The Winn Professorship of Ecclesiastical History is an endowed chair at Harvard Divinity School.
As a result, the sum was to be disposed of under the direction of Edward Everett Hale (1822-1909), a Unitarian minister, and Andrew P. Peabody (1811-1893), Plummer Professor of Christian Morals at Harvard Divinity School.
The two concluded that a professorship in Ecclesiastical History at the Unitarian Harvard Divinity School would be a worthy cause, and petitioned the Supreme Judicial Court for permission to use a portion of the funds to that end.
He shall also give instruction, by lectures or otherwise, on such subjects as the religious history of the world; the relations of secular and church history; the influence of Christianity on the Roman Law, on preexisting institutions and customs, and on the earlier philosophies; the influence of antecedent institutions, religions, and philosophies, on Christianity; and the origin, history, and scope of the canon law; —such instruction to be open to all members of every department of the University.
"[1] The President of Harvard at the time Charles William Eliot (1834-1926) began to make inquiries of potential candidates for the chair.