By Elliott Nace | Assistant News Editor
“Servatores historiae tam heroici quam creatores.”
That phrase seems like the sort to grace the front of Pat Neff Hall, Baylor’s architectural centerpiece, completed in 1939. Baylor, being over 180 years old, seems like the type of campus to sport classical pillars and Latin dedications on its major buildings.
But the phrase is instead written in English, since former Texas Governor Pat Neff coined it. “The preservers of history are as heroic as its makers.”
The Latin language, although characteristic of old college campuses, makes few appearances on Baylor’s grounds.
Baylor’s motto and seal, recently updated to “Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana, Pro Mundo” in 2024, appear inscribed in the Burleson Quadrangle, though they currently lack the final clause.
The other major representation of Latin appears at the Honors Residential College, whose motto is “Fides Quaerens Intellectum” (“faith seeking understanding”) and whose crest depicts a book containing the word “Veritas,” meaning “truth.”
Baylor has committed to rendering Scripture verses in English, as recently as with the Memorial to Enslaved Persons, dedicated last November. The two inscriptions on the memorial’s centerpiece, Exodus 20:2 on one end and John 8:36 on the other, are written in English.
Cypress senior Madeline Howard, a classics student who completed an internship with the Book Arts and Letterpress Lab this summer, noticed while documenting inscriptions how little Latin exists on Baylor campus, particularly in the case of Bible verses.
“I think it’s part of our Baptist religious heritage … to want to convey scripture in the language of the vernacular, and I think that it does go that deep, that it would be identifying ourselves with a non-Baptist tradition if we were to inscribe our campus with Latin scripture,” Howard said.
Baylor was once more receptive to Latin influence, most notably in its architecture.
Dr. Kenneth Hafertepe, a professor of museum studies and published Waco historian, said Baylor’s early architecture reflected Neoclassicism as the “prevailing architectural style” from the 19th century into the 20th century.
Other universities in Texas erected classical buildings as well. According to Hafertepe, older elements of the University of Texas at Austin campus used a “stripped classicism” that became prevalent during the Great Depression.
Despite its classical roots, the Main Building on UT’s campus bears an English inscription which reads, “Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” — an allusion to John 8:32.
Southern Methodist University also has this verse inscribed on its campus, though in Latin as “Veritas Liberabit Vos,” on the university seal within Dallas Hall.
Hafertepe said an architectural shift began with the original Brooks Hall and Pat Neff Hall, both of which signify Baylor’s shift away from full Neoclassicism and toward Colonial Revival, a style which hearkened back to design elements from the 18th and 19th centuries.
Latin was once the academic language of the West and remained so until the 19th century. Academic studies, whether undertaken by students or professors, often used the language.
Inscriptions were also written in Latin, particularly at old American universities. Other campuses in the Colonial and Neoclassical styles, such as those in the Ivy League, St. John’s College and the College of William and Mary, feature Latin dedications and phrases.
However, Baylor’s relationship with Latin differs from that of schools along the East Coast. Hafertepe said a “major reaction” of the Protestant Reformation was translating the Bible out of the commonly used Latin Vulgate into several languages, such as English.
Baylor’s Baptist tradition, he continued, retained this preference for the English language, informing the university’s predominantly English architectural identity.
“I think Baptist leaders [would] be quite comfortable with wanting to reach the widest number of people with the sentiments that they’ve carved onto the [buildings],” Hafertepe said.
Despite the practicality of using English as the university language, Howard said Latin should be more normalized on Baylor campus for its historical significance and its preservation as a language.
“[Latin] shouldn’t be a language that lives in ivory towers,” Howard said. “Giving the Honors College or Big Baylor a monopoly on Latin promotes the idea that [it] should live in these cold, elite lecture halls.”
Universities are “complex organisms,” Hafertepe said, because their architectural design fluctuates regularly.
“Even Harvard and Yale have built in many different styles, and part of the reason for that is that when a president comes in, they tend to want to make their own mark on the campus,” Hafertepe said.
Baylor is no exception to this variation. The university’s earliest buildings in Independence, as well as the Baylor Female College, point to its antebellum period being dominated by Neoclassicism.
According to Hafertepe, American innovations led to style changes in new developments on the Baylor campus. Although red brick became widely available in Waco in the 1880s, later projects used stone shipped in from Abilene.
“The railroad is one of the big explainers of the difference between Old Main and Burleson Hall, and Carroll Library and Carroll Science,” Hafertepe said.
One such innovation came from the work of former Baylor President Samuel Palmer Brooks and campus architect Birch Easterwood, both of whom surveyed East Coast campuses while developing new buildings for Baylor.
Easterwood designed Memorial Hall and Pat Neff Hall, two major projects that combined colonial influences with Baylor’s distinctly Baptist identity.
“[Easterwood] was a Baptist himself, so he was very comfortable working [on] providing those sorts of designs for a Baptist institution,” Hafertepe said.
Yet one of Brooks’ predecessors, Rufus Columbus Burleson, who served as Baylor’s second president from 1851 to 1861, proposed a Latin addition.
In addition to the classic Baylor motto, “Pro Ecclesia, Pro Texana,” Burleson proposed adopting a secondary motto: “Dulce et Decorum, Pro Patria Mori.”
Meaning “It is sweet and proper to die for your country,” the Latin phrase came from an ode by the Roman poet Horace. However, according to the Texas Collection, “it’s not clear if [the motto] ever was adapted.”
Despite Baylor’s founding in 1845, its architecture and evangelization led it to shift away from the once-common standard of academic Latin.
Because of the need to share Sacred Scripture in the common tongue, and due to the eventual retirement of Neoclassicism, Baylor never fully adopted a tradition often found in other old universities.
