactions were consequently part of the history of running the university, rather than a background remote from the classroom.

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The early university had too few teachers, and its curriculum depended on the scholars it could recruit. The physician Gerard de Bont combined municipal medical duties with university teaching in medicine, also covering mathematics and astronomy. Cornelis de Groot taught across law, ethics, and mathematics. Disciplinary divisions were far less settled than those of modern faculties, and appointing a teacher versed in several subjects often met several educational needs at once.

A timetable drawn up in 1578 proposed lectures from Monday to Thursday, with Friday and Saturday assigned to speeches, exercises, and courses taught by extraordinary professors. That year, the compulsory religious oath for students was abolished, reducing barriers to admission for people of different beliefs. Enrolment subsequently increased, but the registers also included ministers and other learned people seeking university privileges. Not everyone registered can be treated as the equivalent of a modern full-time degree student.

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In 1581, the university moved into the former church of the White Nuns and gradually acquired more stable teaching accommodation. Important sources of its books included a polyglot Bible donated by William, the bequest of the theology professor Holmannus, and purchases from the Greek scholar Vulcanius. On October 31, 1587, the vaulted room in the Academy Building formally opened as a library, twelve years after the university itself.

In 1595, the collection moved across the street to the Faliede Bagijnkerk, and acting librarian Petrus Bertius compiled the printed catalogue Nomenclator. From this catalogue, Otterspeer counted 442 titles in approximately 525 volumes. Large-format books were chained to reading desks and cabinets, arranged by subjects such as theology, law, medicine, and history. Book purchases, binding, space, and cataloguing jointly determined whether the texts could actually be used for study.

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Medical teaching also required the identification of living plants. Preparations for a botanical garden involved years of searching for a site and recruiting staff. After Carolus Clusius accepted an invitation, the Delft apothecary Dirck Cluyt undertook much of the planting and maintenance and brought plants from his own garden. By autumn 1594, the garden behind the Academy Building was complete. Plants were grown in separate areas, while cold-sensitive varieties had to overwinter in sheds heated by stoves.

The garden did not grow medicinal herbs alone. Clusius’s contacts across regions and Cluyt’s practical work brought plants from diverse origins into a space where they could be compared. As with the development of the library, sustained exchanges of knowledge depended on land, staff, heating, and everyday management. Leiden’s early development was a process in which wartime educational objectives gradually became practical conditions for teaching through the organization of finances, admissions, and collections.

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