Handbook and guide to Aberdeen / compiled for the Local Executive Committee by J. Scott Riddell.

  • British Medical Association.
Date:
1914
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Handbook and guide to Aberdeen / compiled for the Local Executive Committee by J. Scott Riddell. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    SECTION II THE UNIVERSITY Reprint 'd from the “ British Medical Journal ” of January io and 17, 1914. The University of Aberdeen as it now exists is a compound of two distinct foundations—King’s College and Marischal College. It must be clearly understood that these were never in any sense colleges of one university. Except for a short time in the seventeenth century when they were forced into a union which was quickly dissolved, they stood apart, independent, and in fact always more or less antagon- istic. Each was a university with provision for teaching, and the power of granting degrees. As some parliamentary wit said, “ Aberdeen is a great place, as, like England, it has two universities.” The anomaly of the existence of two universities in one town only a mile from each other arose from the circumstances of their foundation. King’s, the older college, was created by the Pope ; Marischal was an offspring of the Reformation. For nearly a couple of cen- turies, after the religious reason for their separation had ceased, the disunion continued, and was a cause of weakness to both colleges. Many attempts to bring them together were made by enlightened men, but it was not till i860 that they were joined together in one university. King’s College The original University of Aberdeen was King’s College, which was founded by Bishop William Elphinstone in 1494-5 and formally opened as a teaching institution in September, 1505. Elphinstone was a man of great fame and influence in his day, who had studied and taught in the Universities of Paris, Orleans, and Glasgow. He was skilled in all the learning of his time, and was particularly distinguished as a scholar and a lawyer. He was also a statesman and a diplomatist. He was in great favour with King James III, and was sent by him as ambassador to France, England, Burgundy, and Austria. For a short time he was Chancellor of Scotland ; this office he lost at the death of James III, but he was soon recalled by James IV to the royal counsels, and he seems to have been Keeper of the Privy Seal from 1500 till his death in 1514. On his consecration as Bishop of Aberdeen in 1487 he first set about the reform of the ecclesiastical affairs of his diocese, and then proceeded to carry out a design which he had conceived of founding in his cathedral city a university which should rival those of St. Andrews and Glasgow. At