Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen

Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen (5 September 1796–1862) was a Belgian lawyer, founder of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles, and liberal politician. He was Chairman of the Belgian House of Parliament (of 28 June 1848 up to 28 September 1852 and of 17 December 1857 up to June 1859)

Family history

He was born in Brussels, where he lived his whole life, and was descended from a respectable Roman Catholic family of especially lawyers from the region of Haacht. The Verhaegens had an academic background; two of them had been principals of the University of Leuven. Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen, his godfather, had been the last headmaster of the old Universite Catholique de Louvain, before it was closed by the French revolutionary troops. The family went on to become part of the Catholic elite of Belgium, and were raised to the nobility, which he himself had always refused. They married into families such as Carton de Wiart and Wouters d'Oplinter.

His best-known descendant is possibly his grandson Arthur Verhaegen, architect (especially of Catholic school buildings), Conservative-Catholic member of parliament, and founder of the antisocialist worker association and the Catholic daily "Het Volk". A Father Verhaegen was confessor of king Baudouin I of Belgium.

Life

Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen grew up when Belgium was incorporated into France. The influence of the French revolution was large, certainly in his birth city Brussels, where his father had established himself as a lawyer. He went to school at the "Lycée impérial", and afterwards went on to study law at the "Ecole de Droit", which had been founded by Napoleon I of France in Brussels. When in 1815, French predominance had been replaced by Dutch, through the union with the Netherlands under king William I of the Netherlands, he became a lawyer himself. Remarkably, the first large case in which shone the young lawyer was the case of three priests who were accused of disobedience to the regime of Williamm I. His legal practice made him a wealthy man.

An important step in its life was undoubtedly his decision to join freemasonry. In 1823, he was inaugurated in the Brussels "Lodge L'Espérance", which was presided by the Prince of Orange. His relations with the prince possibly made that he was appointed as burgomaster of Watermaal-Bosvoorde, then still a very rural municipality to the "Zoniën forest".

He became an Orangist, a partisan of the more or less enlightened regime of William I (which strongly promoted public education). With the Belgian revolution of 1830 he did not want to be involved. As a burgomaster he ensured that it remained calm in Bosvoorde. After the Belgian state was definitively founded, he understood that the Orangism had no future and he chose the side of the Belgian liberals. In 1833, he was Master of the Masonic lodge "Les Amis Philanthropes" in Brussels. It was his intention to let Belgian Freemasonry, with its progressive ideas, play a more leading role in Belgian politics. However, this stance lead to opposition within the Grand Orient itself as well as from Masonic organizations abroad. Verhaegen was Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Belgium from 1854-1862 [ [http://www.mason.be/en/ver.htm Verhaegen"] Accessed 21 August 2008.]

From this moment on Verhaegen started the development of a real Liberal Party. The first liberal electoral association in Belgium, the "Alliance" of Brussels, grew out of his lodge "Les Amis Philantropes". Verhaegen himself, from 1836 up to 1859, was a liberal member of parliament for Brussels. Twice (1848-1852 and 1857-1859) he was Chairman of the House of Parliament. Doctrinary and anticlerical, the liberals then formed the political left wing of Belgian politics, Verhaegen himself in those days had pronounced progressive ideas. As a rich bourgeois he was real "doctrinary" liberal. A convinced monarchist, he was opposed to revolutions and no proponent of general voting rights. He was opposed against a general learning duty, because he feared that especially the catholic schools would profit of it. This however does not mean that he was insensitive for the needs of the lower classes. He was opposed against taxes, especially those which would affect the poor. As a "child" of the Enlightenment, he was convinced that the progress of humanity would eventually lead to a general prosperity. As a perfectly bilingual inhabitant of Brussels, Verhaegen, who had frequently pleaded under the Dutch rule in Dutch, considered himself a Fleming. Although he preferred French and found it normal that this was the official language of Belgium, he thought that the "Flemish" language had to be treated equitably, also in education. He was not an atheist, but he was anticlerical in the strict meaning of the word: someone who is opposed against the influence of the clergy on society. This strong antagonist of the catholic party called himself in public a catholic, even a catholic better than his clerical antagonists. He regularly attended mass, to the despair of his political enemies.

He donated an important amount of money for the construction of a church in Bosvoorde. He was convinced that religion was very important for people (most of the Belgian liberals and freemasons of that time were in some degree religious, even if they had to break with the catholic church). But the place of the priest was for him in the church, not in public life and politics. He denounced vehemently the influence of the church on the state and science, which in his opinion had an oppressing and reactionary influence on progress, and even was in his opinion disadvantageous for true religion It was a time in which Pope Pius IX condemned the Belgian constitutional freedoms, also the freedom of opinion expression, as "misleadings" (Quanta Cura issued on 8 December, 1864 - against modernism).

Verhaegen, who in spite of everything remained a religious man, eventually refused any ecclesiastical assistance when in 1862, he felt he was dying. To the great concern of his son and pious daughter-in-law, he asked some prominent freemasons to keep watch that no priest would approach his deathbed. He also refused an ecclesiastical funeral service. A civil burial was at that time something very unusual, certainly for prominent personalities such as Verhaegen. For the Catholics it was a scandal. A Catholic newspaper wrote that it was "the intention of liberalism to use Belgium as the scenery for blasphemous burial ceremonies".

Despite the condemnation by church authorities, thousands of people attended his funeral service: politicians, freemasons from Belgium and abroad in full Masonic dress, professors, students and alumni of the ULB, whereas the brass band the of socialist "Freethinker lague" played the music. His family stayed away form his funeral service, and they gave him a very sober sepulchral monument, with a cross and typical catholic oranaments. Twenty years after its dead the lodge "Les Amis Philantropes" erected in front of his grave a statue of Verhaegen which carries the hallmarks of freemasonry. In 1865, his admirers had already revealed a large statue of him. It stands now for the main building of the ULB at the Rooseveltlaan in Brussels.

Foundation of a university

It is within the social and political situation of Belgium in those days, the foundation of the Universite Libre de Bruxelles must be seen. Already in 1831, a group of intellectuals pointed to the advantages of a university in the capital. One of them was Auguste Baron, but also the astronomer and statistician Adolphe Quetelet.

The Belgian bishops founded a new Catholic University in Mechelen, in order to regain the influence on higher education which was lost under French and Dutch rule. The government was to close the State University of Leuven, which was founded by Willem I (as a replacement of the old University which had been closed under French rule) and to let it reopen as a Catholic University. The anticlericals considered this as a declaration of war. Auguste Baron, who had become a member of the Les Amis Philantropes, could convince Verhaegen for his idea and on 24 June 1834 Verhaegen presented the plan in a speech during a banquet of his Lodge:

"If we speak about the light of the century, we let thus everything to do promte it, but also, in the first place, protect it because our enemies are ready to extinguish it . We must rise against fanaticism, we must attack it frontally and with eradicate it to its roots. Compared with the schools which they wish to set up, we must place a pure morally justified education, about which we will keep the control. (...) A free university should form the counterbalance for the so-called catholic university."

The speech caused so much enthusiasm that immediately money was collected for the plan. Already on 20 November of that year the Free University of Brussels (now split into Université Libre de Bruxelles and Vrije Universiteit Brussel) was created in the Gothic room of the town-hall of Brussels. Although he was not the real "inventor" of a university in Brussels, he was to be its motivating force. He was first an ordinary member of the Council of management, but already rapidly he took as inspector-administrator the control of the university. Certainly the first fifteen years of its existence the Free University of Brussels had it particularly difficult financially. At that time, the state provided no subsidies, even no study grants. Besides the college money and some support of the city of Brussels its income came from grants. Some professors, such as Verhaegen himself, received no income for their teaching. In those years Verhaegen organized fundraising events, as a result of which the university could consolidate its position. Above all he gave the university an ideal, a mission statement which he summarized in a declaration which he had written himself. He launched it in 1854, in a speech to king Leopold I of Belgium:

"Under these freedoms, which were refused or opposed, there is one, freedom of research, which places the university of Brussels above all other, which is the essence of sciences. Being able to examine what is of great value for mankind and for society, free from each politically and religious authority (...) to reach towards the sources of truth and the good, (...) see here your Majesty, the role of our university, its reason for existence."

Free research was for him "the independence of the human reason" but and he realized already too well that this reason came in collision with religious dogmas:

"I say that it is impossible to provide higher education without more or less touching to the dogmas of this or that church."

aint Verhaegen

Each year since 1888, students of both the Université Libre de Bruxelles and the Vrije Universiteit Brussel, which officially separated from ULB in 1970) celebrate his founding of the university on November 20. The day is named "St V," short for "Saint Verhagen," even though he was not a saint.

ources

* [http://www.degrootstebelg.be/dgb_master/100belgen/dgb_verhaegen_pierretheodore/index.shtml Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen]
* [http://www.vub.ac.be/home/historiek.html#verhaegen Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen]
* "Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen (1796-1862)", VUBPRESS, 1996