Category: Around Oxford

Medieval Matters: Week 1

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24/04/2023

11:11

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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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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.

Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023

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21/04/2023

09:37

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The third Medieval Mystery Cycle was held on Saturday 22 April 2023 at St Edmund Hall, 12noon-3:30pm. https://seh.ox.ac.uk/mystery-cycle. Read a report on the cycle by Alison Ray and one on the French play by Elisabeth Dutton. Photographic documentation thanks to artist Pam Davis who took the plays as inspiration for her own production CAT.

Trailer of the most dramatic moments, compiled by Natascha Domeisen

0:00:34 Prologue
0:02:50 O quanta qualia (St Edmund Hall Choir) Latin
0:06:18 Extracts from Piers Plowman (Swonken ful harde) Middle English
0:35:40 The Nativity and Salutation (English Faculty) Middle English
1:07:13 The Innocents (Les perles innocentes) 16th-century French
1:30:19 The Passion (Sorores Sanctae Hildae) Latin and German
1:54:03 The Harrowing of Hell (Medieval Germanists) Middle High German
2:08:08 The Last Judgement (Past and Present Teddy Students) Modern English

Full length version of all prologues and plays – navigate to a particular play via the menu above

Welcome to the third incarnation of the Oxford Medieval Mystery Cycle! As in 2019 and 2022, 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.

Join us, then, on this merry multilingual journey featuring plays dating from between the 12th and the 16th century! When the chapel bell rings at midday, the choir of St Edmund Hall will open the Cycle with a performance in front of the Old Dining Hall. We then start with an allegorical vision of Piers the Plowman before running through episodes of the New Testament, with the Christmas cycle unfolding in the Front Quad, followed by the Easter cycle in the churchyard around St Peter-in-the-East and – last but not least – the Last Judgement closing with the sound of the trumpet from the tower of St-Peter-in-the-East.

A special thank you goes to all the actors, directors, singers and other enthusiasts who have made these performances possible, to Professor Lesley Smith and Professor Henrike Lähnemann, co-directors of Oxford Medieval Studies, the driving force behind the Mystery Cycle, and to the Fellows and Principal of St Edmund Hall, for once again agreeing to host our medieval madness!

Master of Ceremonies

Jim Harris is Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum, a career he came to having trained as an actor at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art and worked for over a decade in theatre, television and radio before deciding there was more to life than castings for shower gel commercials. “Some people would describe this as the role of a lifetime. Me, I’m just glad I don’t have to actually learn the lines.”

Composer of Linking Verses

David Maskell specialises in both the academic and practical aspects of theatre in Classical and Modern Languages. He is an experienced creative writer, and he also created the verses linking the plays for last year’s Mystery Cycle.

Musical Accompaniment

The Mystery Cycle will be opened by a performance of Peter Abelard’s ‘O quanta qualia’ by the Choir of St Edmund Hall. Afterwards, our plays will be accompanied by the heavenly choir of the Turba Angelorum, composed of the ‘Harrowing of Hell’ angels.

Administration

The Mystery Cycle is managed by Henrike Lähnemann, Co-Director of Oxford Medieval Studies and Professorial Fellow at St Edmund Hall, and Michael Angerer, Graduate Convenor for the Medieval Mystery Cycle and a DPhil student in medieval English.

The performances was filmed by Natascha Domeisen and documented by members of Oxford Medieval Studies. The videos were uploaded to the Oxford Medieval Studies Youtube and TikTok account.

Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023

A coffee and cake stall was provided by members of the Oxford University German Society, organised by Thomas Henning, in aid of the German Red Cross.

1.      12noon Extracts from Piers Plowman

Group: Swonken ful harde. Language: Middle English. Director: Eloise Peniston

While our complete play follows a man named Will, who falls asleep beside a stream on a May morning in Malvern Hills with a succession of dreams, we begin with the deadly sins. We then find Piers Plowman, taking only momentary repose from his plough to guide the field of folk towards Truth, although his directions are very confusing. He agrees to take the folk himself as long as they assist him in ploughing the half-acre. However, he finds many of the folk, including pickpockets, knights, common women, wafer-sellers, pardoners, to be wasters! Piers calls Hunger to encourage them to work however, after the acre has been ploughed, Hunger refuses to leave until he has consumed the best food and wine! Truth intercedes and sends Piers a pardon however it is discovered to not be a true pardon at all so Piers, in scandalous fashion, tears it asunder! Watch a full performance of Piers Plowman on the OMS Youtube channel.

Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
  • Will (the Dreamer): Sòlas McDonald
  • Piers (the Plowman): Charlie Epps
  • Repentaunce: Eloise Peniston
  • Pride: Sabrina Coghlan-Jasiewicz
  • Lechery/Gluttony: Laurence Nagy
  • Envy: Anna Cowan
  • Covetousness: Zelda Cahill-Patten
  • Wrath/Sloth: Sonny Pickering
  • Wastour: Liam Stewart

2.      12:30 The Chester Nativity and Salutation

Group: English Faculty. Language: Middle English. Director: Rachel Burns

In this play from the 15th-century Chester Mystery Cycle, witness the wonder of Jesus’ birth, the prophecy of the Sybil, the magnificent humility of Emperor Octavian, and the discomfiture of the midwives!

  • Gabriell/Angelus: Mishtooni Bose
  • Marya: Eugenia Vorobeva
  • Josephe: Tom Revell
  • Elizabeth/Preco: Siân Grønlie
  • Nuntius/Expositor: Cosima Gillhammer
  • Octavyan: Jacob Ridley
  • Primus Senator/Tebbell: Michael Angerer
  • Secundus Senator/Salome: Yinghan Li
  • Sybbell: Clare Mulley
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023

3.      1pm Comédie des Innocents, by Marguerite de Navarre

Group: Les perles innocentes. Language: 16th-century French. Director: Elisabeth Dutton. Read a report on the play.

Marguerite de Navarre (1492-1549) was wife of King Henry II of Navarre, sister to Francis I, King of France, and ancestress of the Bourbon kings of France. With her brother she made the French court a celebrated intellectual and cultural centre; having received an excellent classical education, she became an author and patron of humanists and reformers. Her salon was internationally famous as the ‘New Parnassus’. She wrote poems, a collection of short stories called the Heptameron,and the intense mystical poem Miroir de l’âme pécheresse. She also wrote a number of plays: today we present her dramatization of the narrative of King Herod’s Slaughter of the Innocents.

  • God/Herod/1st Woman: Aurélie Blanc
  • 1st Angel/1st Tyrant: Coraline Vuarnoz
  • 2nd Angel/Captain: Helene Wigginton
  • 3rd Angel/2nd Tyrant: Carmen Vigneswaren-Smith
  • Mary/1st Doctor of the Law/Nurse of Herod’s Son/1st Soul: Felicitas Harris
  • Joseph/2nd Doctor of the Law/2nd Woman, Rachel/2nd Soul: Elisa Pagliaro
  • Singer: Lucy Matheson
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023

BREAK

4.      2pm The Carmina Burana Passion Play

Group: Sorores Sanctae Hildae (unter Beteiligung einiger Bauern aus Iftelei). Language: Latin and slightly modernized Middle High German. Director: David Wiles. Stage manager: Isabel Schwörer

Mary Magdalene is a courtesan who repents her life of sin and pleasure. When she anoints Christ’s feet with expensive ointment, Judas is outraged, and betrays his master for thirty pieces of silver. In the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus begs for the cup to be taken from him, before accepting God’s will. Mary his mother suffers at the foot of the cross, and takes John as a replacement for the son she is losing. The juxtaposition of the two Maries is a striking feature of the play from which our extract is taken. The text originates in 12th-century Bavaria. The performance was repeated in Iffley churchyard on the following day.

  • Narrator: Alex Marshall
  • Angel/Voice of Jesus: Imogen Lewis
  • Devil: Andrew Stilborn
  • Mary Magdalene: Irina Boeru
  • Merchant/Weeping Woman/Longinus: Laura Laube
  • Caiaphas/Woman: Jonathan Honnor
  • Judas: Alice Hawkins
  • Virgin Mary: Laurence Nagy
  • Amator/John the Evangelist: Justin Vyvyan-Jones
  • Joseph of Arimathea: David Wiles
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023

5.      2:30pm The Harrowing of Hell

Group: Medieval Germanists. Language: Middle High German. Director: Luise Morawetz.

In the Harrowing of Hell you can follow the battle between Christ and Lucifer – good and evil – from Lucifer’s perspective. Imagine how Lucifer feels when Christ and his retinue of angels storm hell without difficulty and rush off with his most precious captured souls, Adam and Eve! No wonder he overreacts and tries to make up for quality with quantity by sending his faithful servant Satanas on the hunt for as many lost souls as possible. Watch out, or they might get you too!

The script is based on the ‘Innsbruck Easterplay’ edition by Nigel F. Palmer & Henrike Lähnemann, with modern English narration by Haley Flower.

  • Lucifer: Montgomery Powell
  • Satan: Freya Hoult
  • Jesus: Timothy Powell
  • Adam: Alyssa Steiner
  • Eve: Nicholas Champness
  • Narrator: Evgeny Gurin
  • Lost souls: Lena Vosding, Godelinde Perk, Anja Peters, Justin Vyvyan-Jones, Julia Brusa, Felix Clayton McClure, Elizabeth Hogermeer, Georgia Macfarlane
  • Angels: Andrew Dunning, Travis Fuchs, Cosima Gillhammer, Nicole Jedrzejko, Henrike Lähnemann, Oliver Riordan
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023

6.      3pm The Last Judgement

Group: Past and Present Teddy Students (and Friends). Director: Amy Hemsworth. Assistant Director: Aili Channer

Language: Modern English

A modern take on the final play of the Towneley Cycle by Amy Hemsworth and Alex Gunn, featuring a very confused John of Patmos, an exasperated Angel, and their best attempts to make sense of the Book of Revelation. For a full account of the story behind the script, read the blog post on the 2019 Medieval Mystery Play website.

  • John of Patmos: Patrick Painter
  • Angel: Lily Massey
  • Jesus: Sebastian Morson
  • Satan: Freddie Houlahan
  • 1st Evil Soul: Hester Gleeson
  • 2nd Evil Soul: Holly James Johnston
  • 1st Demon: Alex Gunn
  • 2nd Demon: Jake Caudwell
  • 1st Good Soul: Aili Channer
  • 2nd Good Soul: Amy Weihang Deng
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2023
The text reads ' OMGC 2023. Save the Date! Online and in Oxford, 20th - 21st April, 2023 ', and is overlaid on a manuscript, a 15th century preist's vade medum, Bodleian Library MS. Douce 18, f. 44 v. This folio is the calendar page for April.

Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2023

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15/04/2023

14:28

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The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference is back on April 20-21, 2023 with the theme of ‘Names and Naming’!

The conference takes place fully hybrid, in Oxford and online. Follow us on Twitter @OxMedGradConf and In the meantime, check out the conference website (https://oxgradconf.wixsite.com/omgc), with its extensive digital collection of Oxford medieval medical manuscripts and its blog featuring some excellent articles on past conference themes. If you’d like to contribute a blog post or have any questions about the conference, you can get in touch at oxgradconf@gmail.com.

20 Apr, 09:00 – 21 Apr, 18:00. Online & In-Person at Ertegun House, Oxford
Register here for free to participate remotely

THURSDAY, APRIL 20

9:55-10:00 Opening Remarks

10:00-11:30 Session 1: Individual & Unique

  • Tristan Alphey, ‘Nicknames in Early Medieval England and Social Regulation’
  • Will Hoff, ‘In the name of Robin Hood: a new look at byname evidence for the outlaw tradition’
  • Sebastian Dows-Miller, ‘Jean from Saint-Quentin: who was he, and does it matter?’

12:00-13:30 Session 2: Patterns & Variations

  • Madeleine Killacky, ‘Rubricating Names in Malory’s Le Morte Darthur’
  • Birger Mård, ‘Name-phrase variation in the Arboga municipal court records (1450–1569)’
  • Marina Ilia, ‘Naming Patterns in Venetian Cyprus’

14:30-16:00 Session 3: Reading the Land

  • Abigail Lloyd, ‘How to find a medieval settlement by the name of a hill? A challenge to the Gelling and Cole hypothesis’
  • Christophe de Coster, ‘‘Hic Sunt Dracones’: data-driven analysis of the (un)changing nature of toponyms and its implications for toponym-based landscape-reconstructions
  • Em Horne, ‘An Examination of the value of place-names as evidence for the history, landscape and, especially, language(s) of the Lancashire Coast’

16:30-17:30 Keynote Address 1 Dr David Zakarian, ‘The World through the Eyes of Medieval Armenian Scribes’

FRIDAY, APRIL 21

10:00-11:30 Session 4: Genealogies & Histories

  • Claire Lober, ‘Monuments to Meaning in the Historia and Brut y Brenhinedd’
  • Deepashree Dutta, ‘The Little Kingdom of Bishnupur: Naming, Self-Fashioning and Making of a Vaishnava Devotional Realm’
  • Jodie Miller, ‘Naming and Moral Lineage in Les Enfances de Renart

12:00-13:30 Session 5: Identification & Definition

  • Jack Nunn, ‘Anthological Identities: Naming Names in the Robertet Manuscripts’
  • Wyn Shaw, ‘Naming, Gender and Transition in Old French Chansons de Geste’
  • Nancy Michaud, ‘Masons’ Marks in the York Minster: Using masons’ marks to understand the construction of the York Minster’

14:30-16:00 Session 6: Unseen & Unknown

  • Hillel Feuerstein, ‘Satan is a List: Naming Demons in Medieval Kabbalah’
  • Ilinca-Simona Ionescu, ‘Naming Household Spirits: a Lexicographic Perspective on Late Medieval Spain’
  • Rodrigo Ballon Villanueva, ‘Naming God: A More Radical Medieval Theory?’

16:30-17:30 Keynote Address 2 Professor Richard Dance, ‘The Name Game: The Etymologist vs. the Vikings’

17:30-17:45 OMGC 2024 Theme Selection + Closing Remarks

Medieval Matters: Week 8

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06/03/2023

06:44

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Around Oxford, events

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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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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

Lehnwörter – A Double Bill on Etymology & a Cultural History of Writing through Words

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23/02/2023

22:34

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Around Oxford, paper

, , ,

When: Week 8, 10 March  2023, 3–5pm

Where: 47 Wellington Square, 1st floor, lecture room 1

What: Double bill on etymology in German and English with Dr Aletta Leipold (Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Leipzig, working also on the history of magic) and Dr Philip Durkin (Oxford English Dictionary, author of ‘Borrowed Words’ & al.). This is part of Henrike Lähnemann’s Paper IV lecture series ‘Topics in German Historical Linguistics’, aimed at honours students of German literature and linguistics but open to anybody interested in history of the German language and its intersection with English.

Aletta Leipold: rûna, rîzan, scrîban – A Cultural History of Writing from the Old High German dictionary

The lecture will examine the evidence of transmission and usage of two Old High German termini technici for writing, rîzan and scrîban. The indigenous Germanic verb *wrîtan, which has remained the general term for the writing process in English, is displaced in German by the Latin loanword scrîbere. I will examine whether there is evidence of this process in Old High German, and where there are overlaps. The third part will focus on the Old High German noun rûna, which is frequently attested in North Germanic as the object of *wrîtan. Unlike in New High German, OHG rûna does not mean ‘rune, Germanic character’ but is predominantly associated with the oral realm. I will discuss whether the designation of the Germanic characters was transmitted into West Germanic or whether it perished with the runes themselves on the continent. Can we see traces of rûna being used in Old High German as a general term for a ‘written character’?

Lecture translated and read by William Thurlwell

Philip Durkin (Oxford English Dictionary): Lexical Borrowing – Fremdwörter, Lehnwörter and German words in English

How can we survey borrowings from German into (modern) English? How does borrowing from German compare with borrowing from other languages, in scale and nature? What issues are there in identifying loanwords, and various types of loan formations? Are concepts such as Fremdwort and Lehnwort of practical use, and what issues do they raise? Link to the OED.

Part of the Paper IV lecture series
Runic alphabets in St. Gallen, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. Sang. 270, p. 52 – Educational manuscript 
http://www.e-codices.ch/en/csg/0270/52
Open book with music notation on the left side and song text on the right hand side, landscape format

Late-Medieval German Love Songs. Concert and Talk

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23/02/2023

09:27

1 Comment on Late-Medieval German Love Songs. Concert and Talk

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In 1524, the Augsburg organist Bernhart Rem started writing the part books Österreichische Nationalbibliothek Ms. 18 810 from which the songs for the concert are taken. The pre-concert talk will explore the writing and music-making of late medieval Germany. The early 16th-century soundscape was varied and colourful, ranging from street cries, via religious songs in processions and meetings of the Meistersinger, to instrumental music performed by “town waits”, groups of instrumentalists playing for festive occasions. The songs of Ms. 18 810 retain features of this exclusive aristocratic song culture. They might look like pop music with run-of-the-mill lyrics but in fact these are cutting-edge text-musical combinations. Singing about love’s woes and (occasionally) joys, and of how the poet, assuming the persona of a male lover, constantly runs into and (occasionally) overcomes the obstacles society throws in his way, is as noble a pastime as falconry or commissioning costly manuscripts.

On 7 March 2023 (Tuesday of week 8 of Hilary Term for the Oxonians), music editor and viol player David Hatcher, Professor of German Literature & Linguistics Henrike Lähnemann, and singer James Gilchrist met in the Holywell Music Room to discuss the songs of this manuscripts, taking in music, literature and culture in early 16th century Germany.

Pre-Concert Talk recording by Dr Natascha Domeisen for Oxford Medieval Studies
Pre-concert-talk-scriptThe talk script including text and translation of all songs performed in the concert

The authors were members of the same courtly circles or, in cases such as Ludwig Senfl’s autobiographical song ‘Lust hab ich ghabt’, even writing texts themselves as singer-songwriters of the period. In line with the poetic habits of the period, they pay more attention to stanza form than to originality of content. Maximilian’s court was an international meeting point: not only would all forms of German dialects have been spoken, but Latin, French, and even English as well; Ludwig Senfl’s teacher Heinrich Isaac was Dutch.

The pre-concert talk also mentioned the autobiographical song Lust hab ich gehabt zur musica, a song in praise of music education which spells in the verse initials the name of its author and composer, LUDWIG SENNFL, and charts his musical training.

Pre-Concert Handout

Henrike Lähnemann writes: It is appropriate that with James Gilchrist this repertoire is interpreted by a non-native speaker. Coming to the repertoire not from within the system gives performers the advantage over a German singer to be aware of temporal and regional varieties of the language of song. I was delighted when James contacted me via Claire Horáček – alumna of my own College St Edmund Hall – to check out historical pronunciation. It was exciting to go through this repertoire which can only be grasped when spoken out aloud; this is not a text for silent reading!

Concert in the Hollywell Music Room with the Linarol Consort of viols and James Gilchrist (tenor)

Recording of the concert by Natascha Domeisen

Book further concerts with the Linarol Consort. Listen to the concert playlist.

Concert Programme