Renaissance College: Corpus Christi College, Oxford in Context, c.1450-c.1600

6-9 September 2017

Corpus Christi College, Oxford was founded, on humanistic principles, in 1517. Its fellows included specially-appointed lecturers in Latin literature, Greek and Theology and its new trilingual library featured works in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Throughout the sixteenth century, Corpus was a major centre of learning and religion: it played host to the Spanish humanist, Juan Luis Vives and the German astronomer and mathematician, Nicholas Kratzer; its fellows included the Catholic reformer Reginald Pole and the Protestant thinkers John Jewel and Richard Hooker.

In the College’s 500th anniversary year, we shall be holding a conference to discuss the wider context and implications of this remarkable foundation, exploring the inter-connected worlds of learning and education, prelacy and public service, charity and communal life, religion, literature and the arts, in Oxford and beyond, during a hundred-and-fifty year period of Renaissance and Reformation. 

There will be papers from Susan Brigden, Clive Burgess, Jeremy Catto, Paul Cavill, Alex Gajda, Anthony Grafton, Lucy Kaufman, Nicholas Hardy, Pamela King, Julian Reid, Richard Rex, Miri Rubin, David Rundle, Christopher Stray, Joanna Weinberg, Magnus Williamson, and William Whyte. A round table of Mordechai Feingold, Felicity Heal and Diarmaid MacCulloch, chaired by Keith Thomas, will bring proceedings to a close.

More details will become available over the next few months, but if you would like to make a provisional booking now, please contact sara.watson@ccc.ox.ac.uk; or, for more information about the academic aims and content of the conference,john.watts@ccc.ox.ac.uk