Welcome, students, faculty, staff, members of the Board of Trustees, alumni, parents and friends of Saint Michael's College.
This is a special day. We officially begin our celebrations for the Centennial of Saint Michael's College. It is a momentous occasion—one that is deserving of our interest, enthusiasm and reflection. In the course of the next eighteen months, we will have multiple opportunities to describe and discuss our past, present and future. Many of us will join in the efforts to highlight the achievements and aspirations of Saint Michael's College, and we will do so in every corner of our community, in every department of the academy, in every unit of our organization.
The Centennial celebration must be solidly grounded in the identification and exploration of our historical roots. It presents an ideal moment for a candid and honest appraisal of where we are and what we have become. Above all, and most importantly, our celebration will encompass substantive and collective imagining about our future.
Today, I would like to focus most of my remarks on Saint Michael’s historical past, and I would like to address them primarily to our students because they are the most transient population here, along with presidents. Each incoming class succeeds the graduating seniors, who take the fruits of their college learning experience from faculty into the world and prove as alumni how well we have fulfilled our mission and goals.
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One hundred years ago, Saint Michael’s College began in a rather small, yet meaningful, fashion. However, that particular date is but one point in a much longer and broader history of the institution that traces back into the Middle Ages, to the moment when a young teenage boy crossed the channel from England to France, traveling abroad to study at the Sorbonne in Paris. Under the strong and forceful direction of his mother, Edmund Rich of Abingdon (outside of Oxford) was seeking a liberal arts education that was considered to be the very best available at the time. In his pursuit of an excellent education, Edmund is therefore a most appropriate guidepost and model for students in an institution of higher learning like Saint Michael's College. He could be considered the first patron saint of study-abroad programs.
When Edmund later completed his studies in Oxford, he was the first to gain a doctorate in theology and subsequently embarked on a career that would lead him into the religious life. He also established a residential setting for young students in Oxford—St. Edmund’s Hall—which still survives today as the second oldest college in that beautiful university town. He believed, as do we, that to be part of a community of learners was essential to a liberal education.
Edmund served as a parish priest in the small town of Calne and was treasurer when the large and magnificent Salisbury cathedral was being built. In the latter role, he learned the rules of business and demonstrated that a solid liberal arts education of Parisian quality was equal to and complemented by the rough-and-tumble work of managing a major construction project. He also showed that he could be a man of the world as well as taking care of the poor parishioners in a small village north of Salisbury. He was a man devoted to the Church and to learning.
Thus, it is not surprising that Edmund was finally named Archbishop of Canterbury by Pope Gregory in 1233, succeeding a long line of extraordinary men in that position, including Thomas Becket as well as Stephen Langdon. Eventually, he would share with them not only the honor and challenges of serving as Archbishop, but would, like them, spend some time in exile in France and Burgundy and find refuge in the Abbey of Pontigny, a large Cistercian foundation created by Bernard of Clairvaux and one of the preeminent centers of that movement.
When Edmund died in Soisy, France, in 1240, on one of his trips to Rome, his body was brought to Pontigny to be buried. Shortly thereafter, he was declared a saint and became the focus of centuries of devotion on the part of the local Burgundian population.
If we now jump ahead to the middle of the 19th century, the French countryside is still affected by the Revolution, and at the same time, a number of efforts are undertaken by church groups to re-evangelize France, particularly the rural areas. Among the courageous men who undertook these initiatives was Fr. Jean Baptiste Muard, a self-styled reformer who created a small society with a band of priests, installed them in the old abbey at Pontigny, and began to explore the practice of a religious life and pastoral ministry.
As part of their work, Fr. Muard and his colleagues restored the abbey. When he eventually left to create the very strict monastery, according to the rules of Saint Benedict, at La Pierre qui Vire in the forest of Morvan, he was succeeded by Fr. Pierre Boyer. Under Fr. Boyer’s leadership, the young order developed into a group of enthusiastic evangelizing priests who performed multiple duties, including auxiliary services in Burgundy, a ministry to parishioners on Mont-Saint-Michel and responsibility for small schools in Château-Gontier and Laval.
In the second half of the 19th century, these auxiliary priests of the Society of the Fathers and Brothers of St. Edmund, the Oblates of the Sacred Heart of Jesus and the Immaculate Heart of Mary, were simply referred to as the Priests of Pontigny. Early on, they had adopted the Archbishop of Canterbury, Saint Edmund—scholar, pastor to the poor and teacher—as their patron saint. However, it is only in the latter part of the 20th century that the Society of Saint Edmund became the official name, in recognition of the fact that the priests and brothers, particularly in America, were known as the Edmundites.
Returning to France, in the 1880s and 1890s, the country was embroiled in many struggles between Church and state, such as the famous Dreyfus affair. In that context, a number of religious left France to explore other venues for their ministry, and some Edmundites settled in northern Vermont, most likely because of the presence of a French-speaking population. They started their work in Keeler’s Bay in Swanton, but in 1903, were invited by Bishop John Michaud of Burlington to start a “college,” actually a small school for boys, ages 12 to 24.
Among the Edmundite priests still in Europe at this time was Fr. Amand Prével. Upon his ordination, he had been assigned to Mont-Saint-Michel for his first pastoral ministry, where he developed an affection for and devotion to the Archangel. When he was chosen to become the first superior of the school in Château-Gontier in the mid-1980s, he named it Collège Saint Michael.
So, the Vermont community invited Fr. Prével to come to the United States and become the first president of their new institution. It is not surprising that they embraced the name of Saint Michael once again. Thus, Saint Michael’s Institute was born and began operations in the fall of 1904, with a few priests, some lay instructors and about three dozen students. That was our beginning.
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This is how Saint Michael’s began and how we have developed over the ensuing 100 years. The history of Saint Michael’s College is rich with myriad features of which we can still be proud and for which we can find contemporary equivalents. Indeed, today, many of those very same characteristics are reflected in the rich experience of higher learning that we offer.
Clearly, of greatest importance are the religious roots of our institution. When we trace our origins back to Saint Edmund, we delve into the intellectual and cultural traditions of medieval Christendom. We connect with the historic universities of Paris and Oxford, and the great learning of Western civilization.
Through the story of the Society of Saint Edmund, we are linked with Pontigny and the wonderful mystery of monastic traditions, such as the Cistercians. We also find our impetus in French history—the Revolution and re-evangelization of France. These threads show our French and English heritage, and we should never forget that our founding fathers created an institution that reflected both in its learning and aspirations. But, there is more.
Saint Michael’s College is an immigrant institution. Our founding fathers came to the New World as refugees, looking for the freedom to express their religious beliefs and for a new start in the life of their Society. This is a very significant aspect of our history—Saint Michael’s was created as an institution of higher learning in direct consequence of the simple desire to be free.
Our College began as a small, humble and regional school, one that was intended to serve a very specific population of young men in this area. The Edmundite priests inculcated in the first generation of students a desire for learning, faithfulness to the Church and the drive to realize the full promise of this new land.
We should also carefully consider the original programs of learning at Saint Michael’s College, which show a strong emphasis on the classics and the humanities—and the long tradition they represent—in conjunction with “commercial studies,” les études commerciales, as they were called. Thus, our founders offered contemporary pre-professional education integrated with the study of liberal arts from the outset. This thread in the fabric of our history must continue into our second century.
They created a program that was bilingual. Although that aspect of our history disappeared in the 1920s, it is still reflected in the international mix of our staff and faculty today.
We are a liberal arts institution in the manner intended by our founding fathers. We are equally committed to maintaining educational programs that have a direct relationship to the world of work as we are to continuing the study of the humanities as the core of a liberal arts education. The recent recognition of our faculty in being granted a Phi Beta Kappa chapter attests to the high standards we have achieved at Saint Michael’s in that regard.
We remain modest in size—considerably larger than 100 years ago, but still relatively small compared to the large universities that are being created through increased enrollments and the merger of institutions. Our size is important because it is a key factor in helping us provide the residential life that may be the hallmark our students’ experience here.
From the start, Saint Michael's was a residential institution—students lived together in community. This may very well be the most important characteristic of our College because the personal relationships that develop between students and faculty are central to the excellence of a Saint Michael's education.
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There is no doubt that at the start of the second century, our College very much reflects our beginnings.
We are Catholic—not as early colleges in the past century were formed, “in defense of the faith,” but as a forward-looking, embracing, autonomous institution of higher learning, where people of all faiths and no faith are welcome in the pursuit of truth and knowledge, with great respect for life and the differences among us. While the profile of our faculty and students has changed over the past century, the core values they represent are the same.
We are a liberal arts institution where we simultaneously offer professional education next to the liberal arts and sciences programs which are always preparatory to the professions.
We are residential—in very much the way the founding fathers expected us to be—where learning in the classroom is always complemented by the entire range of co-curricular and extra-curricular activities that guarantee a holistic education.
And while the early Edmundites started in Vermont, we can truly claim, one hundred years later, to be rooted in Vermont. This environment has become part of the fabric of our institution—an appreciation of and fondness for nature as well as deep respect for independent thinking.
Finally, at this time in the history of Saint Michael’s College, it remains all of our responsibility first of all to maintain and feed a restless desire for excellence. Ignatius of Loyola argued that a real education liberates us “from the perpendicular, from straight lines, blocks, boxes and binds of thought.” This can inspire a good liberal education, where we shall never humble reality to precept; where faith and reason will argue all the inexhaustible mysteries; where we learn that everything human is worth the struggle to enjoy and to understand; and where we discover that nature is a precious resource, equally deserving of our study as of our care. Such an education gives us the courage to look into the future—which to a degree will always be uncertain—and it will give us the strength to imagine what is possible.
We should not dwell too much on what we are, but should rather focus on what we ought to be. At Saint Michael's College, we will continue what the Edmundites have begun—their belief that the interaction between a student and professor is indeed a treasure, a rare and precious commodity. Those of us who surround the teachers and students will support the process of building those relationships should always keep in mind that the value of the encounter between learner and teacher is impossible to measure.
In the course of this celebration, we will recognize that we have a story that is worth telling, and we will remain committed to igniting a passion for learning, to helping our students to gain intellectual habits that will last a lifetime. Hopefully, we will grow fonder and firmer in our traditions so that we are prepared to and capable of going beyond them to escape the dangers of parochialism.
That is our identity, and our identity as Saint Michael’s College will carry us into our second century.