The University City of Oxford [antikvár]

The University City of OxfordOxford is indeed well-known by all manner of mortals. Here King Harold died, Richard the Lionheart was born, Henry V was educated, Elizabeth I was entertained and feted, and this is where William of Orange refused to eat anything for fear of being poisoned!Academic Oxford has nurtured politicians, clerics, poets, philosophers and scientists, to mention a few. Oxford has been home to generations of writers, artists and publishers and car builders.As you visit the 'dreaming spires', the influence of all these, past and present, is evident all around you. The map on pages 14 and 15 will assist you in your search for the romance and reality of Oxford.The Origin of OxfordU' nhealthy and low-lying as the Romans evidendy found it (they ignored it) Oxford was regarded as strategically important by the Saxons, who made a settlement near the junction of the rivers Thames and Cherwell. It became so important to them that in the fifty years before the Norman Conquest Oxford was said to have seen more of the English kings and their ret-mues than at any other time in its history.The earliest written reference to Oxford is in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle in AD 912, but a popular legend has the Saxon Princess Frideswide as the foundress. She wanted to become a nun and in trying to escape from a royal suitor hid in the woods (at Binsey); the suitor was struck blind, she prayed for his recovery and in gratitude founded a monastery in AD 727. Later, Christ Church ('the House of Christ m Oxford' and now usually referred to as 'The House') was built on the site of the Priory of St. Frideswide (1121), and she was regarded as the Patron Saint of Oxford.The Normans built a castle at Oxford and the city continued to develop during the 12th century, but how, why or by whom the University was started is still amatter for debate and uncertainty. Whatever the reasons, in about 1190 the city was described as 'abounding in men skilled in mystic eloquence, weighing the words of the law, bringing forth from their treasures things new and old'.What sort of men came to study here at the time? In The Canterbury Tales Chaucer has left us a graphic account of the Oxford Clerk, too unworldly to seek for secular employment, whose prime care was study, whose speech was filled with moral virtue, avid for learning and equallyLEFT: St. Margaret's Well, Binsey. The tvell is traditionally associated ivith St. Frideswide, the Patron Saint of Oxford, the water from which is believed to have healing powers. It is the treacle mine in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland.