Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, Fellow at St Edmund Hall, and Co-Director of Oxford Medieval Studies.
Lecture Hall of the Museum of Decorative Arts Kulturforum, Potsdamer Platz, Matthäikirchplatz 4/6, 10785 Berlin
In a lecture for the Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin (Founded in 1887), Martin Kauffmann (Head of Early and Rare Collections, Bodleian Library, Oxford) will speak on an Ottonian illuminated manuscript in Oxford, and how to study it
Oxford’s most important medieval work of art from the German-speaking lands is an illuminated manuscript which, though it does not tell us where or when or by whom it was made, was probably produced at the monastic house of Reichenau on Lake Constance in the first half of the 11th century. Whilst exploring the making of the manuscript, its relation to other books made at the same house, its uses and its reception (including its subsequent travels), it is important to interrogate the interlocking tools which historians have traditionally used to analyze such objects: codicology, palaeography, liturgy, stylistic criticism, and iconography. What is the place of an illuminated book in history, and in the history of art? Martin Kauffmann was born in London but his mother’s family came from Berlin. He studied History at Oxford and History of Art at the Courtauld Institute where he wrote his doctoral dissertation on a group of 13th-century illustrated saints’ lives. After a fellowship at the Warburg Institute he was appointed Curator of medieval manuscripts at the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, where he has catalogued, exhibited, taught and written about illuminated manuscripts from the Anglo-Saxon period to the end of the Middle Ages. He is now Head of Early and Rare Collections at the Bodleian (consisting of maps, music, early and rare printed books, and medieval and early modern manuscripts).
This lecture will be held in English The Secretary Please note that the main entrance to the Kulturforum closes at 6:00 p.m. After that time, the lecture hall can only be accessed via the entrance to the Art Library (coat check on the ground floor). Annual membership fees (€35, reduced rate €15) should be transferred to the account of the Kunstgeschichtliche Gesellschaft zu Berlin IBAN DE46 1001 0010 0623 7771 39, BIC PBNKDEFF, Postbank Hamburg. Mailing Address:: Geschwister-Scholl-Str. 6, 10117 Berlin Phone: 030/266-42-5531, e-mail: anmeldung@kunstgeschichtliche-gesellschaft.de
Andrew Davison’s Inaugural Lecture: A thousand years of setting Christian theology to music
Monday 15 June, 5:00pm. Auditorium, Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities
Join us as the Revd Professor Andrew Davison delivers his inaugural lecture as Regius Professor of Divinity, exploring how Christian theology has been expressed through musical settings of the Creed across a millennium. The lecture will be interwoven with live performances by the Cathedral Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, celebrating 500 years since their foundation. The programme spans the Renaissance to the 20th century, featuring settings of the Creed by John Taverner — one of the most significant composers of the English Renaissance and the first organist of Christ Church — and Frank Martin, offering a rich illustration of the continuity and development of theological expression through music.
Taking place in the inaugural term of the Schwarzman Centre’s new auditorium, this event represents a landmark moment for the humanities at Oxford, bringing together theology, music, and history in a uniquely rich and celebratory occasion.
Event Details
Date and Time: 17:00-18:00 15 June 2026 (followed by drinks reception)
Professor Andrew Davison is Regius Professor of Divinity. The Regius Professorship of Divinity was founded by Henry VIII in 1535 as one of the original five Regius Chairs and remains one of the most distinguished academic appointments in the world.
Professor Davison read Chemistry and completed a DPhil in Biochemistry at Merton College, University of Oxford. He subsequently read Theology and completed a PhD in Theology at the University of Cambridge. Ordained in Southwark, he served in parish ministry in South London before moving to the University of Cambridge, where he was a Fellow and Director of Studies in Theology at Corpus Christi College.
His research spans theology, philosophy, and natural science, and includes work on astrobiology, AI, Thomas Aquinas, and what Christianity has made of themes from Plato.
The Harrowing of Hell.26 is a 2026 experimental and abstract adaptation of the medieval Harrowing of Hell narrative, created from English mystery plays (York Cycle, Towneley Plays, Ludus Coventriae, Chester Cycle) and rewritten into contemporary English.
With: Thomas Arensen (Satan), Ian Machalek (Jesus), Elizabeth Henderson-Millier (Devil 1), Sonny Fox (Devil 2), Anastasija Vidjajeva (Eve), Caleb Silvergleid (Adam), Patrizia Hinz (Narrator)
Plot: For 4000 years, Satan has ruled Hell and guarded the souls of the dead. After the Crucifixion, Christ descends into Hell to reclaim them and dismantle the kingdom Satan built. The play opens in an exhausted, decaying Hell where Satan, far from triumphant, has become the prisoner of his own creation, haunted by the voices, smells, and bodies of the souls who have been condemned. A narrator forces both the audience and Satan to witness the spectacle of his downfall, imposing upon him the slow collapse and reconfiguration of his kingdom.
Around him, demons transform suffering into ritual. Their violent games perpetually reenact a grotesque mechanism. Hell becomes an obsessive choreography in which exhausted bodies repeat the same gestures endlessly, trapped within laws that even Satan no longer fully controls. Meanwhile, Adam and Eve drift between terror, dependence, and tenderness toward the very being who imprisons them. As an unknown presence begins to press against the walls of Hell, the fragile balance of this decaying world starts to fracture. Christ arrives not as a merciful redeemer, but as a violent intrusion: abandoned by both God and mankind, he descends to reclaim what he believes is rightfully his, tearing apart the miserable order in which these souls have painfully learned to survive. Yet what Christ offers is far from simple salvation. The inhabitants of Hell no longer know how to imagine life outside the systems that have shaped them. Adam and Eve hesitate to leave Satan behind, even as they continue to suffer under his power.
The play asks whether escape from Hell truly means submission, or whether salvation itself can become another form of violence. The Harrowing of Hell.26 is a piece about domination, exhaustion, attachment, and the terrifying uncertainty of liberation itself.
Warning: Contains religious (Christian) themes, elements of irreverence, and depictions of psychological distress
From the Cast Call
About the director: Méryl Vourch is an Oxford Visiting Student at Merton College. She has worked as an assistant director with Laurent Delvert and Denis Podalydès at the Opéra de Lille (Gounod’s Faust, May 2025), and assisted Caroline Staunton (Don Giovanni, Opéra Bastille, 2023) and Mariame Clément (Don Giovanni, Glyndebourne Festival, 2023). As a director, she has staged three productions in Paris: Hamlet, Alice in Wonderland (Théâtre Nicole Loraux, 2024–2025), and Mamma Mia! (MPAA, 2025).
We will be performing our play in week 6 (2 to 6 June) at the Burton Taylor Studio, from 9:30 to 10:30pm and in week 7 (9 to 11 June, tbc) in the crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (St Edmund Hall), from 8 to 9pm. We are still missing three roles (Adam, Eve, and a demon; all backgrounds welcome, aged 18+). There were auditions on 25/26 April, but anyone who was unavailable is very welcome to contact the director by email for further information.
Roles Available
One demon (one of two): part of a grotesque and comic duo—agents of chaos, both cruel and ridiculous, frustrated by their condition.
Adam and Eve: a bourgeois couple frozen in time, marked by long waiting, repetitive gestures, and a certain passivity
All roles include some choreographed scenes (minimal movement required).
Auditions
Please prepare a monologue of your choice (2–5 minutes) and an extract from the audition pack for your chosen role. Contact : meryl.vourch@merton.ox.ac.uk if you are interested or have any questions! If the audition dates have already passed but you are still interested, you are very welcome to contact us.
Digitised special collections such as manuscripts, archives and photographs are rarely made accessible to people who are blind or have low vision, but this does not mean they are not interested in accessing such materials or that they have no need for access in order to pursue their studies, research, work or pleasure. The cultural heritage and academic sectors could do more to expand access for blind and low vision people, but research is needed to understand what blind and low vision people want to know about digital cultural heritage, and what methods and resources are required to achieve access.
In this talk, Dr Victoria Van Hyning, Assistant Professor of Library Innovation at University of Maryland, College of Information, will report key findings from ‘AccessiBod: Exploring Accessible Futures for Digital Bodleian’, a participatory design study conducted at the Bodleian Libraries in 2025 to understand how crowdsourcing, AI, curatorial metadata and scholarly expertise might be harnessed to create better access within the Digital Bodleian site. Bodleian Libraries curators, digital scholarship specialists, web developers, students, disability services specialists and faculty from across the collegiate University and the broader Oxford community participated in interviews and workshops.
The findings and recommendations shared in this talk will be germane to Digital Bodleian as well as wider cultural heritage and digital humanities practice. We all have a role to play in widening access to digital cultural heritage and the web more broadly, and even small changes can make a big difference.
This is the latest talk in the Bodleian Bytes series, hosted by the Centre for Digital Scholarship at the Bodleian Libraries.
Celebrating 900 years of prayer, care and pilgrimage at Bartlemas Chapel
A historic Oxford chapel is marking 900 years of history with a year-long programme of events celebrating its legacy of prayer, care and welcome. This follows on from the workshop with Ian Forrest, read the report: Searching for History
The celebrations at Bartlemas Chapel in 2026 will tell the story of a place that has served pilgrims, the sick and those on the margins since it was founded in 1126 during the reign of Henry I.
The chapel began life as part of a medieval hospital for people with leprosy. Today the chapel is in the parish of St Mary and St John Church Oxford and remains a place of quiet prayer and reflection on the edge of the city.
Organisers say the Bartlemas 900th anniversary is about more than marking an ancient date.
Revd Martha Grace Weatherill, Vicar of the parish, said:
“At heart, the anniversary is about telling the story of this extraordinary place well. Bartlemas has been a place of prayer, pilgrimage, healing and welcome for centuries. The celebrations are an opportunity to help people understand why it still matters today.”
The life of Bartlemas
One spring morning, a young boy spies the dreaming spires of Oxford through the mists from the top of Shotover. Descending the hill, hoping to find a welcome and the opportunity to study, he is caught up in a strange procession of young men singing madrigals and brought to a small chapel on the edge of the city. So begins Elizabeth Goudge’s fine novel of Tudor Oxford, Towers in the Mist, beloved of generations of children. The chapel is, of course, Bartlemas Chapel, and young Faithful has, unbeknownst to him, stumbled across the traditional May morning procession of the scholars of New College to sing for the brethren of the attached hospital and the lepers who crowd around the windows outside.
This tradition of May morning singing died out in the early modern period, until in 2009. The choristers of New College revived it once again, walking to Bartlemas chapel on Ascension Day in 2009 to sing once more.
Although the hospital has long since gone (it was badly damaged in the Civil War), the chapel remains a place of prayer and music. Evensong continues to be sung monthly, as well as a celebration of the feast of St Bartholomew every August and an Advent Carol Service. The most recent celebration in 2025 was made even more atmospheric by a fuse blowing at the beginning of the service, leaving the organist and choir to sing in almost complete darkness.
A year of art, music and history
The celebration programme begins in May with several events linked to the Oxford Festival of the Arts and Oxford Artweeks.
On 10 May, the Voice Trio performed Feather on the Breath of God at the chapel. The performance celebrates the music and spirituality of the medieval abbess Hildegard of Bingen, whose writings and compositions continue to inspire audiences today.
Later in the month, the chapel will host a Bartlemas 900 exhibition as part of Oxford Artweeks (16–25 May). The exhibition will feature photography and reflections from a new book by Martin Stott exploring the chapel’s architecture, landscape and spiritual significance.
Visitors will also have the chance to delve deeper into the site’s story at a public talk on 23 May at St Mary and St John’s Church, exploring the history of the chapel and the medieval leper hospital that once stood there.
Music will return to the chapel on 24 May with an intimate concert during Artweeks. On 31 May the chapel will host May Song, a celebration of medieval music, poetry and readings about Oxfordshire in spring. The event will feature the Comper Singers alongside actor Anna Tolputt and poet Kate Wakeling.
A place of pilgrimage
The liturgical focus of the anniversary year will be on 24 August, the feast day of St Bartholomew. A special patronal festival service will gather parishioners, pilgrims and visitors to mark the chapel’s nine centuries of worship.
Later in the year, the chapel will open its doors to a wider audience during Oxford Open Doors, inviting people who may not yet know Bartlemas to explore the site.
Discovering Bartlemas today
Photographer, writer, and sustainability campaigner Martin Stott has worked with the church on a new photographic book to offer readers a way to encounter Bartlemas through image and story. In the book he traces the site’s medieval origins and reflecting on its continuing spiritual resonance.
Organisers hope the anniversary will help more people discover the chapel and reflect on how ancient places still speak into modern life.
Martha said:
“We would love people who have never heard of Bartlemas to discover it. It’s a place where history, prayer and quiet hospitality have come together for centuries — and where that story continues today.”
Visitors are encouraged to attend an event, explore the chapel during Artweeks or Oxford Open Doors, or simply make time to pause and reflect in this ancient place of prayer.
Bartlemas 900th anniversary programme of events
All at Bartlemas Chapel unless otherwise listed.
Feather on the breath of God, Voice Trio, Bartlemas Chapel 10 May, 4pm
Bartlemas 900 Exhibition 16–25 May, 12-6pm
Talk: The History of Bartlemas Chapel and the Leper Hospital, May 23, 6.30pm at St Mary & John’s Church with Martin Stott
This follows on from the workshop with Ian Forrest, read the report: Searching for History
An event of the history of a local medieval site posted by the Florence Park Community Centre – FPCC. 900 Years of Sanctuary & Compassion in East Oxford. Martin Stott marks the anniversary of Bartlemas, a hidden treasure. Presented by: Florence Park Talks
On the 900th anniversary of the founding of the leper hospital at Bartlemas in east Oxford, Martin Stott charts its origins, turbulent history, its focus on the outcasts, dispossessed, and refugees of the times, and the healing, care, refuge and sanctuary it offered. He traces its impact on east Oxford over 900 years, drawing out the threads of these traditions, re-made and celebrated in the neighbourhood today. Also known as St Bartholomew’s Chapel, it is older than any other Grade 1 listed building across the city. A hidden treasure. Starting as a leper hospital, recent archeological investigations have shed light on a wide fascinating history. You will be enthralled.
Martin Stott is a photographer and local historian. His photobook Bartlemas: Oxford’s hidden sanctuary is just out and will be available for sale on the evening.
On Saturday 2 May 2026, a group comprising medievalists, musicians, musicologists, liturgists and art historians met in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library for a workshop on Medieval German Drama, organised by Henrike Lähnemann, Carlos Rodríguez Otero, Monty Powell and Sharang Sharma. The event centred on an ongoing project to publish the late Peter Macardle’s reconstruction of the liturgical music in the late-medieval Frankfurt Passion Play (Die liturgischen Gesänge der Frankfurter Dirigierrolle und des Frankfurter Passionsspiels, under contract with Open Book Publishers), more specifically focusing on scenes from the life of Mary Magdalene, arguably the play’s most interesting and multifaceted character.
The play, which we know to have been performed from the early fourteenth century onwards if not earlier, included Latin chants to punctuate the drama, imbuing the Middle High German text with strong liturgical resonances. The surviving sources, however, preserve only the play’s text (principally, the Frankfurt Passion Play of 1493 and other regional versions) and condensed performance instructions (i.e. the mid-fourteenth century Frankfurt Director’s Roll). Only a small fragment of what was once a complete version survives, with both text and music intact.
As Henrike Lähnemann mentioned in her introduction, Macardle had painstakingly obtained scans and photocopies of the play’s approximately 120 liturgical chants for a full reconstruction with text and music, building on his 2007 edition of the St Gall Passion Play. Central to Macardle’s approach was the importance of working from local liturgical sources, the sonic components of Christian liturgy in the Medieval West being significantly contingent on local traditions. Fortunately, a significant collection of late fifteenth- and early sixteenth-century chant books written in and for the Bartolomäusstift in Frankfurt survives, where the play originated in mid-fourteenth century. (It would also have been performed immediately outside this former Augustinian collegiate church, the cathedral of the city, in the town square.) Having been entrusted with the manuscript for its posthumous publication, Henrike Lähnemann brought Carlos Rodriguez Otero, Monty Powell and Sharang Sharma into the project to assist with the transcription of the play’s chants, as found by Macardle in these local sources, as well as to situate Macardle’s work among the subsequent research on medieval German passion plays.
The music for the Frankfurt Passion Play, as recorded in the Director’s Roll, primarily consists of chants from the Office and the Mass, which, as Carlos Rodríguez Otero explained, Macardle located in graduals, antiphoners and a sequentiary belonging to the Bartolomäusstift (apart from a later gradual, nevertheless from the Archdiocese of Mainz), now kept in the Frankfurt Universitätsbibliothek. These sources, written in a late gothic musical script known as ‘Hufnagel’ (nails for horse shoes) notation, preserve the chants as they would likely have been known to the play’s late fifteenth-century audience. As Carlos and Sharang Sharma—the two musicologists on the team—learned, this notation has its own quirks, which has prompted fruitful discussions with several members of the musicological community. The most pressing for the purposes of publication was the presence of quilismas (or quilismata), symbols of unclear and contested meaning which appear in these late sources in unexpected ways, requiring a decision regarding their transcription.
Sharang Sharma, who specialises in digital resources for medieval chant research, discussed the new tools that developed since Macardle ceased work on this project in 2013, which have formed an indispensable component of the project. He began by explaining the team’s choice of musical font with which to engrave the musical transcriptions, Volpiano, a typeface that converts music into alphanumeric strings, enabling comparison between chants and large-scale analysis. Its compatibility with Microsoft Word, xml or any other text-based software, the ability to search for specific musical passages, and its Open Source ethos made it the ideal choice. Closely related to this is the Cantus Database, a central body of regional chant databases that include melodies and chants for the Mass and Office, which includes 7,000 manuscripts, 660,000 chants, and integrates the Corpus antiphonalium officii (CAO) numbering system, which identifies office texts and was used by Macardle to catalogue the play’s chants. As well as allowing us to look specifically at German sources that have been indexed, and even typeset with Volpiano, Cantus provides a platform with which to share our own transcriptions later on.
When this became clear, the team wrote to Margot Fassler, whose helpful advice guided the project and, fortuitously, led to her eventual presence at the workshop as an honoured guest and speaker. As well as the issue of quilisma, which traces its origins to the beginning of the chant tradition in German-speaking lands (in sources such as the Hartker Antiphoner from c. 1000), there is also the question of recitation chants, such as gospel tones and passion tones, indicated in the text by verbs such as ‘clamare’, which requires engagement with other plays from the Hessian Passion Play tradition (Alsfeld, Heidelberg, Fritzlar, Friedberg, Trier, etc.), consultation of modern chant sources, and indeed an element of reconstruction.
List of musical sources used for reconstructing the musical chant, all Frankfurt University Library
Antiphoners: Ms. Lat. qu. 48 (Bartholomäusstift, mid-15th cent.) and Ms. Barth. 94 (Bartholomäusstift, mid-15th cent.)Frankfurt UB lat. qu. 48 / Barth. 94 (Bartholomäusstift, mid 15th cent.)
Graduals (archdiocese of Mainz, ‘Moguntinum’): Ms. lat. qu. 44 (Bartholomäusstift, 2nd ¼ 15th cent.), Ms. Leonh. 13 (c. 1525 from St Leonhard)
The character of Mary Magdelene was of central prominence during the day. In the Frankfurt Play she has nearly as many scenes as Christ (more than Mary the Mother of God) and she undergoes the most significant change throughout the narrative. This is even reflected in the staging, with her initially appearing on the West side of the square (representing Hell), and later moving to the East (Heaven) after her conversion. Within the Hessian play tradition, embellishments are added to her story (a lover, taunting devils…) that are of musical interest as well, involving vernacular song.
Margot Fassler explored this with reference to the longest chant of the play, a sequence written for her (‘Laus tibi Christe’) bv Gottschalk of Limburg (or of Aachen) in the late eleventh century. The malleability of her character, resulting from the unclarity of exactly who she is in the gospels, made her a popular and versatile saint, with several aspects of her life explored in visual arts as well as liturgical music. In the early Middle Ages, she was also rendered as the sinner in Luke 7 and Mary of Bethany. In the figure of Mary Magdelene, Margot Fassler explained, we have a condemnation of worldly vice (before her conversion), a model penance, and a story of conversion, making her both a universal saint and at the same time a privileged first witness of the Resurrection and ‘apostola apostolorum’. Margot Fassler also highlighted the significance of visual depictions of Mary Magdalene, and how these would enrich a future performing edition project, as well as the role of intertextuality within the sequence repertoire. She pointed out how focussing on the ringdance in the Frankfurt and Alsfeld Passion Play could help as defining feature for a performance version of the Mary Magdalen passages.
Monty Powell then began the more hands-on afternoon session with a paper on the ‘adaptability’ of medieval drama, specifically in the context of the Hessian group of plays from which a large number of full and fragmentary play-manuscripts survive. A number of sources, collated from the Stadtrechnungen and Bürgermeisterbuch of medieval Frankfurt as well as from personal diaries, provide insightful (and sometimes amusing) accounts of the great tradition of putting on Passion and Easter plays in medieval Frankfurt. They also document amajor change that took place in the tradition: before 1480, it seems, plays were performed under the auspices of the Bartholomäusstift, to which context, from more than one century earlier, the Frankfurter Dirigierrolle belongs. After 1480, the plays came under the close control of the Town Council: the manuscript containing the text that Germanists have termed the Frankfurter Passionsspiel was copied in 1493, and contains an (incomplete) play text that has become far less “liturgical” in character but where other scenes have been added and vastly expanded upon. A case in point are the Mary Magdalene scenes: as the afternoon’s workshop showed, the later passion plays from Frankfurt and Alsfeld revel in exploiting to the full not only the comic potential inherent in such a character, but also her importance as a model of penance. This second, penitential aspect of Magdalene’s character had been demonstrated so wonderfully earlier in the day by Margot Fassler.
It is important to keep in mind that we can never safely map records of historical performance onto the text preserved in play-manuscripts. For instance: although it would be tempting to read Johannes’ Kremer’s 1493 play-text, now known as the Frankfurter Passionsspiel, as an archived version of the performance that we know took place one year before, things might not be quite so simple: is it an archive recording parts of the play performed one year before, or Kremer’s own rewritten version, perhaps intended for future performance – or for his own enjoyment and personal use? And what about its relationship to the plays held in Frankfurt over the following decades, for which no play-manuscriptssurvive? We can ask similar questions about the later Alsfelder Passionsspiel manuscript. Although dates of three performances, along with the content of what was performed when, is recorded on its first folio, the manuscript shows evidence of three scribal hands which cannot always be easily differentiated from one another, and includes added quires and pages stuck in to the manuscript. The point is that a ‘reconstruction’, of music and/or of a whole play, is not quite as simple as we might wish. As Johannes Janota, editor of the Hessian group of plays, argued in his excellent essay Mittelalterliche Texte als Entstehungsvarianten, it is paramount to develop models of editions (in the case of the Hessian group, parallel texts) that do not obscure but make clear (sichtbar) the constant processes of rewriting and adaptation – what Walter Haug called der aktualisierende Vollzug – at work between manuscript witnessesof play-texts, and in medieval literature more generally. By comparing and attempting to perform not just comparable Mary Magdalene scenes from the play-texts, but also their music as reconstructed by Peter Macardle, we hoped that Saturday afternoon’s workshop could make these processes not just sichtbar, but hörbar, too.
The group then divided into pairs and small groups, each exploring possible approaches to different elements of the play in a future English-language performing edition. Questions raised included whether—and how—music might be translated, how faithfully to adhere to original forms and language (both musical and textual), and how to transmit the feel and experience of the play, with its contrasts between sacred and secular, high- and lowbrow, vernacular and learned. The responses were creative, insightful and above all, enjoyable, culminating in a showcase of recomposed folk laments, sensuous settings of courtly and worldly desire, Shakespearean-influenced verse translations and various choreographies, including the Ring Dance, a popular dance type in Medieval Germany that blurred the boundaries between sacred and secular authorities, as well as the mundane and the divine.
The workshop was not only successful, therefore, in introducing the project of publishing Macardle’s edition, but it also demonstrated how his work can inspire a broader, creative engagement with this stimulating and exciting dramatic genre.
The TORCH Oxford Medieval Studies Programme invites applications for small grants to support conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity organised by researchers at postgraduate (whether MSt or DPhil) or early-career level from across the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford.
The scheme has a rolling deadline. Closing date for applications: Friday of Week 4 each term for activities taking place during that or the following term. An additional deadline for summer activities and Michaelmas Term is last Friday of July.
Grants are normally in the region of £100–250 and can either be for expenses or for administrative and organisational support such as publicity, filming or zoom hosting. They can also be used to support staging a play for the Medieval Mystery Cycle, e.g. for buying props or material for costumes. Recipients will be required to supply a report after the event for the Oxford Medieval Studies blog and will be invited to present on their award at an OMS event.
Applicants will be responsible for all administrative aspects of the activity, including formulating the theme and intellectual rationale, devising the format, and, depending on the type of event, inviting speakers and/or issuing a Call for Papers, organising the schedule, and managing the budget, promotion and advertising.
Living Stones is looking for volunteers of any age, background or beliefs. Living Stones is the heritage and educational arm of St Mary’s, the church at the heart of Iffley village, Rose Hill and Donnington. Volunteers welcome visitors to the church. They also run activities, events and talks on its history and architecture. They welcome visitors to the church on Sunday afternoons from Easter to October.
Spend a day looking at and drawing Iffley Church with local artist and teacher, MICAH HAYNS
Saturday 16 May 2026 10.30-5.00pm St Mary’s Church OX4 4EJ
Iffley Church is an outstanding Romanesque building. It stands in a unique historic landscape
all materials supplied
live demonstration and feedback
For amateurs aged 16+
Limited numbers
BOOK NOW! Ticket sales open!
The session starts in the Church Hall, Church Way, Iffley OX4 4EG. Bring your own lunch. Or visit nearby pub, The Prince of Wales, 73 Church Way, Iffley, Oxford OX4 4EF 01865 586379https://www.princeofwalesiffley.co.uk/
Living Stones will provide free hot and cold drinks throughout the day.
All materials will be provided, but you are welcome to bring your own sketching stool, sketch book, or anything you are working on if you wish.
The day will run as part of East Oxford Art Weeks. Some of Micah’s work will be exhibited in the Church Hall throughout the day.
Work by participants will join the exhibition at the end of the day after which participants may take their work home.
SATURDAY 10 MAY 10.00-4.30 – Drawing Iffley Church, day-school with artist Micah Hayns.
SATURDAY 17 MAY 11.00-7.15 – Day of chant in celebration of St Dunstan, patron saint of bellringers and music. The day ends with a special service in the church sung to music composed by St Dunstan and first written down in the 12th century.
SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER – Patronal Festival for St Mary the Virgin, picnic and family fun.
Moses. The ‘Exagoge’ of Ezekiel. ‘Moses and the Shepherd’ by Rumi
Friday, May 8, 2026 – 18:30: Ioannou Centre, 66 St Giles Sunday, May 10 – 12.30: Iffley Church Hall Monday, May 11 – 6pm: Wolfson College Buttery
David Wiles directs a production of the extant fragments of a tragedy written in Alexandria in the second century BC. Drawn from the Book of Exodus, the story tells of the Hebrews’ escape from Egypt. The play was written by a Jew, and is the first extant dramatization of a biblical text.
The performance is mostly given in ancient Greek, with the opening scene played in English. The project follows on from Hrosvita’s Martyrdom of the Three Virgins performed in Latin in 2025, and prior to that Seneca’s Octavia in a Renaissance translation.
The cast are a mix of students and seniors. The production style will be choral, using movement to illustrate narrative passages such as the burning bush and the crossing of the Red Sea – so fluent knowledge of ancient Greek is not required.
The first performance is in the Classics Centre in St Giles at 6.30 on Friday May 8, sponsored by the APGRD https://www.apgrd.ox.ac.uk/events. The second is in Iffley Church Hall at 12.30 on Sunday, May 10. The third is in Wolfson College Buttery at 6.00 on Monday, May 11, sponsored by the Ancient World Research Cluster. The performance should last for about 35 minutes, and we will have a brief Q&A afterwards. The APGRD and AWRC are both kindly providing wine.
EXAGOGE by Ezekiel. The Exagoge was written in Alexandria in the 2nd century BCE in the mode of a Greek tragedy, adapted from the Book of Exodus. It is the earliest dramatic adaptation of Biblical text. 269 lines were preserved by Christian commentators. We have made only a small number of cuts, but line allocations have been transposed, with the role of Moses divided between four different actors. Storyline: Pharaoh’s daughter discovers baby Moses in the Nile, and rears him. He kills an Egyptian overseer and flees to Libya, where he marries, sees a vision of the stars, and then God in a burning bush. Moses is reluctant to return. God tells him to inflict plagues on Egypt in order to secure the release of the Hebrews from bondage. After an angel of death has ‘passed over’ the houses of the Hebrews, they flee, pursued by the Egyptian army. The waters of the Red Sea open for them, then drown the Egyptians. In the final non-Biblical episode, the story is resolved by a kind of deus ex machina – perhaps a mirage, perhaps a demon, perhaps a phoenix.
Alex Marshall. Raguel (Sepphora’s father); Moses 4.
Laurence Nagy. Pharaoh; God.
Vishal Rameshbabu. Herald.
David Wiles (standing in). Moses 2.
All. Chorus
MOSES AND THE SHEPHERD by Rumi. Much more contemplative, Moses and the Shepherd is a story from the Manavi, a compilation of parables dictated by the Persian Sufi poet Rumi (1207-1273) over the last fifteen years of his life. We hope that the two plays speak to each other in interesting ways.
