The Mortimer History Society is proud to announce in 2021 the sixth round of its annual essay prize
With the continued difficult circumstances, the scope of the prize has once again been extended. This year, essays will be accepted on:
✓ Any aspect relating to the history, geopolitics, topography, laws, economy, society and culture of medieval borderlands, including comparative studies, between 1066-1542, or:
✓ Any aspect of the medieval Mortimer family of Wigmore including its cadet branches and its impact on the history and culture of the British Isles
The prize
✓ first prize £750, runner-up prize £300, third-place £200
The conditions
✓ the essay must contain original research not published previously elsewhere and the prize is open to everyone who can meet the assessment criteria
The chair of the judging panel
✓ Emeritus Professor Chris Given-Wilson, University of St. Andrews
The closing date
✓ essays must be submitted by 1st March 2022
Publication
✓ prizewinning essays will be published in The Mortimer History Society Journal as may other commended entries
Week 5 and perhaps we’ll see some sun again in the next few days! Fortunately, medieval seminars are appropriate for all weather.
No announcements this week, aside from a note for those of you who are interested in fantasy literature to follow the Oxford Fantasy research cluster (and podcast!) on Twitter @OxFantasyLit. Onward to the seminars!
‘All the world’s a seminar, and all the men and women merely invited speakers; they have their questions and their comments, and one man in his time attends many papers.’ – As You Like It, if I recall correctly
MONDAY 24 MAY
The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance by contacting james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Grace Stafford (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz), ‘Between the Living and the Dead: Use, Reuse, and Imitation of Painted Portraits in Late Antiquity’.
At 4 pm we have the Germanic Reading Group on Zoom, which will explore alliterative verse in a different Germanic language each week; this week, Eugenia Vorobeva will lead a session on Old Norse. To be added to the list, contact howard.jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Antonio Marson Franchini (St Cross), ‘The de festis Model Sermon Collection of Nicolas de Biard: Toward a Critical Edition’, with respondent Jessalynn L. Bird (Notre Dame University).
Old Norse Reading Group continues its journey through Hervarar saga at 5:30 pm on Teams. Email bond.west@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list.
The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom. Register here. This week’s speaker is Janet Martin (University of Miami, emerita), ‘Looking at the Bright Side: Some Benefits of the Pomest’e System in 16th c. Muscovy’.
Medieval Church and Culture also meets at 5 pm on Teams, on the MCC channel. Papers start at 5:15. This week’s speakers will be Arielle Jasiewicz-Gill (Oriel), ‘Lay Devotion and Performative Identity in the Fifteenth Century’ and Florence Swan (Wolfson), ‘The devel of helle sette his foot therin! A Literary Historical Analysis of the Cook in Late Medieval England’.
A third seminar at 5 pm on Teams: The Medieval French Research Seminar hears this week from three graduate students about their work-in-progress: Sebastian Dows-Miller, Alice Hawkins, and Mara-Elena Ciuntu. To be added to the mailing list, contact sarah.bridge@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
WEDNESDAY 26 MAY
The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11:15 am on Teams, to continue discussing a variety of short texts.
Digital Editions Live returns from 3-5 pm on Teams (join the meeting here). This week’s speakers, on illustrated Italian manuscripts, are Katie Bastiman & Holly Abrahamson, ‘Dane Ante-Purgatorio (MS. Canon.Ital. 108)’ and Giuseppe Nanfitò, ‘Boccaccio, Filocolo (MS. Canon.Ital. 85)’.
The Medieval English Research Seminar, also on Teams, meets at 4:30 pm; contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk if you need the link. This week’s speakers are Gareth Evans and Siân Grønlie (Oxford), ‘Old Norse: Trees and Sons, Tears and Time’.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speakers are Krystina Kubina (Vienna) and Nathanael Aschenbrenner (Princeton), ‘Word as Bond in an Age of Division: John Eugenikos as Orator, Partisan, and Poet’.
THURSDAY 27 MAY
The Early Text Cultures Astronomy and Astrology Seminar meets at 3 pm on Zoom. Fill out this Google form to receive the link. This week’s speakers are Caterina Franchi (Bologna) and Katherine Olley (Oxford) on ‘Literary Narratives: The Alexander Romance and the Adonias saga’.
GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) Reading Group meets at 4 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be Homer’s Iliad, VI.429-81.
The Aquinas Seminar Series continues on the theme of De Magistro: Aquinas and the Education of the Whole Person, at 4:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance here. This week’s speaker is Andrea Aldo Robiglio (K U Leuven), ‘Learning Failures and Scholarly Vices’.
The Old English Reading Group meets at 5:30 pm on Teams, continuing with Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Contact eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk for details.
Visiting the Ashmolean Museum is one of the many great privileges that the University of Oxford has to offer. One can travel to a myriad of different times and places within its walls, and speaking personally, I am always eager for the encounter with the medieval past made possible through its collections. Recently, Jim Harris, the Andrew W Mellon Foundation Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean, gave the Oxford Medieval Studies Lecture for Trinity Term on precisely this topic. His talk, entitled Museum in the Middle: Medieval Things in a (Still) Medieval University, provided much food for thought about the wonder, loss, and strangeness in both the medieval and the museum.
Wonder
Much of Jim’s teaching is rooted in the medieval collections, which has allowed him to engage both with the material culture of the Middle Ages and with those who study it – us medievalists. In Jim’s words, the “thread connecting medievalists to the past of their study is wonder,” and it is wonder that can be channeled through teaching with objects. As medievalists, this sense of wonder, the idea that knowledge can be derived from studying things we do not know about and do not yet understand, has driven us to acquire the skills to access that knowledge. We have learned new languages, both medieval and modern, how to decipher different scripts and to what location and periods these scripts belong, and how manuscripts were produced, among many other things, to bring us closer to the past that inspires so much wonder in us. Undertaking this learning allows us to further our connection to this past, as medieval people also had to learn new languages, ways of writing, methods of production, and many other skills to create the texts, documents, and objects that are now the subject of our study. Jim stressed that such wonder-motivated learning is not a product of the Early Modern Period or the Enlightenment, but rather is human, and was certainly present during the Middle Ages.
Jim described how teaching with objects can put this sense of wonder back into the curriculum. When we look at objects in ways that make them speak to us, using the skills that our sense of wonder has motivated us to learn, we become connected to a tradition, a history of looking, and the past that we look at is in turn bound to us through this act. Jim made clear that teaching with objects is not about being an art historian or portraying the rare and exceptional as exemplary, but rather about the wonder contained within the everyday and the mundane. Like the sense of wonder that drove us to learn how to communicate with the Middle Ages, wondering at its everyday objects once again brings us closer to the people who made them and to the period in which they lived.
The wonder that object-centred teaching can bring to the study of the Middle Ages speaks to what literary historian Stephen Greenblatt calls the resonance and wonder of museum objects. Greenblatt characterises resonance as the power of an object “to reach out beyond its formal boundaries to a larger world, to evoke in the viewer the complex, dynamic cultural forces from which it has emerged and for which it may be taken by a viewer to stand,” while wonder is an object’s power “to stop viewers in their tracks, to convey an arresting sense of uniqueness, to evoke an exalted attention.” While everyday objects, like the holy water ampulla associable with the Beckett pilgrimage and the pilgrim badge of John Schorne that Jim featured in his lecture, may not cause the viewer to stop in their tracks on display, in Jim’s words these objects become “capable of answering questions beyond what can be shared in a museum label” when they are taken off display and brought into the teaching room.
This can be seen clearly in Jim’s example of a small Limoges pyx, dated to c. 1200, that shows signs of its wear and use. While its well-preserved counterpart can be found on display in the museum, and it has been selected for display because of its condition and beauty, the pyx that Jim uses for teaching, with its worn exterior and signs of copper corrosion, has the potential to reveal more about the lives of medieval people than the one on display. This is because we can interrogate this object in ways that we cannot apply to the example on display: we can look inside this pyx, we can touch it, we can see it up close and from different angles and in different lights; we can ask questions about its manufacture, iconography, and use in devotional practice. While the ways of looking that we can use to interrogate the pyx on display are restricted by its exhibition, the pyx that Jim teaches with, though off display, becomes accessible to us from seemingly endless perspectives.
That this object can be interrogated not only by medievalists and other students of the humanities, but also students of medicine, neuroscience, and psychiatry, makes this what Jim calls an “agile” object with the “capacity to submit to interrogation from any number of disciplines.” In their agility, objects like the pyx cultivate resonance: they reach out to us from the past and can tell us how they were made, how they were used, and what they meant within the world that produced them. The resonance of these agile, everyday objects can stop us in our tracks and inspire our sense of wonder, as their agility allows us to discover their uniqueness and can further connect us to the past that they represent.
Loss
Loss is something that medievalists are often faced with. Whether it be the loss of texts through the deterioration or destruction of manuscripts, the loss of traditions and customs that have faded from memory, or loss due to the simple absence of information, the impact of loss is felt greatly within Medieval Studies. Loss is likewise ever-present in the museum, and Jim spoke of objects of loss: those that have been broken, discarded, or intentionally destroyed, or those that we no longer understand or recognize.
If we look at objects of loss with a sense of wonder, however, their loss can reveal much about the world from which they came. Jim demonstrated this with a small, broken corpus that had been removed from a crucifix, its arms deliberately broken and its feet bent. Jim explained that the stubs of its broken arms had been worn smooth not through cutting or filing but by touch, and when we look at this corpus this way, it reveals itself as a personal devotional object. This broken corpus, and other objects like it, had afterlives beyond their intended uses, and they take on yet another afterlife as museum objects.
When we, as medievalists, study the texts, documents, and objects that bring us closer to the past, these things too take on afterlives as the subjects of our study. Just as the producer of the crucifix to which the broken corpus originally belonged likely did not imagine that their creation would be transformed in this way, the medieval producers of the texts and documents that we study probably did not envision that they would be scrutinized by scholars in countless ways centuries later. We can interrogate these texts and documents from a variety of different perspectives: literary, historical, cultural, social, feminist, queer, ecocritical – the potential is almost endless. In studying the products of the past, we contribute to shaping the afterlife of the Middle Ages.
It is in our scrutiny and interrogation of the past that we will encounter loss, and we require certain ways of looking at what we study in order to see through the gaps. The ways we look at texts and documents are not unlike those that Jim uses to teach with objects like the pyx, as they allow us to extract information, to make new connections, and to expand our knowledge. As sociologist and museologist Tony Bennett says, these ways of looking allow objects “to be not just seen but seen through to establish some communion with the invisible to which they beckon.” Approaching both texts and objects, at times in tandem, from different perspectives allows us to see through to the past, and sometimes loss provides us with another view to the Middle Ages.
Strangeness
The Ashmolean was founded in 1683 by the polymath Elias Ashmole, and as such it is not technically a “medieval” museum. It exists, however, within a medieval university, and Oxford’s “medievalness” helps to remind us that the medieval did not simply stop on New Year’s Day of 1500. One need only to look at Oxford’s buildings and participate in its traditions to see that the medieval is still all around us. Medieval traditions and structures thus continued to shape society and culture long after what is now considered the “end” of the Middle Ages, and as Jim illustrated, this is certainly true of the Ashmolean and its collection.
Elias Ashmole acquired his collection from John Tradescant the Elder and his son, who were interested in gathering together rare and wonderous things from near and far in order to gain knowledge from them. The world in which the Tradescants and their associates were interested, Jim explained, was the world of medieval travel tales, and the medieval therefore had a large role to play in the formation of these early collections. The “medievalness” of the creation of knowledge from the gathering together of strangeness, and the documentation of this collecting, can be seen not only in Jim’s examples of the inventories of the Valois kings, who produced huge and highly detailed catalogues of their collections, but also in cathedral inventories that document the relics, offerings, and even sometimes natural curiosities that they possessed. As vast works of looking carefully and recording what is seen, Jim likened these prolific medieval inventories to the Ashmolean’s own digital archive, which currently makes over 200000 object records accessible online.
As the museum is often viewed as a strictly modern phenomenon, the Middle Ages are generally excluded from discussions of its development and practices. What Jim’s fantastic lecture drove home was that the wonder, loss, and strangeness found in both the medieval and the museum forge a connection between them: the museum can be medieval, and the medieval can be museal. Jim’s example of the Nuremberg Chronicle perfectly illustrates this connection in that it brings together the ancient and the current, the factual and the mythical, in a way that mirrors the museum’s ability to bring together different times and places in a single location. The Nuremberg Chronicle, as a product of the Middle Ages, and the museum are both what Michel Foucault would call “heterotopic,” in that they are capable of juxtaposing, “several sites that appear incompatible within a single space.” As Jim said, “the medieval mind is encompassing, and in itself a museum.”
Jim’s OMS Lecture is a must-see for medievalists and museologists alike. Though the Middle Ages may seem like another world, Jim underscored that the “middle age” between the past and the future is, in fact, now. There is perhaps nothing quite like a global pandemic to highlight just how much is shared between the medieval and the present. As we emerge from the third lockdown and museums reopen, this summer will hopefully allow us to visit the Ashmolean to encounter the wonder, loss, and strangeness of the medieval held therein.
Watch it here:
Bibliography
Greenblatt, Stephen. “Resonance and Wonder.” In Exhibiting Cultures, edited by Ivan Karp and Steven D. Levine, 42–56. Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991.
Bennett, Tony. The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics. Abingdon: Routledge, 1995.
Foucault, Michel. “Different Spaces.” In Aesthetics, Method and Epistemology: Volume Two, edited by James D. Faubion, translated by Robert Hurley, 178–185. New York: The New Press, 1998.
About the author
Olivia Elliott Smith is a DPhil Candidate at Linacre College and a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada Doctoral Fellow. Her research focusses on developing museological and heritage studies approaches to Old Norse literature. She has a background in museology and has worked for the Royal Ontario Museum and the Art Gallery of Ontario.
We’ve made it to the halfway point! Now if only it would stop raining. Take shelter from the weather in a seminar or two.
Only one announcement this week – the University Bulletin is looking for research staff, especially ECRs, to write posts for the weekly Bulletin blog in which they introduce their research area and share their perspective on their field in an informal, personal way. Learn more and get in touch with the Public Affairs Directorate here.
‘Moreover, how [were seminars] created? I’m not sure if you realize this, but it was in God’s image. How can anybody dare to speak ill of something which bears such a noble imprint?’ – Christine de Pizan, The Book of the City of Ladies
MONDAY 17 MAY
The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance by contacting james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Ben Kybett (Cambridge), ‘Themistius and the Muses: Religion, Rhetoric, and Classical Statuary in Fourth-Century Constantinople’.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Alice Spiers (St Anne’s), ‘Mechthild of Magdeburg: Mystic Writer, Political Commentator’.
TUESDAY 18 MAY
The Medieval Book Club meets at 3:30 pm on Google Meet. Contact oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com to be added to the mailing list. This week, Nicola Carotenuto will lead the club out onto Legendary Seas and talk through a selection of medieval maritime texts spanning Russia, China, Persia, and Venice.
The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom. Register here. This week’s speaker is Panos Sophoulis (National and Kapodistrian University of Athens), ‘“They sweep down from the mountains to despoil and ravage the land”: The Problem fo Banditry in its Medieval Balkan Context’.
Medieval Church and Culture returns this week on Teams, on the MCC channel in the OMS Team. The meeting begins at 5 pm and papers start at 5:15. This week’s speakers will be James Tomlinson (Magdalen), ‘The Relationship Between Music and Architecture in Late Medieval Creativity: Structure, Allegory, and Memory’ and Irina Boeru (Wadham), ‘At the Frontier of the Known World: Cartographic and Heraldic Encounters in Libro del Conosçimiento de todos los Regons et Tierras et Señorios que son por el mundo, et de las señales et armasque han’.
Bibitura Dantis Oxoniensis meets at 5:30 pm on Zoom (link here). This week, Nicolò Crisafi reads Paradiso 20.
WEDNESDAY 19 MAY
Digital Editions Live returns from 3-5 pm on Teams (join the meeting here). This week’s speakers are Mary Newman, ‘The Oldest Tupi Manuscript (MS. Bodley 617)’ and Lois Williams, ‘Cân o Senn iw Hên Feistr TOBACCO (1718), NLW. North PRINT W.s. 156’.
The Medieval English Research Seminar, also on Teams, meets at 4:30 pm; contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk if you need the link. This week’s speaker is Tamara Atkin (Queen Mary University of London), ‘Error in the Printing House: Sixteenth-Century Scribes, Compositors, and Correctors’.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Daria Resh (NYU/Athens), ‘What is in the Bath: Pilgrims, Brides, and Baptism in the Early Byzantine Passion of Barbara’.
THURSDAY 20 MAY
The Early Text Cultures Astronomy and Astrology Seminar meets at 3 pm on Zoom. Fill out this Google form to receive the link. This week’s speakers are Claire Hall & Liam Shaw (Oxford) and Vanishri Bhat (Independent Scholar), discussing ‘Computational Methods’ in Ptolemy, Vettius Valens, and the Aryabhatiya.
GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) Reading Group meets at 4 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be Sallust, The War with Catiline, 52.36-54.
The Aquinas Seminar Series continues on the theme of De Magistro: Aquinas and the Education of the Whole Person, at 4:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance here. This week’s speaker is Adam Eitel (Yale Divinity School), ‘“Lift up your voice with strength”: The Idea of the Preacher in Thomas Aquinas’ Super Isaiam and In Jeremiam’.
The Medieval Trade Reading Group also returns this week at 7 pm on Teams. To be added to the team and have access to the reading materials, email annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.
FRIDAY 21 MAY
Pre-Modern Conversations returns at 11 am on Teams to help you workshop your works in progress. Contact lena.vosding@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for details.
In the hope that May showers bring June flowers (and plague-free picnics) –
The Public Affairs Directorate (PAD) would like to hear from research staff who would be interested in writing a blog for publication with the University Bulletin. This is a fabulous opportunity for research staff to give insight into their area from their perspective.
Those interested in writing a blog should contact Rakiya Farah, PAD. Rakiya will need a one-line description of the subject of the proposed blog and an indicative time line that would work for the researcher.
About the blog: We send out a weekly blog with University Bulletin, usually written by a senior member of staff. Several hundred staff read it every week and we are now keen to ensure that our colleagues hear from a broader range of staff at Oxford.
We’d particularly like to profile more Early Career Researchers in the blog to give more visibility to their work, and because research stories are consistently among the most popular articles we share in the Bulletin.
With this in mind, we would like to invite you to write one of our blogs. This would be a platform to describe your work to a (predominantly) uninitiated audience, to reflect on your experiences as a researcher, your motivations, and to share your perspective on research at Oxford.
The brief: • Informal, personal style and tone • A reflective piece that gives staff some insight into your area – we tend not to use the blog as a place for formal announcements • Content: a guiding question, when writing your blog, might be good to think about what staff across the University would find most interesting about your work and experiences • Around 250 words, but can be longer – they can be up to 450 • Deadline: end of Thursday preceding the Monday edition – unless you are drafting a blog not for inclusion on a set date • We are finding that staff are really responding to this style and have been asking to hear from a wider range of staff.
Timing: We would welcome a blog that you draft at your leisure, which we can slot in as appropriate. But if you had a particular week in mind, we could also pencil this in provisionally. All of our blogs are subject to final approval by the Vice-Chancellor.
Week 3 already! Term is picking up steam and hopefully the weather will involve a little bit less hail and sleet going forward.
A few announcements:
This week, on Friday 14 May at 5 pm, we have the annual O’Donnell Lecture in Celtic Studies. This year’s speaker will be John Carey, ‘The Kindred of a Child Without a Father: Merlin’s British Forebears and Irish Cousins’. Join the lecture here.
Dartmouth’s annual Zantop Memorial Lecture will be given this year by Mary Carruthers, on ‘Dante’s Intent Geometer: ‘Alta fantasia’, Vision, and Creation in Medieval Poetry’. Register for the Zoom link in advance here; the lecture will be on 18 May at 5:30 pm BST.
The History of Domestic Violence and Abuse Seminar returns this Thursday, 13 May, at 10 am on Zoom. Speakers include Jane Gilbert, Trevor Dean, Emma Whipday, Lewis Webb, and Julia Bolton Holloway. Register in advance here.
A call for papers: the brand new Oxford Medieval Commentary Network aims to establish a multi-disciplinary network for research and discussion of medieval texts concerned with the interpretation of the Bible, bringing together research on traditional commentaries as well as research on interpretations of the biblical text in a broader sense. A one-day workshop at Christ Church on 9 October 2021 will launch the network and lay out pathways for future collaboration and interchange. Proposals for presentations of 15 minutes on aspects of medieval biblical interpretation, including post-medieval responses, are welcome. Please submit your title and abstract (150-200 words) by 4 June 2021. Expressions of interest are also invited from those who wish to get involved with the network more generally. The workshop will take place in person in Oxford if circumstances permit (but may move online if necessary), and is free for all participants. To submit your proposal, express your interest, and for further information, please contact cosima.gillhammer@chch.ox.ac.uk.
Another call for papers: the Sylloge of Coins in the British Isles is running its annual Symposium on Money and Coinage on 26 July 2021, on the theme ‘The Sincerest Form of Flattery? Imitative Coinage in Britain, Ireland, and Europe’. The Symposium invites contributions of 20 minute papers exploring aspects of the imitation of coins in Europe from late antiquity to the early modern period. Submit your titles and abstracts of no more than 150 words to Murray Andrews and Fraser McNair at SCBIcoinagesymposium@gmail.com by 31 May.
Deyr fé, deyja frændr, / deyr sjalfr it sama, / ek veit einn, at aldrei deyr: / seminarir hinn Oxnaforda. [Cattle die, kin die, the self must also die, but I know one thing that never dies: seminars in Oxford.] – Hávamál, I’m pretty sure
MONDAY 10 MAY
The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance by contacting james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Cristina Cocola (Universiteit Gent & Katholieke Universiteit Leuven), ‘Feeling Repentance in Byzantium: A Study on the Literary Sources of Katanyktic Poetry’,
The Bodleian will hold a special seminar this week on Sebastian Brant’s Ship of Fools in German and English Collections to mark the 500th anniversary of the author’s death, on Zoom at 3 pm. Register here.
At 4 pm we have the Germanic Reading Group on Zoom, which will explore alliterative verse in a different Germanic language each week; this week, Howard Jones will lead a session on Old High German. To be added to the list, contact howard.jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is Helen Flatley (St Cross), ‘The Mozarabs and their Neighbours: Mapping Communities in Medieval Toledo’.
Old Norse Reading Group continues its journey through Hervarar saga at 5:30 pm on Teams. Email bond.west@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list.
The Decentring Dante Series returns at 6 pm on Zoom with speaker Suzanne Conklin Akbari (Princeton), on the topic ‘What Ground Do We Read On?’, celebrating the publication of The Oxford Handbook of Dante. Further information and registration here.
TUESDAY 11 MAY
The Medieval Book Club meets at 3:30 pm on Google Meet. Contact oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com to receive notices. This week’s theme is Hagiography, with selections from the Legenda Aurea.
The Early Slavonic Seminar meets at 5 pm on Zoom. Register here. This week’s speaker is Liliana Simeonova (Institute for Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Science), ‘Amalfitans in Byzantium’s Cultural and Religious Life, 10-13th c.’
Medieval Church and Culture also meets at 5 pm on Teams, on the MCC channel. Papers start at 5:15. This week’s speakers will be Jennifer Coulton (Wolfson), ‘Tongue-Tied and Legal Loopholes: Binding Motifs in Early Medieval England’, and Florence Eccleston (Jesus), ‘The Emotional and Embodied Experience of the Seven Deadly Sins, c. 1350-c. 1500’.
A third seminar at 5 pm on Teams! The Medieval French Research Seminar returns for the term, with speaker Edward Mills (Exeter), ‘Why Write the Calendar in French? Computus Texts and the Languages of Medieval England’. To be added to the mailing list, contact sarah.bridge@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
WEDNESDAY 12 MAY
The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11:15 am on Teams, to continue discussing a variety of short texts.
Digital Editions Live returns from 3-5 pm on Teams (join the meeting here). This week’s speakers, on early printed holdings in the Taylorian and the Bodleian, are Agnes Hilger & Alyssa Steiner, ‘Pfaffennarr (Taylor ARCH.8o.G.1521(27) & Tr.Luth. 16 (78)’, Alexandra Hertlein, ‘Jacob Locher’s Panegyricus (Inc. e.G7.1497.2./Douce 73)’, and Sam Griffiths & Christian Tofte, ‘Marginalia in Plutarch’s Vidas Paralelas (1491)’.
The Medieval English Research Seminar, also on Teams, meets at 4:30 pm; contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk if you need the link. This week’s speaker is Paul Schaffner (Editor, MED, University of Michigan), ‘Quidels and Crotels and Glossing Tails: Attractions and Distractions of Middle English Lexicography’.
The Decentring Dante Series continues at 6 pm on Zoom, with speaker Lorna Goodison (Poet Laureate of Jamaica; University of Michigan), on the topic ‘Going Through Hell’. Further information and registration here.
THURSDAY 13 MAY
The Early Text Cultures Astronomy and Astrology Seminar meets at 3 pm on Zoom. Fill out this Google form to receive the link. This week’s speakers are Luca Beisel (Berlin/Tel Aviv) and Gonzalo Recio (Quilmes) on ‘Our Science and Theirs: Reconstructing Ancient Greek Models’.
GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) Reading Group meets at 4 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be Herodotus’ The Persian Wars, VIII.84-6, 96.
The Aquinas Seminar Series continues on the theme of De Magistro: Aquinas and the Education of the Whole Person, at 4:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance here. This week’s speaker is Rev. Prof. Michael Sherwin (Fribourg), ‘Integrated Humanities Programmes and the Renewal of Catholic Education: Thomistic Reflections’.
The Old English Reading Group meets at 5:30 pm on Teams, continuing with Bede’s Historia Ecclesiastica. Contact eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk for details.
Happy May Day! Fun fact: the first recorded use of maypoles in Britain dates to the 14th century. Meanwhile, in the present day, it’s second week already and the seminar offerings are just getting more numerous. If you want to catch up with what happened last week, here’s the link to Jim Harris’ fabulous OMS Lecture ‘Museum in the Middle’. Anybody interested in writing a post about it or any other Oxford medieval topic for our revamped website medieval.ox.ac.uk, do get in touch!
Announcements first:
Tomorrow, Tuesday 4 May, from 2-4 pm, the Bodleian will be hosting a special online event on ‘Dante 1481: the Comedia, illustrated by Botticelli’. Gervase Rosser (Oxford), Cristina Dondi (Oxford), and Tabitha Tuckett (UCL) will give talks on Botticelli’s engraved illustrations of the 1481 edition of La Comedia, on the surviving copies, and o the context of the book’s production. Book tickets here.
The Oxford Fantasy podcast is still taking pitches! Our line-up for the term already includes The Silmarillion, interviews with a variety of exciting authors, and explorations of Oxford’s fantasy archives (with visuals), but we want your ideas!
May, with alle thy floures and thy grene, / Welcome be thou, faire fresshe May, / In hope that I som [Trinity Term seminars] gete may’. – Chaucer, The Knight’s Tale, one can only imagine
MONDAY 3 MAY
The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance by contacting james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. This week’s speaker is Alessandro Carabia (University of Birmingham), ‘Defining the “Byzantine Variable” in Early Byzantine Italy: The Case of Liguria (500-700 CE)’.
The Medieval Latin Reading Group meets 1-2 pm on Teams. Improve your Latin, learn palaeographical skills, and engage first-hand with medieval texts by reading reproductions of manuscripts. Submit your email address here to receive notices.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5 pm on Teams. This week’s speaker is José Andres Porras (St Hugh’s), ‘Is Love in One’s Blood? Establishing Solidarities via Common Descent in Late Medieval Thought, 1250-1400’, with respondent David D’Avray (UCL).
TUESDAY 4 MAY
The Medieval Book Club meets at 3:30 pm on Google Meet. Contact oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com for the link and to be added to the mailing list. This week’s theme is Urban Legends, featuring Giovanni Villani’s Chronicle.
The Early Slavonic Seminar is back this week, meeting at 5 pm on Zoom. Register here. This week’s speaker is Petar Todorov (Institute of National History, Skopje), ‘History as a Source of Conflict Between Nations: Recent Macedonian-Bulgarian Controversies’.
Medieval Church and Culture also makes a triumphant return this week on Teams, on the MCC channel in the OMS Team. The meeting begins at 5 pm and papers start at 5:15. This week’s speakers will be Pilar Bertuzzi Rivett (Lincoln), ‘Ten Names, One God: Exploring Christian-Kabbalistic Affinity in a Christian Hymn of the Twelfth Century’ and Samuel Heywood (St Peter’s), ‘The Finnish Product: Translation and Transmission of Luther’s Hymns in Finland and Sweden’. Special commendation for the pun.
Bibitura Dantis Oxoniensis meets at 5:30 pm on Zoom (link here). This week, Katie Bastiman reads Purgatorio 25.
WEDNESDAY 5 MAY
The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets at 11:15 am on Teams, to continue discussing a variety of short texts.
Digital Editions Live returns from 3-5 pm on Teams (join the meeting here). This week’s project features Arnold von Harff’s travel manuscript MS. Bodley 972 presented by four generations of History of the Book students. The editors Eva Neufeind and Agnes Hilger are joined by Mary Boyle, Aysha Strachan and Jasmin Leuchtenberg. Sneak preview on Taylor Editions, including links to several blog posts. The recording of the launch of the fabulous beasts from Merton by Seb Dows-Miller and Julia Walworth is now online on the OMS Youtube channel.
The Medieval English Research Seminar, also on Teams, meets at 4:30 pm; contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk if you need the link. This week’s speaker is Eric Weiskott (Boston College), ‘William Langland’s Apophatic Poetics’.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5 pm on Google Meet (link here). This week’s speaker is Christophe Erismann (Vienna), ‘Why Do Methods Change? On the Significance of 815 for Byzantine Thought’.
THURSDAY 6 MAY
The Early Text Cultures research cluster is offering another seminar series on Astronomy and Astrology this term, at 3 pm on Zoom. Fill out this Google form to receive the link. This week’s speakers are Yossra Ibrahim (Mainz) and Peter John Williams (Cambridge), discussing ‘Text and Image’ in Egyptian and Hellenistic Greek astronomy.
GLARE (Greek, Latin, and Reception) Reading Group meets at 4 pm on Teams. Email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be Ovid’s Amores, III.2.1-42, 59-84.
The Aquinas Seminar Series continues on the theme of De Magistro: Aquinas and the Education of the Whole Person, at 4:30 pm on Zoom. Please register in advance here. This week’s speaker is Fáinche Ryan (Loyola Institute, Trinity College Dublin), ‘The Role of Intelligence in Good Human Living: Aquinas and the Teachability of Prudentia’.
This term’s Celtic Seminar kicks off this week at 5:15 pm on Teams. Contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk if you need the link. This week’s speaker is Amy Mulligan (University of Notre Dame), ‘Moving into Chicago’s “White City”: Race, Celtic Iconography and the Construction of Irishness at the 1893 World’s Fair’.
The Medieval Trade Reading Group also returns this week at 7 pm on Teams. To be added to the team and have access to the reading materials, email annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.
FRIDAY 7 MAY
Pre-Modern Conversations returns at 11 am on Teams to help you workshop your works in progress. Contact lena.vosding@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk for details.
Doon your observaunce to May, and enjoy the bank holiday!
Meeting 7-8:30pm on Thursdays of even weeks of term. Session 1: Thursday 6th May, Week 2 Session 2: Thursday 20th May, Week 4. Session 3: Thursday 3rd June, Week 6. Session 4: Thursday 17th June, Week 8. We are an informal group who come together to discuss secondary readings about a variety of themes related to medieval trade across the globe. In previous meetings we have discussed readings covering topics such as Muslim merchant communities in China, Eastern Mediterranean slavery, and network theory approaches. Each session, a group member will present for 5-10 minutes on a pre-suggested reading followed by a large group discussion. Suggested reading in preparation for each session is sent out at least a week before the group meeting. Anyone interested in any element of medieval trade and its study are welcome to join. To be added to the team and have access to the materials and meetings please email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk
Medieval Latin Reading Group Mondays, 13:00–14:00, Microsoft Teams Improve your Latin, learn palaeographical skills, and engage first-hand with medieval texts by reading reproductions of manuscripts together. We will learn to read and translate directly from medieval books, moving in a roughly chronological sequence during the year. All welcome; meetings will take place weekly during term. Submit your email address (https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/subscribe/medieval-latin-ms-reading) to receive notices. Organisers: Jacob Currie; Andrew Dunning; Matthew Holford.
Pre-Modern Conversations
Fridays of even weeks, 11am–noon, Microsoft Teams Convenors: Lena Vosding, Lewis Webb, Godelinde Perk
‘The Evangelist St. Matthew writing, with his symbol the angel’, MS 10 E 3, f. 18r (Museum Meermanno-Westreenianum, The Hague).
Nervous about an upcoming presentation? Struggling to improve your article’s argument or structure? In need of constructive peer feedback on a book chapter, or simply encouragement? Join our friendly, interdisciplinary group of early career pre-modernists, offering an informal, supportive environment for helping each other revise, refine, and finally complete that work in progress. The group convenes in weeks 2, 4, 6, and 8 on Teams to discuss a work in progress. The format for these one-hour sessions alternates between a presentation to the entire group (for conference contributions) and a discussion of a pre-circulated written text. WIP contributors are expected to provide a cover letter outlining the desired areas for improvement to facilitate discussion. The final twenty minutes of each meeting are dedicated to discussing more general topics related to writing, editing and publishing. All ECR pre-modernists from any Faculty are welcome. We particularly invite WIPs with an interdisciplinary and/or gender focus. You are also very welcome to participate without contributing a paper. If interested, please submit an abstract (up to 300 words) of your WIP, accompanied by a short biography to lena.vosding@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk by Friday 30 April to be added to the PMC Teams channel and receive updates on the programme as well as meeting invitations. First meeting: week 2, Friday 7 May, 11am–noon, Teams.
Anglo-Norman Reading Group
The Anglo-Norman Reading Group will continue to meet on Zoom during Trinity Term on Fridays of ODD weeks (30 April, 14, 28 May, and 11 June) from 5-6:30pm. We will be reading the Anglo-Norman Fabliaux. Please contact Jane Bliss (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org) or Stephanie Hathaway (stephanie.hathaway@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk).
Oxford University Numismatic Society All talks will be held online over MS Teams at 5pm GMT. Links will be distributed beforehand by means of the OUNS mailing list: to subscribe and receive meeting links and further updates, please email the Secretary at daniel.etches@new.ox.ac.uk.
4th May (Week 2) at 5pm: Dr. John Talbot (University of Oxford): “Icenian and Durotrigan Coinage – Using A Study of Coinage to Learn about Late Iron Age Society” 18th May (Week 4) at 5pm: Prof. Fleur Kemmers (Goethe-Universität Frankfurt): “Making Money in Republican Rome: A Numismatic Perspective on Rome’s Expansion”. 1st June (Week 6) at 5pm: Dr. Maria Vrij (The Barber Institute of Fine Arts / University of Birmingham): “‘How Do You Solve A Problem Like Mezezios?’ – Understanding and Unpicking the Imagery of the Emperors Mezezios (668-669) and Constantine IV (668-685)”. 15th June (Week 8) at 5pm: Dr. Julien Olivier (Bibliothèque nationale de France): TBC.
Germanic Reading Group
This term we’re planning four meetings of the Germanic Reading Group, loosely connected by the theme of alliterative verse. The sessions will take place on Mondays from 4:00 to 5:00 pm by Zoom, as follows: Monday, 26 April (1st week). Old English, led by Rafael Pascual Monday, 10 May (3rd week). Old High German, led by Howard Jones Monday, 24 May (5th week). Old Norse, led by Eugenia Vorobeva Monday, 7 June (7th week). Old Saxon, led by Nelson Goering We’ll go through a short text, translating and discussing points of linguistic interest, under the guidance of the leader of each session. To be added to the list, contact howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk
