Oxford (England) -- History; University of Oxford -- History
That Frideswide, the daughter of an under-king named Didan, founded a
nunnery at a spot where a bank of gravel ran up from what is now Christ
Church Meadow, and offered a dry site, raised above the wandering,
unbarred streams, set amid lush meadows untainted as yet by human
dwellings, and fringed by the virgin forests that clad the surrounding
hills, we need not hesitate to believe, or that here Didan presently
built a little church, some traces of which yet remain in Christ Church
Cathedral. For the rest, how Frideswide escaped by a miracle to Binsey
and lived there in the woods, in dread of the hot courtship of a young
and spritely prince; how that prince was miraculously deprived of his
sight when about to assault the city in revenge for his disappointment,
and how from that time forward disaster dogged the footsteps of any king
who entered Oxford; how the virgin Frideswide returned at last to
Oxford, and, after performing many miracles there, died and was buried
in her church--are not all these things told at length in the charming
prose of Anthony Wood? The Lady Chapel of the Cathedral, on the north
side of the choir aisle, is the architectural illustration of this story
in Oxford. It was enlarged in the thirteenth century, and has the early
English pillars and vaulting of that period, but the eastern wall
carries us back to S. Frideswide's day. And on the floor is a recent
brass which marks the spot where the bones of the virgin Saint are now
supposed to rest. Here too is the Shrine of S. Frideswide--that shrine
which used to be visited twice a year by the Vice-Chancellor and the
principal members of the University in solemn procession "to pray,
preach and offer oblations at her shrine in the Mother Church of
University and town." This is the site of S. Frideswide's first church.
The Lady Chapel is in a line with what was the ancient nave, the central
apse of that church, and there, at the east end of it and of the
adjoining aisle, are the rough rag-stone arches which were built for
her, and which led, according to the ancient Eastern plan, into three
apses. And inseparably connected with S. Frideswide too is the adjacent
Latin Chapel, by virtue of that window designed by Sir E. Burne-Jones,
one of the earliest and one of the most beautiful of the artist's
designs, so lovely in its conception that, if you take each picture
separately, it seems like some perfect poem by Rossetti translated into
colour by a mediæval craftsman. But take it as a whole and the effect is
quite other than this. It is so full of subjects and dabs of bright
colour that it is dazzling and almost unintelligible.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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