Talk:Old University of Leuven

Orphaned references in Old University of Leuven

I check pages listed in Category:Pages with incorrect ref formatting to try to fix reference errors. One of the things I do is look for content for orphaned references in wikilinked articles. I have found content for some of Old University of Leuven's orphans, the problem is that I found more than one version. I can't determine which (if any) is correct for this article, so I am asking for a sentient editor to look it over and copy the correct ref content into this article.

Reference named "CE":

• From Catholic University of Leuven: Herbermann, Charles, ed. (1913). "University of Leuven" . Catholic Encyclopedia. New York: Robert Appleton Company.
• From Republic of Venice: Catholic Encyclopedia, "Venice", p. 602.

I apologize if any of the above are effectively identical; I am just a simple computer program, so I can't determine whether minor differences are significant or not. AnomieBOT⚡ 16:16, 12 May 2010 (UTC)

Pet project

This page seems to all intents and purposes to be declining into what the wikipedia guidelines call a point-of-view fork, the purpose in this case being to proclaim the "hidden" (but undenied) truth that there was a historical hiatus between the pre-1797 and post-1835 universities of Leuven (as there was indeed between all pre-revolutionary and post-revolutionary universities in Continental Europe), and to emphasize the differences between them (the one founded by the bishop of Rome, the other by Belgian bishops; the one founded in Leuven, the other founded in Mechlin and moved to Leuven; etc. etc.); great importance is attached to a narrowly legalistic hedging of what it might mean to seek to continue a tradition. The same user has been doing the same on the French, German, Dutch and Latin wikipedias (and perhaps others), with greater and lesser success. It's all great fun, of course, to be avidly declaring and defending a sacred truth and denouncing those who would edit any detail of it as axe-grinding censors, but 200 years on it isn't very relevant to anything in the real world, and certainly doesn't amount to an encyclopedia article. (But "The public has a right to know!"). Ho hum. What to do? --Andreas Philopater (talk) 18:50, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

I think you might be right. Any refs on the "other universities" claim that I could look at? Oreo Priest ^talk 20:12, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

The edit summaries are particularly worrisome. Phrases like "The Public has a right to [k]now" have nothing to do with Wikipedia and everything to do with POV. I read some of the changes last night and was too tired to try to figure out what exactly is going on with the article; if I have time I'll take a look today. If at all possible, I'd like User:Bruxellensis to join the discussion here, letting us know what specifically he means by phrases like that. Qwyrxian (talk) 21:13, 22 June 2010 (UTC)

After reading over the article in it's current form, it actually troubles me less than it did at first glance yesterday. The overall article certainly seems to pass notability guidelines, given the number of citations and the importance of the university to old debates within the Catholic Church. Of course, I'm assuming good faith, that the citations are what the editor claims them to be, as I neither have access to them, nor do I read any European languages other than English. Only 2 things concern me at the moment, both about the references section. First, the first reference really seems like it should go, to me--it's explanatory about some sort of land transfer, which doesn't seem to be at all relevant to this particular article. The second is that, for the actual citations, it is generally not Wikipedia's convention to pull quotes from the sources in the reference section. That's not really matching WP:MOS guidelines, at least as far as I read them (that's much more in the style of an academic journal article, for me). So I think we should pull those quotations and eliminate the first reference. There's also some copy-editing work to be done on the article, but that's almost always true, ne? Because I can already see that there was contention (based on the language used in the edit summaries), I'm going to look for some consensus first before making those edits. Thoughts, anyone? Qwyrxian (talk) 05:55, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

To be completely clear, Bruxellensis has been working hard expanding all the articles related to the university and its history. He's a native francophone, so it's normal that there be some grammatical and spelling mistakes in the text. I think the point is that it all should be one article with appropriate sections and subsections rather than a number of different ones. Oreo Priest ^talk 06:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

In this article, I give only historical facts and not their interpretation so that the public, having a good information, can make himself it's own opinion. For exemple: the facts are "it is not any material, institutional, legal or human links between the old University of Leuven and the Catholic University of Mechlin then called Catholic University of Leuven". The interpretation of those facts is to say: "which is seen as a re-founding of the Old University, and as its successor"--Bruxellensis (talk) 09:35, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

No one was, at least not here (I didn't check the other talk pages) saying that you were giving an opinion. I see two concerns here. 1) Between the 8 different pages, there may be too much information, and possibly unnecessary overlap. I don't know if that's really true, and I'm not sure I can wade through all of the info to find out. 2) That the style doesn't quite match Wikipedia's style (that's my concern about the references). Qwyrxian (talk) 10:48, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Dear Bruxellensis, that the Catholic University of Leuven presents itself and is generally perceived as being a restoration of the pre-Revolutionary traditions of learning in Leuven is a fact; whether such presentation or perceptions are justified is open to interpretation. Intentionally or not, you give the impression that the single most important historical fact about either the "old" or the "new" university is the 1797-1835 discontinuity between them. You have done an impressive amount of work to make this narrow and in itself uncontroversial point the centrepiece of as many articles as can plausibly be created about historical tertiary institutions of learning in Leuven and other parts of what is (or was) Belgium. I'm going out on a limb here, but it seems to me that we are doing wikipedia users a disservice by making it look as though this is a central issue in need of special emphasis. Knowing that your main hope here is to be useful to the English-language wikipedia, I'm sure you would not want that. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 11:29, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

I think AP is right, and that he puts it quite nicely. Oreo Priest ^talk 22:54, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Dear Philopater, I don't have the pretention to have absolutely reason, and the constructive corrections of the others are always welcome, but I think it was very necessary to correct and recast the first article concerning the Catholic University of Louvain that was an anhistorical mixture. I think it is better to study every of the three universities of Louvain as an "selbstandiger historischer Gegenstand" and to give all the objective historical facts and only the facts. I hope that I was very useful to the English-language wikipedia and that the english lector can better now the complexity of the reality. For exemple mutch people ignoring the reality thinks and whrite that the books and the archives of the Old University ware destructed in the fire in 1914, but all the books and archives are still existing! It is then necessary that the lector can have a clear vision of the history of those three successives universities. Other exemple, it is also necessary to make a separate list of alumni of each university, because an alumni of the liberal State University dont have the same cultural and political background than a alumni of the Old of the catholic university. The original article dont make the difference. That can create historical errors. But if you can better, do it!--Bruxellensis (talk) 13:15, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Thanks very much. I'm glad that you welcome constructive changes to the article. I cannot, though, help but wonder why it is that so far, so many changes (and not by any means just mine) have been treated as unconstructive, and whether you alone should get to decide just what counts as constructive or not with regard to this and related articles. My own attempts to streamline the lead paragraph and my removal of an inappropriate image (in line with my understanding of wikipedia guidelines such as this one), have been met by fiery accusations of attempting to censor urgent truths. That sort of thing does rather put me on my guard, and is likely to impede other efforts to "do better". (On a minor point, I seem to recall from a lecture by T. A. Birrell a few years ago that a lot of the books and archives went missing between 1794 and 1797 - something your own quotation from P. F. X. De Ram appears to substantiate - so the extent to which they still exist is an open question.) --Andreas Philopater (talk) 14:17, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Indeed as you can read in the article Academic libraries in Leuven (the french version is more complete fr:Bibliothèques universitaires de Louvain: "It is also likely that during the troubles of the wars of the French Revolution many books and valuable documents had surreptitiously followed an “unofficial” way. Indeed, in many libraries in Europe they are books and manuscripts coming certainly from the old University of Louvain as its founding charter of 1425 which was based in 1909 at the seminar of s'Hertogenbosch, our as an incunable coutaining the courses of the law professor Henricus de Piro who was based in the late twentieth century in the National Széchényi Library in Budapest.". I dont will impose my point of view and therefore all what I say is demonstred by a citation, but I had the impression that any contributors needed to whrite again a sort of anhistorical legend of an non-interrupted university from 1425 to now.--Bruxellensis (talk) 15:47, 23 June 2010 (UTC)

Cologne as a model?

Could we take the same approach as here? (A "medieval" university with a hiatus of over a hundred years, 1794-1919.) --Andreas Philopater (talk) 10:59, 26 June 2010 (UTC) (Sorry: 1798) --Andreas Philopater (talk) 11:00, 26 June 2010 (UTC)

This article concourning the two different universities of Cologne is totaly non historical. We have here two different universities. But the article in Deutsch Wikipedia present its as different universities: "Im Verlauf des 19. Jahrhunderts waren Bestrebungen der Stadt und ihrer Bürger, eine neue Universität zu gründen, gescheitert"--Bruxellensis (talk) 11:13, 27 June 2010 (UTC)

Merge of Faculty of Theology, Old University of Leuven into this article

I propose that Faculty of Theology, Old University of Leuven be merged into this article because it consists of information under this article.--Ankit Maity ^{Talk • contribs} 07:31, 20 December 2011 (UTC)

I oppose. The Faculty is the subject of an extensive scholarly literature in its own right. --Andreas Philopater (talk) 09:27, 14 March 2012 (UTC)

Faculty of Theology, Old University of Leuven

Thank you four your interess to this article, but if man take out this article it shoud be also necessary to take out the article Faculty of Theology, Catholic University of Leuven because it exists also an article Catholic University of Leuven. This article concern the Old University of Leuven and not the Catholic University of Leuven and not the lemma University of Leuven. What is your opinion? Thank you.--Bruxellensis (talk) 09:10, 20 December 2011 (UTC)