Author: Luisa Ostacchini

Medieval Matters: Week 1

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24/04/2023

11:11

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Around Oxford, News

Welcome back to Oxford for Trinity Term! I’d like to take this opportunity to thank everyone who contributed to making the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference and Medieval Mystery Cycle so wonderful. So much hard work goes into these events, and you really showcased the wide range of approaches and the incredible vivacity of Oxford’s medieval community. We could not have hoped for a better start to the term. In the words of Alcuin:

tantas grates et laudes agimus […] quantas habet liber ille syllabas!
[I give you as many thanks and praises as the book has syllables! Ep. 206 ]

But of course, these events were only the beginning of what is sure to be a busy Trinity. Indeed, you will notice that a certain book of very many syllables has arrived in your inboxes this week: the Trinity Term Medieval Booklet is now live! I have attached the compressed pdf version for your reference, but for all of the very latest updates you can consult the live version here on our website. If events are cancelled or details change, we will update them on the calendar, so check that out in case of doubt. For a guide to everything happening this week, please see below:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • SAVE THE DATE! The Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term Lecture will take place on May 4th at 5:30-6:30pm in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. Alison Ray (Archivist at St Peter’s) and Heather Barr (Library Trainee at St Edmund Hall) will be speaking on “GLAMorous work: Medievalist Pathways in Archives and Libraries”. Join us for a careers talk with a twist and with coffee and cake PLUS the chance to see an exhibition in the Old Library and handle some of the special collections!
  • To celebrate the life and scholarship of Nigel F. Palmer, Professor of German Medieval Literary and Linguistic Studies at the University of Oxford, Faculty, College and academic community will honour his memory with a symposium, to be held at the Taylorian and the Weston Library on 19-20 May 2023. Admission is free for symposium and reception; dinner to be charged (subsidized for graduate students and early career people). Please register to attend the symposium by 30 April 2023. There will be a separate registration deadline for attending the Garden reception on Saturday, 20 May, 5pm, to which everybody is welcome, and the dinner 7:30pm, both at St Edmund Hall.
  • The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures invites to a Round table: Digital publishing and future research in manuscript studies on Wednesday 5.15pm in the Memorial Room of The Queen’s College, Oxford in celebration of the release of vol. 2 of the Journal of Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC), edited by our Co-Director Lesley Smith. All welcome!

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 24th April:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Prolet Decheva (University College Dublin), Late Antique Personifications of Abstract Ideas and Elite Identity. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  •  The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Brianne Dolce (Merton) ‘Hell’s Army: Heretics and Usurers in Medieval Arras‘. The seminar will also be available remotely via Teams. 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 Oxford Interfaith Forum is hosting lecture on The Popes and the Jews in Sixteenth-Century Italy through the Chronicle of Pope Paul IV at 6pm, online. For full details and to register, please click here.

Tuesday 25th April:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building. This week’s speaker will be Hannah Lucas (Newnham College, Cambridge): Contemplating Criticism.
  • The Medieval Churchy and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Claire Holthaus (Christ Church): Royal Displays of Power in the Welsh Castles of Edward I.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar will meet at 5pm for drinks, with the presentation starting at 5:15pm, at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford on Norham Road. This week’s speaker will be Marion Uhlig (Université de Fribourg), ‘Tuer l’auteur. Sur quelques curieux cas de métalepse dans la littérature médiévale en français’. For more information, to be added to the seminar maillist, or for the Teams link to join a seminar remotely, contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.

Wednesday 26th April:

  • The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. This week we will have a shorter organisational meeting. In Trinity Term, we are continuing to discuss Heinrich von Neustadt’s texts, focussing on ‘Von Gottes Zukunft’. We will meet in person in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker will be Ivana Jevtić (Koç Üniversitesi, Istanbul) ‘The Landscape and Rock-Cut Architecture of Medieval Thrace: Historiography, Fieldwork, and Photogrammetry across Three Countries’.
  • The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) meets at 5.15pm in the Memorial Room of The Queen’s College, Oxford. In celebration of the release of vol. 2 of the Journal of Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC), which takes an explicitly experimental approach of involving digital tools for the presentation of research in manuscript cultures, Round table: Digital publishing and future research in manuscript studies. To find out more, click here. The volume features two articles by Oxford Medievalists! One on The Karlevi runestone by Heather O’Donoghue and one on Cambridge, Trinity College, MS B.5.4, folio 135v: the Psalms, with commentary by Peter Lombard by Lesley Smith

Thursday 27th April:

  • The Piers Plowman in Context discussion group, for those who believe more Langland is better than less, kicks off in the Main Quad Boardroom at Univ from 16:30-17:30. This week’s seminar will be led by Professor Lawrence Warner (KCL). In preparation, please read Passus III of the B-text, plus the following short contexts: the Westminster Chronicle (pp. 60-65), John Leeder’s proclamation of 1421, and Deguileville’s Pilgrimage of Human Life (lines 2921-3300), all available through this link All welcome! Email jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk with any questions.
  • Interface of Old English Dictionaries: Inflection and Derivation, a special talk by Javier Martín-Arista, Professor of Old English Linguistics at the Universidad de La Rioja and the President of SELIM (Spanish Society for Medieval English Language and Literature) will take place at 5pm at Magdalen College, Daubeny Laboratory.
  • The Oxford Interfaith Forum is hosting lecture on Seventy Languages (and Translations) for Seventy Nations at 6pm, online. Register here.

Friday 28th April:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections. This week, Charles Webster will present some rare 17th century books from the Hartlib network.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at the Julia Mann room, St Hilda’s College and online. This term we are reading extracts from Hue de Rotelands’s Protheselaus. Please contact Jane Bliss and/or Stephanie Hathaway to let us know if you can come in person (so we know whom to expect), also to obtain copies of the texts, and for the Zoom invitations.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • CFP: Pax Normanna. This conference will address the notion of “first generations” in relation to the medieval Norman conquests in England, Wales, Ireland, southern Italy, Sicily, and the Crusader states. Focusing on the conquerors’ departure from their places of origin, the papers will explore the rhythms, modalities, reasons and objectives for leaving. Please send your paper proposal to pierre.bauduin@unicaen.fr and annick.peterscustot@univ-nantes.fr. Deadline: 10 May 2023. For full details, please see the blog post here.
  • “Noblesse Oblige? Barons and the Public Good” Network: Last Call for Associate Membership! Though there might be another call next year, if you wish to take part in this year’s conference and associated events, please email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk with your CV and a brief cover letter. Full details can be found at http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/2023/03/05/new-ahrc-network-noblesse-oblige/ and https://noblesseoblige.exeter.ac.uk/.”
  • Job in Medieval History: UCD’s School of History has just advertised a position in medieval history through the Ad Astra Fellowship scheme. Appointments will be made with a view to permanency subject to a review after four years. Further details attached. To apply click on the ‘apply’ button in the link below: https://www.ucd.ie/adastrafellows/en/ucdcollegeofartsandhumanities
  • PhD Opportunity: The Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts” is looking to recruit doctoral research associates to pursue their dissertation project. The core responsibility of the research associate is to pursue their dissertation project that fits the overall comparative research profile of the Cluster of Excellence “Understanding Written Artefacts”, and to contribute to the collaborative research activities of the Cluster. Candidates should have a strong interest in cooperating beyond disciplinary boundaries, especially across the humanities, natural science and computer sciences. For further information, see: https://www.uni-hamburg.de/stellenangebote/ausschreibung.html?jobID=2c372021cdb6fff2c64a56b1d8102ec996320586
  • A postdoctoral position in Manuscript Studies and Digital Humanities is advertised at Princeton University through the Manuscripts, Rare Books, and Archive Studies working group and the Center for Digital Humanities. The deadline is May 7, 2023.
  • ASIMS announcement: The Terence Barry Prize for Best Graduate Paper in Irish Medieval Studies: The prize is open to graduate students from any field who either have presented or have written and intend to present a paper on a subject of relevance to Irish Medieval Studies at any conference, including virtual ones, during the year beginning with the Kalamazoo Congress (ICMS) in May 2022 and ending with the Kalamazoo Congress (ICMS) of 2023. Please note that only graduate student papers written/presented by members of ASIMS will be considered.  Membership may begin at the time of submission. For membership and more details, please see http://www.asims.org.

It is always a pleasure to assemble your submissions for the Booklet: I’m always struck by the incredibly wide range of events and seminars happening at Oxford, and how lucky we are to have such a vibrant, busy community. In fact, there’s so much on that it can be hard to keep track. Afterall, as Alcuin says:

[memoria] saepe perdit quod servare debet, nisi in thesauro litterarum reconditum teneat
[the memory often loses what it should keep, unless it holds it stored away in the treasure hoard of the written word, Ep. 49]

I’m honoured to once again be your guide to the term’s events, and to store all of your information about Oxford’s medievalist happenings in the treasure hoard of our booklet and blog! If you have any treasures you would like to add to our proverbial hoard, be they news of publications, calls for papers, upcoming events, or even media appearances, please do get in touch: we’d love to advertise all of these things on our blog and celebrate them. For now, I wish you all a joyful first week!

[The communications officer gathering submissions to store in the treasure-hoard of the Medieval Booklet…]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 35v.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

CFP: Pax Normanna

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23/04/2023

23:26

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Around Oxford, opportunities

The First Generations of the Conquest (Norman Worlds, 9th-12th Century) – 1. Departing
Symposium at the Maison Française d’Oxford, 22-23 September 2023

Image: Dove of peace between two soldiers: Tours, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 568, f. 249v © BMT

This conference will address the notion of “first generations” in relation to the medieval Norman conquests in England, Wales, Ireland, southern Italy, Sicily, and the Crusader states. Focusing on the conquerors’ departure from their places of origin, the papers will explore the rhythms, modalities, reasons and objectives for leaving.

The conference aims at:

1/ Determining how relevant the notion of “first generations of the conquest” is. All these movements were phenomena that took place over several generations and featured different kind of protagonists – soldiers, mercenaries, pilgrims, merchants, clerics and monks.

2/ Considering the horizons of those who departed, while avoiding teleological and unilinear assumptions. These horizons require an analysis of diverse dynamics and “push and pull” factors: political motivations, economic grounds, social mechanisms, acculturation processes, social and political creativity.

3/ Exploring the documentation, approaches, and tools that help to answer these questions. Our documentation was often produced in the regions where the conquerors settled, and it focuses on their new status; it must be compared retroactively with sources from Normandy (and more broadly speaking from northern France) to enlighten the dynamics that led to the mobility of these people.

This symposium is part of the 2022-2026 research project Pax normanna (dir. Prof. Pierre Bauduin, University of Caen-Normandie, and Prof. Annick Peters-Custot, University of Nantes). Please send your paper proposal to pierre.bauduin@unicaen.fr and annick.peterscustot@univ-nantes.fr. 

Deadline: 10 May 2023 

Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures Round table: Digital publishing and future research in manuscript studies 

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23/04/2023

20:20

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Around Oxford, events

26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5.15pm UK time

In celebration of the release of vol. 2 of the Journal of Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC), which takes an explicitly experimental approach of involving digital tools for the presentation of research in manuscript cultures, the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) is holding a round table 26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5.15pm UK time at the Memorial Room of The Queen’s College, Oxford. The topic of the round table will be digital publishing and future research in manuscript studies. 

The round table will be chaired and moderated by Richard Ovenden, OBE, Professorial Fellow and Bodley’s Librarian. 

Members of the round table are Yegor Grebnev, Lesley Smith, Máire Ní Mhaonaigh, and Simon Aldridge.

Máire Ní Mhaonaigh is professor of Celtic and medieval studies at the University of Cambridge and Fellow at St John’s College. Her research stands at the interface of history and literature and focuses on connections between Ireland, England and Scandinavia and the wider western world. Máire is currently working on a complex multi-manuscript corpus of medieval Irish landscape literature, as part of a Leverhulme project which she leads, and she co-directs ongoing research on the electronic dictionary of medieval Irish (www.dil.ie) funded by the AHRC.

Lesley Smith is professor of medieval intellectual history at Oxford and Fellow of Harris Manchester College. Her research centres on the medieval Bible as both an intellectual and a material object, as it was studied in the schools and proto-university of medieval Paris. Lesley is the co-editor of vol. 2 of MTC and a member of the board of CMTC.

Yegor Grebnev is Distinguished Associate Research Fellow at Beijing Normal University (Zhuhai) and an assistant professor at BNU-HKBU United International College. Trained as a specialist on early China, he has initiated multiple collaborative projects with scholars of history, texts, and manuscripts from various regions of pre-modern world. Yegor is the co-editor of vol. 2 of MTC and a member of the board of CMTC.

Simon Aldridge is professor of Main Group Chemistry at Oxford and Fellow of The Queen’s College. He is the Director of the OxICMF CDT and will bring the perspective of the exact sciences to the table.

Medieval Matters: Week 0

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19/04/2023

14:33

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News

,

Welcome back to Oxford, and to the Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term programme! We have so many exciting things in store for you this term, and I’m really looking forward to once again being your guide for all of Oxford’s Medieval Matters. In the words of Alcuin:

nos semper suspensi de reditu tuo
[I will be continually in suspense until your return, Ep. 64]

To kick the term off to a triumphant start, we have two very special events. Firstly, the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference: Names and Naming, takes place on April 20th and 21st, both Online & In-Person at Ertegun House, Oxford. Secondly, this Saturday, April 22nd, join us for the annual Medieval Mystery Plays at St Edmund Hall! This is sure to be a day of merriment and festivity, and a chance to celebrate the diverse languages, departments and medievalists of our community. For the short programme, see the pdf attached to this week’s email, and please see the event listings below for further details.

The full OMGC and Mystery Play programmes can be found here, along with a sneak-peek at some of the offerings in the draft of this term’s Medieval Booklet. If you have not sent in your booklet submissions yet, please do so ASAP to ensure inclusion in time for the full release on Monday.

The full newsletter will begin again on Monday, but for now, a sample of the delights in store upon our return to term time:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • SAVE THE DATE: 26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5pm UK time: In celebration of the release of vol. 2 of the Journal of Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC) by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC), which takes an explicitly experimental approach of involving digital tools for the presentation of research in manuscript cultures, CMTC are holding a round table 26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5pm UK time at the Memorial Room of The Queen’s College, Oxford. The topic of the round table will be digital publishing and future research in manuscript studies. The round table will be chaired by Richard Ovenden, OBE, Professorial Fellow and Bodley’s Librarian. More information to follow.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Thursday 20th April:

  • The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2023: Names & Naming takes place at 9-6pm, both online and at Ertegun House. Attendance is free, but you must register in advance. To register to attend, either online or in person, please visit the conference website here.
  • A Special Lecture for the Churches Conservation Trust will take place at 1pm, online via Facebook Live. Shelley M. Williams will be presenting at this lecture, which will consider how the twelve signs of the zodiac were incorporated into ecclesiastical architecture between c. 1100-1250 CE. To attend, please click this link.

Friday 21st April:

Saturday 22nd April:

  • The Medieval Mystery Plays take place at 12-3:30pm at St Edmund Hall. Join us on this merry multilingual journey featuring plays dating from between the 12th and the 16th century! This highlight of the Oxford medieval calendar offers a variety of plays in different medieval and modern languages, staged at several stations in the beautiful grounds of St Edmund Hall. Cycles of plays retelling stories from the Bible were a popular form of entertainment in the Middle Ages, which we are only too happy to revive for modern audiences. Admission is free and you are welcome to turn up at any time. For more details about the programme, please see our blog post here.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • “Noblesse Oblige? Barons and the Public Good” Network: Last Call for Associate Membership! Though there might be another call next year, if you wish to take part in this year’s conference and associated events, please email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk with your CV and a brief cover letter. Full details can be found at http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/2023/03/05/new-ahrcnetwork-noblesse-oblige/ and https://noblesseoblige.exeter.ac.uk/.”
  • Three-year Senior Researcher Position at the University of Oslo, Deadline May 14th: A three-year Senior Researcher position in medieval studies has been just announced at the University of Oslo with the application deadline on May 14th. The job will be available  from the fall of 2023. The position is funded by the ERC Advanced Grant project 101018645 MINiTEXTS “Minuscule Texts: Marginalized Voices in Early Medieval Latin Culture (c. 700–c.1000),”. A more detailed description of this position and the application requirements are provided at the job announcement at https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/242179/senior-researcher-in-medieval-studies.
  • 10 funded PhDs opportunities within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral network “From Antiquity to Community: Rethinking Classical Heritage through Citizen Humanities” (AntCom): Interested applicants will find information on the training program, on each fellowship as well as details on specific requirements and the application process on the consortium’s website: https://antcom.eu/call-for-applications/. For further questions you are welcome to contact the project’s PI Aglae Pizzone (pizzone@sdu.dk).
  • The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is excited to hire a new postdoctoral research scholar in premodern critical race studies. This position is open to PhDs in language, history, religion, philosophy, classics, or related humanistic fields. The postdoctoral research scholar will join our ongoing Mellon Foundation-funded RaceB4Race initiative for a two-year appointment starting Fall 2023 at a stipend salary of $75,000/fiscal year. More information and how to apply can be found at our website.

I will return to your inboxes on Monday with the Medieval Booklet and the Week 1 events. In the meantime, we hope to see many of you on Saturday for the mystery plays. For those of you contributing to the plays, some words of wisdom from Alcuin:

modo vero viriliter fac et fortiter!
[Play your part powerfully and bravely! Ep. 72]

Wishing you all a week of power and bravery in all of your medieval endeavours!

[A brave and powerful performance at the mystery plays!]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 27 v.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 8

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06/03/2023

06:44

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Around Oxford, events

,

It feels like term has just begun, but here we are in week 8 already! That said, the medievalist happenings at Oxford are far from over. In fact, we have an especially full week of exciting events and seminars lined up for you! This isn’t surprising: even Alcuin knew that week 8 was sometimes the richest of all the weeks:

saepe posterior adfert hora, quod prior non poterat
[Often the later hour brings what the earlier hour could not, Ep. 239]

Please do peruse the announcements, events and opportunities listed below, to see all of the joys that the ‘late hour’ of Week 8 has brought to us:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • New AHRC Network: Noblesse Oblige? ‘Barons’ and the Public Good in Medieval Afro-Eurasia (10th-14th Centuries). This network is a forum for the re-evaluation of ‘baronial’ government and the common good between the tenth and fourteenth centuries across different Afro-Eurasian polities. For full details, please see the network website here. The network is also offering two opportunities: a conference and call for associate membership — see the “opportunities” section of this email for full details!
  • The Oxford Interfaith Forum will be hosting a talk of interest to Medievalists next week, on 13th March, 6-7pm, via Zoom. The talk will be Dr Nick Posegay (University of Cambridge), ‘Material and Linguistic History of Arabic Manuscripts in Muslim and Jewish Contexts‘. To register, please click here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 6th March:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Juliana Santos Dinoá Medeiros (Uniwersytet Warszawski), Hagiography and miracle performance in seventh-century Gaul. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. We will start with natural history from a medieval encyclopaedia. Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information. 
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s Frauendienst. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar today is CANCELLED.
  • A Workshop for the Medieval Mystery Plays will take place in the Pontigny Room, St Edmund Hall, with David Wiles and Jim Harris, for all actors and directors, 4:30-6pm.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Jacopo Gnisci (UCL), Ethiopia and Byzantium: Reframing the Evidence. (You may also attend remotely, Teams link here: or log in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and join the group “Medieval History Research Seminar”, team code rmppucs. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk). 
  • The Lincoln Leads seminar takes place at 5.30–7pm at Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College. This week’s panel is ‘How do we define ‘child’ and ‘adult’?’, and features Harriet Soper (Fellow in English Literature) on life courses in Old English poetry. Book a free place here.

Tuesday 7th March:

  • The Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar will take place at 2–3.30pm in the New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and coffee available from 1.45pm. This week’s speaker will be Duncan Hardy, University of Central Florida, ‘Reform and crusade at the imperial diets: towards a new explanatory framework for political change in the late medieval Holy Roman Empire‘.
  • The third and final lecture of this year’s E. A. Lowe Lectures in Palaeography takes place at 5pm in the MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College. This year’s lectures are given by Prof. Niels Gaul, A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Today’s lecture will be on the subject of  “Authority”, and relates expressions of authorial ethos to matters of mise-en-page, with particular attention to marginal spaces. All welcome.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets in the Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Paper starts at 5.15pm, with tea, coffee, biscuits and friendly Medievalist chat from 5pm! This week’s speakers will be Henrietta Leyser (St Peter’s) and Samuel Fanous (Bodleian Library): The Vision of the Monk of Eynsham
  • Concert ‘Inn stetter hut’: The Linarol Consort of Viols and James Gilchrist present a songbook from the court of Emperor Maximilian 7.30-9.30pm at the Holywell Music Room, preceded by a free pre-concert talk 5.55-6.45pm at the same venue with Henrike Lähnemann. Tickets for both can be obtained at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/linarolconsort. Listen to the concert playlist.

Wednesday 8th March:

  • The Medieval German Seminar features a special guest lecture by Dr Aletta Leipold (Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Leipzig), 11.15-12.45 in the island room, Oriel College.
  • The Medieval Crafternoon will take place at 1.30-4.30pm at 21 St Giles, St John’s College. Come along for an afternoon of medieval textile crafts! The guided workshop will focus on four textile techniques, and refreshments will be served. To sign up, click here. For question, email Eleanor Birch.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 3.30pm at G. Martin Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Nicola Carotenuto (Oxford, St Hugh’s): ’Trade, traders, and institutions in late medieval Venice’.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Zachary Chitwood (Univ. of Mainz), ‘A Cloister for the (Grand) Komnenoi: Dynastic Rivalry and Memoria at the Foundation of Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, followed by a drinks reception. This week’s speaker will be Niamh Kehoe (University of Düsseldorf), ‘Humour and Horror in Ælfric´s Passion of St Vincent’.

Thursday 9th March:

  • The Oxford Medieval Commentary Network will meet at 12.45-2.15pm in Thatched Barn, Christ Church (by meadow entrance). Free lunch from 12.45, seminar paper begins at 1.15. Today’s speaker will be Alistair Minnis, Emeritus Professor, Yale, ‘Reconciling amour and yconomique: The significance of the Chess of Love commentary by Evrart de Conty (c.1330–1405)’. Please direct all questions to Cosima Gillhammer, or visit the website
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speaker will be Emily Zazulia (University of California at Berkeley), The Fifteenth-Century Song Mass: Some Challenges. 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 just send an email to matthew.thomson@ucd.ie
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.15pm via Teams and in The History of the Book Room, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Nora White (Maynooth), ‘Multimedia ogham and digital epigraphy‘. Please contact David Willis if you need a link.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Mary Carruthers New York University, All Souls College, Oxford, ‘Envisioning Thinking: Geometry and Meditation in  the Twelfth Century‘.
  • The Medieval Vestments Conference takes place at St John’s College on March 9-10. This conference is inspired by the college’s collection with a mixture of impressive speakers, interactive workshops, and dynamic displays. To register, visit the eventbrite page.

Friday 10th March:

  • Weston Library Medieval Coffee Morning, 10.30-11.30, will feature Old High German glosses, scratch and otherwise, presented by Luise Morawetz. For more information on newly found glosses in the Bodleian cf. http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/2022/12/13/ms-canon-pat-lat-57/
  • Double bill on etymology in German and English with Aletta Leipold (Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch) rûna, rîzan, scrîban – A Cultural History of Writing based on examples from the Old High German dictionary, 3-4pm, and Philip Durkin (Oxford English Dictionary): Lexical Borrowing – Fremdwörter, Lehnwörter and German words in English, 4-5pm, in 47 Wellington Square, 1st floor, lecture room 1 (access via the second staircase, end of the corridor), the final session of Henrike Lähnemann’s lecture series on German Historical Linguistics.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Conference and Call for Associate Membership: Noblesse Oblige? ‘Barons’ and the Public Good in Medieval Afro-Eurasia (10th-14th Centuries). We would like to welcome any who might be interested in our research to join a conference, which will take place in Oxford between the 25th and the 27th May 2023 – 5th week of Trinity. In addition, we would like to open our network to associate members: this is especially aimed at early career academics or students interested in questions of governance, elites, and the common good in this period. Any student or ECR interested in joining as an associate member should email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk with a CV and short personal statement on their research and what they would contribute to the network. For full details, please see the OMS blog here and the network website here.
  • CfP: Dissolving Kinship in the Early Middle Ages, ca. AD 400-1000: The University of York, 1-2 June 2023. Proposals for 30-minute papers are invited from late-stage postgraduates and ECRs. Due to the generosity of the Past & Present Society and the Department of History, University of York, accepted speakers who wish to present in person will receive at least a 150-pound bursary towards travel and accommodation. We also welcome applications for virtual presentations. Please send ca. 300 word abstracts and a brief bio to both organisers, Dr Alex Traves (alex.traves@york.ac.uk) and Dr Becca Grose (becca.grose@york.ac.uk), by 7 April 2023. For full details, please click here.
  • Invitation to Attend an International Conference “Episcopal Leadership. Shaping Power in Gaul and Hispania (IVth-VIIth centuries)”, organized by Prof. Dr. Sabine Panzram (RomanIslam Center, Universität Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Marc Heijmans (Aix Marseille Université, Centre Camille Jullian) and Dr. Paulo Pachá (RomanIslam Center, Universidade Federal di Rio de Janeiro). The workshop will take place on 6-8 March 2023 (in person and on Zoom). For full details, please click here.

Of course, whilst this week marks the last week of teaching term, it’s not the end of Medieval happenings in Oxford. In fact, I’m sure many of us are looking forward to the opportunity to hunt down some elusive research time! Here is Alcuin on the difficulty of finding research time:

Fateor siquidem: propemodum ante annos triginta voluntatem huius habere operis; sed quievit calamus meus…
[I confess, I had a desire to write this work thirty years ago: but my pen was at rest… Ep. 159]

Wishing you all a week full of exciting medievalist gatherings, and a vac full of bountiful and productive research time!

[Medievalists hunt for the rare beast known as “research time”]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 10 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

New AHRC Network: Noblesse Oblige?

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05/03/2023

21:59

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Around Oxford, opportunities

‘Barons’ and the Public Good in Medieval Afro-Eurasia (10th-14th Centuries)

Conference and Call for Associate Membership

This network is a forum for the re-evaluation of ‘baronial’ government and the common good between the tenth and fourteenth centuries across different Afro-Eurasian polities. By bringing together emerging and established international scholars, it challenges the traditionally Eurocentric approach to this problem and uses new methodologies to reassess our framework for studying the medieval period, leading to a fundamental reappraisal of the teleological narrative that has previously explained the rise of modern states.

The story of the medieval barons is commonly a negative one. Because aristocracies have been almost universally eclipsed by centralised states in the modern world, they are often cast as regressive forces whose self-interest held back ‘progress’. Nor is this exclusively a European narrative, though the historiographical attention paid to the ‘rise of the State’ has privileged the Latin Christian experience of political formation and shaped the way in which non-royal élites are seen in other historical contexts. As a result, ‘private’ rulers such as lords, amirs, kshatriya, and samurai are often assumed to have been at odds with the needs of the wider society. 

This network is challenging this understanding of the role of ‘barons’ in their relation to public good in two important and complementary ways. First, we are exploring case studies of how these non-royal élites conceived and implemented responsible government, whether for themselves or for others. Second, we are comparing these case studies in a bold transnational framework, reaching from western Europe to China, that spans the collapse of major centralised imperial projects in the ninth century to the destabilising experience of the Great Death in the fourteenth. 

We have brought together international scholars in two online working groups, followed by an international conference in order to discuss, debate, and disseminate interpretations of the ‘public’ role of the baron in an Afro-Eurasian Middle Ages. The two working groups are organised two major axes of research: ‘Barons and the Public Good in a Transnational Context’ and ‘Minority Élites and Government in a Transnational Context’ which will work separately before uniting in a three-day conference in 2023 to share their findings.

Conference

This conference will take place in Oxford between the 25th and the 27th May 2023 – 5th week of Trinity. We would like to welcome any who might be interested in our research to join, though spaces are limited. In order to express interest in attending, please email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk. The full programme will be announced in the coming weeks, though all network members on the website will be giving a paper, and there will be a keynote speaker as well.

Call for Associate Members

In addition, we would like to open our network to associate members: this is especially aimed at early career academics or students interested in questions of governance, elites, and the common good in this period. Associate members will be invited to all future events, and they will be encouraged to share their research on our website and at these events. We intend to apply for further funding so that these associates can be made full members of the network in future.

Preference will be given to those whose research covers areas not already well covered by our network members, but even those with substantial cross-over will be considered. Any student or ECR interested in joining as an associate member should email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk with a CV and short personal statement on their research and what they would contribute to the network.

We look forward in future to sharing our research at Leeds IMC 2023 and 2024 as well, and if any seminar organisers in Oxford would like to collaborate in order to invite these speakers again, or to keep them in the UK longer to give another talk, they should not hesitate to get in touch.

Medieval Matters: Week 7

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27/02/2023

10:48

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Around Oxford, events

,

Teaching term may be starting to wrap up, but things are still extremely busy here at OMS. There are so many exciting events and upcoming free-to-attend online conferences for us to enjoy that it’s hard to remember that we are entering the final fortnight of term! That said, I am sure I am not alone in feeling quite tired at this point in the term. For those of you feeling likewise, here is some wisdom from Alcuin:

Saepe […] bos lassus fortius figit ungulam
[The tired ox always puts his hoof down more strongly, Ep. 85]

In other words, though we might be tired this week, we might still do our best work! Here is the week’s roundup of events – there’s lots to take strength from:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Medieval Vestments Conference at St John’s College (March 9-10). Taking inspiration from the college’s unique gallery of stunning medieval vestments, this conference will feature two day’s worth of speakers and presenters. These presentations will be enriched by displays from both the college and Bodleian Library archives as well as a dynamic exhibition of works created during the conference workshops. Please register for the segments that you are interested in and able to attend here on eventbrite.
  • The After Constantine Journal, Medievalists.net, and the Orthodox Academy of Crete invite you to attend the conference Easter in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, which will take place on Zoom and YouTube on April 1st, 2023. This conference will examine how Easter was celebrated and viewed from Late Antiquity throughout the medieval period. Every year this would be a high point of the Christian life, and late antique and medieval people were keenly interested in many aspects of this event. For full details, please see here.
  • There will be a half-day colloquium on the quattrocento scholar, Sicco Polenton, and his magnum opus – the first extended history of Latin literature to have been written in modernity – at Faculty of Classics in Oxford on Friday, 14 April 2023. It will begin at 13:45. Attendance is free, but please register attendance by writing to Tristan Franklinos.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 27th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will not take place today. The seminar resumes next week!
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. We will continue with natural history from a medieval encyclopaedia. Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information. 
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s speaker is Kat Smith on ‘The female pursuit of  knowledge through the Virgin Mary’s breasts in 15th century Castile’. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.   
  • The Seminar in Manuscript Studies and Palaeography will take place at 2.15-3.45pm, in the Weston Library, Horton Room. This week’s speaker will be Laura Light (Les Enluminures), “Latin Bibles in England c. 1200-c. 1230“. For further information contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
  • A special lecture on Islamic Law in Norman Sicily, by Professor Jeremy Johns, will take place at 5pm in the L. W. Auditorium, Wolfson College.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Liesbeth van Houts (Cambridge), ‘Towards a new biography of Empress Matilda: what can be known about the women of her acquaintance?.‘ (You may also attend remotely, Teams link here: or log in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and join the group “Medieval History Research Seminar”, team code rmppucs. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk). 
  • The Lincoln Leads seminar takes place at 5.30–7pm at Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College. This week’s panel is ‘Failure and First Drafts’. Book a free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/lincoln-leads-2023-1539199

Tuesday 28th February:

  • The Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar will take place at 2–3.30pm in the New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and coffee available from 1.45pm. This week’s speaker will be Peter Crooks, Trinity College Dublin, ‘Chimera of Conquest: Colonial Warfare in Late Medieval Ireland‘.
  • The Codicology and the material book seminar takes place at 2-3.30pm in the Weston Library, Lecture Theatre. This week’s speaker will be Teresa Webber, on Medieval Libraries.
  • Dr Nelson Goering will be talking about Old High German and Old Saxon metre from 2:15 to 3:45 on the ground floor of the Linguistics Faculty on Walton Street as part of the Comparative Linguistics Seminar.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Maison française d’Oxford (www.mfo.ac.uk). Drinks at 5pm, presentations begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Dominique Lagorgette (Université Savoie Mont Blanc), ‘“Par sainct Copin, je suis tanné”. Jurons et blasphèmes dans quelques textes des en moyen français : représentations de l’oralité et transgression’. For more information, to be added to the seminar maillist, or for the Teams link to join a seminar remotely, contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
  • Medieval Church and Culture meets on Tuesday at Harris Manchester, 5pm (tea and biscuits) for a 5.15pm paper. The speaker will be  Elena Lichmanova (Merton), on Humour in the Margins: the interpretative problem.
  • The first of this year’s E. A. Lowe Lectures in Palaeography takes place at 5pm in the MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College. This year’s lectures are given by Prof. Niels Gaul, A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Today’s lecture will be on the subject of “Codex”, and explores the phenomenon of Byzantine literati curating their own writings in codex format and possible ancient and patristic models; with glances at similar practices in other medieval manuscript cultures. All welcome.

Wednesday 1st March:

  • No Medieval German Seminar this week – watch out for some special events in week 8 with guest Dr Aletta Leipold from the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig)!
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar has been changed to Friday: please see full details there.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Nikos Zagklas (Univ. of Vienna), ‘Τhe Cinderella of Byzantine Literature: Rethinking Schedography in Middle and Late Byzantine Periods’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, followed by a drinks reception. This week’s speaker will be Tom Grant (University of Utrecht), ‘In Defence of Bjarki: Reappraising Beowulf’s Links with Scandinavian Legend’.
  • A taster session for the Old Frisian Summer School will take place at 5.15pm, at the Taylor Institution Library, Room 2. We will be discussing the similarities between Old Frisian and Old English and aspects of the settlement history of Frisians. No booking required. For further information, please contact by the organiser Dr Johanneke Sytsema.

Thursday 2nd March:

  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.00pm via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Dimitra Fimi, ‘Magic writing: Representations of the Og(h)am script in contemporary fantasy‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.
  • The second of this year’s E. A. Lowe Lectures in Palaeography takes place at 5pm in the MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College. This year’s lectures are given by Prof. Niels Gaul, A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Today’s lecture will be on the subject of “Ethos”, and examines the ways in which such codices were thought to display the author’s character, and what the concept entailed in this context. All welcome.

Friday 3rd March:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library with presentation of items from the special collections.
  • A taster lecture for the Old Frisian Summer School will take place at 3-4pm, at 47 Wellington Square, 1st floor, Lecture Room 1, about Old Frisian among the other Germanic languages (part of the Paper IV German Historical Linguistics series). No booking required. For further information, please contact by the organiser Dr Johanneke Sytsema.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 3.30pm at G. Martin Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Elena Rossi (Oxford, Magdalen), ‘The Entangled Nature of the University and Family Spheres in Medieval Bologna’.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at St Hilda’s College, in the Julia Mann Room. The text will be extracts from the Chronicle of Langtoft; pdf will be provided. For access to the text and further information, please email: stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com or jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org.
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5pm at The Royal Oak. Please email Ashley Castelino (ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list.

Saturday 4th March:

  • A Church Monuments Society Online Lecture takes place at 5pm, online. Dr Karen Blough (Professor Emerita of Art History at SUNY Plattsborough) will be speaking about Abbatial Effigies from Quedlinburg in the Medieval and Early Modern Era. For full details and to register, please click here for the eventbrite page.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Columbia University is hosting A Colloquium for Early Medieval Studies, Indigenous Futures / Medieval Pasts: “Analogues and Kinship: A Talking Circle”, taking place on March 10, at 10:30am-3:30pm ET / 15:30 – 20:30 GMT. This CEMS talking circle and workshop facilitates a broad discussion about the politics, power structures, and potentials of thinking about medieval pasts in concert with Indigenous futures. To register to attend via zoom, please click here.

Finally, some wisdom on Alcuin on prudent library use when you are tired:

quod pondera librorum nobiscum portari nequeunt, ideo aliquotiens brevitati studendum est, ut […]habeat fessus ex itinere viator, quo se recreet: licet ex pondere portantis manus non gravetur
[Because we cannot carry heavy books, we have sometimes had to aspire to brevity, so that the traveller weary from the road might have what restores them, without their hands being weighed down by the weight of it Ep. 49]

In other words, take lightly from the libraries this week: don’t let your weary hands be weighed down by great stacks of books!

[A Medievalist struggles with a particularly weighty tome…]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 28 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 6

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20/02/2023

08:41

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events, News

,

We are well into term and also into February. I don’t want to be too optimistic, but I think I saw some sunshine in Oxford last week! Brighter days are coming. Of course, all days are bright when they have wisdom in them, so here is some advice for fellow teaching staff this week:

Ergo magistri minuitur auctoritas, si doctrina eius destruitur opere
[The authority of a teacher will be diminished if their teachings are refuted by their own works. Ep. 217]

In other words: those who can do, teach! Of course, what better way to supplement your own works (and by extension, your teaching) with some of our fabulous seminars and reading groups? Let’s lead by example this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Oxford Centre for Textual Editing and Theory is organising a workshop on ‘Genetic Narratology’ – combining genetic criticism and narrative analysis (23-24 February 2023, Jesus College, Oxford), with Karin Kukkonen as keynote speaker. Please find the preliminary programme and free registration via Eventbrite.
  • Please note that the time and date of The Medieval Italian Seminar has changed: this week’s paper will now take place on Friday at 11.30am at Colin Matthew Room, History Faculty.
  • From the Breast, an interdisciplinary hybrid seminar series and workshop whose central theme revolves around representations of breastfeeding and infant feeding in pre-modern culture will have a seminar relevant to medievalists on Wednesday 22 February, advertised below, but also several other seminars and a workshop on pre-modern breastfeeding more broadly. Please see the Eventbrite here to register for all upcoming events!
  • Valentine’s Day at the Medieval Church and Culture seminar featured a enthralling talk from Dr Federica Gigante, Curator of the Collection from the Islamic World at the History of Science Museum in Oxford.  Federica showed us the many places where Islamic textiles can be found in medieval Christian religious settings – places we’ve all seen, but never realised what we were looking at! If you missed Federica’s talk, please see our blog post here for some of the highlights.
  • Save the date! We will be running another workshop on voice projection and staging for the Medieval Mystery Cycle. This will take place on Monday 6 March (Week 8), 4.30–6pm, in the Pontigny Room at St Edmund Hall. All actors and directors interested in taking part are welcome! Beyond general voice projection exercises, there will also be an opportunity to work out staging constellations on site at St Edmund Hall (as well as an opportunity to enjoy tea and cake). The workshop will be led by Dr Jim Harris, the Mystery Cycle’s Master of Ceremonies and Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum. Please let us know if you’re able to join us by emailing michael.angerer@ccc.ox.ac.uk.
  • CALL FOR TIKTOK PARTICIPANTS As you should know by now, OMS has a new TikTok account, and we want to use it to highlight the work of medievalists at Oxford (and beyond)! https://tiktok.com/@OxMedStud. If you’d be willing to film a short TikTok for us talking about what you’re working on or some interesting aspect of the medieval world, email ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk!

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 20th February:

  • The Childhood and Youth Studies Network is delighted to announce our first pedagogy session, with a focus on sources for integrating childhood and youth studies into teaching for undergraduate or postgraduate students. This session is run in conjunction with the Centre for the Study of the Book at the Bodleian Library, and is open to teaching staff of all career stages who hold a University or Bodleian Reader card. For full details, see here. Register via Eventbrite for the first session at 11.30-12.30 or the second session at 12.30-1.30, both Horton Room at the Weston Library. 
  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be James Duncan (University of Liverpool), Mechanical Dragons and Underground Cults: Quodvultdeus’s Hidden Pagans. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm continuing with the natural history theme. Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information. 
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is Dietrich von der Glezze’s Der Borte. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar meets at 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Dr Corisande Fenwick, UCL, ‘The transformation of medieval Morocco: State formation and everyday life‘.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Erin Dailey (Leicester), and her talk’s title is Domestic Slavery, Sexual Exploitation, and the Transformation of the Late Roman World, AD 300-900 (You may also attend remotely, Teams link here: or log in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and join the group “Medieval History Research Seminar”, team code rmppucs. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk ). 
  • The Lincoln Leads seminar takes place at 5.30–7pm at Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College. This week’s panel is ‘What is the use of the modern museum?’. Book a free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/lincoln-leads-2023-1539199

Tuesday 21st February:

  • The Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar will take place at 2–3.30pm in the New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and coffee available from 1.45pm. This week’s speaker will be Maria João Branco, Universidade Nova, Lisbon, ‘Status, Service and Function: Revisiting Royal Councillors and Governance in 12th-13th-Century Portugal‘.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5-6pm in the Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Paper starts at 5.15pm, with tea, coffee, biscuits and friendly Medievalist chat from 5pm! This week’s speaker will be Laura Light (Les Enluminures), The Paris Bible: what is it, and why its name matters.
  • The concluding Carlyle Lecture in Medieval Law with Prof. John Hudon (St Andrews) takes place at 5pm in South School, Examination Schools. This lecture reflects on the problems and possibilities of comparative legal history before moving on to the differences and similarities in patterns of England, France, and north Italy in the period c.1160-1270. All are welcome.

Wednesday 22nd February:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar will meet at 11:15am in the island room of Oriel College with Marlene Schilling presenting the personification of Frau Minne and Frau Venus in Heinrich von Neustadt’s Apollonius von Tyrland. If you are interested to come along, contact Henrike Lähnemann, to be added to the teams chat.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 6.26.1–27.3. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Robert Wizniewski (Univ. of Warsaw), ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire? Clerics and their income in Late Antiquity’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, followed by a drinks reception. This week’s speaker will be Cosima Gillhammer (University of Oxford), ‘For to telle treuly holy writ and schortly and pleynly: The Wycliffite Gospel Commentaries’.
  • From the Breast, an interdisciplinary hybrid seminar series will meet at 6-7pm online. This week’s speakers are Mazi Kuzi, Tel Aviv University, Breastfeeding Culture in Twelfth-Century France, and Anna Packman, University of Birmingham ‘modes meolc’ (‘milk of the mind’): Milk as Metaphor in Old English Literature. Please see the Eventbrite here to register!

Thursday 23rd February:

  • The Oxford Medieval Commentary Network will meet at 12.45-2.15pm in Thatched Barn, Christ Church (by meadow entrance). Free lunch from 12.45, seminar paper begins at 1.15. Today’s speaker will be Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, ‘Nigra sum: What Song of Songs Commentaries Can Tell Us About the Meanings of Blackness’. Please direct all questions to cosima.gillhammer:chch.ox.ac.uk, or visit the website.
  • The Celtic Seminar by Stuart Dunmore (Edinburgh), ‘Language acquisition motivations and identity orientations among Scottish Gaelic diasporas in Nova Scotia and New England‘ has been POSTPONED to 2 November. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for further info.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Jack Hartnell University of East Anglia, ‘Visualising Wombs and Obstetrical Fantasies in Late Medieval Germany‘.

Friday 24th February:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library with presentation of manuscripts from the collection, this week some manuscripts of the Rigveda, presented by Barbora Sojkova, a graduate trainee librarian at All Souls College (who has also been helping with the Bodleian Sanskrit cataloguing). Watch here the last medieval presentation by Dr Thea Gomelauri on the layout of Hebrew Bibles.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 11.30am at Colin Matthew Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Trevor Dean (Roehampton): ‘Female killers in late medieval Bologna‘. Please note the change of time and venue!

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Utrecht University is looking for two researchers (1 PhD candidate and 1 Postdoc) to complete the team of the NWO VIDI project Lettercraft and Epistolary Performance in Early Medieval Europe, 476–751 CE, running from 2023-2027. The PhD candidate (1,0 fte, 4 years, details here) will conduct a case study of the consensus-building powers of lettercraft in the context of Merovingian episcopal successions. The Postdoc (0,8 fte, 2 years, details here) will work together with the project leader, Dr Robert Flierman, to develop and explore two new research tools for the study of lettercraft in early medieval Europe. The application deadline is 12 March. The projects are set to start on 1 July 2023.
  • The History Department at Hamilton College invites applications for a one-year position at the rank of Visiting Assistant Professor, beginning July 1, 2023. We seek candidates to teach courses on Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Histories. Candidates with ABD will be considered, although candidates with a Ph.D. are preferred. The teaching load for this position is five courses. Candidates should submit a cover letter, c.v., and two letters of recommendation via interfolio at http://apply.interfolio.com/121331. Questions regarding the search may be directed to John Eldevik, Search Committee Chair, at jeldevik@hamilton.edu. Our review of applications will begin on March 20, 2023.
  • Two postdoc posts (five years) are now being advertised to work on Professor Helen Fulton’s ERC/UKRI project, ‘The Medieval March of Wales, c. 1282–1550’. Closing date is 16 March. Please circulate widely. Enquiries to helen.fulton@bristol.ac.uk. For full details and to apply, see here.

I began this email by addressing teaching staff, but don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the students of our community! Some advice on the importance of taking charge of your own learning:

Et si quid minus accepistis, non meae, credo, culpae deputari potest!
[And if anyone didn’t learn sufficiently, I don’t think they can assign the blame to me [the teacher]!, Ep. 34]

May we all learn sufficiently this week, and blame nobody for our lapses! Wishing you a sunny Week 6 full of learning and teaching.

[“Whose fault is it that we didn’t learn enough this week?”]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 25 v.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

MCC Highlights: Dr Federica Gigante’s talk on Islamic Textiles in Christian Religious Settings

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20/02/2023

07:50

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Around Oxford, News

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Valentine’s Day at the Medieval Church and Culture seminar featured a enthralling talk from Dr Federica Gigante, Curator of the Collection from the Islamic World at the History of Science Museum in Oxford.  Federica showed us the many places where Islamic textiles can be found in medieval Christian religious settings – places we’ve all seen, but never realised what we were looking at.  Islamic silks were used to wrap saints’ bones, or were depicted as trompe l’oeuil hangings on church walls – such as here in the upper basilica in Assisi:

or even within the frescoes of the life of St Francis:

The images can be linked to surviving Islamic textiles and often feature kufic or pseudo-kufic script in a band along the top, with Islamic religious messages.

Perhaps the most fascinating set of images Federica showed was the depiction of a whole Islamic tent in the chancel of a medieval convent in Ferrara, Sant’Antonio in Polesine – still extant, though with later interpolations:

Why a tent might be painted on the walls of a convent chancel prompted lively speculation from the audience, and we all went away with our eyes opened for when we next spot textiles in churches.

Medieval Matters: Week 5

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13/02/2023

10:57

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News

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It’s fifth week, the most notorious week in the Oxford term! If you are feeling the fifth week blues, you might perhaps be comforted by the fact that Spring will be arriving soon. The days are already getting longer, and we are enjoying more sunny days in Oxford. Here is Alcuin on the importance of Spring:

Cuculum, vernalem avem, vestrae direxi sanctitati cum munusculis parvitatis meae
[“I have sent your grace the cookoo, the bird of Spring, with some little gifts from me” Ep. 167]

Though I can’t bring you Spring right away, I can offer many little gifts in the form of a delightful schedule of weekly events! Please check the weekly listings below to chase those fiften week blues away:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Piers Plowman was a great success (cf. our new TikTok account for some clips!); the costumes are now part of the OMS stock and can be used by any group performing in the mystery cycle on 22 April. Contact Michael Angerer for any questions around the performance!
  • The 54th Annual Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held on 17-19 March 2023, at Corpus Christi College & All Souls College, Oxford, on the theme of Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond. The Symposium brings together Byzantine studies with a series of innovative approaches to the material nature and realities of religion – foregrounding the methodological, historical and archaeological problems of studying religion through visual and material culture. For more information, the Symposium programme and registration, please visit the Symposium website here.
  • The Week 7 Medieval History Seminar coincides with a strike day (27th Feb), and will be CANCELLED. Prof Liesbeth van Houts will deliver the paper on the Empress Matilda in Michaelmas Term. 
  • The third Old Frisian Summer School will take place from 9-16th July in St Edmund Hall. After the in-person edition in 2019 and the online edition 2021, the third edition will be a hybrid event. We still hope as many students and early career researchers will be able to attend in person, but the hybrid part should enable students and scholars around the world to take part. There will also be a taster session with Johanneke Sytsema in week 7: Friday, 3 March 2023, 3–4pm in 47 Wellington Square, 1st floor, lecture room 1: Johanneke Sytsema: Old Frisian and its place among the Germanic Languages. For more information please see the OFSS website.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 13th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Nathan D. C. Websdale (University of Oxford), The Humbled Generation: Racial Otherization and Ethnic Contraction in Byzantium in the Witnesses of the Fourth Crusade. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. We will start with natural history from a medieval encyclopaedia. Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information. 
  • The Seminar in Manuscript Studies and Palaeography will take place at 2.15-3.45pm, in the Weston Library, Horton Room. This week’s speaker will be Sonja Drimmer (University of Massachusetts Amherst): “The ‘Genealogy Industry’: Codicological Diversity in England, c.1400–c.1500.” For further information contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Ingrid Ivarsen (Cambridge), ‘Law in the late seventh century: the case of Theodore, Hlothhere, Wihtræd and Ine‘. (You may also attend remotely, Teams link here: or log in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and join the group “Medieval History Research Seminar”, team code rmppucs. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk ). 

Tuesday 14th February:

  • The Governability across the medieval globe Discussion Group is CANCELLED, in solidarity with UCU strike action.
  • The Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar will take place at 2–3.30pm in the New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and coffee available from 1.45pm. This week’s speaker will be Patrick Lantschner, UCL, ‘A Symbiotic Relationship? Cities and States in Europe and the Islamic World‘.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar will not take place, in solidarity with the UCU industrial action.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5-6pm in the Charlese Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Paper starts at 5.15pm, with tea, coffee, biscuits and friendly Medievalist chat from 5pm! This week’s speaker will be Federica Gigante (History of Science Museum), ‘Islamic Spoils in a Christian Context: the reuse of Islamic textiles in Medieval Italian churches‘.
  • The Carlyle Lectures in Medieval Law, with Prof. John Hudon (St Andrews) takes place at 5pm in South School, Examination Schools. This week’s lecture explores the ways in which deliberate legal change came to have unintended effects, especially on substantive law. It considers the interplay of legal learning, legal reasoning, and legal change. In so doing, it ponders Sir Henry Maine’s view of substantive law being secreted in the interstices of procedure. All are welcome.

Wednesday 15th February:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar will meet at 11:15am in the island room of Oriel College for discussing the prologue of this term’s text, Heinrich von Neustadt’s Apollonius von Tyrland. If you are interested to come along, contact Henrike Lähnemann, to be added to the teams chat.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 2pm at Rees Davies Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Elena Rossi (Oxford, Magdalen), ‘The Entangled Nature of the University and Family Spheres in Medieval Bologna’.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Ovid, Fasti, 1.1–62. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Lilyana Yordanova (Ecole française d’Athènes), ‘In the name of the …lotus? Reinventing Christian monumental art and elite culture in the long 15th century’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, followed by a drinks reception. This week’s speaker will be Mike Bintley (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Beowulf’s Foliate Borders and the Surrounding Forest in Early Medieval England‘.

Thursday 16th February:

  • The Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Network Hilary Term Lecture takes place at 1pm at Memorial Room, Worcester College. This term’s speaker is Jacqueline Nowakowski FSA, Director of the Tintagel Castle Archaeological Research Project, on behalf of the Cornwall Archaeological Unit and English Heritage. The paper will be ‘Cornwall in Late Antiquity: New Findings from the Tintagel Castle Excavations‘. For queries, please contact Meredith Cutrer (meredith.cutrer@worc.ox.ac.uk).
  • The Centre for Gender, Identity, and Subjectivity (CGIS) is hosting a talk at 4pm in the History Faculty. The talk will be given by Jonas Roelens of the University of Ghent, titled “The young sodomite: Age and agency in sodomy cases in the late medieval Southern Low Countries”.
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speakers will be Martin Kirnbauer and the project team Vicentino21: Anne Smith, David Gallagher, Luigi Collarile and Johannes Keller (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis / FHNW), Soav’ e dolce – Nicola Vicentino’s Intervallic Vision. 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 just send an email to matthew.thomson@ucd.ie
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.00pm via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Nathan Abrams (Bangor), ‘Capturing and Preserving North Wales’ Jewish History?‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.

Friday 17th February:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library with presentation of manuscripts from the collection. Watch here last week’s exciting presentation by Dr Thea Gomelauri on the layout of Hebrew Bibles.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at St Hilda’s College, in the Julia Mann Room. The text will be extracts from the Chronicle of Langtoft; pdf will be provided. For access to the text and further information, please email: stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com or jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org.
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5pm at The Royal Oak. Please email Ashley Castelino (ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • CFP: Interfacing with linguistic norms, 323 BCE – 1453 CE: panel in Coimbra (14th Celtic Conference in Classics). This panel focuses on the use of linguistic norms in literature between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. From the idea of Hellenismos/Latinitas/ʿArabiyya until the development of the concept of ‘national language’, the promotion of language correctness and the imitation of canonical texts are elements of continuity in the endless compromise between norms and usage. Interested scholars are invited to submit abstracts of maximum 500 words by 20th February 2023 to the organisers (chiara.monaco@ugent.be; ugo.mondini93@gmail.com).  For full details, see the blog post here.
  • CFP: The Stanford-Berkeley English Graduate Conference 2023, Otherworlds. The Stanford-Berkeley English Graduate Conference seeks proposals for 20-minute papers that address any aspect of worldmaking in the context of otherness, alterity, subaltern studies, and literal other worlds, from any period, for a one-day conference, “Otherworlds,” to be held on April 22nd, 2023, in Stanford, CA, at Stanford University. The conference is open to any student currently enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program in English or a related discipline. For full details, please see the full CFP here.

Of course, it is also Valentine’s day tomorrow, and it would be improper of me to leave you without an appropriate Alcuin quote on academic love:

quia semper te amabo, semper te ammonere no cessabo
[“I will always love you, and so will never cease to give you advice”, Ep. 42]

May you give and receive kind advice this week! Of course, as your devoted news herald, I will never cease in providing weekly “advice”, but you are also served by the excellent graduate students Ashley Castelino, Eugenia Vorobeva, and Coral Kim, who are keeping the twitter and calendar updated with all of the latest updates on seminars, events, and strike action! Please remember to send them some love for their hard work, and to enjoy the fruits of their labours. I look forward to returning to your inboxes next week with even more gifts!

[A Medievalist, feeling the 5th week blues, is on the lookout for the arrival of Spring…]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 20 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian