[Plate XVII. Christ Church : The Cathedral from the Meadows]
"Those voiceless towers so tranquil seem,
And yet so solemn in their might,
A loving heart could almost deem
That they themselves might conscious be
That they were filled with immortality."
F. W. FABER.
The east end of Oxford Cathedral, shown both in the frontispiece
(Plate I) and Plate XVII, probably contains the oldest buildings,
above ground, in Oxford. Inside the cathedral can clearly be seen
traces of three round arches, which may well be part of the church
founded by St. Frideswyde in the eighth century. That princess,
according to the tradition, the details of which are all pictured by
Burne-Jones in the east window of the Latin Chapel, having escaped by
a miracle the advances of too ardent a suitor, founded a nunnery at
Oxford. The nunnery, which was later transferred to Canons, was
undoubtedly the earliest institution in Oxford, and in its cloisters,
in the second decade of the twelfth century, we hear of students
gathering for instruction. It was this old monastery, which Wolsey,
with his reforming zeal, chose as the site of his great Cardinal
College, and the chapel of the old foundation was to serve for his
new one, until such time as a great new chapel, rivalling in
splendour that of King's College at Cambridge, had been built on the
north side of Tom Quad. This new chapel never got beyond the stage of
foundations; and hence the old building has continued to serve the
college till this day, having been made also the cathedral of the new
diocese of Oxford, which was founded by King Henry VIII. Wolsey may,
perhaps, be credited with the fine fan tracery of the choir roof, but
he certainly swept away three bays of the nave in order to carry out
his ambitious building plans, and only one of these three bays has
been restored in the nineteenth century.
Wolsey's action at Christ Church was significant. Men felt that the
days of monasteries were past, and the Church was ready to welcome
and to extend the New Learning. But his changes were a dangerous
precedent; as Fuller says with his usual quaintness: "All the forest
of religious foundations in England did shake, justly fearing the
King would finish to fell the oaks, seeing the Cardinal began to cut
the underwood." Henry, however, when he swept away the monasteries,
spared his great minister's work; modifying it, however, as has just
been said, by associating the newly-founded college with the diocese
of Oxford, now formed out of the unwieldy See of Lincoln.
The cathedral is the smallest in England, but contains many features
of special interest; its most marked peculiarity is the great breadth
of the choir, due to the addition of two aisles on the north side;
these were built to gain more room for the worshippers at the shrine
of St. Frideswyde. Another feature of architectural interest is the
spire, which is one of the earliest in England. But perhaps even more
interesting is the wonderful series of glass windows, which give good
examples of almost every English style from the fourteenth to the
nineteenth century. And for once the moderns can hold their own; the
Burne-Jones windows of the choir (not, however, the Frideswyde
window, already mentioned) are particularly beautiful.
The hand of the "restorer" has been active at Christ Church, as
elsewhere in Oxford; Gilbert Scott took on himself to remove a fine
fourteenth-century window from the east end of the choir, and to
substitute the Norman work shown in Plate I. The effect is admittedly
good, but it may be questioned whether it be right to falsify
architectural history in this way.
Oxford Cathedral has great associations apart from the college to
which it belongs. It was to it that Cranmer was brought to receive
the Pope's sentence of condemnation, and in the cloisters the
ceremony of his degradation from the archbishopric was carried out.
Almost a century later the Cathedral was the centre of the religious
life of the Royalist party; when Charles I made his capital in Oxford
and his home in Christ Church, and when the Cavaliers fought to the
war-cry of "Church and King." It is not surprising that, when the
Parliamentarians entered Oxford, the windows of the Cathedral were
much "abused"; that so much old glass was spared was probably due to
the local patriotism of old Oxford men.
In the next century it was to Christ Church that Bishop Berkeley, the
greatest of British philosophers, retired to end his days, and to
find a burial-place; and, during the long life of Dr. Pusey, the
Cathedral of Oxford was a place of pilgrimage, as the living centre
of the Oxford movement.
In the back of the picture (Plate XVII), behind the Cathedral, rises
the square tower, put up by Mr. Bodley to contain the famous Christ
Church peal of bells (now twelve in number), familiar through Dean
Aldrich's famous round, "Hark, the bonny Christ Church bells." When
the tower was erected, it was the subject of much criticism,
especially from the witty pen of C. L. Dodgson, the world-famous
creator of /Alice in Wonderland/. The opening paragraph is a fair
specimen:
"Of the etymological significance of the new belfry, Christ
Church.
"The word 'belfry' is derived from the French '/bel/-- beautiful,
meet,' and from the German '/frei/--free, unfettered, safe.' Thus the
word is strictly equivalent to 'meat-safe,' to which the new belfry
bears a resemblance so perfect as almost to amount to coincidence."
Others saw in the uncompromising squareness of the new tower a subtle
compliment to the Greek lexicon of Liddell, who then was Dean. But in
spite of the wits, who resented any innovation in so famous a group
of buildings, Bodley's tower is a fine one, and really enhances the
effect of Tom Quad.