Author: Henrike Lähnemann

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.

Poetry in the Medieval World

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27/11/2023

11:19

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New TORCH Network approved

by Ugo Mondini

Poetry in the Medieval World is a network that explores premodern literature from a global perspective. Its aim is to address broad questions and seek answers building on contemporary discussions in comparative and world literature through a cross-disciplinary approach.

Our case study is currently poetry between c. 600 and c. 1250 CE. Poetry is a multifaceted phenomenon: it answers to different needs, travels across communities, and undergoes continuous changes. It is rooted in shared culture and knowledge; its intercultural communication or its appreciation by posterity can, at times, fail. There are recurring features: vivid images, complex words and rhythm, but also recitation music and singing. It is an expression of beauty and harmony. Even if poetry requires specialised experts to be scrutinised, yet its study should be easily approachable and crucial to the understanding of premodern literature, but also of literature as a whole. This – and way more – is the realm of poetry the Network will explore.

The Network creates an infrastructure for an open dialogue on medieval poetry with reading groups every two weeks, lectures by national and international scholars, and two annual meetings. The focus of our discussion is the production and transmission of poetry, its historical reception, and the challenges of translating it into modern languages, with a particular emphasis on English.

The Network connects people driven by scholarly curiosity. Therefore, we are extremely keen on receiving expressions of interest for collaboration from people at any phase of their career. If you are interested in this project and want to contribute to it actively, please email Ugo Mondini. The first events in Hillary 2024 will be shared in the coming weeks on the TORCH Networks website and the network’s X account (@PoetryMedieval), both of which are currently under development.

Images:

  1. Fujiwara no Yukinari (Kōzei), Excerpt from Bai Juyi’s “Autobiography of a Master of Drunken Poetry Recitation”
  2. David singing, MS BNF Par. gr. 139, f. 1v

Oxford’s Medieval Meadow

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30/10/2023

10:34

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by Jocelyn Wogan-Browne

Hinksey Meadow is first on record in a grant by Henry I to Abingdon Abbey 1102 x 1110, and it’s still there, in West Oxford in walking distance of Oxford Railway Station, one of the rarest, most species-rich meadows in Britain. But it’s threatened with destruction – by the Environment Agency.  The EA is insisting that it should build only the most destructive version of its Oxford Flood Alleviation Scheme, scooping out a  5 km channel through the Oxford green corridor from Botley to Sandford Lock, through Hinksey Meadow.

The UK has lost 97% of its meadows since World War II, including so many floodmeadows that the Thames Valley contains a quarter of those remaining. Hinksey Meadow is even rarer than that: it  is a wildflower floodplain meadow with type MG43a grassland, of which only four square miles survive in the UK as a whole.  It’s of much higher diversity than, for instance, Port Meadow.

Hinksey Meadow has survived for the best part of a thousand years because it’s part of a sustainable agricultural collaboration between humans and their environment: managed grazing fertilizes the meadow, and the meadow’s hay cut provides food for stock with no need for industrial fertilizer.  Hinksey is also an invaluable seedbank for the future of regenerative farming.  

Image1. Part of the scheme area, showing the direction floodwater takes and the location of the EA’s channel (up to 200 metres wide). Red arrow marks site of Hinksey Meadow

The channel requires

  • digging out c.400,000 cubic metres (700,000 tonnes) of soil and gravel
  • removing 3780 mature trees and 11 kms hedgerows
  • destroying habitat for many species of insects, birds and animals
  • destroying existing braided floodplain streams and wild life corridor
  • destroying iconic Oxford riverine willowlined landscapes
  • compulsory purchase of some 1000 parcels of land in and around the scheme area
  • release of sequestered carbon: grassland is second only to peat in its capacity

Hinksey Meadow cannot survive digging up and hydrological interference.

Landscape artist Elaine Kazimierczuk painted the Meadow for a charity auction to raise funds for its defence: see her at work and hear why, even on the grey windy English summer’s day the weather gave her,  she feels so passionately about the Meadow

The  EA’s channel offers

  • a small increase in alleviation to a few dozen houses and shops at massive financial and environmental cost
  • a big ticket scheme that will ultimately enable more development in and around the floodplain

And it is not needed:

  • up to 85-90% of the scheme’s protection is offered by much smaller localised flood defences such as bunds and earthworks
  • independent experts in hydrology and cost/benefits have shown that no channel works very nearly as well, without the enormous environmental destruction, and have also proposed several other alternative strategies.

Why does the EA insist on the channel?

It won’t say.  In the absence of clear reasons, we can only speculate that it decided on the channel (its characteristic response in twentieth-century flood schemes) in advance and then worked backwards to try to find mitigations. Independent experts pointed out that the EA used the wrong DEFRA metric for the area’s biodiversity in its application.  In its revised application the proper metric turned the EA’s claimed 10% increase in biodiversity into a biodiversity loss.

The EA now claims it will

  • translocate MG4a grassland. This cannot be done according to independent experts: such grassland takes hundreds of years to create.
  • create wetlands and plant saplings onsite and offsite (in unspecified locations somewhere in Oxfordshire)
  • secure environmental partners and get landowners to help with the costs of monitoring and maintenance

This leads to absolute loss of irreplaceable bio-diversity and interlocking mature eco-systems at least 30 years to wait before saplings become mature trees – if they are maintained. (For the effects  of a riverine EA scheme in 2022 see this BBC Interview)

Some of the trees that will be lost within and beside the Oxford meadows
The Willow Walk, the path by Hinksey Meadow
The EA’s proposed replacement for Willow Walk

What can be done? Objectors have secured a Public Enquiry into the scheme. The Enquiry opens 10 am on Tuesday 14 November 2023 for a month at The King’s Centre, Osney Mead, Oxford OX2 0ES (walkable from the railway station).  FIND US | The King’s Centre (kingscentre.co.uk)

You can

1. Support the Public Enquiry by joining a peaceful demonstration 10am on 14th November outside the King’s Centre entrance. Feel free to bring your own signs and banners. Please do get in contact at the email below if you would like to come on the 14th.

2. Sign the petition to Save Hinksey Meadow

3. Spread the word! And if you know people who might be able and willing to contribute to the defence of the meadow, direct them to the Go fund me page

References and more information

Any questions to Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, FMAA
SCR Associate St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford
Thomas F. X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature (Emerita), Fordham University
olim Professor of Medieval Literature, University of York

CMTC research talks

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14/10/2023

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The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) is a research group based at The Queen’s College in the University of Oxford. We are scholars working in different fields of the humanities with a common interest in pre- and early modern texts, their materiality, transmission, and dissemination. For further information please visit our website: https://cmtc.queens.ox.ac.uk/. Most of our research talks are recorded and uploaded to our YouTube channel CMTC Media: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCNAJFkc6gzBVgseJ_IRrpLw. If you like CMTC Media please subscribe to the channel and turn on notifications to receive regular updates on the new content available.

There are two CMTC events in Michaelmas term:

Michaelmas Term Lecture:  25 October 5.15pm  (week 3), Memorial Room, The Queen’s College

Prof. Mary Carruthers (NYU and St Hilda’s, Oxford): Understanding Solid Figures in Early Medieval Manuscripts:  how Rhetoric and Geometry interact

Work in Progress Seminar:  7 November 3.30pm (week 5), Memorial Room, The Queen’s College

Dr Anthony Ellis (University of Bern): ‘Greek’ in the Medieval Latin manuscripts of Josephus:  reconstructing the philological workings of a late antique translator
Dr Sara de Martin (Oxford): Reassessing the transmission of Strato com. fr. 1 K. A.

Archive Michaelmas 2022

(1)  “Work in Progress” colloquium
Tuesday 8th November 2022, 3,30–5,00pm UK timeMemorial Room, The Queen’s College (and Zoom)(please register through the link provided below: Zoom links will be sent by email by 9,00am UK time on the day of the talk)
Benedetta Bessi (Venice/Stanford): ‘Towards a Digital Edition of the Liber insularum by Cristoforo Buondelmonti’
Joseph Mason (New College, Oxford): ‘Oral and Written Transmission in Old French Song: a reassessment’

Please register here (whether you are planning to attend in person or online)

(2) Michaelmas Term Lecture
Wednesday 23rd November 2022, 5,15–6,45pm UK timeMemorial Room, The Queen’s College (and Zoom)(please register through the link provided below: Zoom links will be sent by email by 9,00am UK time on the day of the talk)
Nikolay Tarasenko (Kyiv/Pembroke College, Oxford): ‘What Can the “Greenfield Papyrus” (pLondon BM EA 10554) Tell Us about Its Owner?’
Please register here (whether you are planning to attend in person or online)


Middle High German Lecture Series

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13/10/2023

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In Michaelmas 2023, Dr Nikolaus Ruge (Universität Trier) returned to Oxford as Visiting Lecturer in German Historical Linguistics at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages and delivered an updated lecture series on Middle High German. This was mainly designed as an introductory course for students of the German Paper IV ‘Historical Linguistics’ but the recordings are available to a general audience interested in medieval languages. The first two lectures were recorded by Dr Ruge in person in the Taylor Institution Library, Room 2, lectures 3, 4, and 7 were recorded by him, lectures 5, 6 and 8 from his script on his behalf by the Oxford tutors for Paper IV. The first lecture also saw the launch of the 11th edition of the popular study guide ‘Old and Middle High German’ (utb Sept 2023).

I. Teaching Middle High German: time, space, language (panopto recording, handout), 13 Oct 2023
II. Early Middle High German (1050-1170) (panopto recording, handout), live on 20 Oct 2023
III. ‘Classical’ Middle High German (1170-1250) (panopto recording, handout) recorded on 14 Oct 2023
IV. Late Middle High German (1250-1350) (panopto recording, handout) recorded on 14 Oct 2023
V. Graphemics and Phonology (panopto recording, handout), recorded on 9 November 2023 by William Thurlwell
VI. Morphology (panopto recording, handout), recorded on 9 November 2023 by William Thurlwell
VII. Word formation and Lexis (panopto recording, handout), recorded on 19 October 2023
VIII. Morphosyntax and Syntax (panopto recording, handout), recorded on 9 November 2023 by Joshua Booth

Lectures are accessible once they are recorded via the Panopto folder Paper IV, all lectures are included in the playlist “German Historical Linguistics” https://tinyurl.com/PaperIVHistoricalLinguistics. Thanks for help with the English translation of the lectures to William Thurlwell, for technical and topical support to Henrike Lähnemann.

The textbook for this lecture course is The Oxford Guide to Middle High German. The set text for Middle High German is Helmbrecht in the edition by Karl-Heinz Göttert (2015). Oxford students can access further resources such as reading lists and essay topics via the Canvas page.

Anglo-Norman Reading Group

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09/07/2023

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Jane Bliss reports on the Oxford Anglo-Norman Reading Group.

The group is now nearly as old as the century! It was born of a chance conversation in the Taylorian Library, as we deplored an apparent lack of interest in Anglo-Norman. Having had a crash course with Tony Hunt during my MPhil studies, I was aware of the riches that are available but usually ignored by those who think the language is even more difficult than Old French.  From the outset we were keen to build an informal and collaborative forum for reading, discussing, and translating a wide variety of texts.  We welcome all comers, primarily graduate students but also numerous others, whatever their level of knowledge.

We study the literature of Anglo-Norman (the insular French of the Middle Ages), presenting and translating texts chosen according to members’ needs or suggestions. The range of material is inclusive: romance, chronicle, saints’ life, religious material, letters, legal texts, and much more. When possible, we invite a guest speaker, or (for example) the editor of a work in progress.  Recent texts have included the Anglo-Norman life of St Godric, presented by one of its recent editors Margaret Coombe, and an Apocalypse edited and translated (with our help) by Antje Carroll.  We even once presented extracts from one of our texts at the Medieval Road Show:  dramatic readings from the Maniere de Langage in which sample conversations, some highly comic, are offered to the language student.

We usually meet fortnightly, from 5.00-6.30pm, on a Friday. The group is currently supported by Helen Swift, who kindly arranges a room for us in St Hilda’s College, and a Convenor (Stephanie Hathaway) who looks after technical matters with splendid efficiency.  I lead the work on the texts:  I have done extensive research in Anglo-Norman literature (as an independent scholar); I studied with Tony Hunt and have many years teaching experience; I have published a number of books and articles in the field. 

The group varies from about 4 to 12 people, depending on their other commitments in a busy Oxford term; our hybrid sessions have attracted scholars from farther afield and may bring the number up to as many as 20. In fact, we have recently attracted a medievalist all the way from Bristol University, to take part in person whenever she can. We take it in turns to read the text aloud, never mind the pronunciation, and then help one another with translation and commentary.  Each text is presented at the beginning of term with an introduction, questions are explored, and discussion is encouraged.  A `padlet’ is provided for disseminating texts, sources, secondary materials, other interesting clips, and so on.

Thanks to our convenor and OMS, our studies are lubricated by a choice of wine or soft drinks. This encourages lateral thinking, and definitely aids relaxation at the end of a busy week. In addition, when we have a visiting speaker, we arrange to take them out to dinner. Failing that, we often meet for a drink together after the end of term.

Finally, I would like to pay tribute to the memory of Paul Hyams, who declared on joining us: `Historians don’t read enough romances, nor will they read anything in French.’  He was a faithful member of the group almost to his death last year, contributing to our understanding of the language used for day-to-day admin in medieval Britain. 

Jane Bliss (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org)
Image thanks to St Brendan

Distance: Medieval and Modern Languages Conference

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09/06/2023

20:46

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When? 19 June 2023
Where? Taylor Institution Library (St Giles, OX1), Main Hall

9am Panel One ‘Distance’ in Pre- and Early Modern Times (Panel Chair: Sebastian Dows-Miller)

  • Jack Nunn, University of Oxford: ‘Distant voices’: The Making of Late-Medieval Anthologies
  • Marlene Schilling, University of Oxford: ‘Defying Distance’: The Rhetorical Potential of Personifications of Time in the Prayerbooks of the Northern German Convent Medingen
  • Samuel FitzGibbon, University of Cambridge: Windows to New Worlds: Illustrations as Conveyors of Eyewitness Testimony in 16th Century Travel Accounts

10:40 Panel 2 ‘Distance’ in Translation, Reception and Adaptation (Panel Chair: Alexia Ji Wang)

  • Edward Voet, University of Oxford: Sanskrit to Korean transliteration in the Ansimsa-pon Chinŏn chip (1569)
  • Xiyuan Meng, University of St. Andrews: Performing ‘Distance’ on Chinese Stages: Translation, Adaption, and (Re-)Performance of Euripides’ Medea
  • Mariachiara Leteo, University of Oxford: The Distant Perspective of Greek Tragedy in Woolf’s Jacob’s Room

13:00 Panel Three Distance, Oppression and Transgression (Panel Chair: Mathieu Farizier)

  • Jake Robertson, University of Oxford: Art on the Edge: Patronage and Precarity in Gulag Theaters on the Soviet ‘Periphery’
  • Audrey Gosset, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne and EHESS: From Stasis to Democratic Ex-stasis: Bridging the Distance through Shared Art
  • Georgina Fooks, University of Oxford: Susana Thénon’s Distancias: Poetry as Choreography

14:35 Panel Four ‘Distance’ in Literary Correspondences (Panel Chair: Aditi Gupta)

  • Tess Eastgate, University of Oxford: The implications of distance in Marie-Antoinette’s correspondence
  • Valery Goutorova, University of St.Andrews: “My plan is to treat you as detached spirit”: Virginia Woolf’s Effigy to Beloved Women

15:40 Panel Five ‘Distance’ in Migration and Diasporic Literature (Panel Chair: Ola Sidorkiewicz)

  • Ruming Yang, University of Miami: Orientalism and Auto-orientalism in Contemporary Peruvian Literature
  • Madeleine Pulman-Jones, SOAS University of London: The Love Poems of Debora Vogel: A Jewish-Modernist Aesthetics of Longing
  • Kendsey Clements, University College London: Through Her Eyes: An Analysis of écriture migrante au féminin in Québec

17:15 Keynote: Karolina Watroba

Conference programme flyer designed by Anna Glieden

Night Office in 15th-Century Oxford

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26/05/2023

21:40

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A re-enactment of a forgotten liturgy for St Thomas Becket

When: Tuesday 6 June at 9 pm
Where: New College Chapel

Free entry. All welcome!

The service has been prepared specially by Dr Henry Parkes (University of Nottingham), currently Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellow in Music at the Bodleian Library. His research project ‘Music in the Shadows: Staging the Medieval Night Office’ explores the cultural history of Christian night worship through a mixture of archival, performance-led and ethnographic research.

Many Oxford colleges preserve the late evening office of Compline, once sung daily. But in medieval times there was a much more substantial service to follow, known as Nocturns, Vigils, or the Night Office.

New College Choir will enact a short-form Night Office as it might have been known in 15th-century Oxford, to explore how this now- forgotten liturgy worked in performance. In southern England from the late 14th century on, Tuesdays were commonly given over to the veneration of St Thomas Becket. This service recreates a ‘commemorative’ Tuesday Becket office, as precribed in late medieval books of the Sarum Use—many of which survive in Oxford libraries.

For an introduction to the service, watch a presentation of some of the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library

The Pursuit of Musick. The Taverner Consort at 50

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23/05/2023

17:22

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When: 1 June 2023, 3-4pm
Where: Taylor Institution Library, Room 2

Andrew Parrott will be in conversation with Henrike Lähnemann on musical life in medieval and early modern Europe. This is a celebration of 50 years of the Taverner Consort and Andrew Parrott’s The Pursuit of Musick: Musical Life in Original Writings & Art c1200–1770, a uniquely colourful compendium of almost everything to do with pre-modern musical life. The lecture will take as its starting point how the examples on music in the everyday life of medieval and early modern Germany can be used as a teaching tool and will also discuss questions of translation of premodern sources. All original source material is open access available on the publication website, e.g. https://www.taverner.org/everyday-life.

With over 60 albums under its wing, the Consort is internationally renowned not only for Parrott’s insights into early music like Taverner, Tallis and Josquin des Prez, but also for award-winning recordings of composers including Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Bach, and unexpected carols. To announce the 50-year milestone, the Consort has made a special two-track recording involving Fretwork and boys from New College choir with a total of some 30 assorted instrumentalists. The tracks are being released on June 16th via Avie Records:
J. S. Bach, ‘O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht’ (BWV 118, version I), c1736/37
Giaches de Wert, ‘Egressus Jesus’ (a7) / Michael Praetorius
Commercial pre-save link for Apple, Spotify, etc. Previous recordings have clocked up over 1,000,000 listens (for his 2018 Bach Magnificat alone).

Followed at 7pm by a reception hosted by Merton College and Benjamin Nicholas on the cherry tree lawn outside the chapel after evensong for informal drinks and chats.
Buy the book: £35.00, 560 pages, ISBN: 978-1-915229-54-0

Bodleian Library Auct. M 3.14, fol. 1r

Nigel Palmer’s Books in the Bodleian

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18/05/2023

21:00

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A presentation by Dr Alan Coates, Assistant Librarian, Rare Books, Dept. of Special Collections and Subject Librarian, Bibliography & History of the Book on the occasion of the Memorial Colloquium for Nigel Palmer and as part of the Weston Library Medievalists Coffee Mornings. This builds on the work the late Nigel F. Palmer did with the Incunable Catalogue of the Bodleian Library, available as Bod-Inc. He contributed the text of descriptions for the section on blockbooks and wood- and metalcut prints. All digitised incunabula and blockbooks are available on digital.bodleian.

The list of books is as follows:

Missale Cisterciense ([Strasbourg: Johann Reinhard Grüninger], 1487) [from Eberbach]
Shelfmark: Auct. 6Q 2.20 [= Bod-inc. M-245(1)]

Apocalypse [Edition V] [Germany, c.1468/70, impression c.1472] Blockbook
Shelfmark: Auct. M 3.14 [= Bod-inc. BB-3]

Death and the Last Judgement ([England (Syon Abbey?), c.1499])
Woodcut, with Latin typographic text
Shelfmark: MS. Rawlinson D. 403, fol. 3v [= Bod-inc. XYL-19]

St George; St Maurelius ([Italy (Ferrara), c.1520])
Woodcut book cover with Italian inscriptions
Shelfmark: Broxb. 30.13 [= Bod-inc. XYL-23]

Büchlein von den peinen (Strasbourg: Bartholomaeus Kistler, 1506)
Shelfmark: Douce L 189

Büchlein von den peinen (Strasbourg: Bartholomaeus Kistler, 1506)
Shelfmark: Vet. E1 e.217

Bodleian Library Auct. M 3.14 in the digital.bodleian viewer.

Literary, religious and manuscript cultures of the  German-speaking lands:  a  symposium  in memory of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022) 

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15/05/2023

14:25

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Friday 19 – Saturday 20 May 2023

To celebrate the life and scholarship of Nigel F. Palmer, Professor of  German  Medieval Literary and Linguistic  Studies at the University of Oxford, the academic community honoured his memory with a symposium, which brought together colleagues from around the world. Their presentations spoke to the wide spectrum of Nigel’s intellectual interests, which ranged extensively within the broad scope of the literary and religious history of the German- and Dutch-speaking lands, treating Latin alongside the vernaculars, the early printed book alongside the manuscript, and the court and the city alongside the monastery and the convent.

Friday, 19 May 2023 

10:30-11:30         Weston Library, Visiting Scholars Centre

  • Presentation of incunables and blockbooks linked with Nigel F. Palmer in the Bodleian Library by Alan Coates.

13:00-13:45             Taylor Institution Library. Main Hall

  • Welcome and introduction. Video by Jeffrey Hamburger in honour of Nigel Palmer

14:00-15:00             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Racha Kirakosian

  • Henrike Manuwald, ‘German-language pericopes between retelling, exegesis and prayer: the case of the Begerin Prayer Book’
  • Martina Backes and Barbara Fleith, Extraordinary or conventional? Überlegungen zu einem un­ge­wöhnlichen Bildmotiv im Begerin-Gebetbuch

14:00-15:30             Weston Library. Horton Room: Chair: Henrike Lähnemann

  • Erik Kwakkel, ‘The problem of dating medieval manuscripts’.  Recording.
  • Victor Millet and Lorena Pérez Ben, ‘‘Fragmentology’ around Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein’.  Recording.

16:00-17:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Almut Suerbaum

  • Ben Morgan, ‘Critiquing critique: how Erich Fromm’s reading of Meister Eckhart can transform contemporary conceptualisations of human flourishing’
  • Freimut Löser, ‘Latest news on Nigel Palmer’s Meister Eckhart’
  • Racha Kirakosian, ‘Philology meets visionary practice’

16:00-17:30             Weston Library: Chair: Martin Kauffmann

  • Andrew Honey, ‘‘I believe they were fixed in some low places in the Church, Chapell or House’: further investigations into the glue stains of Douce 248, a blockbook Biblia pauperum of c.1465-1470’. Recording.
  • Geert Warnar, ‘The Roman van Limborch in a European framework’. Recording.
  • Luise Morawetz, ‘Gregory the Great in Old High German: the newly discovered glosses of MS. Canon. Pat. Lat. 57’.

Saturday, 20 May 2023

A small exhibition of medieval German manuscripts used by Nigel Palmer for teaching Palaeography and History of the Book was on display in the Voltaire Room of the Taylor Institution Library, including the two manuscripts from Erfurt Charterhouse Taylor Institution Library MS. 8° Germ. 1 and MS. 8° Germ. 2 (comment by Balázs Nemes).

10:00-11:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Annette Volfing

  • Elke Brüggen, ‘Parzival-Lektüren im komplexen Zusammenspiel von Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentierung’
  • Daniela Mairhofer, ‘Almost lost in transmission: the peculiar case of a Staufer song’
  • Nikolaus Henkel, ‘Liturgie im Schulunterricht um 1500. Der Osterhymnus ‚Salve festa dies‘ des Venantius Fortunatus und seine deutsche Reimpaarübersetzung’

10:00-11:30             Taylorian Room 2: Chair: Stephen Mossman

  • Adam Poznański and Reima Välimäki, ‘Petrus Zwicker’s Cum dormirent homines: transmission history and prospects for a critical edition of a popular anti-heretical treatise’
  • Linus Ubl, ‘Palm(er)ing material culture – medieval German manuscripts in the
    National State Library of Israel’
  • Astrid Breith, ‘Locked away for love – the Vita Wilbirgis inclusae and the manuscript holdings of St. Florian (Upper Austria)’

13:00-14:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Sarah Bowden

  • Jonas Hermann, ‘What gives? Marquard von Lindau and the ›Buch von geistlicher Armut‹’
  • Anne Winston-Allen, ‘Sibilla von Bondorf’s art of reform’
  • Edmund Wareham Wanitzek, ‘Soror in Christo dilectissima: Learning and exchange in the correspondence of Nikolaus Ellenbog and his sister Barbara’

13:00-14:30             Taylorian Room 2: Chair: Elizabeth Andersen

  • Peter Rückert, ‘Bücher zwischen Kloster und Hof. Neues zur literarischen Topographie in Württemberg’
  • Monica Brinzei and Giacomo Signore, ‘The rise of ars moriendi at the University of Vienna before the printing press’
  • Nigel Harris, ‘“Nach dem text und etwen nach dem sin”. Heinrich Haller und das Cordiale de quattuor novissimis des Gerard van Vliederhoven’

15:00-16:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Christine Putzo

  • Ralph Hanna, ‘On exempla: “Hoc contra malos religiosos”‘
  • Peter Tóth, ‘The early history of the Meditationes Vitae Christi: quotations and references’
  • Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘Kollektive Autorschaft und Baukastenprinzip. Geistliche Literatur dominikanischer Provenienz um 1300’

15:00-16:30             Taylorian Room 2: Chair: Lydia Wegener

  • Sarah Griffin, ‘Unfolding time in a late medieval German concertina-fold almanac (SPKB, Libr. pict. A 92)
  • Youri Desplenter, ‘Newly discovered interlinear Middle Dutch translation of the Psalms (c. 1300?). Analysis and contextualization within the Middle Dutch and medieval Psalm translations’
  • Wybren Scheepsma, ‘Laudate dominum in sanctis eius: a Limburg sermon with French roots’

17:00-19:00 Old Library of St Edmund Hall

Followed by speeches in honour of Nigel F. Palmer

  • The Pro Principal of St Edmund Hall, Rob Whittaker. Recording.
  • A performance of a medieval poem by Ruth Wiederkehr, Monika Studer, Claudia Lingscheid-Andersen and Racha Kirakosian
  • Words of memory by Eva Schlotheuber and in dialogue by Hans-Jochen Schiewer and Michael Stolz

The event was supported by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, the Meister-Eckhart-Gesellschaft, SSMLL, Oxford Medieval Studies and St Edmund Hall. Here a link to the call of papers; please contact Henrike Lähnemann if you have any comments on the content of this page.