Category: Around Oxford

Play: The Enterlude of the Godly Queen Hester

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16/03/2025

19:26

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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

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14/03/2025

05:44

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When? 2 May 2025, 6-8pm
Where? Old Library (drinks) and Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (performance)

Come one, come all! Prepare to worship the power of a good shit and marvel at the agonies and ecstasies of excrement!

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 semi-staged reading of the play, held in the spectacular Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East at St Edmund Hall, celebrates its recent publication by Strange Region Press. Written in shades of Donne and Swift, the text of this surreal and macabre work by Good Friends for a Lifetime is fully illustrated by Sigrid Koerner and Hannah Mansell.

The event is free to attend and no booking is required. Copies of the book will be available to purchase. The event will begin with drinks in the Old Library at 6pm, followed by a performance in the Crypt that will last approximately 1 hour and 15 minutes.

Maeve Campbell, Minna Jeffery and Lily Levinson are Good Friends for a Lifetime. They met on the MA Text and Performance at Birkbeck and RADA. Their first production, Shades of Mediocrity, about friendship, the cult of male genius and Simon & Garfunkel was performed at Camden People’s Theatre and the Old Red Lion. They were associate artists at Bathway Theatre, University of Greenwich, in 2021.

Strange Region is a publisher of experimental writing by artists, novelists and poets. They endeavour to use publishing as a tool to celebrate writing as performance, as architecture , as a mechanical component of creative practice and as a space to enjoy the perilous corners of the human experience. 

Get Ready for the Medieval Mystery Cycle

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02/03/2025

09:00

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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

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28/02/2025

14:10

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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

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27/02/2025

07:05

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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 2025. Presentations 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

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25/02/2025

18:09

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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

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20/02/2025

14:37

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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.

Krasis Information and application form TT 2025Download

CMTC presents — “Work in Progress” Colloquium

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13/02/2025

06:42

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The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures’ Hilary Term ‘Work-in-Progress’ colloquium – Tuesday 18th February (5.15-6.45pm, the Memorial Room at Queen’s) 

The CMTC is delighted to be hosting the following speakers: 

Dr Riccardo Montalto (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II): From manuscripts to history: The reconstruction of the Greek manuscript library of Achilles Statius (1524-1581)

Achilles Statius was a Portuguese humanist active in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century. Committed to editorial and propaganda activities and, in particular, in the edition of the texts of the Fathers of the Greek Church, Statius set up one of the largest private libraries in Renaissance Rome, peculiar for its size and intellectual value. Starting from the material data detectable from the manuscripts, compared with the data available from different sources – primarily historical, archival and library science – the research aims to reconstruct a part of Achilles Statius’s library and to identify some methods and working practices of the late Renaissance humanists.

Holly Dempster-Edwards (University of Liverpool): Emotions, Gender and Crusading in Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Prose Epics and Chronicles

This paper will give an overview of my PhD thesis, which examines the social function of emotions at the fifteenth-century court of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (r. 1419-1467). My methodology is based on that of the historian Barbara Rosenwein, whose concept of ‘emotional communities’ has been highly influential within Medieval Studies. My study is based on emotion words in three Burgundian mises en prose Les Croniques et Conquestes de Charlemaine by David Aubert, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople by Jehan Wauquelin, and Mabrien (attrib. Aubert). I have built on Rosenwein’s framework by employing quantitative analysis of the gendered and ‘racial-religious’ distribution of emotions within each text, alongside qualitative textual analysis and examination of text-image relations. This paper demonstrates how emotions have a social function within this specific emotional community of Burgundian knights and would-be crusaders in response to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and how these texts function as literary propaganda which presents itself as didactic; in so doing they attempt to achieve their more subtle aim of maintaining emotion norms within the context of Burgundian chivalric masculinity, hoping to persuade Philip’s courtiers to go on crusade with him in response to the defeat of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.

From the archive

Tuesday the 13th of February 2024, 5.15–6.45pm UK time Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures

Memorial Room, The Queen’s College    

1. A. D’Angelo (Rome ‘Sapienza’), ‘Catullan marginalia in the 16th century: the books of Piero Vettori’. 

The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich preserves three printed editions of Catullus’ Liber with marginal notes by Piero Vettori (1499-1585). This important scholar edited dozens of Classical authors, but never published anything on Catullus: thus, these books are the main extant evidence of his work on this poet. The notes contain variant readings, original conjectures and loci similes, and they offer new insights on Vettori’s philological method and his library. Through these marginalia, I will try to point out Vettori’s main interests in Catullus’ poetry and the sources he used for his Catullan studies.

2. Marlene Schilling (Oxford), ‘A special form of devotion – personifications of time in late medieval prayer books from Northern Germany’.  

Addressing liturgical holidays, for example welcoming Mr Easterday, is a particular characteristic of late medieval vernacular prayer-books from North German female convents. They highlight a distinct form of poetics, because describing and interacting with specific points in time – personifying them – allows an intercommunication with the divine that conveys a certain form of agency to the speaker. In this paper, we explore the particular type of prayer-books these personifications are found in, talk about their material indicators within the text, and think about the special role of the prayer-books from the Cistercian convent Medingen within this distinct manuscript landscape.

The Sorrowful Virgin: Medieval and Early Modern Devotion

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16/01/2025

11:32

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In association with Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH), and the Centre for Early Modern Studies, convened by Anna Wilmore, Taro Kobayashi, and Katerina Levinson on 24 March 2025 in St Hugh’s College

9:15-10:15am – Panel 1: Textual and Visual Devotion

  • Susanne de Jong (Leiden): Praying with Compassion: The Devotion of Mary’s Sorrows in Middle Dutch Books of Hours
  • Fiammetta Campagnoli (Sorbonne): A “Devotional Mirror”: Following Mary’s Footsteps through Her Sorrow and Meditations

10:35-11:35am – Panel 2: Sacred and Secular

  • Joana Balsa de Pinho (Lisbon): Piety and welfare: the Sorrowful Virgin in the context of the Portuguese Confraternities of Mercy
  • Serena Cuomo (Santiago de Compostela): Mother of all mothers – Affective Piety and Maternal Grief in the Roman de Troie

11:35am-12:35pm – Panel 3: Emotion and Trauma

  • Costas Gavriel (Oxford): ‘You know my pain’: Trauma, Self-Narrative and Marian Devotion in the Memorias of Leonor López de Córdoba
  • Ana Vitoria Lopes (Sao Paulo): Crying Women in Devotional Panels: A Study through the Lens of the History of Emotions

2-3pm – Manuscript workshop at the Weston Library. Handout.

Presented by Anna Wilmore and Susanne de Jong, with manuscripts being shown by Bodleian curator Matthew Holford

  • Private Devotions:
    – MS Douce 264: early 16th century book of private prayers and devotions (Latin and French) printed for a member of the family of Scepeaux
    – MS Lat Liturg .e .36: Italian collection of prayers written for a nun, 14th /15th century
  • Latin and Vernacular:
    – MS Douce 1: A tiny prayer book c. 1460 England, containing prayers in Latin and Middle English
  • Speculum humanae salvationis:
    – MS Lyell 67: late 14th century, Bohemia. f. 46r and 87v (Crucifixion), 90v (Virgin pierced by sword) and 91v (Virgin surrounded by arma Christi)
    – Arch. G d. 56, digitised, a hybrid Dutch incunable/blockbook c. 1470, see the description of the John Rylands copy and the CERL entry
  • Middle Dutch Books of Hours – MS Douce 243: Dutch; 3rd quarter 15th Century
    – MS Buchanan f. 1: These are both Dutch Books of Hours using the translation of Geert Grote.

3:45-5pm – Montgomery Powell (Oxford): Myn kynt unde ok myn god: Sorrowful Participation in the Bordesholmer Marienklage, followed by performance and discussion of Marian laments. Handout

5pm-6pm  – Keynote by Prof. Lesley Twomey (Northumbria): The Sorrows of the Virgin Mary at the Foot of the Cross in vernacular Vitae Christi in Medieval France, England and Spain.

The Seven Sorrows of the Virgin from The Prayer Book of Cardinal Albrecht of Brandenburg, approx 1525-35, Simon Benning, Getty Museum, Ms. Ludwig IX 19 (83.ML.115), fol. 251v