Corpus Christi College, Oxford

“ It was clear that, if Oxford had given the stimulus to new studies, Cambridge was more skilful in providing for them a permanent home. If progress was to be made, Oxford must copy the methods of Cambridge. The man who grasped this fact, and taught it to Wolsey, Richard Fox, Bishop of Winchester, had special means of knowing it, as he had been Chancellor of Cambridge and Master of Pembroke. In 1516 Fox founded Corpus Christi College at Oxford, avowedly in the interests of the New Learning. ”

“ He matriculated from Oriel College, Oxford, on 17 Dec. 1792, and on 6 May 1794 was admitted a scholar of Corpus Christi College. He was afterwards elected to a fellowship, which he held till 1812. From Corpus he graduated B.A. in 1796, M.A. in 1800, and B.D. in 1809. On 12 Feb. 1803 he became vicar of Yarnton in Oxfordshire; on 11 June 1804 he was appointed vicar of Stoneleigh in Warwickshire, and on 25 March 1811 he received the rectory of Duntisborne Rouse in Gloucestershire. These three livings he held during the remainder of his life. He died at Oxford on 26 Oct. ”

“ Sermons in the Parish Church of | Meisey Hampton in the Di-|ocesse of Gloucester, | BY | SEBASTIAN BENEFIELD DOCTOR | of Divinity and fellow of Corpus Christi | College in Oxford. | HEREVNTO IS ADDED A SERMON | vpon 1. Cor. 9. 19. wherein is touched the law-|full vse of things indifferent. | [motto, then woodcuts.]
88Impr. 29a: 1613: sm. 4o: pp. [8] + 280 + [8] : p. 11 beg. ther numbring, 111 Which truth: Pica Roman. Contents:—p. (1) title: (3–4) dedication to bp. King, dated “from my study in Corpus Christi College in Oxford, Iuly 5. ”

“ But Christ Church is not the only unique college in Oxford. As there is no other to be found in any university so curiously combined with the cathedral and ecclesiastical dignitaries of a see, so is there no other, in this country at all events, that has preserved its original intention, as a college for Fellows only, as has All Souls. Here no noisy undergraduate is allowed to disturb the calm. ”

“ At first the college instruction was regarded as supplementary to the university teaching, though it soon became far more important. The masters of the university continued to read lectures on the recognized subjects, living as of old on fees from those who chose to listen; but they were clearly unable to compete with the endowed tutors and professors of the colleges. By the beginning of the fifteenth century, the mediæval teaching master was disappearing. The only real teaching in arts—by all odds the most popular branch of study at Oxford—was given within the colleges and halls. ”

“ Until the nineteenth century, there really was no university at Oxford, at least in modern times. The colleges were quite independent of one another socially and in athletics, and each of them provided all the necessary instruction for its members. The social clubs which now admit members from the university at large began life as wine clubs of separate colleges, and even to-day the influence of the parent college is apt to predominate. ”

“ A Trinity man will tell you of the Grinling Gibbons carvings in the Chapel, but he thinks with greater tenderness of an old armchair in his rooms in the garden quad. A Corpus man will take a pride in belonging to a college that has always set before itself a high standard of learning, and is suitably possessed of a magnificent old library, but it is of his quaint old rooms in the little quiet quad that he dreams, when his thoughts go back again to Oxford. ”

“ No, no! it is more meet a great deal that we should have care to provide for the increase of learning, and for such as who by their learning shall do good in the church and commonwealth.' The result of this advice was the foundation of Corpus Christi College, as ultimately settled in 1516 and 1517, towards which object Oldham, besides other gifts, contributed what was then the large sum of six thousand marks. ”

“ Even when a fellow has received all the university has to offer, he is still amenable to the duality of Oxford life. In American institutions, in proportion as a man is happily clubbed, he is by the very nature of the social organization withdrawn from his college mates; but at Oxford he still 76 dines in Hall, holds forth at the college debating society, plays on the college teams, and, until his final year, he lives within the college walls. ”

“ Of late the best public schools have had so strong and admirable an influence that boys have often been kept in them by their parents until they reach the age limit, generally nineteen. By this time they have anticipated most of the studies required for a pass degree in the university, and find little or nothing to do when they go up but to evade their tutors and to "reside." It is by this means, as the satirist 169 long ago explained, that Oxford has become an institution of such great learning. Every freshman brings to it a little knowledge and no graduate takes any away. ”

“ The ordinary English man or woman, unconnected with Oxford, has never heard of them. The undergraduate and the ordinary don has seen some part just now and then, when some enthusiastic guests have had to be taken round the sights.
And yet a book of many volumes might be written to tell of the things both rare and exquisite that Oxford hugs most close to her breast. He who cares to look may find them everywhere. There is not a college in all the University that does not possess something precious, either for its intrinsic beauty or for its historical interest. ”

“ If Oxford thus, to some extent, moulded to her pattern men who, welcome as they were, were only accidental, surely the college spirit may be trusted to assimilate whatever material the changed conditions of social or of political life furnish to it. The hope of many at Oxford is that there will be a great development and a great change. On one side it will be good if Oxford becomes to a much greater extent not only an all-British, but also a world university; on another side it is to be hoped that far more than ever before men of all classes in England will come to Oxford. ”

“ He enjoyed nothing so much as an argument, always holding his ground with great obstinacy; a fine student, frank and affectionate, brimful of wit and humor, fond of reading, with a quiet determination to excel in whatever he undertook. With such weapons he was well equipped to “storm the citadel” at Oxford.
On May 23, 1850, he went up to matriculate—that is, to register his name and go through some examinations and the formality of becoming a student. Christ Church was to be his college, as it had been his father’s before him. ”

“ The Gild or Benefit Society was an important institution in medieval Cambridge, and each church had one attached to it. Somewhere towards the end of the thirteenth century, when the festival of Corpus Christi was become a recognised feast of the Church, a society of this kind was founded in the parish of St Bene’t, and took the title of Corpus Christi in honour of the Blessed Sacrament. What induced the corporation to found a college is unknown; its action is at all events a testimony to the love of learning which was spreading at this time among the middle classes. ”

“ There is a great difference between a university and a college. A university is great enough to shelter many colleges, and its chancellor is ruler over all. When we reflect that Christ Church College, alone, included as many important buildings as are to be found in some of our modern American universities, we may have some idea of the extent of Oxford University, within whose boundaries twenty such colleges could be counted. ”

“ The educational function of the University had, in fact, been almost wholly merged in college tuition, but the scholarships, as well as the fellowships, of the colleges were fettered by all manner of restrictions, which marred their value as incentives to industry. The great majority of fellows were bound to take Holy Orders, and the whole University was dominated by a clerical spirit, which directly tended to make it, as it had so long been, a focus of theological controversy. ”

“ In the educational life of Oxford, as in the social and athletic life, the distinctive feature, at least to the American mind, is the duality of organization in consequence of which an undergraduate is amenable first to his college and then to the university: the college teaches and the university examines. In America, so far as the undergraduate is concerned, the college and the university are identical: the instructor in each course of lectures is also the examiner. ”

“ There is a rare freedom from ‘’Varsity Politics’. Athletic professionalism is an absent quantity. Oxford neither knows nor understands the spirit of the German student Verbindung or of the American ‘College Fraternity’. In fact many phases of the ‘fraternizing’ spirit seem lacking in Oxford life.
The nearest approach to the ‘Class organization’ or organization by Departments which influences University life in America, is the predominance of the College in Oxford life. Clear lines between ‘Senior’, ‘Junior,’ ‘Sophomore,’ and ‘Freshmen’ are not drawn ”

“ If the founders of the earliest Oxford college were indebted for their inspiration to any foreign source, they must have derived it from the great French University in Paris, of which the collegiate system already formed a distinctive feature. Not to speak of still more ancient colleges at Paris, either attached to monasteries or serving the purpose of mere lodging-houses, the Sorbonne, founded about 1250, furnishes a striking precedent for its Oxford successors, as an academical cloister specially planned for the education of the secular clergy. ”

“ In this great foundation then the three characteristic features of a college are found—a common life, powers of self-government, with the right of choosing future members, and endowments that enable religion and learning to flourish, free from more pressing cares. It is these features which distinguish the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, and which have determined their history. ”

“ Some of the fellowships are held in connexion with university offices; but the majority are awarded on examination, and are among the highest honours in the university offered by this method. The only undergraduate members of the college are four bible-clerks, [5] so that the college occupies a peculiar position as a society of graduates. The college has its beautiful original front upon High Street; the first quadrangle, practically unaltered since the foundation, is one of the most characteristic in Oxford. ”

“ Entirely separate from the University in its corporate life and existence, yet federally incorporated in the larger University body, are the twenty-one Colleges or ‘Societies’ of Oxford. Each of these twenty-one States of this larger Academic United States is an independent unit, a self-governing, self-sufficient corporation, with its own traditions, and its own history. The ‘Fellows’ of the College elect their own Head; Christ Church as a Cathedral Chapter is an exception, the Dean of Christ Church being appointed by the Crown. Each College has its own endowments and its own property ”

“ Other similar foundations were soon created: the King’s Scholars (later incorporated as King’s Hall) in 1317, Michael-House in 1324, Clare in 1325, Pembroke in 1347, Gonville in 1348, Trinity Hall in 1350, and Corpus Christi in 1352. Every new college that was established provided fresh definite ties with the locality, and rendered less likely the break-up of the University and the scattering of its members—a serious risk to which in early days it was always subject. ”

“ Many of the middle-aged disciples of the Church of Common-sense are still in our midst. They say the old sayings, they intone the old responses, but somehow it seems that scepticism is abroad; it seems that the world is wider than their system. Not even open examinations for fellowships and scholarships, not half a dozen new schools, and science, and the Museum, and the Slade Professorship of Art, have made Oxford that ideal University which was expected to come down from Heaven like the New Jerusalem. ”

“ Oxford has now 21 colleges, among which are Balliol, Christ Church, Magdalen, Oriel, Trinity, and University College; 64 professors and teachers, and 3000 students. It is rich in museums and libraries; the Bodleian Library is of great value, the Taylor Library is devoted to modern literature. The Oxford or Tractarian Movement, one of the most remarkable religious impulses of modern times, had its centre in the University between 1834 and 1845. Among distinguished Oxford alumni were Hooker, Jeremy Taylor, Wesley, Newman ”

“ In the sixteenth century, Oxford plays no great part in the actual revolution in the English Church; yet it will be a place attractive to many who cherish the memory of the "Oxford Reformers," the members of Erasmus' circle—John Colet, Thomas More, William Grocyn, and other scholars—who hoped by sound learning to amend the Church without violent change. Some, on the other hand, will see in the sixteenth-century Oxford, the school which trained men for the Counter-Reformation, such as the heroic Jesuit, Campion, or Cardinal Alien, the founder of the English College at Douai. ”

“ Negotiations with the University and with the Colleges found all the Colleges willing to accept Rhodes Scholars, although their requirements varied somewhat. The Trustees found it advisable to require that only men who showed ability to pass Responsions [17] should be eligible.
Entrance to an Oxford College is not as simple a matter as entering most Colleges or Universities in the United States, Germany, the British Colonies or even other Universities in the United Kingdom. ”