Medieval Franciscans in Oxford

An early morning meeting at Christ Church last Friday took me on a slightly different route into the centre of Oxford and through the site of the medieval Oxford Greyfriars.

The buildings had been largely demolished by the time Ralph Agas drew his pictorial map of the city in 1578, but excavations in 1971 and 1972 revealed the plan of the church and some of the conventual buildings - the foundations had been largely robbed out. The church had a very unusual extended north transept to accommodate more altars, and was cut into the city wall. Part of the site of the choir is still visible as a grass plot in Old Greyfriars Street, whilst the multi-storey car to the south covers the site of the domestic ranges.

The founding Prior, Bl. Agnellus of Pisa, is buried there. The house, along with the whole Franciscan mission in England, attracted the support of the diocesan bishop, Robert Grosseteste, who held the see of Lincoln from 1235 until his death in 1253. The Oxford friary had his library and relics such as his sanctuary slippers until the dissolution. I strongly suspect that "my bishop" Richard Fleming used the library in his own time as a student and Regent Master in Oxford. Grosseteste's close friend Adam Marsh was trained and lectured at the friary.

Bishop Robert Grosseteste

From a thirteenth century MS in the British Library

Image: Wikipedia

Other notable Franciscan s who lived and studied there were Roger Bacon, who is now commemorated by a plaque on the wall adjacent to the site of the choir and by the nearby Roger Bacon Lane, John Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Peter Phillages, who from 1409-10 reigned as the conciliar Pope Alexander V.

William of Ockham

The sketch is labelled "frater Occham iste", from a manuscript of Ockham's Summa Logicae, 1341.

I understand that just as Ockham's former home in Oxford is now covered by a supermarket car park, so to is his presumed grave in Munich.

Image: Wikipedia

Pope Alexander V - Peter Phillages O.F.M.

Image: Wikipedia

The church was also the site of the burial of the heart of Richard of Cornwall, the younger brother of King Henry III and the elected (on a split vote of the Seven Imperial Electors) King of the Romans from 1257 until his death in 1272. With his death and the abdication of his claim by his rival, King Alfonso X of Castille, the way opened up for the election of Emperor Rudolph I, the first Habsburg ruler of Germany. King Richard's body was buried with that of his second wife, Sanchia of Provence, at Hailes Abbey in Gloucestershire which he had founded and had given to it the great relic of the Holy Blood, but his heart went to the Franciscans in Oxford. Five years later, in 1277, his third wife, Queen Beatrix of Falkenburg, was buried in the Oxford friary.

Statue of King Richard from 1260 in the choir of Meissen cathedral

Image: hubert-herald.nl/DeuRichardCornwall.htm

There is an illustrated website about Richard of Cornwall here, and there are biographies by N.Denholm-Young Richard of Cornwall and by T.W.E. Roche The King of Almayne, which includes a photograph of a stained glass panel depicting Queen Beatrix, which does not appear to be available on the internet.

And all that within a few yards of Oxford city centre.

Bl. Agnellus of Pisa

Today is the feast appointed for Bl. Agnellus of Pisa OFM. in the Oxfordshire part of the Archdiocese of Birmingham.

I have based the following account on that in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia.

The founder of the English Franciscan Province Bl. Agnellus was born at Pisa c. 1195, of the noble family of the Agnelli, and died at Oxford, 7 May, 1236. In early youth he was received into the Franciscan Order by St Francis himself, during the latter's sojourn in Pisa, and soon became an accomplished model of religious perfection. Sent by St Francis to Paris he erected a convent there and became custos.

Having returned to Italy, he was present at the so-called Chapter of Mats, and was sent thence by St Francis to establish the Order in England. Agnellus, then in deacon's orders, landed at Dover with nine other friars on 12 September, 1224, having been charitably conveyed from France by the monks of Fecamp. A few weeks afterwards they obtained a house at Oxford and there laid the foundations of the English Province, which became the exemplar for all the provinces of the order. Though not himself a learned man, he established a school for the friars at Oxford, which was destined to play no small part in the development of the University.However his solicitude extended beyond the immediate welfare of his brethren. He sent his friars about to preach the word of God to the faithful, and perform the other offices of the sacred ministry. Agnellus wielded considerable influence in affairs of state and in his efforts to avert civil war between King Henry III and the Earl Marshal, who had leagued with the Welsh, he contracted a fatal illness.

Thomas de Eccleston, the chronicler of the early Franciscans in England in his De Adventu Fratrum Minorum in Angliam , and a student at the Oxford house in the 1230s, has a brief account of his death. Agnellus's body, incorrupt, was preserved with great veneration at Oxford up to the dissolution of the religious houses in the time of Henry VIII.

The cultus of Blessed Agnellus was formally confirmed by Pope Leo XIII in 1882, and his feast is[or was?] kept in the Order on 7 May.


There is a detailed history of the Oxford Greyfriars from the Victoria County History of Oxfordshire vol ii (1907) here which is well worth reading through, and gives details of the building work in the time of Bl. Agnellus.

Excavations before the building of the Westgate Centre in the early 1970s revealed much of the plan of the house, including the remarkable layout of the church, which added to the usual friary plan of unaisled choir and aisled nave an enormous north transept, elongated northwards in plan, with a series of chapels, presumably to provide for the number of Masses being offered by the friars. There are plans in Oxoniensia and in the medieval volumes of the History of the University of Oxford.

Today there is very little to see of what was once a leading house of prayer and study. A patch of grass in the angle of the road below the Westgate Centre indicates the site of the choir. On an adjacent wall is a plaque commemorating Roger Bacon OFM. Apart from an archway built into another building that is really all there is to see. In terms of quiz trivia however this is a site with the body of a Beatus (Agnellus himself), the heart of a King (Richard of Cornwall, brother of Henry III, and King of the Romans 1257-72. His body was buried at Hailes Abbey), the body of a Queen (Richard's third wife Beatrix of Falkenburg, who died in 1277) and the site of the residence of a future Pope (Peter of Candia OFM, later Pope Alexander V 1409-10).

The website of the restored foundation of Franciscans in Oxford can be found at Oxford Greyfriars.