Neither the University of Oxford nor University College can justly claim to be connected with the name of Alfred the Great. But there are relics of Alfred and Alfred’s time preserved at Oxford which should be of interest to the visitor. In the Bodleian may be seen certain coins which have led historians to assume that Alfred set up a mint at Oxford, and to argue from this supposed fact that his rule was firmly established over Mercia. The coins in question, which were all found in Lancashire, are variations of the type bearing these letters;—
Obverse. ORSNA, then in another line ELFRED, and in the third line FORDA. Reverse BERNV + + + ALDNo
It is assumed that these words indicate that Bernwald was a moneyer who was authorised by Alfred to strike coins at Oxford. But why Oxford should be written Orsnaforda and why, instead of the usual practice of abbreviation, the name of the place of the mint should have been written wrongly and at excessive length is not explained. I do not think there is any sufficient reason to connect the Orsnaforda coins with Oxford at all.
Whether Alfred’s sceptre held sway over Mercia so that it can be stated definitely that “Wessex and Mercia were now united as Wessex and Kent had long been united by their allegiance to the same ruler” (Green) or not, the fact is not to be deduced from an imaginary mint at Oxford, any more than from the forged documents in the archives of University College or from the presence of what is known as King Alfred’s jewel in the University galleries, (Beaumont Street).
This beautiful specimen of gold enamelled work was found in Somersetshire in 1693 and added to the Ashmolean collections a little later. The inscription “Aelfred mee heht gevvrcan” (Alfred ordered me to be made) which it bears has earned it its title.
The promotion of Edmund Rich, the Abingdon lad who was first made an archbishop and then a saint, to the degree of Master of Arts, is the earliest mention of that degree in Oxford. The story of his life there gives the best illustration we have of the early years and growth of the University.
In the ardour of knowledge and the passionate purity of youth he vowed himself to a life of study and chastity. In the spirit of mystical piety which was ever characteristic of him, secretly as a boy he took Mary for his bride. Perhaps at eventide, when the shadows were gathering in the Church of S. Mary and the crowd of teachers and students were breaking up from the rough schools which stood near the western doors of the church in the cemetery without, he approached the image of the Virgin and slipped on Mary’s finger a gold ring. On that ring was engraved “that sweet Ave with which the Angel at the Annunciation had hailed the Virgin.” Devout and studious, the future saint was not without boyish tastes. He paid more attention to the music and singing at S. Mary’s, we are told, than to the prayers. On one occasion he was slipping out of the church before the service was finished in order to join the other students at their games. But at the north door a divine apparition bade him return, and from that time his devotion grew more fervent. It is recorded with astonishment by his biographers as a mark of his singular piety, that when he had taken his degree as Master he would attend mass each day before lecturing, contrary to the custom of the scholars of that time, and although he was not yet in orders. For this purpose he built a chapel to the Virgin in the parish where he then lived. His example was followed by his pupils. “So study,” such was the maxim he loved to impress upon them, “as if you were to live for ever; so live as if you were to die to-morrow.” How little the young scholar, to whom Oxford owes her first introduction to the Logic of Aristotle, cared for the things of this world is shown by his contemptuous treatment of the fees which the students paid to the most popular of their teachers. He would throw down the money on the window-sill, and there burying it in the dust which had accumulated, “dust to dust, ashes to ashes,” he would cry, celebrating its obsequies. And there the fee would lie till a student in joke or earnest theft ran off with it. So for six years he lectured in Arts. But even knowledge brought its troubles. The Old Testament, which with the copy of the Decretals long formed his sole library, frowned down upon a love of secular learning, from which Edmund found it hard to wean himself. The call came at last. He was lecturing one day in Mathematics, when the form of his dead mother appeared to him. “My son,” she seemed to say, “what art thou studying? What are these strange diagrams over which thou porest so intently?”
She seized Edmund’s right hand, and in the palm drew three circles, within which she wrote the names of the Father, Son and the Holy Ghost. “Be these thy diagrams henceforth, my son,” she cried. And so directed, the student devoted himself henceforth to Theology.
This story, Green observes, admirably illustrates the latent opposition between the spirit of the University and the spirit of the Church. The feudal and ecclesiastical order of the old mediæval world were both alike threatened by the new training. Feudalism rested on local isolation. The University was a protest against this isolation of man from man. What the Church and Empire had both aimed at and both failed in, the knitting of Christian nations together into a vast commonwealth, the Universities of the time actually did.
On the other hand, the spirit of intellectual inquiry promoted by the Universities, ecclesiastical bodies though they were, threatened the supremacy of the Church. The sudden expansion of the field of education diminished the importance of those purely ecclesiastical and theological studies, which had hitherto absorbed the whole intellectual energies of mankind. For, according to the monastic ideal, theology was confined to mere interpretation of the text of Scripture and the dicta of the Fathers or Church. To this narrow science all the sciences were the handmaids. They were regarded as permissible only so far as they contributed to this end. But the great outburst of intellectual enthusiasm in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries created a momentary revolution in these matters. The whole range of science as revealed by the newly discovered treasures of Greek thinkers and Roman Jurists was now thrown open to the student. And this faint revival of physical science, this temporary restoration of classical literature, a re-discovery as it were of an older and a greater world, and contact with a larger, freer life, whether in mind, in society or politics, introduced a spirit of scepticism, of doubt, of denial, into the realms of unquestionable belief.