The University of Dublin

But still older than anything in the New World. Not by much though, only 44 years older than Harvard.

“But still older than anything in the New World.”

Not so: the University of Saint Mark in Peru is older, as is the University of Mexico. Both date from 1551, while the University of St. Thomas Aquinas in Colombia dates from 1580. These three are older than the University of Dublin.

There are even more universities in the New World older than Harvard (though not older than D.U.), such as the University of Córdoba (1613), the Central University of Ecuador (May 1622), and the University of Chile (August 1622).

The University of Santo Domingo was founded in 1538, but was in abeyance for some decades in the nineteenth century.

How embarrassingly Anglocentric of me. I stand corrected!

This is a photographer after my own heart. The symmetry, order, and clarity of his subjects are nicely reflected in these photos.

Of course, Dublin is not in Britain at all! I think the Irish would be aghast at such an idea. Or do you mean the British Isles?

Dublin is no longer in Britain, but the University of Dublin nonetheless is one of the seven ancient universities of Britain.

I remember asking a German professor at St Andrews which is Germany’s oldest university. “Prague” was his prompt (and correct) answer.

Thank you! Interesting.

Ah, TCD, the fairest of buildings in “Dublin’s Fair City”! TCD is indeed a British University. It was founded by Elizabeth I as part of a deliberate policy of Anglicising Ireland. Traditionally TCD was the only other university other than each other that Oxford and Cambridge recognised. It was, and to some extent remains, the stronghold of the “Ascendancy” or “West Britons” of Ireland. As Mr Cusack well knows TCD played a crucial role in the military defeat of the Easter Rising of 1916. Up until the 1970’s few Catholics entered Trinity’s hallowed halls, not (latterly) because they were banned but because the Irish bishops forbade the faithful from attending!

In a similar vein to the point re Prague Univeristy, the Primate of Germany is the Archbishop of Salzburg in Austia.

Trinity was firmly anglican so as non-Protestants, Catholics were banned by the university itself until the 1840s I think. Methodists and Presbyterians were banned a little longer than that. (In historic Irish legal usage they don’t count as Protestants, rather as Dissenters.) However, even after this TCD was a cold place for a Catholic to go. A friend who is now a priest of the Northampton diocese related how he was referred to as an “alien in our midst” by Trinity’s senior dean, because he was a Catholic. This was in an address to the newly matriculated class in 1961! The Dean in question was of course Protestant and English! Thingas have moved on a bit since then; Trinity is now mostly atheist.