St Salvator's College

The University of St Andrews was established between 1410 and 1413. St Salvator's College is the oldest of the three endowed collegiate societies of the university. It was founded in 1450 and is known as the 'Old College'. It was founded as 'the College of the Holy Saviour' by James Kennedy, Bishop of St Andrews and second Chancellor of the university, on 27 August 1450 in particular to sustain and develop the study of Theology within the University. He seems to have been inspired by the English foundations of New College, Oxford and King's College, Cambridge (1441). The collegiate church was integral to the community of Kennedy's college which aimed at the union of religion and learning, the ecclesiastical and the academic. The establishment of the college also represented Kennedy's considered attempts at reform of the University. This was to be achieved through the creation of a properly organised and adequately endowed college whose constitution would infuse regularity into the near-anarchy of the Faculty of Arts (based on the Pedagogy) and whose revenues would support a sufficient number of masters in dignity and security.

The original foundation provided for thirteen founded persons in honour of Christ and the Twelve Apostles. The members of the college of theologians and artists were arranged in a hierarchy that was to symbolise the perfect relationship between the two faculties of Arts and Theology. Six poor clerks or scholars, students of Arts who might also act as choristers of the collegiate church, were joined by four priests, Masters of Arts and students of Theology. Above these, in ascending dignity, were three graduates in Theology: a Bachelor, a Licentiate and a Doctor, the latter to act as Provost and head of the entire foundation. The Masters of Arts were bound, by a revised charter of foundation of 1458, to act as lecturers or regents for two years and would probably have given private tuition in Arts subjects to their own students. Each of the three theologians enjoyed a prebend to be exercised in the collegiate church as rector of a local parish annexed to the college: Cults for the Provost, Kemback for the Licentiate and Dunino for the Bachelor. They were to appoint vicars to discharge the parochial work of their cures. These three 'principal persons' were both principal and professors of the university college and provost and canons of a collegiate church. The charter made detailed arrangements for the administration of the college and the preservation of good order and discipline through a Visitor and university assessors. A number of chaplainries were added to the college by Kennedy, and more by private benefactors, but by the Reformation in 1560 there was some confusion over patronage. The foundation documents of the chaplainries are unclear as to whether they were all intended to provide for additional teachers or students. The chaplains were to play an integral part in the worship of the collegiate church.

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