Month: February 2022

Medieval Matters: Week 7

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28/02/2022

07:06

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Where did the term go? Welcome to seventh week, and to the last day of February! Unfortunately this isn’t quite the end of winter, nor of the terrible stormy weather that we’ve been having. I’m aware that my British side is showing in opening this week’s email with weather chat, but I’m not alone: the obsession with the weather holds true in the Early Medieval period too! Here’s some wisdom on storms from the Old English Maxims II:

Wind byð on lyfte swiftust, þunar byð þragum hludast.
[Wind is swiftest in the air, thunder is at times the loudest.]

If you want to avoid the swift winds (or talk of them!) this week, please see below for an excellent range of seminars and reading groups, where the welcome sound of academic discussion will be hludast:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The first event of the newly revived Oxford Medieval Society is a Panel on Medieval Plagues. It takes place in the North Lecture Room of St. John’s College on Wednesday, 2nd March, 5pm. Professor Mark Bailey (University of East Anglia) will give a talk entitled What did the Black Death do for us? Some answers from England, 1350 to 1400, and Professor Samuel Cohn (University of Glasgow) will speak on Plagues of the Central Middle Ages: The dog that didn’t bark.
  • The International Conference “Still ‘Caput Mundi’? The Role of Rome between Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages in the Western Mediterranean“, organized by the RomanIslam – Center for Comparative Empire and Transcultural Studies, University of Hamburg, and headed by Prof. Dr. Sabine Panzram and Dr. Rocco Selvaggi. The workshop will take place on 3-5 March 2022 (in person and on Zoom). For full details and to get the links to attend via Zoom, visit the website here.
  • A Webinar, After the Book of Kells: Insular Art in Scotland and Ireland 900-1900, organised by Rachel Moss, Trinity College Dublin, & Heather Pulliam, University of Edinburgh, takes place on March 4th-5th. To attend, and for futher details, visit the eventbrite page. Full programme of talks, speakers and roundtables can be found here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 28th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12.30-2pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Carolyn Tyler La Rocco (St. Andrews), ‘Christianising Elites and the Religious Topography of Late Roman and Visigothic Iberia‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list. 
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen for further details.
  • The Palaeography Seminar: Medieval Manuscripts Masterclass will meet online and in the Weston Lecture Theatre at 2.15pm. You must be registered to attend: if you wish to attend online, you must register 24 hours before the seminar. This week’s speaker is Colleen Curran, ‘The History of Script and the Scripting of History in 10th/11th-Century Canterbury‘. Register here.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Edith Chen (Exeter College), ‘Under the Tatar Yoke: Persian Local Courts Under the Mongols in the 13th Century’. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Seats will be released 1 week before each seminar. Bookings can be made here. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk
  • Henrike Lähnemann presents on Nuns and Their Texts. Religious Writing from North German Medieval Convents at the Columbia Research Seminar on Religion and Writing 7pm (= 2pm EST), meeting information on the seminar blog.

Tuesday 1st March:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 11.30pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Jane Griffiths (Wadham College), ‘This word in Latyn: late-medieval religious macaronic lyric’. For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Class on Medieval Chronology by Prof. Anna Sapir Abulafia will take place 1.30-3.30 at the Faculty of Theology and Religion, Lecture Room, Gibson Building, ROQ site. The first class will give a broad, hands-on practical overview of the material which includes, Julian and Gregorian calendar, calculation of the Easter date in the West, epact, concurrent, days of the month, days of the week, moveable feasts, different starting days of the year, indiction, eras. Students will be given a practice sheet with medieval dates in different styles and containing a variety of dating methods and asked to solve them in preparation for the second class next week. Students interested in attending should contact anna.sapirabulafia@theology.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Jealousy and Disgust’. If you want to join us, or would like more information, please contact oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com. Option to join virtually via Google Meet as well, please send your contact details.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar meets at 5pm at Maison française d’Oxford and Online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Giulia Boitani (King’s College, Cambridge): ‘Edenic Entanglements: the Ship of Solomon in MS Bodmer 147‘. To join a session remotely via Teams, please contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk to receive the link.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is David Addison (All Souls), ‘Isidore of Seville, the Carolingians, and the idea of the laity‘.
  • The Late Medieval Europe Seminar meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Jutta Sperling (Hampshire College), ‘Queering the maternal body: same-sex lactations in late medieval and early modern art and literature’. To join the zoom meeting click here: Join Zoom Meeting. Meeting ID: 987 7500 2179 / Passcode: 032874.

Wednesday 2nd March:

  • No Medieval German Seminar this week. The presentation on Reinbot of Durne’s Georg by Melina Schmidt is postponed to week 8. If you are interested in attending, email Henrike Lähnemann. For further information, follow MedGermOx on Twitter.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5:30pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Kerim Altuğ (Istanbul): ‘Re-building Byzantium: Archaeological evidence on the construction activities under Justinian in Constantinople and its neighbourhoods‘. Register in advance for this on-line series: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkdeuspz8jG9IfBfrd75k6qrxLyWtG_PAu. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
  • Oxford Medieval Society‘s Panel on Medieval Plagues (see above / link for more information) in the North Lecture Room of St. John’s College at 5pm.

Thursday 3rd March:

  • Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This week’s text is Das Donaueschinger Passionsspiel. If you have any questions or want to participate, please email melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  • The Early Text Cultures Reading Group meets at 4.40-5.30pm at the Dickson Poon Building (China Centre, Oxford), Lucina Ho Seminar Room, and on Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Nora Schmid (University of Oxford), Legal Paraenesis in Muḥammad’s Farewell Sermon. To join online, please click here. For full details and abstract, please click here.
  • Mary Boyle: Imagining Pilgrimage. This talk follows the paths of four medieval pilgrims from the real world, on to the page, and into the imagination, looking at the virtual Jerusalem pilgrimage at the end of the Middle Ages. Update: the seminar had to be postponed. Read instead about it in her book on pilgrimage (or in its previous form in her Oxford doctoral thesis).
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Geraldine Lublin (Swansea University), ‘Settler colonialism and Welsh Patagonia‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.
  • The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30pm. For more information and to receive the text in advance email eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk.
  • A lecture by ffiona Perigrinor will be held at 6pm at St Edmund Hall, Chough Room: ‘Two free-spirited East Anglian women in the later Middle Ages: Alice de Bryene and Margery Kempe’. ffiona Perigrinor is an independent medieval scholar and the author of Reluctant Pilgrim: The Book of Margery Kempe’s Maidservant (2021).

Friday 4th March:

  • The Seminar in the History of the Book will meet online and in the Weston Lecture Theatre at 2.15pm. You must be registered to attend: if you wish to attend online, you must register 24 hours before the seminar. This week’s speaker is Lisa Barber (Lisa Jefferson), Oxford: ‘The Goldsmiths’ Register and other record books of various London Livery Companies‘. Register here.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm on Zoom. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • CFP: Living in Late Antique Mediterranean. The Scientific Committee of CISEM (Inter-University Centre for Studies on Late Antique Housing in the Mediterranean) invites you to submit proposals for the 4th CISEM International Congress “Living in Late Antique Mediterranean”, that will be held in Cuenca (Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, España) on November 7th-9th 2022. The Congress will last three days with sessions dedicated to the presentation and the discussion of general topics regarding Late Antique Housing in the Mediterranean, with special insights on particular contexts. For full details, visit the CISEM website.
  • Merton College proposes to elect a Career Development Fellow in Medieval English Language and Literature. The successful candidate will be appointed from 1 October 2022 (or as soon as possible thereafter) for a period terminating no later than 30 September 2026. This is a prestigious career development post which will provide a promising academic with opportunities to develop as a researcher and university teacher. For full details, see here.
  • Rehearsals are well under-way for the Medieval Mystery Cycle which will take place on Saturday 23 April 2022, 12noon to 5:30pm, in the grounds of St Edmund Hall. It’s not too late to get involved acting, making music or props – contact Eleanor Baker to be added to the list!

Finally, some more windy wisdom, this time from Maxims I:

Werig sceal se wiþ winde roweþ.
[He will be weary who rows against the wind.]

I’m sure many people are feeling weary right now: I wish you all a peaceful week of smooth sailing.

[A group of Medievalists, rowing against the wind, bump into the looming figure of seventh week]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 7r.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Serra

Oxford Medieval Society – Plagues Panel

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27/02/2022

19:10

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On Wednesday 2nd March 2022, the Oxford Medieval Society will hold a panel on medieval plagues.

Professor Mark Bailey (University of East Anglia) will give a talk entitled What did the Black Death do for us? Some answers from England, 1350 to 1400, and Professor Samuel Cohn (University of Glasgow) will speak on Plagues of the Central Middle Ages: The dog that didn’t bark.

The panel will start at 5pm and be held in the North Lecture Room of St. John’s College.

All are very welcome to attend what promises to be a fascinating panel.

Image credit: “The Triumph of Death”, Galleria Regionale della Sicilia, Palermo, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.


Medieval Matters: Week 6

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21/02/2022

14:11

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Somehow we are now in Week 6! If it feels that Christmas happened just moments ago and that the term is passing by very quickly, have no fear: the Old English Andreas reassures us that:

ofost is selost.
[haste is best]

With haste, then, here are all of our events this week – be hasty in adding them to your diary to make sure that you don’t miss them!:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Highlight of the week: The Oxford Medieval Society Relaunch Party! The event will take place at 5pm on Thursday 24th February (6th Week) in the Kendrew Café at St. John’s College. Please enter by the Kendrew Porter’s Lodge, rather than the main Lodge. The party will offer the opportunity to meet members of Oxford’s medieval community over drinks, snacks and a medieval-themed quiz. All students and staff interested in medieval studies are welcome, especially those who are new to Oxford. In celebration of our relaunch, membership fees have been waived for 2021/2022 academic year. If you would like to join the Society, you can do so by completing this short Google Form.
  • It’s not too late to register for Opening the Sacred Text: Meaning, Materiality, Historiography, a conference starting today (21 February) 2:15pm via Zoom, with a focus on carpet pages, Book of Kells and Durrow and more, organised by Stewart J. Brookes and Julie Harris!
  • The Medieval Book Club is cancelled this week, and will meet again in week 7 at the usual time and place.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 21st February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12.30-2pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Benjamin Sharkey (Oxford), ‘The Minority Experience of a Central Asian Christian Community, Explored Through Syriac Gravestone Inscriptions (c. 1201-1345) from the Chu Valley, Kyrgyzstan‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list. 
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen for further details.
  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar meets at 3pm on Teams and in the Institute of Archaeology Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Gabor Thomas (U. of Reading): ‘Holy Waters Floweth: New Archaeological Insights on the Non-Tidal Thames as an Early Medieval Monastic Nexus‘. Please note: Attendance in person is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Bookings can be made by contacting: jane.kershaw@arch.ox.ac.uk. For the Teams’ link click here.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Felicity Hill (St Andrews), ‘Excommunication: collective action and communal knowledge’. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Seats will be released 1 week before each seminar. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.30pm on Teams. Please email Olivia Smith (olivia.smith2@linacre.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list and Teams group.

Tuesday 22nd February:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 11.30pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speakers will be Peter Buchanan (Lady Margaret Hall), ‘Light metaphysics and contingent poetics in Chaucer’s House of Fame’, and Pamela Kask (Mansfield College), ‘The mythology of trauma in Chaucer’s Anelida and Arcite’. For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.’
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Elizabeth Crabtree (Blackfriars), ‘“This happened by the will of God”:  Divine Providence in Nicholas of Lyra’s commentary on the Book of Esther‘.
  • The Medieval Manuscripts Seminar meets at 5.30pm on Zoom. This week’s speakers are Carlotta Barranu (University of Cambridge ), Multilingualism and the organisation of knowledge in fourteenth-century English books; and Philippa de Sissis (Universität Hamburg), Facets of a SchriftBild (script as image) concept – the three scribes of BML Plut 76.1. To attend, and to see the abstracts, please book here.

Wednesday 23rd February:

  • The Medieval German Seminar on Reinbot von Durne’s “Georg” meets at meets at 11.15-12.45 in Oriel College, Harris Room. This week’s speakers are Carolin Gluchowski and Luise Morawetz, discussing Peter Strohschneider’s article Georius miles-Georius martyr. If you are interested in being added to the mailing list for the seminar, email Henrike Lähnemann henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. For further information, follow MedGermOx on Twitter.
  • The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 1-2pm in the Mertze Tate room of the History Faculty and online on Teams. Anyone interested in any element of medieval trade and its study are very welcome to join, from any department. To be added to the mailing list and team please email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5:30pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Olivier Gengler (Tübingen): ‘Building Stories: Constantinople in Malalas and Procopius.’ Register in advance for this on-line series: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkdeuspz8jG9IfBfrd75k6qrxLyWtG_PAu. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Thursday 24th February:

  • Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This week’s text is Das Donaueschinger Passionsspiel. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  • The German Research Seminar will have a medieval theme this week, with Carolin Gluchowski, Henrike Lähnemann, and Lena Vosding jointly presenting on The Nuns’ Network, letters and manuscripts written by women in late medieval North Germany. Click here to join the meeting at 2pm on teams.
  • The ETC Seminar on Gender Identities meets at 4.30-6.00 in the Dickson Poon Building (China Centre, Oxford), Lucina Ho Seminar Room and on Zoom. This week’s speakers are Fayaz Ahmad (University of Kashmir), Sufism, Gender and Literature: Rishi Silsila and the female Sufis of Kashmir; and Frederique Darragon (Sichuan University), Re-visiting the primary textual sources about the ancient ‘Nüguo’ matriarchal queendoms of the Chinese borderlands. To sign up to the mailing list and receive Zoom links, please click here.
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at location TBA at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker is Karolina Rosiak (Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań), ‘title tba‘. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for further details.

Friday 25th February:

  • Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11am-12pm on Teams. For more information and to be added the the PMC Teams Channel, email lena.vosding AT mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Seminar in the History of the Book will meet online and in the Weston Lecture Theatre at 2.15pm. You must be registered to attend: if you wish to attend online, you must register 24 hours before the seminar. This week’s speaker is Katarzyna Kapitan, Junior Research Fellow, Linacre College; Visiting Scholar The Arnamagnæan Institute, University of Copenhagen: ‘The Virtual Library of Thormodus Torfæus, reconstructed from Danish and Icelandic collections‘. Register here: https://forms.office.com/r/FSXrV1W98u.

Even though the term seems to be progressing quickly, we still have a whole three weeks of exciting Medieval events in store, including classes on Medieval Chronology by Prof. Anna Sapir Abulafia; the Palaeography Seminar: Medieval Manuscripts Masterclass; and a lecture by ffiona Perigrinor on ‘Two free-spirited East Anglian women in the later Middle Ages’. You can take a sneak peek at upcoming events on our blog, on our calendar or in the Medieval Booklet. But if you’re feeling impatient for these upcoming events, here is some wisdom from Maxims 1:

Mon sceal […] gebidan þæs he gebædan ne mæg.
[One must wait for what cannot be hastened]

In other words: good things come to those who wait…

[A Medievalist stunned by the fact that it is already Week 6]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 10v
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#LeunCocs

Medieval Matters: Week 5

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14/02/2022

13:02

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Thank you to everyone who came to last week’s OMS lecture. If you missed it, you can view a recording of the lecture, along with a report by Pilar Bertuzzi Rivett (Dphil student in History) here. Today marks Valentine’s day! In honour of the occasion, here is one of the earliest mentions of Valentine’s day in English poetry, Geoffrey Chaucer’s Parliament of Fowls:

For this was on Seynt Valentynes day,
Whan every foul cometh ther to chese his make

[For this was on Saint Valentine’s day, when every bird came there to choose his mate]

Unfortunately finding of fouls lies outside of the OMS remit, but if you cometh her to your inbox looking to chese your perfect seminar or reading group, see below for details of a whole range of them – you’re sure to find one for you!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 14th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12.30-2pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Marc Czarnuszewicz (St. Andrews), ‘Manzikert 1071: The Arabic and Persian Poetry‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list. 
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions: https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/info/medieval-latin-ms-reading. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen for further details.
  • The Palaeography Seminar: Medieval Manuscripts Masterclass will meet online and in the Weston Lecture Theatre at 2.15pm. You must be registered to attend: if you wish to attend online, you must register 24 hours before the seminar. This week’s speaker is Laura Saetveit Miles (Bergen), ‘St. Birgitta of Sweden in late-medieval England’. Register here: https://forms.office.com/r/F6NjbWuhpT.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Eduardo Manzano Moreno (St Andrews), ‘The concept of good government in Medieval Islam: the case of Umayyad al-Andalus‘. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Seats will be released 1 week before each seminar. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk
  • At 6pm, Henrike Lähnemann gives a Public Lecture (via zoom, in German) for the conference ‘Bibelepik. Narratologische Perspektiven auf eine europäische Tradition’ on the topic ‘Ostern erzählen‘ which will include a live-showing of the Medingen manuscripts in the Bodleian Library presented by Andrew Dunning. Register for the talk herausgeber@erzaehlforschung.de

Tuesday 15th February:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 11.30pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Michael Kuczynski (Tulane University), ‘The true portrait of Christ: origins and afterlife of a medieval forgery’. For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Love’. If you want to join us, or would like more information, please contact oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com. Option to join virtually via Google Meet as well, please send your contact details.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar meets at 5pm at Maison française d’Oxford and Online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Sarah Bridge (St Hilda’s College, Oxford): ‘Authors Creating Authors: William Herebert and Nicole Bozon in BL Add. 46919‘. To join a session remotely via Teams, please contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk to receive the link.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Janet Burton (University of Wales, Trinity St David), ‘Ups and Downs:  abbatial careers at the Cistercian abbey of Meaux (Yorkshire)‘.
  • The Late Medieval Europe Seminar meets at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Leah deVun (Rutgers),  ‘The Shape of Sex: A Conversation about Nonbinary Gender before Modernity’. To join the zoom meeting click here: Join Zoom Meeting. Meeting ID: 987 7500 2179 / Passcode: 032874.

Wednesday 16th February:

  • The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in Oriel College, Harris Room, speaker is Rebekka Gründel. If you are interested in being added to the teams channel and the mailing list for the seminar, email Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Princeton Environmental History Lab Seminar takes place at 9.30pm on Zoom. This term’s speaker is Rachel Brody, Doctoral Candidate, Dept. of History, Boston College, “What Creeps Below and Buzzes Above: Multispecies Entanglement in the Early Medieval House”. Registration for this event is required. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5:30pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Alkiviadis Ginalis (Istanbul): ‘Procopius and the reflection of water landscapes in the 6th century‘. Register in advance for this on-line series. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Thursday 17th February:

  • Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This week’s text is Das Redentiner Osterspiel. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Workshop on the Murbach Hymns and MS. Junius 25 takes place online at 3pm-9pm. The presentations and papers will be published online before the event. Questions for the speakers can be asked during the sessions or before the event via Twitter (#MurbachHymns) or email (luise.morawetz@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk, reference: Workshop Murbach Hymns). Register here for the event! If you have any questions, please contact Luise Morawetz (via email or Twitter).
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. Today’s speakers are Antonio Calvia (Università di Pavia) and Anne Stone (CUNY Graduate Center): ‘Two Fragments, One Manuscript: Introducing a Newly-Discovered Italian Source of Ars Nova Polyphony’. If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have questions, please email (matthew.thomson@ucd.ie).
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Karen Stöber (Universitat de Lleida), ‘Royal anger and royal tears: Emotions in the Book of Deeds of James I of Aragon‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.
  • The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30pm. For more information and to receive the text in advance email eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Oxford University Heraldry Society meets at 6 for 6.30pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Adrian Ailes: ‘The Heraldry of Reading Abbey and its Legacy‘. Booking is essential – please contact the secretary at secretary@oxford-heraldry.org.uk

Friday 18th February:

  • The Workshop on the Murbach Hymns and MS. Junius 25 takes place online at 9am-3.30pm. The presentations and papers will be published online before the event. Questions for the speakers can be asked during the sessions or before the event via Twitter (#MurbachHymns) or email (luise.morawetz@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk, reference: Workshop Murbach Hymns). Register here for the event! If you have any questions, please contact Luise Morawetz (via email or Twitter).
  • The Seminar in the History of the Book will meet online and in the Weston Lecture Theatre at 2.15pm. You must be registered to attend: if you wish to attend online, you must register 24 hours before the seminar. This week’s speaker is Brian Cummings, Professor of English and Related Literature, University of York: ‘Bibliophobia‘. Register here: https://forms.office.com/r/FSXrV1W98u.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5pm on Zoom. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.

For those with no Valentine’s day plans, or a more cynical view of Valentine’s celebrations, have no fear: Ælfric of Eynsham suggests that perhaps your days might be better spent at a seminar anyway, since:

Ælc mann þe wisdom lufaþ biþ gesælig.
Everyone who loves wisdom is blessed.

Wishing all of you wisdom-lovers a happy and productive week!

[A parliament of wisdom-loving Medievalist fowls cometh on Seynt Valentynes day to attend their perfect seminar ]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 9v.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Colum

Latin-Old High German Compline

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14/02/2022

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On 17 February 2022, 9:15pm GMT, the St Edmund Consort sings Compline from the crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East, including a bilingual setting of verses from the ‘Christe qui lux est et dies’ from the Murbach Hymnal, MS. Junius 25, by James Whitbourn. Live-streamed via youtube from the Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East. Booklet with texts.

Compline is the last service of the canonical hours in the Christian tradition, sung before retiring for the night. This version hints at the experience of those who created and used the ninth-century Murbach hymnal (Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Junius 25) with their daily exposure to the Divine Office in Latin, making the hymns and liturgical pieces accessible through translation and commentary. The service tonight is not a historically accurate reconstruction of a specific service, rather an experiment to make the soundscape of Latin and Old High German liturgy and hymns accessible to a 21st century audience. We are grateful to the Principal and Fellows of St Edmund Hall for the permission to use the crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East; to James Whitbourn, Director of Music, for setting verses from the Murbach Hymns to music (to the best of our knowledge the first time this has been done for the Old High German interlinear gloss!) and for conducting; to the St Edmund Consort, a recently formed group of fellows, alumni and singers linked with St Edmund Hall; to Luise Morawetz for organising the workshop which inspired this; to Andrew Dunning for typesetting the music; to Christiane Gante who translated the Gloria Patri into Old High German; to Henrike Lähnemann for compiling the text; to all participants of the workshop who contributed their knowledge and enthusiasm.

Programme of the workshop. In association with the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). Image credit: First lines of the Murbach hymns (fol. 122v, Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Junius 25). Produced by Tom Revell

Lucy Pick

Lucy Pick in Oxford

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13/02/2022

22:40

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Report on Lucy Pick’s Lecture for OMS: A Guest Blog by Pilar Bertuzzi Rivett

Watch Lucy Pick’s OMS Lecture 2022 here:

The Oxford Medieval Studies Lecture for Hilary Term 2022 was delivered on 8 February by Professor Lucy Pick, historian of medieval thought and culture, author of Her Father’s Daughter: Gender, Power, and Religion in Early the Spanish Kingdoms (Cornell 2017), Pilgrimage (Cuidono 2014) and Conflict and Coexistence: Archbishop Rodrigo and the Muslims and Jews of Thirteenth-Century Spain (University of Michigan 2004). Professor Pick is a visiting scholar at the Center for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in Oxford, researching the earliest Latin translation of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed.

As a Hebraist and fellow historian of medieval thought, I looked forward to Professor Pick’s take on what Jewish-Christian relationships meant in the case of Maimonides’ Guide to the Perplexed. It is a treat to be able to read a Jewish Medieval author in Latin and since instances of actual intellectual cooperation (especially in the early Middle Ages, which is what I focus on) are very few and far between, I am always curious to learn about them. I was particularly interested in how Professor Pick discovered this cooperation and what method she was going to use in order to flesh it out.

I found that Professor Pick set the scene very aptly when she opened her presentation mentioning that the Guide to the Perplexed “landed in the Latin scholastic world of the thirteenth century like a stick of dynamite.” Maimonides’ synthesis of science, the Law, Greek physics and metaphysics through the lens of the Hebrew Bible was nothing short of “explosive”. He offered a method for assimilating and interpreting the new Aristotle that flooded the schools of the thirteenth century. Did he inspire part of that flood? Did the Guide open up new avenues of thought for Christian readers that could be used as tools in their polemics against the Jews? These were some of the questions that were addressed in her presentation.

In what to me was reminiscent of the Italian school of microhistory, Professor Pick set aside the Christian scholastics of the mid to late thirteenth century, (whose study “used up most of the scholarly oxygen dedicated to Maimonides Latinus”) to focus on a much earlier community of readers of the Guide, one composed of both Jewish and Christians in the city of Toledo. At the heart of her project is the Liber de Parabola (witnessed in only one manuscript, Paris Sorbonne MS 601), the earliest Latin translation of the Guide (Part III, chapters 29-49 in which Maimonides discusses the reasons for commandments). According to Professor Pick, the Liber has not received the attention it deserves, neither as a witness to the Guide nor for its additional content which bears witness to the earliest reception to the ideas of the Guide. She therefore traced these individuals’ contact with the Liber de Parabola to shed light on both positive and negative aspects of its reception by Christians.

The key characters in this “textual community” are Samuel ibn Tibbon, who translated Maimonides’ Guide from Judeo-Arabic into Hebrew; Michael Scot, court astrologer to Frederick II who began his career as a master in Toledo, translating scientific texts from Arabic into Latin and Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada, Archbishop of Toledo, in whose cathedral Michael and Samuel may have met and in whose writings we can trace the earliest evidence of Maimonides’ impact on the Latin world.

Samuel’s contribution to the Liber is easiest to identify: he used his Hebrew translation for the base texts; he drew on his interpretation of Maimonides’ ideas about philosophical and Biblical exegesis and illustrated it with examples from his commentary on Ecclesiastics. He is cited by name at least six times in connection with the readings of the Hebrew Bible and interpretation of Jewish law. Pick believes that these passages reflect oral communication between Samuel Ibn Tabbon and the translator.

Michael Scot’s identity is more difficult to establish and rests on substantial circumstantial evidence. Michael Scot knew the work of Maimonides as he cited him in his “De physionomiae”; he was in Rome at the same time as the Liber de Parabola was dedicated to Cardinal Romanus and first appeared on the historical record in 1215 in Rome, accompanying the entourage of the Archbishop of Toledo at the Fourth Lateran Council. Pick notes that Samuel consulted books by Aristoteles meteorology (some of which Scot translated into Latin) in Toledo at some point between 1204 and 1210, thus Michael and Samuel could plausibly have met and worked together.

Pick also described how Michael Scot became a close associate of Jacob Anatoli while at Frederick II’s court in Naples. Anatoli was Samuel’s son in law, whose philosophical sermons (Malmad ha-Talmidim) recounted conversations with Michael Scot and his knowledge of Maimonides’ work. In one of his sermons on Parshat Nitzavim, Anatoli showed awareness of the Liber de Parabola, inclusive of its structure and introduction and associates it with Michael Scot. Pick very ably showed parallels between Anatoli’s interpretation of Deuteronomy 4:6 with the opening of the Liber de Parabola which contrasts the interpretation of a commandment with the allegory of a parable.    

By means of a venn diagram, Pick highlighted the interpenetration of ideas amongst the translators of key works in Toledo, Naples and Provence all of whom were engaged in a parallel set of translations and commentaries on Aristotle’s Meteorology inspired by Part II Chapter 30 of Maimonides’ Guide. Since Part II was not available in the Liber, this suggests a wider diffusion of the Guide in Toledo.  

The presentation concluded by showing the “polemical” potential to Christian borrowing of Maimonides’ ideas. The Archbishop of Toledo reacted to Part II Chapter 30 in his Breviarium in which he used Maimonides’ ideas of “principle” and “spirit” to argue for the Christian Trinity. This is an example of how the section of the Guide in the Liber de Parabola was used by later Christians in support of a doctrine of “supersession” rather than fostering a more positive understanding of those who follow God’s commandments, as Jacob Anatoli would have hoped for.

This conclusion was what surprised me most about the presentation. I suppose I approached the topic with the eyes of someone accustomed to the interpenetration of ideas between Christians and Jews of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages when it comes to mysticism. However, Professor Pick’s paper showed that by the thirteenth century intellectual cooperation could be both a tool and a weapon. In her own words, “textual community did not mean safety and an exchange of texts could provide ammunition as well as understanding.” In the period of history I focus on, between the ninth and eleventh centuries, both Christian and Jewish polemical tools were still in their pre-scholastic phase; Peter Damian’s work only really impacted Jewish-Christian relations towards the end of my “horizon.” However, the fact that Dante Alighieri put Pater Damian in the highest circles of Paradise, whereas Michael Scot was relegated to the malebolgie of Hell should have alerted me to the fact that there was not going to be a “happy ending” to Professor Pick’s textual community.

Still, any kind of inter-faith intellectual cooperation in the Middle Ages is worth researching because it demystifies some of the myths that surround the history of Christian and Jewish communities. When genuine, as in the case of Pick’s “textual community” or in the case of the Victorines in Paris, cooperation challenges the narrative of Jews and Christians as distinct cultures in “conversation and conflict.” The key takeaway from this paper for my dissertation is that we are better served to approach the history of Jews and Christians in the Middle Ages from an organic model of culture rather than who influenced whom, to borrow from David Biale and Michael Satlow. I admire the way in which Pick focuses on people and their agency and how comfortable she was with admitting that sometimes, as in the case of Michael Scot’s identity, one has to rely on somewhat circumstantial evidence. As medievalists, we do not always find “the silver bullet”; we are dealing with people and sources that existed nearly two thousand years ago. Even the most refined sleuths sometimes build cases on indirect evidence. If we wanted simple, straightforward, direct evidence, we would be statisticians or, worse still, modern historians.

I found that the interdisciplinary, multi-lingual approach in Pick’s presentation fit very well with the remit of the OMS and with our own identity as medieval historians. In Professor Pick’s words, “life is best viewed through more than one window.”

Pick reminded the audience that.

“It has been corrected from my own book. I am Moses son of Rabbi Maimon, the Righteous, of Blessed Memory”
Egypt, 1170–80
Handwritten in ink on paper
Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, MS. Huntington 80

Medieval Matters: Week 4

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07/02/2022

16:03

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This Tuesday we have our long-awaited guest lecture by Lucy Pick on ‘Maimonides Latinus and a Thirteenth-Century Textual Community of Jewish and Christian Readers’. It will be live-streamed from St Edmund Hall on Tuesday 5pm https://youtu.be/XAQlVmpw8Zw – come in person or tune in for what is sure to be a wonderful evening. Lucy’s paper will explore the multilingual, multicultural Middle Ages, so it seems fitting to have some wisdom about language-learning from the Old English Pastoral Care:

ðy mara wisdom on londe wære ðy we ma geðeoda cuðon.
[The more languages we knew, the more wisdom would be in the land]

We certainly have a wide range of languages on offer in this week’s schedule, with events on Celtic, Norse, Latin, Middle High German, and Middle English – to name just a few! Please peruse the listings below to see what a wonderful range of events we have on this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Oxford Medieval Society is very pleased to announce the details of our Relaunch Party. The event will take place at 5pm on Thursday 24th February (6th Week) in the Kendrew Café at St. John’s College. Please enter by the Kendrew Porter’s Lodge, rather than the main Lodge. The party will offer the opportunity to meet members of Oxford’s medieval community over drinks, snacks and a medieval-themed quiz. All students and staff interested in medieval studies are welcome, especially those who are new to Oxford. In celebration of our relaunch, membership fees have been waived for 2021/2022 academic year. If you would like to join the Society, you can do so by completing this short Google Form.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 7th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar meets at 12.30-2pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Becca Grose (Royal Holloway), ‘Avitus of Vienne and Roman Approaches to Burgundian Royal Women: Ascetics, Virgins and Heretics‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list. 
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions. Matthew Holford writes: We’ll read from an early manuscript at Solothurn of Petrus Lombard on marriage, beginning with the rubric de errore qui euacuat consensum. There are more abbreviations than we’ve been used to in earlier texts so you may want to have your Cappelli (online database or digitized version) and the Enigma tool for identifying Latin words when you only have a few letters.
  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar meets at 3pm on Teams and in the Institute of Archaeology Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Caroline Smith (U. of Durham): ‘Recent Excavations at Bishop Auckland Castle‘. Please note: Attendance in person is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Bookings can be made by contacting: jane.kershaw@arch.ox.ac.uk. For the Teams’ link click here.
  • The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Julie Barrau (Cambridge), ‘Compiling, creating, innovating: looking again at twelfth-century authorial practices’. Attendance at the Wharton Room is by advance booking only as the room has a strict Covid-19 capacity limit. Seats will be released 1 week before each seminar. Bookings can be made at https://medieval-history-seminar.reservio.com. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.30pm on Teams. Please email Olivia Smith (olivia.smith2@linacre.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list and Teams group.

Tuesday 8th February:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 11.30pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Katarzyna Anna Kapitan (Linacre College), ‘Collecting and annotating Old Norse texts: on the library of Thormodus Torfæus’. For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.
  • CMTC postgraduate lunchtime colloquium 12:30–2:00pm with Eleanor Baker (St John’s College, Oxford): “Lydgate’s Defamiliarizing Material Texts” and Thomas Laver (St John’s College, Cambridge) “Commercially active monasticism in the papyrus archives from Byzantine Aphrodito”. Abstracts and link to the sign-up form. Attendance is free of charge but sign-up is mandatory. A Zoom link will be sent to all participants the day before the talk.
  • The Late Medieval Europe Seminar meets at 2pm at Saint John’s College, seminar room 21 St Giles. This week’s speaker is Rachel Moss (Northampton), ‘Trans-forming identities: Menarche from St Wilgefortis to Charlotte Church’.
  • The Medieval Book Club meets at 3.30pm in Magdalen College, Old Law Library. This week’s topic is ‘Joy’. If you want to join us, or would like more information, please contact oxfordmedievalbookclub@gmail.com. Option to join virtually via Google Meet as well, please send your contact details.
  • The OMS Lecture Hilary 2022: Lucy Pick, ‘Maimonides Latinus and a Thirteenth-Century Textual Community of Jewish and Christian Readers’ takes place at 5pm at St Edmund Hall Old Dining Hall followed by drinks. Lucy Pick is a historian of medieval thought and culture. She is currently studying the earliest translation of part of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed into Latin and what it tells us about intellectual cooperation and conflict across religions in Toledo, Naples, Provence, and Paris in the early thirteenth century. The youtube stream is available live and after the event without registration at https://youtu.be/orJHVpWgaMs, so spread the word! If you want to join the discussion online, either post questions in the youtube chat which Tom Revell will monitor or tweet them mentioning the Oxford Medieval Studies twitter account @OxMedStud.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Scott Moynihan (Pembroke), ‘Diplomacy between Christians and Muslims during the Crusades‘.

Wednesday 9th February:

  • The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in Oriel College, Harris Room, discussing Reinbot von Durne: Georg. If you are interested in being added to the mailing list for the seminar, email Henrike Lähnemann henrike.laehnemann@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk. For further information, follow MedGermOx on Twitter.
  • The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 1-2pm in the Mertze Tate room of the History Faculty and online on Teams. Anyone interested in any element of medieval trade and its study are very welcome to join, from any department. To be added to the mailing list and team please email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5:30pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker is Jim Crow (Edinburgh): ‘Procopius, De Aedificiis and Eastern Thrace: Is absence the highest form of presence?‘. Register in advance for this on-line series: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZEkdeuspz8jG9IfBfrd75k6qrxLyWtG_PAu. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting.

Thursday 10th February:

  • Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This week’s text is Das Redentiner Osterspiel. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
  • A #Nuntastic Achievement: Celebrating Eileen Power 100 Years On will take place at 2pm–5pm, in Griffiths Room, 11 Norham Gardens, St. Benet’s Hall. This workshop will commemorate the centenary publication of Eileen Power’s Medieval English Nunneries and her influence on convent studies in England and beyond. Please register in advance at https://tinyurl.com/eileenpower, and send any questions to Diana Myers (diana.myers@stb.ox.ac.uk) or Edmund Wareham (edmund.wareham@stb.ox.ac.uk).
  • The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in St Edmund Hall. Room TBC: contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at location TBA at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker is Matthew Frank Stevens (Swansea University), ‘Segregation and integration in the towns of medieval Wales‘. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for further information.
  • The Oxford Bibliographical Society meets at Balliol Historic Collections Centre, St Cross Church and on Zoom at 5.30pm. This week’s speaker is Hannah Ryley (Oxford), ‘Re-using manuscripts in late Medieval England‘. There will also be a small display of some of the manuscripts Hannah will be discussing. For the Zoom link please contact sarah.cusk@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.

Friday 11th February:

  • Pre-Modern Conversations meets at 11am-12pm on Teams. For more information and to be added the the PMC Teams Channel, email lena.vosding AT mod-langs.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Seminar in the History of the Book will meet online at 2.15pm. You must be registered 24 hours before the seminar to receive a link to attend online. This week’s speaker is Riccardo Olocco, Bolzano: ‘The trade in type in Venice in the early decades of printing‘. Register here: https://forms.office.com/r/FSXrV1W98u.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Masterclass: Medieval Iberia in Global Perspective. A masterclass with two leading scholars of medieval Iberian history: Eduardo Manzano Moreno (British Academy Global Professor, Univeristy of St. Andrews/Research Professor, Instituto de Historia, CSIC) and Wendy Davies (Professor Emerita, UCL). All members of the University are welcome; graduate students and ECRs are particularly encouraged. 2-4pm, Tuesday 15 February, Wharton Room, All Souls College, Oxford. The event will be held in a hybrid format. For in-person attendance (limited capacity), please sign up here. For online attendance, please click here.
  • Postdoc Position in the ERC-funded project APOCRYPHA in Oslo: The Faculty of Theology at the University of Oslo invites applications for a 3-year position as Postdoctoral Fellow in the ERC-funded research project Storyworlds in Transition: Coptic Apocrypha in Changing Contexts in the Byzantine and Early Islamic Periods (APOCRYPHA). For full details, please click here.

Finally, some advice from Maxims I about the importance of wise words, whatever language they happen to be in:

wæra gehwylcum wislicu word gerisað
[Wise words are seemly in everyone]

May your week be filled with an abundance of wislicu word / wise words / verba sapientes / parole sagge in many languages!

[Medievalists, dressed in their finest clothes, hurry to the OMS lecture to hear some wise words]
Merton College, MS 249, f. 3r.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dows-Miller
https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/bestiary/#Monosceros

CMTC postgraduate lunchtime colloquium (Tuesday 8th February, 12:30–2:00pm GBT)

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07/02/2022

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Please join us for two online talks hosted by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures at The Queen’s College in the University of Oxford. Our centre promotes inter-disciplinary discussion among scholars and students interested in manuscripts and material culture in the premodern world. So your participation is most welcome regardless of your field of specialty.

We are meeting on Zoom on Tuesday 8th February at 12:30-2:00pm (GMT).

Eleanor Baker (St John’s College, Oxford)

“Lydgate’s Defamiliarizing Material Texts”

‘Defamiliarization’ refers to the technique of depicting everyday objects in a way that differs from their usual presentation to provoke a more nuanced understanding of the familiar. The material text is often defamiliarized in late medieval Middle English lyrics. The images of the material text used in religious lyrics render its constituent parts alien to the reader or listener: ink becomes blood, pens become spears, letters become his wounds, and parchment or paper sheets become anything from tree leaves to body parts. The material text, once familiar, becomes strange. Conversely, the holy figures these books represent or interact with become, if not less strange, at least more comprehensible through their apparent similarities with the material text. Whilst others have stressed how John Lydgate (c.1370-1451) brings images and texts into conversation with one another, I will consider how he represents material texts, objects which are, by their very nature, textual and imagistic. In this paper, I argue that Lydgate’s depictions of material texts are often defamiliarizing, and that this defamiliarizing effect often promotes a meditative response that renders the reader’s engagement with devotional material both affective and intellectualised.

Thomas Laver (St John’s College, Cambridge)

“Commercially active monasticism in the papyrus archives from Byzantine Aphrodito”

The papyrus archive of Dioskoros of Aphrodito is well-known amongst Byzantinists as an important record of village life in 6th century Egypt, containing administrative documents, letters, and poems written in Greek, Coptic and Latin by and to the local notable Dioskoros, his wife Sophia, and father Apollos. Monasteries and monks often appear in the Coptic and Greek documentation from this archive, leading some scholars to delve into the secular activities of monks in rural Egypt, including their social and economic interactions with various groups in the village. This presentation will highlight some novel analyses that I have made of particular documents from the Dioskoros archive, which I believe demonstrate that the monks and monasteries of the village were much more commercially active and entrepreneurial than has previously been suggested by other papyrological analysis of the Dioskoros (or any other) archive.

Here is a link to the sign-up form. Attendance is free of charge but sign-up is mandatory. We will send a Zoom link to all participants the day before the talk.