Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen

Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen
President of the Chamber of Representatives
In office 17 December 1857 – 19 July 1859
Preceded by	Josse Joseph de Lehaye
Succeeded by	Auguste Orts
In office 28 June 1848 – 3 April 1852
Preceded by	Charles Liedts
Succeeded by	Noël Delfosse
Personal details
Born	(1796-09-05)5 September 1796 Brussels, France (now Belgium)
Died	8 December 1862(1862-12-08) (aged 66) Brussels, Belgium
Political party	Liberal Party

Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen (5 September 1796 – 8 December 1862) was a

(from 28 June 1848 to 28 September 1852 and from 17 December 1857 to June 1859).

Family history

He was born in

, before it was closed by the French revolutionary troops. The family went on to become part of the Catholic elite of Belgium, and was raised to the nobility, which Pierre-Théodore always refused. They married into families such as Carton de Wiart and Wouters d'Oplinter.

His best-known descendant is possibly his grandson

for 20 years. Another descendant is Marie-Pierre, Countess Bernard d'Udekem d'Acoz, cousin by marriage to Queen Mathilde 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

, he became a lawyer himself. His first large case involved three priests accused of disobedience to the regime of William 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, presided by the Prince of Orange. His relations with the prince led to an appointment as burgomaster of Watermael-Boitsfort, then still a very rural municipality in the Sonian Forest.

He became an Orangist, a partisan of the more or less enlightened regime of William I (which strongly promoted public education). With the

From this moment on Verhaegen started the development of a real

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 better Catholic 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).

Still, Verhaegen remained a religious man, attending mass on Sunday and financing church constructions in Brussels.

Thousands of people attended his funeral service—politicians, professors, students and alumni of the ULB. Twenty years after his death, the lodge Les Amis Philantropes erected a statue of Verhaegen in front of his grave. In 1865, his admirers erected a statue of him, which now stands by the main building of the ULB at avenue Franklin Roosevelt in Brussels.

Foundation of a university

Université Libre de Bruxelles

', campus in Solbosch

It is within the social and political situation of Belgium in those days, the foundation of the Université 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

to regain the influence on higher education they lost under French and Dutch rule. The government was to close the State University of Leuven, which Willem I founded as a replacement for the old University that closed under French rule, and 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 promote 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 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

:

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.

Celebrations

Verhaegen's founding of the Free University of Brussels is celebrated annually by students of both successor institutions with an event called

/Sint-Verhaegen. The formal celebration consists in faculty honouring Verhaegen by placing flowers at his tomb. Concurrently, thousands of students from both universities have a daylong party and procession through downtown Brussels.

References

Sources

• Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen
• Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen
• Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen (1796–1862), VUBPRESS, 1996

External links

• Pierre-Théodore Verhaegen in ODIS - Online Database for Intermediary Structures
• Archives of family Lammens-Verhaegen in ODIS - Online Database for Intermediary Structures

Political offices
Preceded by Charles Liedts	President of the Chamber of Representatives 1848–1852	Succeeded by Noël Delfosse
Preceded by Josse Joseph de Lehaye	President of the Chamber of Representatives 1857–1859	Succeeded by Auguste Orts
Masonic offices
Preceded by Eugène Defacqz	Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Belgium 1854–1862	Succeeded by Joseph Van Schoor