St Leonard's College Library

St Leonard's College was founded in 1512 by Alexander Stewart, Archbishop of St Andrews, and John Hepburn, Prior of St Andrews. The Archbishop, as Chancellor of the University, had wanted to reorganise the Pedagogy and erect it into a proper college. However, he was diverted from his intention by the Prior who was able to provide an endowment, and the new college came to be a 'college of poor clerks' associated with the Priory of St Andrews, primarily intended for the education, in arts and theology, of novices of the Augustinian Order. The charter of 1512 reveals that the college was a new incarnation of 'the Hospital and the Church of St Leonard joined thereto', which antedated the Cathedral, being already in existence in 1144. In 1747 the College was united with St Salvator's College to form the United College of St Salvator and St Leonard.

The original hospital or hospice of St Leonard seems to have been used by pilgrims to the shrine of St Andrew. Its location was on the western edge of the ecclesiastical settlement to the south of the eastmost part of South Street. The chapel is first mentioned in 1413 as 'the parish church of St Leonard within the city of St Andrews', served by a chaplain attached first to the hospital and latterly to the College under the title of 'curate'. St Leonard's Church was one of the buildings used for the earliest meetings of the University of St Andrews from 1411. There are references to the hospital or almshouse of St Leonard between 1421 and 1511 but the nature of the institution at that time is obscure.

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