Light on Darkness – Book launch in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford

On 24 April, 8pm, Antiquum Documentum are pleased to present a concert to celebrate the launch of the new book ‘Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy’ (Cosima Clara Gillhammer, Reaktion Publishers). The programme features music connected to the book’s main themes, by composers such as Palestrina, Byrd, Weelkes, Amner, Judith Weir, and others, sung in ornamented style.

Entry is free. Books and drinks will be available for sale in the interval.

About the book:
Light on Darkness: The Untold Story of the Liturgy offers a captivating journey through the history of religious rituals in Western Europe, showcasing the profound impact of Christian liturgy on art, literature, music and architecture. Through ten evocative stories, it explores medieval rituals and their cultural influence up to the present day, providing fresh insights into the enduring legacy of the liturgy as an expression of human emotion and religious experience. Accessible to all, this guide provides translations and explanations to uncover the hidden treasures of ancient rites and their lasting significance, appealing to those seeking a deeper understanding of Western liturgical traditions. For more information: www.liturgybook.com

The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2025: Programme

When? 26 April 2025, from 12 noon. Where? St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, OX1 4AR

Come One, Come All! Free entry, no booking required.

On Saturday, 26 April 2025, a cycle of medieval mystery plays will be performed by various troupes around St Edmund Hall’s grounds. Medieval mystery plays were performed throughout the Middle Ages by and for everyday townspeople, and we’re excited to put on quite a day of shows for you!

Worried that you won’t understand the performances done in medieval languages? Never fear! Each play will be accompanied by a modern English prologue, which will help to summarise the play.

12 noon: Old Testament Plays (Front Quad):

The Fall of the Angels (Angels of Oxford) – Middle English

Adam and Eve (Oxford German Medievalists) – Hans Sachs, German

The Flood (The Travelling Beavers) – Middle English

Abraham and Isaac (Shear and Trembling) – Middle English

1.30pm: New Testament Plays (Churchyard):

The Annunciation (Low Countries Ensemble) – Middle Dutch

The Nativity (Les Perles Innocentes) – Marguerite de Navarre, French

The Wedding at Cana (Pusey House) – Modern English, with Middle English archaisms

The Crucifixion (The Wicked Weights) – Middle English

The Lamentation (St Edmund Consort) – Bordesholmer Marienklage, Low German and Latin

The Harrowing of Hell (The Choir of St Edmund Hall) – Latin Sequence

3.30pm: New Testament Plays Continued:

The Resurrection (St Stephen’s House) – Middle English

The Martyrdom of the Three Holy Virgins (Clamor Validus) – Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, Latin and modern English

The Last Judgement (MSt English, 650–1550) – Modern English

6.15pm: Evensong (Chapel)

No tickets or booking is required, and it is free to attend. You are welcome to drop in and out throughout the afternoon. All performances will take place outside, so please dress comfortably for the weather conditions. There will be two small tea breaks, at around 1.15pm and 3.15pm.

The Wicked Weights admire their purpose-built cross – all ready for the Crucifixion! Picture: Rebecca Menmuir

If you have any questions about the cycle or the performances, email the co-heads of performance: Sarah Ware (sarah.ware@merton.ox.ac.uk) and Antonia Anstatt (antonia.anstatt@merton.ox.ac.uk). And look out for updates to our website, where detailed information about the individual plays will be published.

For a trailer of the type of Medieval Mystery play which awaits you, have a look at the extract from the Towneley Last Judgement play performed for a HistoryHit programme about the Apocalypse

Play: The Enterlude of the Godly Queen Hester

When? 28 March, 18:30–20:15
Where? Research Centre, Thatched Barn, Christ Church Meadow

The anonymous English Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester (c. 1529) is a fascinating play, unperformed since the 16th century. Ostensibly in praise of Esther, heroine of Jewish history, the play is actually a political satire about the demise of Cardinal Wolsey. The fall of Wolsey, who had been the monarch’s right-hand man, was a key moment in the reign of Henry VIII. Assuerus, King of Persia, stands for Henry, while Aman, the model of the evil counsellor, for Wolsey. Henry’s wife, Katherine of Aragon, is idealised in the figure of Hester, who fills a traditional role for virtuous royal women by interceding with her husband, but also boldly argues that queens should exhibit the same virtues as kings and can perfectly well govern kingdoms when their husbands are away fighting wars! She thus anticipates the strong secular heroines of Shakespearean comedy.

Originally, the play would have been performed by a boys’ company so it is appropriate that it will be staged by Edward’s Boys. This company, from King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, has, over the last two decades, revolutionised our understanding of the early modern repertoire. Alongside the English Enterlude, they will also present a short purimshpil, a Jewish folk play. The purim plays (still a living tradition in Yiddish) tell the story of Esther in a very different mode, celebrating the rescue of the Jewish people by their heroine in farcical style. The production is part of the WOMARD project, which explores connections between Jewish, Christian and Islamic Theatre and is sponsored by the SNSF.

Book your ticket here

The performance will be preceded by free talks, on Esther in Reformation Europe, and the purimshpil: 

16:00-16:45 Professor Cora Dietl, talk on ‘The Esther tradition and Reformation in medieval and early modern Europe

16:45-17:15 Rabbi Bex introduces the purim tradition, and a Q and A session with Bea Baldwin 

Esther pleads for the Jewish people; from The Queen’s College Library, Sel. d. 81, a Sammelband of Reformation-related pamphlets. Retratos o Tablas de las Historias de testamento (1568)
Retratos o tablas de las historias del Testamento viejo, : hechas y dibuxadas por vn muy primo y sotil artifice. Iuntamente con vna muy breue y clara exposicion … de cada vna dellas en Latin, con las quotas de los lugares de la sagrada scritura de donde se tomaron, y la mesma en lengua Castellana, para que todos gozen delas. Frellon, Jean, -1568 M. D. XLIX. | En Lion de Francia, : [Excudebat Ioannes Frellonius] | [52] leaves : ill. ; 4⁰


 

The Netherhole Martyr – Dramatic Reading

When? 2 May 2025, 6-7.30pm
Where? Old Library (drinks) and Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (performance)

From the website: The year is 1320 in the stinking town of Netherhole. A young nun feels the hand of God clutch her guts, an ambitious Earl issues a dangerous decree, and a ghost rises from the river. Doctors, priests and rumours descend and Netherhole’s fortunes are changed forever.

The Netherhole Martyr is a play recounting a year in the fortunes of the people of Netherhole, a Yorkshire town in the grip of religious fervour after a young novitiate enacts a painful communion with the divine through her constipated bowels. This surreal and macabre play, written by ‘Good Friends for a Lifetime’ in shades of Donne and Swift, is fully illustrated by Sigrid Koerner and Hannah Mansell.

Get Ready for the Medieval Mystery Cycle

When? 26 April 2025, 12noon-5.30pm. Where? St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, OX1 4AR
Preparatory Meeting: 13 March 2025, 5-6.30pm, St Edmund Hall
(ask at the Lodge for directions to Henrike’s office)

The days are getting longer, the sun has come out for three days in a row (!), and the flowers in Teddy Hall are starting to blossom. That can only mean one thing: the Medieval Mystery Cycle is approaching!

Less than two months from now, on 26 April, between 12 noon­ and 5.30 PM, the Front Quad and churchyard of St Edmund Hall will be transformed into Paradise, Golgatha, Hell, and much more, as a selection of groups from all walks of academic life will perform a collection of twenty-minute-long medieval plays based on different Biblical stories. No tickets or registrations are required — just drop in and out of Teddy Hall.

We will start at noon with ringing the chapel bell for the Creation and Adam and Eve. Leaving Paradise and exiled to Earth, we will then see the Flood and Abraham sacrificing his son Isaac. From those Old Testament stories, we will move to the New Testament, and physically from the Front Quad to Teddy Hall’s unique graveyard. There, we will witness the Annunciation and Nativity, before seeing adult Jesus in action at the Wedding at Cana. The Crucifixion (featuring a purpose-built cross!), Mary’s Lament, Martyrdom of the Three Holy Virgins, Mary Magdalene, and Resurrection will take us through Easter. Finally, the Last Judgement will conclude this day of medieval storytelling.

As always, the selection of plays and languages will be fantastically diverse, taking us from Hans Sachs’s German to Marguerite de Navarre’s French, from Hroswita of Gandersheim’s Latin to the Middle English of the Digby Mary Magdalene. Other plays will be performed in Modern English, including the world premiere of the Wedding at Cana, based on only 1.5 surviving lines in the York cycle. But worry not: all plays will be introduced by a Modern English prologue, so no language skills are required to follow along. And of course, the language of theatre is universal …

Curious? Intrigued? We are holding a meeting for all creatives and those who’d like to be one at Teddy Hall on Thursday of 8th Week (13th March), 5 PM. This will be a great opportunity to meet some of the other people involved, chat to the organisers, have a look at the performance spaces, and discuss any open questions.

Alternatively, email Sarah Ware (sarah.ware@merton.ox.ac.uk) and Antonia Anstatt (antonia.anstatt@merton.ox.ac.uk) if you have any questions or are looking for a way to get involved. In the meantime, watch this space and be on the lookout for updates to our website for the 2025 cycle, which we will update periodically as our thespians prepare to take centre stage — or, in this case, quad!

The Oxford Anglo-Norman Reading Group

The group continues to meet in hybrid format at Harris Manchester College (see photo!). We study the literature of the Anglo-Norman world (the insular French of the Middle Ages) in four collaborative sessions per term, 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… When possible, we invite a guest speaker, or (for example) the editor of a work in progress. We believe our extra-curricular group has been an important addition to medieval studies in Oxford for at least 20 years. We welcome all comers, primarily graduate students but also numerous others, whether they know any French or Old French or not; we welcome all readers in any medieval language, literature, history, hagiography, music… Recent texts have included the Anglo-Norman life of St Godric, presented by Margaret Coombe, and an Apocalypse edited and translated (with our help) by Antje Carroll. Michael Angerer presented part of his thesis as an introduction to reading the Voyage of Brendan.

As an amusing change, we recently read a translation of a short modern story into Anglo-Norman, that I had been commissioned to make. The group `peer-reviewed’ my work, offering suggestions and improvements. It was as valuable in terms of language and vocabulary, and for the study of genre, as reading the real thing!

The group is run by me, an independent scholar in Anglo-Norman studies. I studied with Tony Hunt and have many years’ experience of teaching and publication. An average meeting varies from 4 to 12 people in person, depending on a busy Oxford term, and our hybrid format allows scholars from farther afield, who bring the number up to perhaps 20. 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 with an introduction, questions are explored and discussion is encouraged. It’s our mixture of serious scholarship and fun (not to mention the refreshments: thank you, OMS) that has kept the group going for so long.

Jane Bliss (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org)

Job: Professor in Latin Palaeography

The Faculty of History and Wadham College are seeking an outstanding palaeographer to join the team of medieval historians. Medieval History is exceptionally strong in Oxford with a large and lively community of taught graduates, doctoral students and postdoctoral early career researchers.  The collegiate university is home to the largest university-based collection of medieval manuscripts in the world.

This post is an exciting and demanding opportunity for a proven scholar and talented teacher whose research and teaching specialism is in the history of Latin manuscripts (codices, documents, fragments thereof) within the disciplinary context of medieval history.  Beyond a specialism in scripts used for writing medieval Latin, there are no chronological or geographical preferences, and the successful candidate will be responsible for graduate teaching across the entire span of Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages including book and documentary traditions. The person appointed will conduct research of the highest quality suitable for submission to REF within the broad parameters of the discipline of medieval history, will seek external grant funding for manuscript-related projects and will participate in the public engagement and knowledge dissemination activities of the Bodleian Libraries and the colleges of the University.

The appointee will be expected to play a full part in the academic life of the Faculty of History and Wadham College and will work closely with colleagues in other faculties within the Humanities Division. The University of Oxford uses the grade of associate professor for most of its senior academic appointments. Associate professors are eligible for consideration through regular recognition of distinction exercises for award of the title of full professor.

We welcome applications from candidates at all post-doctoral career stages, including at professorial level. We are committed to creating a diverse academic workforce and positively encourage applications from under-represented communities. We particularly encourage applications from women (approximately 40% of Faculty posts are held by female academics), people with disabilities and Black, Asian, and minority ethnic candidates.

The appointee will be a member of the Faculty of History and a non-tutorial fellow of Wadham College. The post is tenable from 1 October 2025 or as soon as possible thereafter. The deadline for applications is Wednesday 19th March 2025Presentations and interviews are expected to take place in Oxford late April/Early May.

Queries about the post should be addressed to the Chair of the History Faculty Board, Professor Martin Conway  or the Chichele Professor of Medieval History, Professor Julia Smith. All enquiries will be treated in strict confidence; they will not form part of the selection decision.

Pay Scale : Associate Professor Grade 36S: £55,755 to £74,867 per annum plus additional benefits and allowances as detailed in the job description. Further particulars: AP in Medieval Latin Manuscript Studies FP-FINAL.pdf

Apply Now

Volunteering at Iffley Church

Invitation to a tea party with LIVING STONES on SATURDAY 15 MARCH 3.00-4.30 in the Church Hall, Church Way, Iffley OX4 4EG.
Come along and find out about LIVING STONES. Meet the Living Stones volunteers. Join in: Living Stones is looking for volunteers of any age, background or beliefs

Living Stones is the heritage and educational arm of St Mary’s, the church at the heart of Iffley village, Rose Hill and Donnington. Volunteers welcome visitors to the church. They also run activities, events and talks on its history and architecture. They will start welcoming visitors to the church on Sunday afternoons on Palm Sunday, 13 April. They also have three events planned:

SATURDAY 10 MAY 10.00-4.30 – Drawing Iffley Church, day-school with artist Micah Hayns.

SATURDAY 17 MAY 11.00-7.15 – Day of chant in celebration of St Dunstan, patron saint of bellringers and music. The day ends with a special service in the church sung to music composed by St Dunstan and first written down in the 12th century.

SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER – Patronal Festival for St Mary the Virgin, picnic and family fun.

Krasis: Object-centred symposia at the Ashmolean

Krasis is a unique, museum-based, interdisciplinary teaching and learning programme, which began life at the Ashmolean in 2017, devised by classicist (and historian of ancient Boeotia) Dr Sam Gartland and Teaching Curator Dr Jim Harris. In 2018, the programme won a University of Oxford Humanities Division Teaching Excellence Award. Hilary term 2025 was its 22nd iteration.

Each term Krasis gathers eight early career researchers from the University of Oxford (the Ashmolean Junior Teaching Fellows or AJTFs) and 16 current Oxford undergraduates and taught-postgraduates (the Krasis Scholars) for a series of object-centred symposia, devised and delivered by the Teaching Fellows, who each address a shared theme from the standpoint of their own discipline and their own research.

For the Krasis Scholars, the programme offers first-hand insight into what an academic pathway might look like, and provides a rare opportunity to learn directly from researchers and to contribute to the conversation from within their degree specialism. For the AJTFs, it offers a forum for interdisciplinary dialogue and a ready, able team of students and colleagues to explore creative, imaginative approaches to collaborative, collections-based teaching. For all participants, it offers the chance to engage with the peerless collections of the Ashmolean at first hand.

Over the past seven years, Krasis has seen series on Power, the Body, Absence, Presence, Performance, Devotion, Imitation, Voices in Conflict, Movement/Transition, Play, Danger, Identity, Constraint, Opening, Becoming, Belonging, Re-Use, Work, Dialogue, Container, Wealth, Intersections, and Ruptures. We have used objects ranging from kimonos, musical scores and Tibetan musical instruments to Renaissance bronzes, newspaper advertisements, palaeolithic hand-axes and ancient Egyptian magic wands.

Most recently, we have used images loaned to the Ashmolean by the Terra Foundation for American Art to anchor each symposium, with Teaching Fellows connecting outwards from them to explore, for example, Chinese jade, the anthropology of obesity, economic aspiration in the French Revolution, witchcraft and common wealth in early modern Europe, and gift-giving in pre-Christian Sweden, in symposia involving four thousand years of objects from Egypt, China, Japan, Europe and ancient West Asia.

Krasis Teaching Fellows and Scholars have come from Classics, English, History, Economics, Fine Art, Chemistry, Archaeology, Anthropology, Egyptology, Assyriology, Russian, Japanese Studies, German, Earth Sciences, Engineering, Politics, French, Portuguese, History of Art, Arabic, Physics, Statistics, Islamic Studies, Development Studies, Geography, Music, South Asian Studies, Philosophy, Linguistics, Theology, Women’s Studies, Experimental Psychology and Law, and from almost every college of the University.

The growing number of former Scholars returning as Teaching Fellows testifies to the impact of Krasis on its participants. If you’d like to take part, please fill out the application form and return it to krasis@ashmus.ox.ac.uk by 5pm on Friday of 8th week, 14th March.

Four afternoons to change your way of thinking. Forever.