7/29/2019 renaissance oxford.doc

1/1

Renaissance Oxford

Despite its monastic nature the radical humanism of the Renaissance was taken up eagerly in Oxford, and it

marks a new period in the importance of Oxford. It may be argued that with the Renaissance came the first

study of anything that was not of a clerical nature in the world at large, and the monastic institutions stillwielded enormous power in the Oxford of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Oxford, however, did more

than respond to this new emphasis in thinking from abroad, it positively embraced it.

Desiderius Erasmus, that most typical as well as most exceptional of Renaissance philosophers, visited the

University in 1499, and, in his letters, seems greatly to have enjoyed his stay, and been much impressed

with the quality of learning, except in one particular subject:

In our day Theology, which ought to be at the head of all literature, is mainly studied by persons who

from their dullness or lack of sense are scarcely fit for any literature at all.

These new emphases so excited Richard Fox, the blind bishop of Winchester, that he founded Corpus

Christi College in 1517, an establishment very much of the Renaissance, with its emphasis on classical

teaching, and lecturers in both Greek and Latin.

These new emphases in teaching were reinforced by Henry VIIIs sponsorship of Regius Chairs in subjects

like civil law, medicine and Greek, and his abolition of the study of canon law (see Henry VIII and hisTroublesome University), and thus the desire of the monarch for a son reinforced the changing attitudes of

the sixteenth century.

Queen Elizabeth I visited Oxford twice, once in 1566, and once in the 1590s, when she is said to have

entered public disputations of a light-hearted nature with the scholars, and enjoyed all of the entertainments

that the town had to offer. This is in heavy contrast to the most famous involvement with Oxford that her

predecessor, Queen Mary, had with the city, which was the burning of Latimer, Ridley and Cranmer, the

Oxford Martyrs (see Religion in Oxford).

However, despite its new cathedral, the intellectual revival of the Renaissance, the huge rise in thepopulation of the city (by 1638, the citys population had risen to 10,000), and its mercantile revival, the

attendance of the University during the Tudor period slumped to an all-time low (although, at this time, it

must be remembered that to be a religious academic, of whatever denomination, could prove to be ahazardous business, and the dissolution of the monasteries obviously deprived it of some potential clerical

scholars). Thus in the international academic uprising of the Renaissance, Oxford was passionate and

strident, although its streets may have looked strangely empty.