Frank Leslie Cross

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Frank Leslie Cross (1900-1968), Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Oxford, was an Anglican patristics scholar and founder of the Oxford Patristics Conference, and editor of The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (First Edition 1957).

Born in Honiton, the family moved to Bournemouth whilst he was a child, where he won the Domus scholarship for Natural Science at Balliol College Oxford, taking Honours in Chemistry and Crystallography and then, in 1922, following tuition at Keble College, First Class Honours in Theology. He studied in Marburg and Freiburg, taking a Doctor of Philosophy in Oxford in 1922 with a dissertation on Husserl. He became an ordinand of Ripon Hall in 1923 and was ordained in 1925 as Tutor and Chaplain of that college. In 1927 he became one of the priest-librarians of Pusey House, of which he became Custodian in 1934. He was appointed Lady Margaret Professor and Canon of Christ Church in 1944, by which time his interest in patristics was developing, alongside the beginnings of the Dictionary, which was published in 1957. At the time of his death he was working on the Second Edition.

Post-war he organised international conferences- initially to re-establish relations with Christians in Germany. He organized the First International Conference on Patristic Studies in 1951, the second in 1955; he also organized New Testament congresses. As well as their academic importance, the conferences were an early expression of ecumenism.

Cross was awarded an Oxford Doctor of Divinity in 1950; he received honorary degrees from Aberdeen University and Bonn University and was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1967.

• Cross, F.L. and Livingstone, E.A. (eds), "Frank Leslie Cross" in The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, pp.xxxiv-xxxvii. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1997. ISBN 0-19-211655-X