Introduction from the President of Magdalen College and the Dean of Christ Church

Wolsey Symposium - Academic Roundtable Discussion

Carlotta Barranu

The roundtable held in the Upper Library of Christ Church, Oxford on the 12th of May 2017, was organised to coincide with the launch of this website, an online platform created to encourage the study of two manuscript books commissioned by Cardinal Wolsey in his later career. Thanks to the Mirador plugin, images from the two volumes in question, Oxford, Christ Church, MS 101 and Oxford, Magdalen College, Lat.
The Wolsey Manuscripts

Thomas Wolsey's Epistle and Gospel Lectionaries: Unanswered Questions and New Hypotheses

Professor James P. Carley

The history of Thomas, Cardinal Wolsey’s epistle lectionary (Oxford, Christ Church, MS. 101) and gospel lectionary (Oxford, Magdalen College, MS. lat. 223), perhaps the two finest surviving examples of his cult of magnificence in its final phase, continues to be elusive in spite of all the scholarship devoted to them.
detail from Christ Church, ms 101 10r

Cardinal Wolsey’s Patronage of the Arts

Professor Steven Gunn

Thomas Wolsey was the greatest English art patron of his age. As England’s leading churchman and the king’s first minister – cardinal-legate and chancellor – he had both the motive and the opportunity. For contemporaries, magnificent buildings and fine objects proclaimed social rank, political power and greatness of mind; but inappropriate magnificence reeked of vainglory. Wolsey measured himself against the English nobility, whom he disciplined in the Court of Star Chamber and whom he expected to hold bowls and towels when he sang mass on grand occasions.