CHAPTER I.
THE HISTORY OF THE BUILDING.
The "Cathedral Church of Christ in Oxford" has had a somewhat unfortunate history. Built for the small monastery of St. Frideswide, with no thought of any ampler destination, it was in the sixteenth century raised to the rank of a cathedral, just after it had been reduced in size by the destruction of the bays of the nave, and sunk out of sight among a mass of college buildings. Nor was this all the indignity it suffered; for it had also to do duty as the chapel of the new academic foundation which Wolsey established, and very soon the cathedral was forgotten in the college chapel. So neglected was it that Britton wrote at the beginning of the present century—"It is very common for visitors, and even those of rather refined and critical minds, to leave Oxford without examining the building now under notice." A century earlier Browne Willis had been content to make the astounding observation: "'Tis truly no elegant structure."
The first church on this site was that built by St. Frideswide, "The Lady," as she was afterwards called in Oxford, and her father Didan, about the year 727. The story of this saint, which no visitor to her church should omit to read, will be found in our chapter on the History of the Foundation.
A contemporary of the Venerable Bede, she was one of those noble and devoted souls who (as Dr. Jessopp reminds us) made Anglo-Saxon monasticism the brightest spot in the history of English community-life. The monks and nuns of that period were in fact missionaries, who spread the Christian faith among the half-civilised pagani, or country-folk; and, by the wise method of planting themselves in remote districts, and quietly living the gospel they preached, touched the hearts, and won the souls, of their rough neighbours. Thus, without the use of force, without even the exercise of royal authority, says Professor Freeman, the whole of England had, by the time of the birth of St. Frideswide (c. 700), accepted the Christian faith. But the religion of the country districts must have still been of a very untutored description; and St. Frideswide was one of those who spread in the South, just at the time when Mercia was the paramount power in England, the finer civilisation which had already established itself in the North, and produced kings like Edwin, saints like Aidan, and poets like Caedmon. Whatever may be the authority of the legends which gathered about her name, it is certain that she gave up her high estate, "devoted herself and all her worldly goods to the service of Christ and her poor brethren," refused the offer of a royal marriage, escaped the persecutions of her suitor, "and finally died in the odour of sanctity, blessed by the poor and ignorant people to whom she had devoted her troubled life."
Of the place where she established the little church, part of which can still be seen in the walls of the cathedral, Dr. Liddell, the late Dean, thus writes:—
"Meadows unbroken by human habitations or human cultivation, a river wandering through them as it listed, unbarred by locks, or weirs, or mills, the hills down to their margin clothed in primeval forest. The bank of gravel which still slopes down to what we call Christ Church Meadow, offered a dry and pleasant site; the river supplied fish for the inmates of the new convent; the Trill-mill stream bears testimony by its name to the fact that its water was in early times, perhaps the earliest, used to turn the wheel which ground their corn; the neighbouring forests supplied abundant wood for fuel, as well as game for food, and acorns for the swine; the rich meadows of the valley furnished pasture to the flocks and herds. In those days, no doubt, the existence of such a peaceful community exercised a humanising and softening influence over the rude thanes and their clansmen and serfs, who had as yet perhaps hardly heard the name of Christ."