Oxford in 20 objects

The Tab charts the Oxford University experience, past and present, through twenty objects sourced from the university collections and the surrounding city.

Object 1: 1214 Papal Legate settling the hanging of two clerks and appointing a Chancellor of the university

The long summer has ended and another academic year has completed its rotation. Once more the streets of Oxford groan with the weight of incoming suitcases, mini-fridges, and the tip tapping of fashionably battered be-brogued feet. Once more we turn to our friends and speculate, “The locals must dread us all trundling back into town.”

Considering that during term time students at Oxford and Brookes make up over 25% of the population who can blame the permanent residents for groaning at the thought of sharing their home with a new wave of bumptious students drunk on late adolescent freedom.

This tension pre-dates the growth of Oxford’s small but furious nightlife (we do our best); it predates the arrival of women and new ideas on free love; it predates drinking societies, sports societies, the rock ‘n’ roll being blasted from student rooms; it even predates Old Man Bridge. In fact, the first object I shall discuss in this series shows that Town vs. Gown rivalry is as old as the university itself.

Our first object is their earliest document: a Papal Legate dated 1214. It was issued to settle a dispute in 1209 when two clerks were hung for the alleged murder of a local woman. Now whether the clerks were guilty or not is unimportant, the issue here is that these clerks were members of the university.

Medieval universities were largely autonomous to the surrounding area. They were safeguarded by a bishop or archbishop appointed by the Pope and university members were exempt from the jurisdiction of ordinary civil courts.

So, when these two clerks were hung the scholars decided to rebel by migrating, pulling any business brought by the university out of Oxford (a similar trick led to the founding of Cambridge). Not only did the 1214 legate command the town to feast a hundred poor scholars each year but also provided for the appointment of a Chancellor to make sure Oxford students weren’t being hung unfairly for harmless activities such as… um… murder.

The modern Oxford resident should be grateful that basic human rights and national law now actually apply to the student body. And yet nothing changes – mishandling your books is still the greatest offence the university could imagine a student committing.

This document is stored in the Lower Archive Room at the Bodleian Library and can be viewed at the Duke Humfrey’s Library (temporarily relocated to the Radcliffe Science Library) by readers with A cards (not undergraduates unless with the prior recommendation and support of their dissertation supervisor or tutor). Information on the cataloguing and indexing of the archives can be seen here:http://www.oua.ox.ac.uk/holdings/larindex.html