Oxford Cathedral
The Oxford Cathedral , English Christ Church Cathedral , in the English university city of Oxford is the episcopal church of the Diocese of Oxford of the Church of England and at the same time the church of the traditional Christ Church College , with which it is structurally connected. The basic component in the Anglo-Norman basilica was from about 1170 as Augustinian canons - Collegiate Church built and received at the time of Perpendicular its present form.
history
The church and monastery are considered to be the founding of St. Frideswida in the 8th century, whose patronage they later also bore. According to the legend of Frideswida, the convent was initially a nunnery, but was converted into a collegiate monastery before the Norman conquest , and then into an Augustinian canon monastery in the 12th century.
Nothing has survived from the previous buildings of today's church. This was built in the last quarter of the 12th century as a pilgrimage church for the reliquary of St. Frideswida, which was very popular. From the offerings of the pilgrims, including well-known ones such as Catherine of Aragón in 1518, the church was further enlarged and embellished in the following centuries.
In 1524 Cardinal Thomas Wolsey dissolved the monastery with papal approval and built a large college for Oxford University in its place . However, the planned demolition of the church in favor of a smaller new building did not take place. Instead, after the separation of the English Church from Rome , Henry VIII elevated it to the cathedral of the diocese of Oxford, which he founded in 1546. It has been called Christ Church ever since .
With the work of John Taverner , the church became a center of choral and organ music.
In 1825, John Henry Newman was ordained anglican priestly here .
In 1870, George Gilbert Scott carried out a restoration that also affected the building fabric.
Architecture and equipment
The cathedral church consists of a three-aisled , four-bay nave and a choir of the same type . A narrow transept runs between the two. Above the crossing there is a mighty square crossing tower , the basement of which is still Norman. Several side chapels, the cloister and the chapter house are added to the cathedral .
The interior of the cathedral is characterized by the late Gothic reticulated vaults and the large rose window in the east wall. It contains numerous, in part significant, tombs from different epochs. The stained glass windows date from the 14th century. The Thomas Becket window is below it.
organ
The organ was built in 1979 by the organ builder Rieger (Austria). The instrument has 43 registers on four manuals and a pedal . The organ case largely dates from 1680. The positive case was created in the 19th century.
|
|
|
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Cathedral time
The bell and service times, as well as the clock in the neighboring Tom Tower of Christ Church (Oxford), are five minutes behind the official time. This so-called Cathedral Time or Christ Church Time corresponds to the once official local time of the city of Oxford, 1¼ degrees west of Greenwich, which was only replaced in the second half of the 19th century by the nationally valid Railway Time - Greenwich Mean Time - introduced in 1852 has been.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Information on the organ ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Christ Church Cathedral - Miscellany ( Memento December 6, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
- ^ Daily Info, Oxford
Web links
- Short description of British Listed Buildings (English)
- History (website of the cathedral, English)
- History and description (Richard John King: Handbook to the Cathedrals of England , 1862)
Coordinates: 51 ° 45 ′ 0.3 ″ N , 1 ° 15 ′ 17 ″ W.