Editing Corpus Christi College, Oxford (section)

==History==

===Foundation===
Corpus Christi College was founded by [[Richard Foxe]], [[Bishop of Winchester]], and an accomplished statesman. After entering the clergy, Foxe worked as a diplomat for [[Henry VII of England|Henry Tudor]]. He became a close confidant of his and, during Henry's reign as Henry VII, Foxe was appointed [[Lord Privy Seal|Keeper of the Privy Seal]] and promoted up the bishoprics, eventually becoming Bishop of Winchester. Throughout this time he was involved in Oxford and Cambridge Universities: he had been [[Visitor]] of [[Magdalen College, Oxford|Magdalen College]] and of [[Balliol College]], had amended Balliol's statutes for a papal commission, was master of [[Pembroke College, Cambridge]], for 12 years and had been involved in the foundation of [[St John's College, Cambridge]], as one of [[Lady Margaret Beaufort]]'s executors.{{sfn|Fowler|1898|pp=6-7}}

Foxe began to build from 1513.<!-- Or "as early as 1512"? Check Fowler p. 37 --> He bought a nunnery, two halls, two inns and the Bachelors' Garden of [[Merton College, Oxford|Merton College]].{{sfn|Fowler|1898|pp=38–40}} Building was probably completed by 1520.{{sfn|Fowler|1898|p=41}}

Foxe was assisted in his foundation by his friend [[Hugh Oldham]], [[Bishop of Exeter]], and Oldham's steward, William Frost. Oldham was a patron of education and donated £4,000 and land in Chelsea towards the foundation. For this, he was styled ''præcipuus benefactor'' (principal benefactor) by Foxe, remembered in daily prayers and a scholarship was established for students from [[Lancashire]], where Oldham was born.<ref>{{cite ODNB | id=20685 | title=Oldham, Hugh}}</ref><ref name="VCH">{{cite journal | url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/oxon/vol3/pp219-228 | title=Corpus Christi College | journal=A History of the County of Oxford: Volume 3, the University of Oxford | date=1954 | series=[[Victoria County History]] | location=London | editor-first1=H. E. | editor-last1=Salter | editor-first2=Mary D. | editor-last2=Sobel}}</ref> Frost bequeathed his estate in [[Mapledurwell]] to the college, for which he and wife were remembered in a yearly prayer and a scholarship was founded for his descendants.{{sfn|Charles-Edwards|Reid|2017|pp=70, 264}}{{sfn|Fowler|1898|p=15}}

Foxe was granted letters patent for the foundation by [[Henry VIII of England|Henry VIII]] in 1516.{{sfn|Fowler|1898|p=32}} The college was officially founded in 1517, when Foxe established the college statutes.{{sfn|Fowler|1898|p=18}} These specified that the college was to contain 20 fellows, 20 students, three lecturers, two priests, two clerks and two choristers.<ref>{{citation|title=The Foundation Statutes of Bishop Fox for Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford A. D. 1517|translator-last=Ward|translator-first= G. R. M.|year=1843|publisher=Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans|chapter=1|page=3|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=lgdeAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA3}}</ref>

The library of the college was "probably, when completed, the largest and best furnished library then in Europe".{{sfn|Fowler|1898|loc=Appendix A}} The scholar [[Desiderius Erasmus|Erasmus]] noted in a letter of 1519 to the first President, [[John Claymond]], that it was a library "''inter praecipua decora Britanniae''" ("among the chief beauties of Britain"), and praised it as a "''biblioteca trilinguis''" ("trilingual library") containing, as it did, books in Latin, Greek and Hebrew.{{sfn|Fowler|1898|pp=34–35}}

Founding fellows of the College included [[Reginald Pole]], who would become the last Catholic [[Archbishop of Canterbury]].{{sfn|Fowler|1898|pp=33–34}}

===Later developments===
In its first hundred years, Corpus hosted leading [[Anglican divine|divines]] who would lay the foundations of the [[Anglican]] Christian identity. [[John Jewel]] was Corpus' Reader of Latin, worked to defend a Protestant bent in the [[Church of England]] and the [[Elizabethan Religious Settlement]].{{sfn|Charles-Edwards|Reid|2017|pp=64, 75–81}} [[John Rainolds]], elected president in 1598, suggested the idea of the [[King James Bible]] and contributed to its text.{{sfn|Charles-Edwards|Reid|2017|pp=131–132}} [[Richard Hooker]], author of the influential ''Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity'', was deputy professor of Hebrew.<ref>{{cite book | chapter=Life of Hooker | first=Lee W. | last=Gibbs | editor-first=Torrance | editor-last=Kirby | title=A Companion to Richard Hooker | pages=8–9 | publisher=Brill | isbn=978-90-04-16534-2 | issn=1871-6377 | date=15 February 2008 | series=Brill's Companions to the Christian Tradition | volume=8}}</ref>

{{quote
 | quote=No one county in England bare three such men (contemporary at large) [Jewel, Rainolds and Hooker] in what college soever they were bred, no college in England bred three such men, in what county soever they were born.
 | author=[[Thomas Fuller]]
 | source=''The Church History of Britain''<ref>{{cite book | mode=cs2 | title=The Church History of Britain: From the Birth of Jesus Christ until the year MDCXLVIII | edition=3rd | publisher=Thomas Tegg | publication-date=1842 | date=1655 | volume=3 | page=231 | url=https://books.google.com/books?id=jfKGfHepk2AC&pg=PA231}}</ref>
}}

The Spanish humanist [[Juan Luis Vives]] taught at Corpus during the 1520s while tutor to Mary Tudor, later [[Mary I of England]].{{fact|date=March 2021}} [[John Keble]], a leader of the [[Oxford Movement]], was an undergraduate at Corpus at the start of the 19th century, and went on to a fellowship at [[Oriel College|Oriel]] and to have a college named after him ([[Keble College, Oxford]]).{{fact|date=March 2021}}

Having been founded nearly half a millennium earlier as a college for men only, Corpus Christi was among many of Oxford's men's colleges to admit its first female undergraduate students in 1979 (though women graduate students had been admitted five years earlier).{{sfn|Charles-Edwards|Reid|2017|p=403}} Between 2015 and 2017, 0.6% of UK undergraduates admitted to Corpus were black.<ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.ox.ac.uk/sites/files/oxford/Annual%20Admissions%20Statistical%20Report%202018.pdf|title=Annual Admissions Statistical Report May 2018|website=www.ox.ac.uk}}</ref>