A history of the University of Oxford

by George C. Brodrick

During the reign of Henry VII. the University was strongly agitated by the struggle between the old scholastic philosophy and the new learning of the Renaissance. The credit of introducing classical studies, and especially that of Greek literature, has sometimes been claimed for the Reformation, but it is rather due to a liberal spirit then springing up in the Catholic world, and especially to Italian influences. It was from Italy that England caught the new impulse, and that Oxford imported numerous MSS. of classical authors, while printing was still almost a fine art. Perhaps the foundation of grammar schools at Winchester and Eton for the special instruction of boys in Latin may have contributed to pave the way for the classical revival at the Universities. At all events, it was in progress before the Reformation, and was promoted by several enlightened bishops and abbots of the old religion, and may not improperly be regarded as a legacy of Catholic to Protestant England. Writing in 1497, Erasmus, who is sometimes described as the father of classical studies in England, speaks of a ‘rich harvest of classical literature’ as already flourishing at Oxford on every side, and declares that he could well nigh forget Italy in the society of Colet, Grocyn, Lynacre, and More. Indeed, he places England, in respect of culture, above France or Germany, and second to Italy alone. In fact, we soon afterwards find Richard Croke, an Englishman, teaching Greek at Leipsic, whence he migrated, a few years later, to succeed Erasmus himself as Professor at Cambridge.

Erasmus, More, Colet, Grocyn, and Linacre

During his first visit to Oxford, Erasmus lodged in a conventual house of Augustin Canons, known as St. Mary’s College, opposite New Inn Hall. Of the names thus commemorated by him, that of Sir Thomas More belongs to the political history of England, but he also deserves to be remembered as the young student of Canterbury College, among the most ardent disciples and most zealous promoters of classical teaching at Oxford. Colet, who had known More in the house of Cardinal Morton, and who became famous as the founder of St. Paul’s School, was educated at Magdalen College, but afterwards visited France and Italy, whence he returned in 1497, to lecture publicly but gratuitously on St. Paul’s Epistles, and to become a leading pioneer of Latin scholarship in the University. Grocyn had been elected Fellow of New College as far back as 1467, and was Divinity Reader at Magdalen College about 1483. It was not until some years later that he went to Italy for purposes of study, and devoted himself to Greek and Latin. On his return, he resided in Exeter College, and delivered the first public lectures on Greek, which seem to have been attended by Erasmus himself, who speaks of him with unfailing respect. Lynacre was elected Fellow of All Souls in 1484, but, like Colet and Grocyn, owed his erudition chiefly to his residence in Italy, where he became Professor of Medicine at Padua. But his range of studies was so wide that it was doubted of him whether he was ‘a better Latinist or Grecian, a better grammarian or physician.’ In modern times he is chiefly known as among the founders, and as the first President, of the College of Physicians; while his principal claim to gratitude at Oxford consists in his posthumous foundation of two Readerships in Physiology at Merton College, which have since been consolidated into a Professorship of Anatomy. The new studies, however, met with violent opposition, and several University dignitaries publicly lectured against Erasmus. Indeed, if we are to believe Anthony Wood, in spite of all the reformers’ efforts, academical learning was still in a deplorable state in 1508, the last year of Henry VII.’s reign. ‘The schools were much frequented with querks and sophistry. All things, whether taught or written, seemed to be trite or inane. No pleasant streams of humanity or mythology were gliding among us, and the Greek language, from whence the greater part of knowledge is derived, was at a very low ebb, or in a manner forgotten.’

Foundation of Corpus Christi College by Bishop Fox

The first endowed lectureship of the Greek language at Oxford was instituted by Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, in 1516, as part of his new foundation of Corpus Christi College. His original intention had been to found a monastery, and in founding a college instead, with twenty fellows and twenty scholars, he clearly showed his desire to encourage the classics by providing also for Professors of Greek and Latin, as well as of theology, whose lectures should be open to all the University. By virtue of this endowment, Bishop Fox has been regarded as the founder of the professorial system, though he must perhaps share that honour, not only with William of Waynflete, but with Margaret, Countess of Richmond, mother of Henry VII., who had already founded the Margaret Professorship of Divinity in 1502. But Fox’s liberal spirit and sympathy with the Renaissance was shown in provisions, hitherto unknown, for instruction in the classical authors, for the colloquial use of Greek as well as Latin, and for the election of lecturers from Greece and Southern Italy. It was upon these grounds that Erasmus predicted a great future for the college as a stronghold of the classical movement.

Greeks and Trojans

That movement had already provoked a strange outbreak of academical barbarism in the University of Oxford. The faction of ‘Trojans,’ as they called themselves, from their enmity to Greek letters, seems to have been partly animated by a popular aversion to change, and partly by a far-sighted appreciation of the anti-Catholic tendencies inherent in the Renaissance. It is said to have originated in hostility to Grocyn’s Greek lectures at Exeter College; but it reached its height in the early part of Henry VIII.’s reign, by which time, however, the classics had won powerful friends at Court, and the ‘Greeks’ were protected by a peremptory Royal order, issued in 1519. It is remarkable that no trace of these fierce controversies between Scholasticism and the New Learning, still less of the impending revolution in the national religion, is to be discerned in the statutes of Brasenose, the latest of the pre-Reformation colleges, issued in 1521, nine years after its foundation. Under these statutes the scholars were bound to study the old subjects of the scholastic curriculum, ‘Sophistry, Logic, and Philosophy, and afterwards Divinity ... for the advancement of Holy Church, and for the support and exaltation of the Christian faith.’ On the other hand, there are ample proofs that long before the Old Learning ceased to rule the University system of disputations and examinations, the Renaissance had already penetrated into the University and College Libraries.

Cardinal Wolsey and the foundation of Christ Church

The great minister of Henry VIII., Cardinal Wolsey, must always be remembered as the most discerning as well as the most generous patron of liberal culture, which he admired for its own sake, though he naturally regarded it as the handmaid of the Church. It was in 1518 that Wolsey came to Oxford, in company with Catharine of Aragon, while the King remained behind at Abingdon. The University, doubtless perceiving the danger of impending spoliation, ‘made a solemn and ample decree, not only of giving up their statutes into the Cardinal’s hands, to be reformed, corrected, renewed, and the like, but also their liberties, indulgences, privileges, nay the whole University (the colleges excepted), to be by him disposed and framed into good order.’ Wolsey did not disappoint their confidence, and some five years later (in 1523) returned the charters, with a new and still more beneficial one procured from the King. At this period he is believed to have contemplated the foundation of more than one University professorship and the erection of University lecture-rooms, but if he ever entertained such an idea, it was abandoned. In the meantime, however, he was projecting the foundation of a college for secular clergy on a scale of grandeur hitherto unknown, for the purpose (as Huber well says) of ‘cultivating the new literature in the service of the old Church.’ In order to endow ‘Cardinal College,’ as it was to be called, twenty-two priories and convents were suppressed, under Papal and Royal authority, and their revenues, amounting to 2,000l., were diverted to the maintenance of ten professorships, as well as of sixty canonists and forty priests. The students were to be trained in a great school founded at Ipswich, as those of New College were trained at Winchester. The first stone of the building was laid in 1525; scholars had been engaged from Cambridge and the Continent to serve on the professorial staff; the abbey church of St. Frideswide’s had been appropriated as the college chapel; and the splendid kitchen, still preserved, was already completed, when the fall of Wolsey in 1529 arrested the execution of this grand design.

Action of the University on the questions of the Divorce and the Royal Supremacy