1 The motto of Memorial University, Provehito in Altum, is well known, both in Newfoundland and away. It adorns the ceremonial arms of the university, inscribed upon a glowing scroll.1 It was featured on the masthead of the early issues of The Muse and in its pages ever aſter; it graced Memorial library’s checkout cards; and it was so frequently invoked in early graduation speeches that it could incite burning annoyance.2 The motto is still a mainstay in convocation addresses, but it also inspired the Altum Society at MUN’s School of Nursing and subtitles MUN’s Strategic Research Intensity Plan, 2014‐2020.3 It is found inscribed in various places around the university, in particular on the edge of its convocation table, and prominently (and very appropriately) in the deep recesses of MUN’s intra-campus tunnels.4 The motto has also been adopted outside the university, most notably by the band Thirty Seconds to Mars, whence it seems to have inspired countless items of apparel, artwork, and even tattoos.5

2 Though the motto is quite visible and indeed very dear to the hearts of many, no one seems to have looked closely at it, or at least has not done so in print. These three Latin words, very distinctive in their arrangement, have an intriguing story to tell about the history of Newfoundland, Memorial, and its founding president, John Lewis Paton — a story that has been hiding in plain sight. Mottos have sources, and contexts, and interpretations, all of which can be very revealing of the circumstances and mindsets of those who chose them. This is just such a case.

3 Memorial University College (MUC) was officially opened in September 1925, though preparations had been underway for months beforehand. In April of that year John Lewis Paton, the former headmaster of Manchester Grammar School (1903–24) who was then on a lecture tour of Canada, had been approached to head the new college.6 Paton seems to have quickly thrown himself into the work of making arrangements for MUC’s curriculum, staffing, library, and so on.7 The first annual report, written by Paton apparently in the fall of 1926, announces that the college had already chosen a motto:

4 The only other reference we have to the very early history of the motto is a recollection by Nigel Rusted (MUC, 19279 ), as recorded by Malcolm MacLeod. Apparently, at an early assembly of the college’s community, Paton announced the college’s motto, and “credited Hatcher [Albert Hatcher, professor of mathematics, 1925 onward] with having found in the Latin bible Christ’s order to St. Peter: Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught” (Luke 5:4).10 This suggests (to me) that Paton chose the Bible verse and found the Latin with Hatcher’s help. But we know very little for certain about the reasons and circumstances for the motto’s selection: it seems there is nothing extant among Paton’s papers held at Archives and Special Collections at the Queen Elizabeth II Library at MUN.11

5 University and school mottos present a nexus of different functions, meanings, and associations.12 They exist first to instill some virtue in the institution’s members and to individualize the institution from others. Indeed, the virtue(s) described by the motto are oſten prescriptive and descriptive, suggesting how the members are different and how they should be different from others. But the medium is also the message here. As with the mottos of many schools and universities, the use of an archaic, scholarly language (Latin), drawn from an ancient, authoritative text (in this particular instance, the Bible), lends an extra layer of “magisterial” authority to the institution. It is implicitly linked to a timeless fount of established scholarly tradition, separated from the vernacular and changeable currents of the world.

6 The explanation of the motto given in MUC’s first annual report prescribes at least two values, then: intellectual adventure and boldness, paired with a desire for (Christian) community and fellowship. And especially in the case of the former, the motto was also descriptive. Since MUC was only a twoyear college, students would have to venture across the sea, to universities in Canada and elsewhere, to complete their degrees. The audaciousness described by the motto also reminds us that the founding of Memorial University College was itself a bold act: the creation of the dominion’s first true institute of post-secondary education, one faced with opposition before its founding.13 It

7 was an even bolder statement of optimism given the circumstances: the government had just been wracked by a serious corruption scandal under the Squires government, which led to his resignation in 1923, and further contributed to the collapse of the succeeding Warren administration in 1924.14 The country’s economy was also very uncertain in the 1920s: enormous public debt, both from the war and from building the island’s railroad, still saddled the government, while the fishery saw severe difficulties in the early years of the decade.15 Indeed, the motto’s Biblical source seems poignantly appropriate in these latter circumstances: Simon/Peter had just fished all night without a catch, and was utterly despondent, before he launched out once again at the command of Jesus and met with great success.

8 The motto, therefore, connects well to the general circumstances of Newfoundland in the 1920s. Much more intriguing, however, is the exact authoritative source being invoked. It is clear, given Nigel Rusted’s recollections noted above, that the source was Luke 5:4, which runs in the King James version: “Now when he [Jesus] had leſt speaking, he said unto Simon, Launch out into the deep, and let down your nets for a draught.” Of course, Rusted also recalled that provehito in altum was taken from “the Latin Bible.” But should one turn to Luke 5:4 in the standard Latin Bible used throughout the world, the Biblia Sacra Vulgata (commonly known as the Vulgate), one does not find provehito in altum. Instead, one finds duc in altum — something more like “draw out into the deep” — across all standard editions, nor does provehito figure even in the apparatus of major critical editions of the Vulgate.16 So where does this Bible quotation come from?

9 The history of the Latin Bible is long and complex, but it can be simply summarized for our purposes.17 By the fourth century CE, there were many different Latin translations of the original Greek and Hebrew texts of the Bible. These Latin translations, now known collectively as the Vetus Latina, varied widely in quality and accuracy. To remedy this, the scholar St. Jerome undertook to retranslate much of the Bible into Latin, or to revise the older translations. Jerome’s translations and revisions, paired with a few older translations of Biblical books he did not get to, became the dominant version of the Bible in Western Europe from the eighth century on. Perhaps as early as the thirteenth century, this version was known as the vulgata, the “common” version of the Bible, and this name was made official in the sixteenth century. The “Vulgate” Latin Bible was declared to be the sole authentic text of the Bible by the Catholic council of Trent in 1546. It was the Vulgate text that was printed by Gutenberg in the 1450s, but the edition overseen by Pope Clement VIII in the 1590s became the dominant version of the Latin Bible for centuries aſterwards. Only in the later twentieth century did “improved” Latin versions supplant the older Vulgate text in Catholic Christian usage.18 The Vulgate, therefore, likely would have been regarded as the standard Latin version of the Bible in early twentieth-century Newfoundland, Britain, and elsewhere.19

10 If not from the Vulgate, by far the most popular Latin version of the Bible, then whence comes provehito in altum? The answer is frankly astonishing. The phrase comes from Theodore Beza’s sixteenth-century translation of the Greek New Testament into Latin. Theodore Beza (1519–1605), the arch Protestant, avowed enemy of the Catholic Church, was the ally and successor of John Calvin at Geneva.

11 Beza was born in Burgundy, and renounced the Catholic faith in 1548, abandoning a life of humanistic study and ease for one of conflict and exile.20 He spent the rest of his life based in Switzerland, first as professor of Greek in Lausanne (1549), then as leader of the Reformed Church at Geneva upon Calvin’s death in 1564. He was a steadfast supporter of the Protestant cause: he wrote polemics against his Catholic opponents, defended the Reformed position at the colloquy of Poissy in 1561, even aided the Huguenots in the first war of religion in 1562. In 1556, Beza issued his new translation of the Greek New Testament into Latin, and it is there that the phrase provehito in altum appears for the first time in the surviving corpus of Latin literature (so far as I can tell),21 translating Luke 5:4:

12 The phrase appears again in subsequent editions of Beza’s translation, in 1560, 1565, 1575, 1582, 1588, and so on.24Provehito in altum also reappears in later reprintings of Beza’s translation, for example, in seventeenth-, eighteenth-, and nineteenth-century editions of the Novum Testamentum.25 Finally, Beza’s Latin New Testament (NT) was also included in Tremellius and Junius’s complete Latin Bible, which was considered a very Calvinist Protestant work.26 In early editions of Tremellius’s Bible (1581–1630), Beza’s NT translation was accompanied by a NT translated from Syriac into Latin, before Beza’s translation won out completely aſter 1630.27 In all those editions of the Tremellius Bible I have been able to find, Beza’s authorship of the NT translation from Greek is very clearly marked.28 As such, provehito in altum is a phrase that appears only (so far as I can tell) in close association with Beza, whether in separate editions of his New Testament or clearly identified as his work in the Tremellius Bible, until its adoption as MUC’s motto in 1925–26.29

13 Beza’s translation of the NT was fundamentally Calvinist-Protestant in inspiration and character. He states in the preface that it was undertaken to correct many errors and inaccuracies found in the Vulgate edition.30 This was itself an audacious, Protestant statement, given that just 10 years earlier the Council of Trent had pronounced the Vulgate the sole authentic version of Scripture.31 Beza was also quite explicit that his new translation had been completed at the encouragement of John Calvin himself, who had “read and considered” it, and in whose memory Beza laboured to improve the translation in subsequent editions.32 In one of these subsequent editions, issued in 1565, Beza’s preface amounted to a sustained and polemical attack on Catholic traditions and Biblical scholarship.33 Finally, Beza’s translation of the New Testament into Latin was not just Protestant in motivation, but also Protestant in meaning: that is, his translation is not a neutral one that merely happened to be translated by a Protestant; rather, it constitutes a Protestant translation and interpretation of the text. In the rendering of numerous passages, the text is made to align with or support Protestant doctrines such as clerical marriage and double predestination.34

14 Beza’s Novum Testamentum would have been well known as a decidedly Protestant text, produced by a decidedly Protestant figure, not just in his own time, but also in the later nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In 1879–80, the American Catholic Quarterly Review published a long, damning critique of Beza’s translation, provocatively titled “Beza as Translator and Perverter of God’s Word.” It stretched across two issues, amounting to nearly 50 pages in all. The author, James Corcoran, analyzed innumerable places in the NT where Beza had seemingly shiſted or twisted the meaning of the text to suit his or the Reformed agenda, for example, to undermine the Catholic doctrine of good works helping towards salvation (which, for Protestants, came from faith alone).35 But Protestants just as much as Catholics would have been aware of Beza’s reputation. A weighty biography of the man was published in 1899 as the fourth volume in the “Heroes of the Reformation” series;36 Protestant histories of the Bible marked him out for special praise;37 and the Encyclopedia Britannica of 1910 makes his strong Protestantism quite clear.38 Given that J.L. Paton was a Congregationalist, it is also worth noting that Beza was regularly praised in Congregationalist publications.39 Most importantly, nineteenth-century reissues of Beza’s translation — the probable direct source of provehito in altum — bore prefaces with comments such as: “among the learned men who flourished at the era of the Reformation, Theodore Beza held so distinguished a place …” and “[Beza’s translation] was received with a favor which with Protestant Christians it has never lost.”40 Tremellius’s Bible, another source of Beza’s NT, was itself considered quite Protestant around 1900. It was described as “one of the classical works of the Reformation,” while in 1899 Carlyle (in the Dictionary of National Biography) made clear that it was the work of an avowed Calvinist, and a favourite among Reformers.41

15 The motto of Memorial University College, then, was chosen from a translation of the Bible that was undeniably Protestant in character. It seems unlikely that both Paton and Hatcher could have been unaware of this. There is also little chance that provehito in altum was taken from Beza’s translation without much thought, as if it were simply the first copy of the Latin Bible that came to Hatcher’s or Paton’s hand. Though Beza himself was well known, as was the reputation of his translation, the text of his translation was considerably rarer than the Vulgate. For example, Memorial University library (so far as I can ascertain) does not possess a single copy of Beza’s Novum Testamentum. It seems that Tremellius’s Bible (which included Beza’s NT) would have been even rarer: while Beza’s Novum Testamentum was occasionally reprinted in the nineteenth century,42 interest in the Tremellius edition had petered out by the early eighteenth century.43 In either case, choosing Beza’s translation in 1925 would have been either an inconvenient or improbable, and therefore likely deliberate, decision.

16 MUC’s motto was chosen from a source that could have easily been interpreted as anti-Catholic (by anyone who recognized it), and this would seem to fit uncomfortably with what we know about the history of Newfoundland, the founding of the college, and its first president, J.L. Paton. Newfoundland’s bitter, fractious sectarian politics of the earlier nineteenth century had been calmed somewhat by the adoption of the “denominational compromise” in the 1860s, whereby government posts and money were shared out among the various Christian denominations.44 Following on this “compromise,” heated struggles over the control of education by various religious denominations (particularly Anglicans, Catholics, and Methodists) had been partially resolved in 1875 by the adoption of separate, denominationally segregated systems of education, controlled by the various churches.45 Even these stark divisions had begun to soſten somewhat by the beginning of the twentieth century. A particular milestone was the foundation of the interdenominational Council of Higher Education (CHE) in 1893, which thereaſter oversaw higher secondary education in the country.46 This Council was instrumental in the push for interdenominational teacher training and then university studies on the island, aſter the realization that Newfoundland would not be able to support three or more systems of postsecondary education. Successful tri-church teacher summer schools in 1917 and 1918 further strengthened the case for a permanent solution, effected with the foundation of the interdenominational Normal School for teachers in 1920.47

17 The same interdenominational spirit of co-operation brought about MUC’s foundation in 1925.48 Newfoundland had been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship of its own in 1902, and members of the CHE considered various options to give students the two years of university studies necessary to take up the scholarship. There was a plan for an interdenominational federated university in the Maritimes, which would have included a junior college at St John’s, but negotiations for this collapsed in the early 1920s. Though initially hesitant at the idea of any kind of ecumenical university, even the Catholic position had by this point turned in favour of an ecumenical institution in Newfoundland, for fear that Catholics might be forced to attend a university (either in Newfoundland or in Canada) that was anti-Catholic.49 Indeed, it was Vincent Burke, a Catholic, who first received the good news that the Carnegie Corporation would (in the wake of the Maritimes university failure) support a junior college in Newfoundland.50

18 Burke, as deputy minister of education, was also the one who entered into communications with Paton, who had been offered the job of president in April 1925 while in Manitoba. In these initial discussions, it seems to have been Paton who suggested that a Catholic be hired to teach history at the college.51 Malcolm MacLeod hypothesizes that this was done at the prompting of Levi Curtis (a Methodist), who had been sent to Winnipeg to offer Paton the presidency, as a way of placating the Catholic faction. It nonetheless seems that the college made a strong and bona fide effort to find a Catholic history instructor, though it does not seem it was successful until 1928.52

19 This would seem to fit with what we know of Paton’s own reputation for religious tolerance. He seems to have inherited from his father, a Congregationalist minister of some repute, a desire to bridge denominational boundaries among Christians.53 As master of Manchester Grammar School, J.L. Paton wrote an article titled “Religious Education in Secondary Schools,” suggesting that “[i]f the school is one which draws its scholars from homes of different religious professions, it should be the headmaster’s special care to see that, so far as possible, all these different phases of religious belief are represented on the staff.” He goes on to argue that in matters of religion, “it is advisable in school to have as few dividing lines as possible.”54 This ecumenism has been frequently marked by observers from his time at Memorial, for example, Helena Frecker (MUC, 1926):

It is hard to imagine this kindly, devoted, tolerant if eccentric man wanting to (subtly) stick his thumb in the eye of Catholics by using a quotation from Beza’s NT as a motto. But perhaps there was a less charitable side to Paton that we know less about. It is not difficult, for instance, to find muted anti-Catholic feelings in his 1914 biography of his father, John Brown Paton: particular scorn is reserved for claims of universality by the so-called “Romish Church.”56

20 We remember, of course, Nigel Rusted’s recollection that Hatcher was credited by Paton for finding the verse in the Latin Bible, though the episode as recalled may suggest that Paton knew the verse, and Hatcher only found the Latin. In any case, Albert Hatcher was a Newfoundlander who had studied at McGill, taught at the Royal Naval College of Canada and then Bishop’s university, and then became professor of mathematics at MUC. Son of a Methodist preacher, he nonetheless seems even more unlikely than Paton to have attempted a backhanded slight against Catholics. MacLeod’s sketches of the man suggest he was of a retiring, quiet, non-confrontational disposition — perhaps too kind for his own good.57

21 Despite all the seemingly positive interdenominational developments in Newfoundland up to MUC’s founding, sectarian tension nonetheless remained. Perhaps the motto is a reflection of this. In the larger political realm, the 1924 election had brought many of these tensions to the fore, with occasional violence. Walter Monroe’s winning party was identified as “Protestant,” and the election results were uncharacteristically sectarian: Monroe won not a single traditionally Catholic seat in the election.58 So, by 1925, tensions between Catholics and Protestants had been slightly inflamed in Newfoundland. Looking specifically at Memorial, Catholics in particular seemed to have been ill at ease with the college for the first few years of its existence. Where the United Church and Church of England school boards began immediately sending prospective teachers and senior students to MUC, the Catholic board continued its own programs in parallel for some years at schools like St. Bonaventure and St. Brides.59 Catholic students at MUC, in the early years, seem to have been more religiously sensitive than the others: they complained about Paton’s prayers at school assembly, and would not attend an Anglican funeral for a classmate.60 Could these tensions have produced the Beza-sourced motto? Or were Catholic hesitations at MUC perhaps the result of small, divisive actions like the choosing of the motto?

22 So the possibility that this motto was chosen (by Paton, Hatcher, or indeed a mischievous underling) as a subtle taunt towards Catholics is one option. Another is that the motto was chosen from Beza’s translation because it was quite esoteric (though potentially explosive if discovered), and therefore “neutral.”61 Imagine the situation. Paton (or someone else) wanted a quotation of Luke 5:4 for the motto, which, in keeping with tradition, needed to be in Latin. The common and logical place to look for such a translation would have been the Vulgate Bible. But the Vulgate Bible, in the early twentieth century, as before and as now, was considered to be the Catholic version of the Bible, and was frequently criticized by other denominations.62 Choosing a motto from such an easily available and recognizably Catholic source may well have caused offence among Anglicans or Methodists. Beza’s version, however, was safely obscure. An inquisitive Catholic — without extensive research or exceptional knowledge — would only have known that provehito in altum did not come from the Vulgate’s version of Luke 5:4, and might have assumed it was some other, “neutral” Latin version of the Bible (or merely Paton’s Latinization of the verse63 ). Certainly, the rare word provehito would have seemed more difficult and arcane than the Vulgate’s duc in altum, perhaps better qualifying it for a college motto.

23 Whether the source was intended as an insult or to avoid one, there remains the question of why provehito in altum was chosen at all. Certainly, as a bold statement and tidbit of philosophy, it was very appropriate to the circumstances, given Newfoundland’s location in the North Atlantic, its political and economic problems of the time, and, especially, the recent difficulties in the fishery. It can also accommodate a wide range of other meanings: Paton himself apparently used to joke that the motto meant “Close your eyes and jump off the deep end,”64 an interpretation humorously rebutted by the Muse in later years.65 Out of context, the Latin motto comes to mean things quite different from its clear Biblical origins: Beddoe’s Canadian Heraldry offers “advance to the heights” (which perhaps suggests the events memorialized by the university’s name).66 Online, one can find much more creative attempts at translation by the followers of the aforementioned band, Thirty Seconds to Mars.

24 But we know that provehito in altum is a Bible verse. And Bible verses were slightly unusual in this context, particularly for ecumenical institutions. In eastern Canada (the region that exerted the most influence on MUC’s formation), only Catholic institutions tended to have mottos drawn from Bible verses: for example, St. Francis Xavier (Phillipians 4:8) and St. Thomas University (Psalm 119:66).67 Non-denominational institutions oſten picked verses from Classical poets, such as Sapere aude (Horace, Epist. I.ii.40) for the University of New Brunswick (and also Manchester Grammar School) or the remarkably ill-chosen Grandescunt aucta labore (Lucretius, De Rerum Natura, II.1160) for McGill.68

25 Paton may have been set upon Luke 5:4 not only because it fit so well with the circumstances, but because it was associated with his late, beloved father, the renowned Congregationalist minister John Brown Paton. Three years aſter his death in 1911, John Lewis Paton published a biography of his father — 538 pages of filial piety and devotion.69 The book is filled with long, glowing reports on the senior Paton’s activities, achievements, and character. One of these came from the Rev. E.W. Matthews, a student under Paton at the Nottingham Congregational Institute. Matthews relates a story where J.B. Paton sends him on to serve as a chaplain in Antwerp, and pauses to wonder at the character of the great man: “That is the way he handled his men. He went up to his mount of vision, looked out upon the sea, and said to his students, previously drawn out of many waters, ‘Launch out into the deep; let down your nets for a draught.’”70 The circumstances of this story would fit well with those of John Lewis Paton: like Matthews, he had been sent across the water to take up a “ministry” in a foreign place, where he could aspire to emulate the bold vision and command of his much-admired father. Provehito in altum, then, was not just appropriate to the situation of Newfoundland, nor is it just another piece of the sectarian puzzle in Newfoundland: it was something, I believe, that spoke personally to J.L. Paton, from his past and for his task at hand. It may be, so to speak, a memorial to his father, affixed to an institution that is itself a Memorial to the dead.