by Leah Rousmaniere
Associate Director of Development
The Seminary seal was first conceived in 1908 as a doodle on the back of an envelope.
The Rev. William Walker Rockwell did not seem much like the doodling type. A graduate of Harvard and Andover Theological Seminary who had done post-graduate fellowships at the Universities of Marburg and Berlin in Germany, he was Assistant Professor of Church History at Union, had just been named Acting Librarian, and was working on his PhD, which he would receive from the University of Göttingen in 1914. But a trip to Chicago afforded him time to imagine and muse, and on December 9, 1908, returning to New York on the train, he sketched his ideas on the back of an envelope.
That same day, back at Union – then still located at 700 Park Avenue – Rockwell along with President Francis Brown and Professor George William Knox were appointed a committee on the new seal for the Seminary. The envelope entered the annals of history; it resides today in the Seminary Archives, in a folder labeled “Correspondence showing the Origin of the Seal adopted in 1909 . for the Purpose of the New Buildings” – the “New Buildings” being, of course, the current Seminary campus on Morningside Heights, the cornerstone of which had been laid only weeks before Rockwell’s trip to Chicago.
The design of the new seal was not without its challenges. Rockwell confided some of his thoughts to the Rev. Dr. Henry C. McCook, an expert on ecclesiastical heraldry then living in Philadelphia:
“I have been experimenting in an amateurish way,” Rockwell wrote McCook in a letter dated December 16, 1908. “And before bringing the scheme formally to the attention of the Faculty I personally should like very much to receive your criticisms, advice and suggestions.
“You will find enclosed a horribly crude sketch of what I have in mind; the Latin motto ‘unitas veritas caritas’ is appropriate though not novel; the idea of emblazoning the cross on the coat of arms is proper for a theological seminary; to put open books representing V.T. and N.T. is unimpeachable for an institution where the Scriptures lie at the basis of instruction. I have doubts, however, as to the suitability of employing two conventionalized trees in the lower quarter of the coat of arms. My original idea was to put in Assyrian trees of life, taken from ancient bas reliefs or seals. But an Assyrian element will hardly harmonize with mediaeval or Gothic detail. If we can use a tree at all, I suppose it must be a conventional specimen from the herbarium of the heraldists. The idea of the tree, however, appeals to me because it signifies life and growth, qualities which are vital to those who believe in a progressive revelation.”
McCook responded that the proposed seal seemed “appropriate and heraldically correct.” He suggested evergreen date palms, commonly taken to be the trees in Psalm 1 and the emblem of the person “whose delight is in the law of the Lord.” Encouraged, Rockwell took the matter to President Brown and Prof. Knox, and with their approval to the full Faculty. After lengthy discussion of which would be better, oak trees or palm trees, the Faculty chose palm trees, but a few weeks later rejected a new design incorporating them. “The substitution of oak trees,” Rockwell wrote a friend, “would probably obviate the captious criticism that we are immortalizing feather dusters instead of palm trees.” A new sketch, however, fared little better; the oak trees, one professor complained, looked like “cabbages.” Finally two “fully leaved trees” passed muster, a river of wavy lines was removed, the open books representing V.T. and N.T. became one book emblazoned with IHC and XRC, and the design was accepted by the Faculty. The Board approved it on March 9, 1909.
When the new Union buildings on Morningside Heights were dedicated on November 28-29, 1910, there was great rejoicing, exultation, a profound sense of accomplishment, and an almost giddy hope for the future. Some celebrants might even have paused to reflect that God was in the details, too: the Seminary’s wonderful new seal was on all the shining brass doorknobs, imparting to every entry and exit the spirit of harmony, of service, and a supreme fidelity to the truth.
Ph.D. from Union Seminary/Columbia University (1963) with an emphasis in Old Testament. By the time she earned her Ph.D., there were regularly 300+ women enrolled at Union Seminary—but women were still not correspondingly visible in the faculty. Trible taught at Wake Forest University and Andover-Newton Theological School before being appointed Professor of Old Testament at Union, and later the Baldwin Professor of Sacred Literature (1980). She became the first woman to hold that post. Trible has become a leading authority on what is now known as feminist interpretation of biblical texts, as well as literary and rhetorical methods of biblical criticism. She is an internationally known lecturer, and also has served as president of the Society of Biblical Literature (1994). Professor Trible left Union in 1998 to pursue a deanship at the new Wake Forest School of Divinity in Winston-Salem, NC. Her papers constitute the inaugural collection of the Archives of Women in Theological Scholarship.
