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THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY
St Catherine’s, Oxford: A Pen Portrait
At the end of our 50th anniversary year, we
print two contributions to our beautifullyillustrated
new book, St Catherine’s, Oxford:
A Pen Portrait, remembering the lively
community which occupied Jacobsen’s
modernist masterpiece some five decades
ago…
Simon Winchester (1963, Geology)
Outside all was new and noisy, more concrete hell
than cloistered hall. I watched as the common
room was finished, and on hand when the Library
opened. I saw them hang the bell in the tower –
then tie the rope up high because men who had
spent too long in the King’s Arms developed a sudden
likeness for ringing it, late at night. I saw them plant the
cedar tree and sow grass seed around it to produce the
circular centrepiece of the main quad.
The rest of the foliage thrived – and so did we. By my
second year, the hedges were filling out, the shrubberies
blooming, and rooms on the far side of the quad,
once empty, were lit all night by the lamps of scores of
newcomers. The buttery was crowded at lunch, and the
JCR had to order twenty copies of some newspapers – so
thick was the throng.
John Simopoulos, Emeritus Fellow
In 1969, St Catherine of Alexandria, the College’s patron,
had her Feast Day removed by the Catholic Church from
Now on
sale from the
Development
Office
the Calendar. Fired by pious indignation I took
it upon myself to send a telegram to Cardinal
Tisserant, the Dean of the Sacred College,
worded, in Latin:
TO THE MOST EMINENT AND MOST REVEREND
EUGENE TISSERANT, BY THE GRACE OF GOD
CARDINAL OF THE HOLY ROMAN CHURCH AND
DEAN OF THE SACRED COLLEGE VATICAN CITY.
Alas, our Patroness. If the barbarians are deemed
blameworthy for the injuries inflicted on
St Catherine, is the Church not even more guilty
for deciding that she did not exist?
WE, THE MASTER, FELLOWS AND STUDENTS OF SAINT
CATHERINE’S COLLEGE IN OXFORD, HAVE DISPATCHED
THIS ON 23RD MAY 1969.
No answer came forth. But at least we know that the
College’s admonition left St Aldate’s. In 2002, the
Vatican restored the entry as an optional memorial day,
though not as a Feast Day. n
To order your copy of St Catherine’s, Oxford: A
Pen Portrait, and to see a preview of this beautiful
anthology of College memories, please visit
www.stcatz.ox.ac.uk/pen-portrait or contact the
Development Office on +44 (0) 1865 271 760 or, by
email, on development.office@stcatz.ox.ac.uk
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