Talk:Christ's College, Cambridge

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  Staircase 4 from King Street
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  Signature of Lady Margaret Beaufort above Back Gate
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  Rear Gate House

Early history of Christ's

@Largoplazo: in this edit, your edit summary reads "It wasn't founded in 1505. It was renamed by a woman who gave it a large endowment". This is not how the sources cited in the article portray things, however. In The Early History of Christ's Cambridge. Your edit additionally makes the lead incorrect: it now says that Byngham founded the college under the name of Christ's, but as the secton Christ's College, Cambridge#History correctly says, Byngham founded the college as God's House. For these reasons, I suggest that the article is reverted to its state in this revision. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:40, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

I thought I'd altered the statement in the lead section further before I saved it last, and I think that the odd wording I'd left in place is at least part of what you're reacting to. I just altered it to read "The college was founded by William Byngham in 1437 as God's House, ...." I'd chosen the earlier wording when I was going by your representation that the college had been "founded multiple times", and was going to make the argument in the edit summary that that isn't one college being founded multiple times (which makes no sense), it's a succession of colleges each founded under the same name. However, after reading on I realized that that wasn't the situation: It wasn't a matter of a school existing, then shutting down, then someone else starting a new school with the same name.

Now the lead says what I'd meant it to say when I finished up before. Before I got to it, the lead section just didn't make sense, where it said the college was "founded" in 1505 and then, in the next sentence, that it was "established" in 1437. The college was founded in 1437. Lady Margaret Beaufort came along in 1505, kicked in some money, and renamed it. She could have completely overhauled its charter and its program, but she would still have been dealing with an existing school. She didn't found it.

The business with Henry VI in the middle of it involved replacing its charter and then declaring Henry to be the "founder", but that's just royal presumption bearing no resemblance to fact. Largoplazo (talk) 20:53, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

Lead is now better. However, regardless of whether or not you think it makes sense to say that the college was founded multiple times, reliable sources clearly say that it was. Of course, just now I notice that I have somehow posted my original comment to this talk page omitting this key point, so mea culpa. Let me type it up again and try to actually post it properly, this time:

1. Christ's own webpage on their history ([1]) says that "In 1505, with a royal charter from the King, the College was re-founded as Christ's College. Lady Margaret has been honoured ever since as the Foundress." Additionally, it calls the Royal License Henry VI gave the college in 1448 "its Foundation Charter", and says that Byngham originally established the college.
2. Literally the first sentence of AH Lloyd's Early history of Christ's College says that Christ's is unique in Cambridge for having three founders; it goes on to list Byngham, Henry VI, and Lady Margaret Beaufort.
3. You argue that Lady Margaret "could have completely overhauled its charter and its program"; in fact, she did give it a new set of statutes. And, indeed, in Christ's: A Cambridge College Over Five Centuries, Barry Dobson specifically says that "in practice, if not in theory" Christ's was a new institution, founded by Lady Margaret.

It is true that normally saying that an institution was founded multiple times makes little sense; however, in the case of Christ's, reliable sources uniformly do say so. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:03, 1 March 2017 (UTC)

It's important to distinguish between whether a source is a reliable source concerning its subject matter and whether it's a reliable source concerning proper usage of the English language or given words in it. We shouldn't vary our vocabulary article by article according to which each article's sources happen to think the meaning or spelling of certain words is. If their use of "found" is peculiar to them and contrary to the plain meaning of the word, then we shouldn't use it as they do. We should use language that describes the situation that they (reliably) are conveying to us. If other sources are using this word mistakenly because they're just copying the usage employed by the college's official writings, they are equally unreliable guides to usage. Largoplazo (talk) 01:47, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

The overwhelming consensus of sources on the founding of christ's college is that Lady Margaret (re)founded it. Wikipedia reports what reliable sources agree on. Therefore, we should report that Christ's was refounded by Lady Margaret Beaufort.

I don't see the argument for claiming that Christ's is not a reliable source for who founded it: sure, it's not an independent source, and we'd prefer independent sources, but fortunately there are plenty of independent sources which agree with them. The 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, in its entry on Lady Margaret Beaufort, for one. The modern online EB, in its entry on the University of Cambridge, for another. Christ's:: A Cambridge College Over Five Centuries, written by some of the most respected historians of the modern era and published by MacMillan. Lloyd's Early History of Christ's College. It's not like it's one source's idiosyncratic usage: it's the wording used by all of the sources on the early history of Christ's.

If you are going to argue (as you seem to be) that all of these reliable sources are simply aping Christ's own usage, and that they all either misunderstand what the verb "to found" means, or deliberately misuse it, then that's the sort of extraordinary claim that you need to back up.

Otherwise, it looks like you are claiming that your original research should trump the usage of all the reliable sources on the topic. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 19:49, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

These sources are reliable sources for what happened. They aren't reliable sources for whether they're using the correct words to describe it. That is what I am arguing.

Check Merriam Webster, for example: "1: to take the first steps in building; 2: to set or ground on something solid : base; 3: to establish (as an institution) often with provision for future maintenance". Oxford English Dictionary: "To lay the base or substructure of (a building, etc.); to set, fix, or build on a firm ground or base.... To serve as the base or foundation of.... To build (an edifice, town, etc.) for the first time; to begin the building of, be the first builder of.... To set up or establish for the first time (an institution, etc.), esp. with provision for its perpetual maintenance; to originate, create, initiate (something which continues to exist thenceforward)...." [emphasis added] These are all one-time actions. Nothing extraordinary here. Largoplazo (talk) 20:58, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Counterpoint: Chambers has, as one of the definitions of "found", "to endow". And taking your understanding of the chronology, and a dictionary definition, and combining the two to decide that every single reliable source on a topic is wrong is exactly what WP:SYNTH intends to prevent. Be that as it may, I have fixed the lead to accurately reflect what happened without calling lady margaret the college's founder. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 21:16, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Let's try this one more time, in regard to your understanding of "reliable source". Like it or not, we Wikipedians do judge, based on our perspectives, whether a source is a reliable source. If that is impermissible as synthesis or original research, then we can just forget about having Wikipedia. We certainly don't resort to reliable sources to tell us which sources are reliable sources, or else it would be turtles all the way down.

Thus: An expert on architecture who writes a well-regarded paper on the legacy of the Bauhaus movement may include, somewhere in his work, some digression involving bread baking that doesn't, as it happens, accurately describe the chemistry of the bread baking process. Well, no matter how soundly reliable a source this master is considered when he writes anything about building design and construction, that doesn't make his work an All-Purpose Reliable Source. It is a reliable source in its field. It isn't a reliable source about bread baking, and it should be rejected as such by anyone attempting to use it to make a point about bread baking in an article related to that topic. Largoplazo (talk) 22:03, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Regarding Chambers, the word "endow" doesn't occur in its definition here but perhaps you're looking at a different edition. Is "endow" the full definition it gives, with no restrictive context? Largoplazo (talk) 22:06, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

Did you just suggest that the founder of Christ's college is to the early history of Christ's college as baking is to architecture? Or, to put it another way, if a source is reliable on the history of Christ's college (as, I claim, and you do not seem to dispute, the sources I have provided are), then they are likely to be reliable on specific details of the history of Christ's college, such as Lady Margaret Beaufort's role in founding it.

(At any rate, the OED defines "re-found" as "to found again, to re-establish" so I suppose you will have no objection to my re-inserting of "refounded 1505" in the infobox. Caeciliusinhorto (talk) 22:21, 2 March 2017 (UTC)

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