Part II –Vintage Villanova
A College Grows in the Roman Catholic, Augustinian Tradition

Calm settled on the idyllic, early Villanova campus after the Nativist riots subsided. The College reopened in September of 1846.  Twenty-four students were enrolled, and the school’s turbulent beginnings gave way to a gradual expansion under its first president, the Rev. John P. O’Dwyer, O.S.A.  On July 21, 1847, the first public commencement was held.

Secure in the hands of the Augustinian friars, the fledgling college was on its way. The Augustinians set about their task to developing a full-fledged educational institution in the American, religious, Roman Catholic tradition. 

In the 10 years that he was in charge, Father O’Dwyer, became known as “the founding father of Villanova,” because he  played a vital role in advancing the college and the Augustinian mission. The Rev. John Rotelle, O.S.A., in Men of Heart, Part I, writes  “The Augustinian Order in the United States is indebted to O’Dwyer, because “he succeeded in keeping the infant province intact and tried to instill its members with a love for the Order and the Church.” Rotelle describes him as a man of vision and high caliber, guided by deep faith, who was intellectually far superior to men of his times. In a short lifetime, he is credited with accomplishing much at Villanova and St. Augustine’s. O’Dwyer, in fact, set the course for the Augustinian mission. (See sidebar.)

O’Dwyer’s responsibilities included the College and beyond. On campus, he resumed building projects.  In 1847, a one-story wooden lavatory, including a stove, was erected  at the northwest corner of the Study Hall Chapel.  The following year, he commissioned a small stone railroad station for the college. The station, post office and residential suburb that later evolved were named for the college, which came first, although some in the Philadelphia area believed the opposite to be true. Also in 1848, Villanova began construction on the first segment of the College Building, which later would form the east wing of Alumni Hall. (In the 19^th and early 20^th centuries, Villanova was also spelled Villa Nova or Villa-Nova.)

O’Dwyer, also is recognized for recouping the losses suffered in Philadelphia destruction.  During Doctor Patrick Moriarty, O.S.A.’s (Doctor was an honorary title) absence from 1844 to 1850, O’Dwyer served as commissary general.  He was the personal representative of the prior general for the Augustinians in the United States. In January 1847, he was made commissary provincial.

After the College had reopened, the responsibilities as well as problems multiplied for O’Dwyer. He was an active pastor and preacher.  Among his duties, he was pastor at St. Augustine’s Church in Philadelphia and preached at other churches being founded in Pennsylvania.  He was also in charge of other Augustinians in the country and helped the small numbers of clergy to minister to the people in the Philadelphia area.

“The weight of all these responsibilities must have taken a heavy toll on his health which had never been strong,” Father Ennis wrote in “The Augustinians.”  Never a robust man, Father O’Dwyer’s failing health began to plague him shortly after he resumed his duties as Villanova’s president in September 1846.

As his health declined, he delegated more of the responsibility of running Villanova to the newly ordained Rev. William Harnett, O.S.A. Harnett became acting president and prior in April 1847.  When the 1847-48 school year began, O’Dwyer assigned full responsibility for the school to Harnett by naming him president.                    

Villanova receives official status via charter

The 1847-48 academic year looked encouraging for Villanova. The Rev. George A. Meagher, O.S.A., educated in the Order’s houses in Italy, was added to the faculty. The college possessed all the components of a viable institution. Curriculum and enrollment were sound.  A library and reading room was established.

In March of 1848, Villanova marked an important milestone.  It was granted an official charter from the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, signed by Francis R. Shunk, governor of Pennsylvania.  The charter was considered a profoundly important step in Villanova’s  development because it officially recognized the institution as a college. According to Contosta’s account in Ever Ancient, Ever New, the original charter of 1848 granted Villanova “all such powers, authorities and jurisdiction as are held, enjoyed or exercised by any other university or college within this commonwealth.” Legally established, Villanova could fulfill its purpose to be “a college for the education of persons in the various branches of science, literature, and ancient and modern language by the name, style and title of ‘The Augustinian College of Villanova, in the State of Pennsylvania.’”

By this time, with St. Augustine’s Church had been rebuilt.  Consequently, with the lawsuit (for damages suffered during the “Navtivist” riots) against the city of Philadelphia satisfactorily settled, O’Dwyer felt he could once again turn his attention to Villanova.  On May 1, 1848, the first meeting of the board of trustees took place at St. Augustine’s.  Father O’Dwyer was formally elected president of the board. Father Harnett was named treasurer, and a Mr. William Axon Stokes, secretary.  Officers and instructors of the college were also chosen at this same meeting: O’Dwyer, president, taught Greek and Latin; Harnett, vice president, was professor of theology and moral theology. (Other faculty were also assigned.)

At the end of the academic year 1848-49 (1850 according to some records), the president, O’Dywer, informed partcipants at commencement that the College was free of debt. The fledgling Villanova College began to flourish.

Early campus life

The college, as the Doctor Moriarty had explained in his prospectus, was intended for the “good education of ...the children of the less opulent portion of our Catholic people.”

Villanova’s early rural landscape included many elements: a farm, workshops, an orphanage, a monastery, a seminary and a college.  Father O’Dwyer wanted to include a boy’s work school.  his vision became reality when in 1850 Villanova opened a manual labor school for orphans over 16 years of age from St. John’s Orphanage.           

That Villanova was intended as “an institution for boys only was an automatic and foregone conclusion,” Contosta writes. “One of the purposes for founding Villanova was to recruit members for an all-male clergy.” Father Moriarty had expressed hope that Villanova would offer an opportunity to nourish vocations for the priesthood. Prospects for admitting young men to religious life were opened in 1843 when the Augustinians opened the first novice house. In 1848, the first novice was received in what was called the “ecclesiastical” or “scholastic” department in the early decades and into much later in the century.  This department was categorized as “distinct and separate from the college,” with different books, classes and teachers. Nevertheless, due to a shortage of priests in the early days, the departments shared teachers.   

Compared to today, the Villanova regime during these early years may have seemed severe, but Contosta confirms in “Ever Ancient, Ever New” that the routine was similar to other contemporary schools.  Students arose at 5:30 a.m., assembled for prayers, Mass, and breakfast before beginning class at 8:30.  The breakfast menu featured bread and molasses and fried potatoes, with milk, coffee, and tea.  For the typical noonday meal, bread and molasses were served with an occasional dessert of pie or pudding.  Supper, as the evening meal was called, served up mutton, potatoes and gravy. (The proliferation of molasses was due not to preference but was  provided by parents of a student from Louisiana.)  After dinner, as it was called, at noontime, classes resumed at 2 p.m. and continued until 6 p.m,, with an hour for study hall in the evening.

Curriculum

Courses offered, as listed in the prospectus for 1849-50, were in “the Greek, Latin, and English languages, history, geography, mathematics, logic, rhetoric, poetry, natural and moral philosophy, and chemistry.” Students could choose to study the modern languages of French, Spanish, German or Italian for an extra $15 a year each.  Theology courses also were offered, but probably were intended for young men preparing to enter the priesthood.

There were no electives akin to today’s standards. The curriculum was prescribed. This rigid course of study stemmed from a “faculty psychology,” which posited that the human mind was like a muscle. To be viable, its various mental faculties needed to be exercised and trained through the study of certain subjects. The memory faculties were identified as memory, reason, judgment, conscience and the will.  Memory was deemed the most important.  Educators believed students could perfect it only through rote learning of texts, and by having students recite the memorized passages in front of teacher and classmates. The faculty who taught this curriculum at Villanova was very small throughout the 19^th century, according to Contosta. For first two years from 1843-45 it consisted of eight men.

Villanova was truly a different world, even in the 1850s. The importance of rote learning later carried over to punishment.  According to Contosta’s book, students who broke the rules were subject to punishments recorded in the  “Jug Books.”  These were large, leather-bound volumes, which were a custom at many other Catholic institutions. “Jug” was short for “Judgment Under God.” Entries of misbehavior for 1856, listed “running away from prayers,” “burning fire-crackers in the house,” “drawing obscene pictures in studies, “throwing snowballs into the basement,” “reading novels in study,” “using this book for a tambourine,” “throwing Holy Water down another boy’s back in chapel,” and “smoking behind the pig-pen.”

Sidebar: Augustinian Mission

The Augustinian mission was part of Villanova’s heritage from its earliest beginnings.

The Augustinians who built the College as well as today’s friars consider themselves the spiritual descendants of St. Augustine.

The trials endured during the “Nativist riots are said to have fortified the college as an Roman Catholic, Augustinian institution.  “The experience of violent and suffering strengthened rather than weakened the Augustinians and the Catholic community,” wrote Father Arthus Ennis, O.S.A.,  in The Augustinians.

Although other colleges, whether Catholic or not, emphasized religion, and compulsory attendance at religious services, Contosta writes in Ever Ancient, Ever New that the Augustinian mission and heritage are what made Villanova distinct. The Augustinians took a unique approach to teaching/pedagogy, deeply inspired by the humanist traditions of their patron, St. Augustine. The Augustinian Order were hugely aware of the enormous influence that St. Augustine’s legacy exercised on its apostolate of higher education. Mind and heart were united in the fervent search for wisdom. The Augustinian institution of learning was characterized by a curriculum that reflected a Catholic, liberal arts tradition, an understanding of human reason and the intellect.  Concern for the poor and social justice and an esteem for all persons and cultures, both in scholarly and personal endeavors was important.

In a talk on education, Father O’Dywer, Villanova’s first president, emphasized the notion which most characterizes St. Augustine and the Augustinian community for centuries: the symbol of the heart. O’Dwyer preached: “...Too much attention is lavished on the intellect while little or no attention is paid to the Will, the faculty of the soul the most closely connected with the temporal and the external interests of man. ...the heat is educated; the heart is neglected. ...We are bound to cultivate the heart as well as the head, nay even more in as much as the happiness of man is more dependent on the former than on the latter,” as noted in Men of Heart, Red, Part I.

O’Dwyer dies and Harnett heads Villanova

 Father O’Dwyer died in May 1850.  He was 34.  Harnett, aged 29, automatically replaced him as president and as commissary general, assuming both duties.

In 1850, O’Dwyer was admitted to Mount Hope Hospital in Baltimore. Little is known about his illness.  It was diagnosed as “melancholia,” a term used at the time to describe a variety of disorders.  (A later analysis of his affliction based on current medical information indicates he may have suffered from a brain tumor.) Father Rotelle’s account in Men of Heart, Part I, cites a brief comment written by Bishop Kenrick. about his illness:

“Father O’Dwyer...confined in a hospital in Baltimore... is afflicted with a strange hallucination of mind in which he imagines that he had done no good.” (During his last hours in the hospital, he was cared for by Father John Neumann, a Redemptorist, who later became bishop of Philadelphia and ultimately was canonized as a saint.)

A new era begins

In May 1851, Doctor Moriarty returned to Villanova. He was reinstated as commissary general, and he also replaced Harnett as president.  Living at St. Augustine’s in Philadelphia, he was president only in name, and came to Villanova to teach seminarians homiletics once or twice a week. It was Harnett, however,  who was responsible for the daily operation of the school with Father George Meagher, O.S.A., as vice-president.  Harnett had issued the prospectus in 1849 for the coming academic year.

During 10 years as prior at Villanova, from 1847 to 1857, Harnett oversaw a further, slow expansion of the school. He was responsible for the early development of the College. The monastery almost doubled in size.  Alumni Hall’s current east wing was erected as a three -story classroom and dormitory in 1848 to house the gradual increasing student body. The first school building, erected in 1844, became a chapel.  At this time, the parish of St. Thomas of Villanova was formally erected.  (Previously, the school had been considered a mission of St. Augustine’s Parish.)  Father Harnett also took over duties as the first pastor of the parish. (At age 29, Harnett was considered too young for elevation to bishopric, even though he was considered.)

In later years, he and Father Moriarty were the only two who could remember the burning of st. Augustine’s in 1844. As the novice master, Harnett  is credited with infusing the spiritual formation of the next generation of Augustinians. He had seen the Order grow from one parish to 15 houses well-established, from two priests to more than 30, united firmly in a flourishing province.

Although Villanova’s facilities were enlarged, the institution did not generate increased enrollment. Student enrollment fluctuated during the first 50 years. The Catholics of Philadelphia were mostly poor immigrant workmen who were unable to provide a relatively expensive education for their sons.  Thus, enrollment at Villanova before the Civil War, never exceeded 90 or 91 boys, as indicated in Men of Heart, Part II and Contosta’s book.

A Men’s College

Villanova was intended to be a college for men. In 1855, Harnett again became president.  Father Moriarty relinquished the position to become pastor of a new parish in Chestnut Hill.   At this time, the school gradually change from a boys’ academy to a full-fledged institution of higher learning.  The prestige of the college slowly increased as well.  The first bachelor of arts degrees were awarded in 1855 to James F. Dooley and Henry C. Alexander.  The first master’s degree was conferred in 1857.

Despite these and other favorable advancement, other circumstances thwarted Villanova’s growth. The Augustinian priests were desperately needed elsewhere to staff new parishes opened in Chestnut Hill, Ardmore, Atlantic City, and Lawrence, Mass. The nation was in the throes of the economic “panic of ‘57,” and money was tight. Since he was no longer needed at Villanova, Harnett was reassigned to St. Augustine’s in Philadelphia in July 1857.  The Rev. Patrick Stanton, O.S.A., replaced him as prior and pastor of St. Thomas of Villanova (and most likely as novice master).

Once again, the administrators decided it was in the institution’s best interest to close Villanova temporarily for a second time in June 1857 to concentrate on parish work until more priests were available to teach at the college. The economic depression, which began in 1857 and also the Civil War, kept Villanova  closed longer than anticipated.  The College did not reopen again until 1865.

The reasons cited for this second closing according to the Rev. Thomas F. Roland, O.S.A., were: “...a long series of difficulties forced the closing of Villanova after the commencement of 1857.  The services of the priests were needed in parishes far scattered and growing.  The work of spreading the Order kept some of the Fathers from the home base; and the multiplying of subjects taught put too great demands on the faculty.  Times were hard, money was scarce, the ‘panic of ‘57' was on.  The College bowed before the storm and closed for a second time.”