Oxford Inscriptions: St Edmund Hall
sanCtVs edMVndVs hVIVs aVLae LVX
(St Edmund, the light of this Hall)
Unusual capitalization in a Latin inscription such as this one over the main entrance to St Edmund Hall in Queen's Lane can only mean a chronogram.
The thirteen extra-large capital letters of this inscription (rearranged into descending order for convenience) add up as follows:
M = 1000, C = 100, L = 50 (twice), X = 10, V = 5 (seven times) and I = 1, making a total of 1246.
The answer of the year 1246 does not give the date of the foundation of the college, which might be expected, but of the canonization of St Edmund of Abingdon.
Chronograms only work with capital letters, where the letter U is engraved as V and so can represent 5. The word LVX (“light”) which is “lux” in lower case is a particularly useful one that provides three different roman numerals: 50, 5, and 10.
There is also a plaque to St Edmund of Abingdon on the wall of the former Church of St Peter-in-the-East (now the library of St Edmund Hall) and a statue of him sitting reading in the former churchyard: details here