Building Accounts of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1517-18

by Barry Collett

Corpus Christi College, Oxford, was founded in 1517 by Richard Fox, bishop of Winchester. He intended it to educate students in classical Greek, Latin and Hebrew, and their literature; Erasmus praised it as a scholarly achievement, and a beacon of Renaissance classical learning. The heart of this book is an edition of the original fortnightly building site accounts of 1517-1518, giving us a window onto a late-medieval building site, with its details of early sixteenth-century building materials, craft techniques, project management skills and working conditions, including siesta periods and...