“Egregium opus. Cardinalis iste instituit Collegium, et absolvit popinam.”
So runs one epigram, which being freely translated is:
“The Mountains were in labour once, and forth there came a mouse;—
Your Cardinal a College planned, and built an eating-house!”
It was part of Wolsey’s design to gather into his college all the rising intellect of Europe. In pursuance of this plan, he induced certain scholars from Cambridge to migrate thither. But they it was, so men afterwards complained, who first introduced the taint of heresy into Oxford. For at first the University was as strictly orthodox as her powerful patron, who hated “the Hellish Lutherans,” could wish. When Martin Luther (1517) nailed his ninety-five theses on the church door of Wittenberg, in protest against what Erasmus had called “the crime of false pardons,” the
sale of indulgences, his protest found no echo here. On the contrary, the masters in convocation gladly elected three representative theologians who attended Wolsey’s conference in London, and condemned the noxious doctrines of the German reformer. A committee of theologians was also held at Oxford, and their condemnation of Luther’s teaching won the warm approval of the University. But the leaven of Lutheranism had already been introduced. The Cambridge students whom Wolsey had brought to be canons of Cardinal College, began to hold secret meetings and to disseminate Lutheran treatises. They made proselytes; they grew bolder, and nailed upon the church doors at nights some famous “libels and bills.”
Archbishop Warham presently found himself obliged to take notice of the growing sect. He wrote to Wolsey invoking his aid,