[2] In 1968, it was split into two universities, the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Université catholique de Louvain, following tensions between the Dutch and French-speaking student bodies.

On 8 November 1834, on the basis of authorisation in a papal brief of 13 December 1833, from Pope Gregory XVI,[3] the Belgian bishops founded the Catholic University of Belgium (Latin: Universitas catholica Belgii) in Mechelen.

The bishops aimed to create a university "to accommodate any doctrine from the Holy Apostolic See and to repudiate anything that does not flow from this august source".

The announcement of the bishops' founding of the new university in Mechelen was met with demonstrations and disturbances in the cities of Ghent, Leuven and Liège.

[13] A banquet for more than five hundred guests offered by the students to the Rector and the faculty, took place the 23 November 1859, in the great festival hall of the Music Academy of Louvain.

They set fire to a large part of the city, effectively destroying about half of it, including the university library (see below).

Student unrest fueled by the history of discrimination against Flemings eventually brought down the Belgian government in February 1968.

[16] Materials lost included the Easter Island tablet bearing Rongorongo text E and the oldest Czech Bible.

The library's tower included a 48-bell Gillett and Johnston carillon installed in 1928, and dedicated to the memory of the engineers of the United States who died in all wars.

With the cooperation of the Belgian American Educational Foundation and the University, organized efforts to restore the carillon began.

The separation of the university into distinct French-language and Dutch-language institutions in 1968 entailed a division of the central library holdings.

This gave rise to the factoid that encyclopedias and runs of periodicals were divided by volume between the two universities, but actually such series bear single shelfmarks.