From the Academy

St. Andrews

This summer I shall be returning, for a time, to the ancient little University of St. Andrews, on the German Ocean. This is Scotland’s senior university, founded in 1415. The proximate cause of the establishment of St. Andrews was the defense of the Old Profession against the Lollard heresy. Near the close of the succeeding century, of course, the university— with all Scotland—gave into the doctrines of John Knox; but it has remained unto this age, nevertheless, what its enemies call “a stronghold of romantic Toryism,” risking its existence for the Stuarts in their time, and hostile to educational levelling in our century. So far as I know, I am the only living American who holds the senior degree of St. Andrews, doctor of letters; and I feel quite sure that I am the only person who has been capped with the cap of John Knox (literally) and hooded with the hood of St. Ignatius Loyola—this last, I add, not at St. Andrews but at Boston College.

RK

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Russell Kirk

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Alexis de Tocqueville

St. Andrews

This summer I shall be returning, for a time, to the ancient little University of St. Andrews, on the German Ocean. This is Scotland’s senior university, founded in 1415. The proximate cause of the establishment of St. Andrews was the defense of the Old Profession against the Lollard heresy. Near the close of the succeeding century, of course, the university— with all Scotland—gave into the doctrines of John Knox; but it has remained unto this age, nevertheless, what its enemies call “a stronghold of romantic Toryism,” risking its existence for the Stuarts in their time, and hostile to educational levelling in our century. So far as I know, I am the only living American who holds the senior degree of St. Andrews, doctor of letters; and I feel quite sure that I am the only person who has been capped with the cap of John Knox (literally) and hooded with the hood of St. Ignatius Loyola—this last, I add, not at St. Andrews but at Boston College.