The truth is that it is quite impossible to asign even an approximate date to the development of the schools which in Saxon times were grouped round the monastic foundation of St. Frideswide (on the site of what is now Christ Church) into the corporate institution later known as Oxford University. Well-known scholars were, we know, lecturing in Oxford on theology and canon law before the middle of the twelfth century, but these were probably private teachers attached to St. Frideswide's monastery. It is not until the end of Henry II's reign, that is about 1180, that we know, chiefly on the authority of Giraldus Cambrensis, that a large body of scholars was in residence at Oxford, though not probably yet living under any organized constitution.
Half a century later Oxford was famous throughout Europe as a home of science and learning; popes and kings were among its patrons and benefactors; the students are said to have been numbered by thousands; and the climax of its reputation was reached when, during the fifty years between 1220 and 1270, the newly-founded orders of friars -- Dominican, Franciscan, Carmelite, and Austin -- successively settled at Oxford, and threw all their enthusiasm into the work of teaching. Kindled by their zeal, the older monastic orders, encouraged by a decree of the Lateran Council of 1215, began to found conventual schools at Oxford for their own members. The colleges of Worcester, Trinity, Christ Church, and St. John's are all the immediate successors of these Benedictine or Cistercian houses of study.
