Holy cow! Bovine to visit Harvard Yard

But then asphalt would have ruined Harvey Cox’s grazing rights.

Cox, the celebrated Harvard religion professor, was the Hollis Professor of Divinity from 2002 until his retirement this past June after 44 distinguished years at Harvard. (He is now the Hollis Research Professor of Divinity.) The Hollis chair was endowed in 1721 and first occupied by Edward Wigglesworth the following year.

It is the oldest endowed chair in American higher education, and, more germane to this story, traditionally came with grazing rights in Harvard Yard for the cows of chair holders. Wigglesworth and his son who succeeded him exercised those rights.

During the late afternoon of Sept. 10, Cox will do the same and bring a Jersey cow named “Faith’’ from The Farm School in Athol into the yard to graze. The cow’s name is really “Pride,’’ but as that is first among the seven deadly sins, she will go by “Faith’’ for the day to occasion his retirement from teaching and the release of his new book - wouldn’t you know it - “The Future of Faith.’’

Cox is a man of deep intellect, dry humor, and some whimsy. One can also detect in his eye, when the light is right, a potential for mischief or mayhem. He has long wanted to bring a cow into the yard and was simply not going out without having done so.

“I’m reclaiming a tradition that almost got lost,’’ he said last week on the porch of his summer house in Woods Hole. “Why can’t we have cows grazing in Harvard Yard? People started saying to me, ‘Why don’t you do it?’ I finally said to myself, ‘I’m going to do it.’ ’’

At 4:30 that day, a ceremony will be held honoring Harvey along the steps of Memorial Church facing Widener Library. Peter Gomes, Harvard’s preacher, will preside and orate. Cox will say something. But I’m guessing all eyes will be on Faith, who will be chewing her cud behind a rope on one of the two grassy hillocks on either side of the church steps.

Sept. 10 should be a wild one in the Yard. Students who return earlier that week will see Faith there and wonder what in God’s name has happened to Harvard. One can safely assume some will immediately start scheming to top Cox.

Cox, Faith, and entourage will then process to the Divinity School, where they will arrive at a green behind Andover Hall for more ceremony, a reception, and, to crown the day, the milking of Faith by Bradley Teeter, Farm School manager.

Along the way, there will be music - Crimson anthems like “Ten Thousand Men of Harvard’’ - performed by “The Soft Touch Dance Band,’’ a swing band out of Waltham in which Cox has played saxophone for years. He has been addicted to the sax all of his life and can’t wait to play during the procession.

It is no small task to get a cow into Harvard Yard. Cox had to clear the plan with a laundry list of Harvard entities, but they all warmed to the scheme. William Graham, Harvard Divinity School dean, loved the idea. So did the Harvard security people, whose approval was critical.

Cox recalls that when he raised the potential of Harvard security blocking Faith’s entrance into the Yard to his friend, Gomes thundered, “They wouldn’t dare!’’

(Gomes, who also teaches the history of Harvard, notes that the “back yard,’’ as the area where Cox and Faith will be was called, teemed in years past with cows, pigs, chickens, and outhouses. Classes were routinely interrupted by the squeals of pigs as they were taken to meet their maker and become dinner.)

Cox also cleared it with the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee, a Harvard body he had never heard of before. No problema. All he had to do, he recalls, was answer its questions, which included: When was the cow last vaccinated; is she shy around people; and most important, in my words, who is the lucky soul to care for and clean up after the ineffable Faith?

When queried, the secretary to the Harvard Corporation, its governing body of seven poobahs, could find nothing written into the creation of the Hollis chair about cows. Grazing, then, is more of a tradition, prompting Cox to note, “This place is pasted together with traditions.’’

But of course there would be nothing in writing and here’s why. Thomas Hollis was a wealthy London merchant who never set foot in Harvard Yard. He never came to New England, so of course he wouldn’t have written grazing rights into the provisions of his chair.

Hollis was a Baptist and thus a dissenter from the Church of England. He heard from über-Puritan Increase Mather, who spent time in London, about a little college in Cambridge that educated many young men to be ministers. He gave his money to the institution stipulating there be no doctrinal requirements for the post. (Donald Cutler, Cox’s longtime literary agent and an ordained Episcopal minister to boot, is the repository of all knowledge on this stuff.)

As the evening shadows begin to fall on the fated day, Harvey Cox will probably purr with pleasure after a spectacular send-off, and Faith will have been the first cow in the Yard in a couple of hundred years. She will then travel back to Athol and reclaim her rightful name of Pride after a job well done.

Sam Allis can be reached at allis@globe.com