|
St
Patrick's College, Maynooth was founded in 1795 as the National
Seminary for Ireland. In 1896, it was granted a Pontifical Charter
which empowered it to confer degrees in Theology, Philosophy and
Canon Law. In 1910, the courses in the Humanities taught in the
College were recognised for degree purposes by the National University
of Ireland.
In 1966, the first lay students were admitted to the College.
Student numbers grew rapidly, and the range of courses on offer
expanded.
The Universities Act (1997) resulted in the creation of a new
university, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. St. Patrick's
College, which consists of the Pontifical University and the National
Seminary, continues to exist side by side with NUI Maynooth. The
two institutions share the same campus and work in close co-operation
with each other. Some of the pages on this website, and in particular
many of those relating to services for students, are common to
both institutions.
Detailed
information about St. Patrick's College can be found by clicking
a link on the drop-down menu to the top of
this page.
As
it looks forward to continuing prosperity in the 21st century,
Maynooth College is conscious of the part it has played in a venerable
tradition of education. This tradition stretches back to the glories
of Irish monasticism one-and-a half millenia ago, through the
thriving education centres for young Irish people on the continent
of Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries, to the flowering of
indigenous higher education in more recent times.
All
through the Dark Ages, when learning and civilisation on the continent
of Europe were at a low ebb, the heritage of European civilisation
was preserved in the monastic schools of Ireland which attracted
great numbers of students from abroad. The last of these schools
perished with the confiscations that followed Henry VIII in the
16th and 17th centuries. This was when the Penal Laws against
Catholics came into full force and was the historical setting
in which the College at Maynooth was founded.
One
of the most successful steps taken in the great renewal of the
Catholic Church in Europe in the 16th century was the setting
up of seminaries. These were special schools for the training
of the clergy, and ideally there was to be one in every diocese.
No
college or seminary was permitted for Catholics in Ireland under
the Penal Laws that followed the Reformation. Because of that,
a number of small seminaries was established in the Catholic countries
of continental Europe, for the training of priests for Ireland.
Towards the end of the 18th century, these seminaries provided
a total of 480 places. In a very short time, however, during 1792
and 1793, the whole system was destroyed by the French Revolution.
When things settled down, only three of them reopened, in Paris,
Rome and Salamanca. Of these, only the college in Rome is still
training priests for the Irish dioceses. The loss of these seminary
places, built up so painfully from slender resources, was nothing
less than a catastrophe.
At
that time, Ireland was a separate kingdom from Britain, even though
it was under the rule of the British king. The Irish Parliament
was entirely Protestant since no Catholic was eligible for election,
but at the end of the 18th century it was becoming conscious of
the plight of the Catholics who made up the vast majority of the
population. In addition, Britain was at war with revolutionary
France in 1793, and was anxious that no French threat should appear
through the Irish back door. An attempt was made to try to conciliate
both Catholics and Protestants. Consequently, when the Irish Catholic
bishops applied to the Irish Parliament for permission to establish
a seminary in Ireland to replace the seminary places that had
been lost on the continent of Europe, permission was granted.
When the bill of the Irish Parliament, authorising a college,
was presented for signing to King George III, he is said to have
remarked that it gave him more pain than the loss of the American
colonies!
The
bill was signed on 5 June 1795, but no site had yet been chosen.
In fact, the College opened in September 1795 at Maynooth, in
response to the invitation of the Duke of Leinster, Ireland's
premier peer, whose invitation would not and could not be refused.
However, the official foundation date of the College has always
been observed on 20 April 1796, the day when the foundation stone
of the new purpose-built College of Maynooth was laid by the Viceroy.
That evening in Dublin Castle, Irish Catholic bishops sat down
to dine with the Viceroy for the first time since the Reformation.
This favourable attitude towards Maynooth was soon to change radically,
especially after the Rising in 1798 and the Act of Union in 1800,
and the College was lucky to survive its first ten years.
Even
though the College came to be located at Maynooth through a series
of historical accidents, the location none the less evoked very
poignant memories. Maynooth had been the home of the great Norman
family, the FitzGeralds, since 1176.
Their ruined fortress still stands outside the main gates of the
College. At the height of their power in 1518 Garret Óg, Earl
of Kildare, founded the College of St Mary, under the terms of
his father's will. In more propitious times this establishment
might have grown to become Ireland's first university. The power
of the FitzGeralds was destroyed in 1535 when the forces of King
Henry VIII, under Sir William Skeffington, captured the castle
of Maynooth - one of the first occasions on which artillery was
used in Ireland. The College of St Mary headed the list of religious
establishments confiscated in the name of Henry's religious reforms.
The FitzGeralds subsequently rebuilt their fortunes after the
child-heir had been raised a Protestant. Later the head of the
family became Ireland's only Duke, the Duke of Leinster, and it
was his son William Robert FitzGerald who let it be known that
the proposed Catholic college would be welcome at Maynooth, on
the same site and under the same patronage as the FitzGerald's
historic College of St Mary.
 After
its foundation in 1795, the College settled into a small gentleman's
house which is still known by the name of its builder, John Stoyte.
Out of necessity, other buildings had to be added quickly. They
were built cheaply and were not very distinguished, for the annual
grant from the government was small indeed. Nevertheless, the
simplicity of the buildings produced one of the most elegant and
greatest of academic courtyards anywhere, St. Joseph's Square,
which lies at the heart of the present-day College.
A
windfall came in 1845 when the British Government decided that
it had to calm the agitation for the repeal of the Act of Union
mounted by 'The Liberator' Daniel O'Connell.
The Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829 had allowed Catholics to
take their place in Parliament under the same conditions as anybody
else. What had made this possible was the Act of Union of 1800
which had set up one Parliament for the United Kingdom of Great
Britain and Ireland at Westminster. Repeal of the Union raised
the spectre of an Irish Parliament in Dublin with a strong and
possibly preponderant Catholic presence.
The windfall
took the form of an increase in the government grant and a modest
sum toward new buildings. By combining this sum with a substantial
addition from scarce private resources, it became possible to
erect three sides of Maynooth's second quadrangle, the Gothic
square of St Mary, now thought safe to name in memory of the old
college of Maynooth of 1518. Both Pugin, the architect, and the
College authorities were severely criticised for their architectural
insensitivity in constructing a massive Gothic building to dominate
the Georgian-style St Joseph's Square but the result, while lacking
architectural harmony, turned out to be very pleasing and has
given Maynooth the façade by which it is now best known
world wide.
It is one
of the ironies of Irish history that Maynooth College rose to
splendour during the Great Famine, though in the rich agricultural
land of north Kildare the greatest hardship was suffered by people
from less favoured areas trying to make their way to Dublin and
the emigrant ships. In fact, only one person died in the College
during the Great Famine - the President!
The 1845
grant, while generous in comparison with what had gone before,
did not reach far beyond the bare necessities. The building of
an appropriate church for the College still remained in the future.
A beginning was made in 1875, and the work took eighteen years
to complete. The result was the largest and finest Gothic choir
chapel in the world.
The chapel
was used for the main events held to commemorate the College's
centenary in 1895. This was celebrated with a triumphalism typical
of the times, which it would be hard to recapture today. It did,
however, leave one lasting legacy, the authorising of the College
to grant degrees in Theology, Philosophy and Canon Law. From the
beginning, the College courses covered a wide range of the arts
and science subjects, as surviving notebooks and the published
curricula attest, and these were recognised as being of university
standing. However, the formal granting of Pontifical University
status did not come until 1896. The world's pontifical universities
hold their charters from the Holy See, and other well-known pontifical
universities include the Catholic University of America, Salamanca
in Spain and the Gregorian University in Rome.
In 1910,
Maynooth became a recognised college of the National University
of Ireland and was therefore empowered to offer courses for University
degrees. Long before university recognition, however, there had
been distinguished Maynooth scholars in the arts and sciences,
notably Nicholas Callan, Professor of Natural Philosophy from
1826 until his death in 1864. He is now universally recognised
as the inventor of the induction coil, the foundation of all applied
electricity.
When Ireland
was politically partitioned in 1921 the religious institutions
of the country kept their unity. The position of Maynooth as an
all-Ireland institution therefore has considerable cultural
and religious significance in modern Ireland.In
1966, the Trustees took a decision to admit lay students to the
College. Student numbers have grown considerably in the last three-and-a-half
decades, and the range of courses on offer has expanded considerably.
The Universities Act (1997) resulted in the creation of a new
university, National University of Ireland, Maynooth. St. Patrick's
College, which consists of the Pontifical University and the National
Seminary, continues to exist side by side with NUI Maynooth. The
two institutions share the same campus and work in close co-operation
with each other. St.
Patrick's College can look back over two centuries of enormous
contribution to the religious, intellectual and cultural life
of Ireland and the wider international community. It now looks
forward to continuing this contribution in the future and providing
an education for its students - religious and lay, male and female,
young and old, Irish and overseas - that meets the highest standards
of excellence.
|
