CHRIST CHURCH, Oxford, has celebrated the five hundredth anniversary of its foundation, and encouraged a reassessment of its ill-fated Tudor founder, Cardinal Thomas Wolsey.
“Like all early Oxford colleges, we were established for each educational and spiritual purposes — and I’m proud that we’ve maintained this rhythm,” the Dean of Christ Church, the Very Revd Professor Sarah Foot, said.
“In offering witness to God within the midst of a vibrant, modern institution, we’re doing something for the entire country, in addition to for the diocesan church which is centred here. While looking back on what’s been achieved at this unique institution, we’re also looking ahead at how we are able to strengthen it for the generations of scholars to return.”
The Dean was speaking at a conference within the Upper Library at Christ Church on 4 October. The event charted the faculty’s foundation by Cardinal Wolsey (1475-1530) and subsequent acquisition by King Henry VIII.
She said that the lifetime of the faculty and cathedral still revolved around a morning-to-evening cycle of prayer, of which all students — religious or not — were made aware.
Professor Sarah Mortimer, a Fellow of Christ Church, said that Reformation historians were now freer from past confessional restraints and higher in a position to appreciate the motivations of historic figures comparable to Wolsey. “Although we shouldn’t omit Wolsey’s negative features presently of commemoration, we’re more aware today of his positive commitments to education, public service and social mobility.
“Many of our own concerns today mirror those of Wolsey himself, comparable to enable people to precise their potential in an institutional context, and reply to the synergies which arise between competing perspectives”.
Wolsey, the son of an Ipswich butcher, founded Cardinal College in July 1525, on the location of the traditional St Frideswide Priory, while he was Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor.
The stone-built foundation, vast and opulent by contemporary standards, was intended to foster humanist learning. The Cardinal’s annual income has been estimated at £30,000, reminiscent of £135 million today.
It was left unfinished when Wolsey was faraway from office in 1529, after failing in negotiations to have the King’s marriage to Catherine of Aragon annulled by Rome. Henry VIII re-established the faculty as Christ Church in 1546, and designated its chapel as Oxford’s cathedral.
Two separate anniversary exhibitions show how architectural designs and books were collected from Rome and other European centres for the faculty, which had considered one of the world’s first skilled librarians.
The displays include Wolsey’s crucifix, chalice, stationery box, and porridge bowl, along with constructing accounts, music sheets, and the red felt hat presented after he was made a cardinal in 1515.
They also feature an early Fifteenth-century Book of Hours given to him in 1528 by Cardinal Lorenzo Campeggio when the latter visited England to listen to Henry’s annulment petition for Pope Clement VII. Also on display is considered one of many later pamphlets that attacked the “prowde Cardinall” for alleged corruption and disloyalty.
Although Wolsey’s scholarship was lauded by Erasmus and other contemporaries, his official disgrace meant that no biography could possibly be published for greater than a century after his death.
The exhibitions show how views of Wolsey have evolved — from the scheming, self-serving conspirator portrayed by Shakespeare and other hostile writers to the more nuanced and thoughtful figure delineated by modern researchers.
They also highlight how Wolsey’s image has evolved in popular culture, from the power-hungry, gluttonous figure portrayed by Orson Welles within the Oscar- and BAFTA-winning 1966 film A Man for All Seasons to the sensitive and vulnerable statesman personified by Jonathan Pryce within the BBC TV dramatisation Wolf Hall.
“Wolsey was described by contemporary sources as charming and handsome — to have risen to this point so fast, he should have had great ability and wisdom,” Christ Church’s museum curator, Jacqueline Thalmann, said.
“He was clearly an evocative, deeply interesting person; and, while this exhibition captures the villainous, Machiavellian figure previously planted within the British public mind, the time may possibly have come to reassess him.”
The Cardinal’s latest biographer, Glenn Richardson, agreed that efforts were needed to “unpick the actual Wolsey” from the “tapestry of wickedness” created around him by his officially sanctioned Tudor detractors.
“Instead of a grand, aloof cardinal, we must always view him as a hard-working statesman answering to a specific era, a person whose record transcends the failures of his time,” Professor Richardson said.
“In much of what he did, including founding Christ Church, his ambition outran his capability. But this doesn’t mean he wasn’t real and didn’t achieve great advances. Had he survived, Christ Church could have change into a unprecedented international centre even prior to it did.”
Anniversary events at Christ Church include lectures, meetings, and performances uniting current and past students from across the globe.
