The Revd Dr Jonathan Arnold

Jonathan Arnold is Dean of Divinity of Magdalen College, Oxford. He read theology at St. Peter’s College, Oxford, singing at the Royal Academy of Music and has a PhD in English pre-Reformation Church history from King’s College, London. Before ordination he was a Vicar-Choral (singing bass-baritone) in the choir of St. Pauls’ Cathedral for eight years and was a regular member of The Sixteen for fourteen years, appearing on many tours, recordings and broadcasts. In 2007, Jonathan appeared in a five-part television documentary on sacred music with the actor Simon Russell-Beale and The Sixteen. He trained for ordination at Ripon College Cuddesdon and became Chaplain and Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College, Oxford in 2008. He is a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society and teaches late-medieval and early-modern ecclesiastical history for the Theology Faculty as well as convening an interdisciplinary seminar series on ‘Music and Theology’. In 2014 he was also co-founder of a new girl choristers’ choir for Oxford, Frideswide Voices, which is the first choir in the history of the university to offer girls, aged 7-13, the opportunity of being a chorister and singing services in Oxford College Chapels. His current research project is Music and Faith: Sacred Music and its Audience (Forthcoming, Boydell and Brewer, 2018). Other publications include Sacred Music in Secular Society (Ashgate, Autumn, 2014); The Great Humanists: An Introduction (I.B. Tauris, London, 2011); John Colet of St. Paul’s: Humanism and Reform in Pre-Reformation England (I.B. Tauris Press, London, December, 2007).