Belmont Abbey College, located just outside of Charlotte, NC, celebrates its 149th birthday in April 2025.
This month, Belmont Abbey celebrates its 149th birthday. After Fr. Jeremiah O’Connell bought 500 acres of land west of Charlotte for $10 dollars, he donated the land to the Benedictine Order under the condition that the Benedictines establish a school. Fr. Herman Wolfe and two students arrived on April 21, 1876. According to Abbey lore, they had class that very day.
Why did Fr. Wolfe teach class the very day they arrived? Why couldn’t the students take a half day off? Because St. Benedict teaches ora et labora – prayer and work. The purpose of a student is to study and to learn, and such a noble pursuit is not to be put off for a later time. Abbey students are called to excellence. By having class that very day, those two students learned more than just academic efficiency; they were taught that both learning and work are intrinsic parts of life, and that good habits form character to achieve our teleological ends: happiness and eternal beatitude with God.
Abbey tradition holds that many of the monks made the bricks themselves for the monastery and the original academic building. Occasionally, you can detect a handprint in a brick. Just as those monks shaped the Carolina clay by hand to erect the first campus structures, today the monks and lay faculty at Belmont Abbey College build within the minds and souls of their students a foundation through which to study and examine the good, the true, and the beautiful.
To all former, current, and future students of Belmont Abbey College, we wish to say Happy Birthday!
To learn more about Belmont Abbey College, its high school summer camp, great books Honors College, and Master of Arts in Classical and Liberal Education, please contact Dr. Thomas Varacalli at thomasvaracalli@bac.edu.