Medieval Matters, MT25 Week 1

Welcome to Michaelmas 2025 and to the definite version of the Oxford Medieval Studies Booklet! And greetings from the Stephen A. Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities. Among the many superlatives it boasts, there can probably be added the claim that this is the largest grouping (a madness?) of medievalists in the world, allowing encounters across the Humanities faculties. We’ll start this year and term in the traditional way with a social in Harris Manchester College on Tuesday of week 1, 13 October, from 5pm – everybody welcome. 

This email will arrive every Monday in your inbox; any changes after that will be updated in the weekly blogpost and in the calendar, both accessible via https://medieval.ox.ac.uk/.

Monday

  • French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30, Weston Library (Horton Room)
  • Introduction to Arabic Palaeography – 2:00, Khalili Research Centre
  • Carmina Burana: Graduate Text Seminar – 5:00, Harris Lecture Theatre, Oriel College
  • Medieval History Seminar – 5:00 with drinks reception to follow, All Souls College. James Miller  (Christ Church, Oxford) will be speaking on “Imagining Monastic Perfection: Benedict, Fleury, and Beyond in the Central Middle Ages”.

Tuesday

  • Medieval English Research Seminar – 12:15, Margaret Thatcher Centre, Somerville. Richard Dance (Cambridge) will be speaking on “Mirror Man: Ormm and his Words”.
  • Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room)
  • Medieval Studies Social – 5:00, Harris Manchester College. All welcome – come and meet your fellow medievalists!
  • James Ford Special Lecture 2025 Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain & Ireland (EMBI) – 5:15, Shulman Auditorium, Queen’s College. Francesca Tinti (University of the Basque Country) will be speaking on “Long-Distance Travel from Early Medieval Britain”.
  • Old English Graduate Reading Group – 5:15, location TBC, contact Hattie Carter

Wednesday

  • Early Medieval ‘Global Britain’: A Workshop by the Oxford Centre for Early Medieval Britain & Ireland (EMBI) – 9:15, The Memorial Room (Queen’s College). Booking required.
  • John Lydgate Book Club – 11:00, Smoking Room (Lincoln College).
  • Medieval German Graduate Seminar, planning meeting – 11:15, Somerville College.
  • Older Scots Reading Group – 2:30, Room 30.401 in the Schwarzman Centre.
  • Medieval Latin Documentary Palaeography Reading Group – 4:00, online.
  • Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5:00, Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar.

Thursday

  • Middle English Reading Group – 11:00, Beckington Room (Lincoln College).
  • Environmental History Working Group – 12:00, Room 20.421 in the Schwarzman Centre. Stephanie Holt (Oxford) will be speaking on “Curious Minds: Gilbert White and Thomas Pennant”.
  • Celtic Seminar – 5:00, online. Elisabeth Chatel (CRBC) will be speaking on “The Joseph Loth Dilemma: Scientific Authority and Cultural Identity in Brittany”.
  • Old Norse Welcome Event – 6:00, Gardeners’ Arms (Plantation Road).

Friday

  • Medievalist Coffee Morning – 10:30, Visiting Scholars Centre (Weston Library). All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. This week, Christina Ostermann and Henrike Lähnemann will speak on the ‘Girl Who Lived in the Library‘, the memoirs of Luisa Hewitt, born in the basement of the Taylorian in the 1880s
  • Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives – 2:00, Weston Library (Horton Room).

Opportunities

Palaeography Offers in Michaelmas 25

There are a number of palaeography offers available for anybody interested in Oxford happening in Michaelmas 2025, coordinated by Dr Laure Miolo, Lyell Career Development Fellow in Latin Palaeography and Dilts Fellow at Lincoln College, historian of late medieval Europe, specialising in manuscript studies and history of early libraries with a special focus on scientific books and practices. Contact her for  any of the below under laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk.

Header Image: Lincoln College/EL/OAS/D1

  1. French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group, Mo 10.30-12
  2. Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives, Fr 2-3pm
  3. Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group, Tue 2-3.30pm

1. French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group

This group is open to anyone with an interest in Old French, Middle French and Anglo-Norman manuscripts. We study and read manuscripts from the 12th century to the 16th century with a special focus on palaeography. We meet every Monday between 10.30am-12pm in the Weston Library. 

If you are interested in joining the group or would like more information, please write to Laure Miolo.

The seminar comprises brief lectures on the morphology and function of scripts, as well as the evolution of script shapes and graphic systems in context, followed by transcription practice using original manuscripts and documents. Sessions are structured around the historical development of scripts, progressing from simpler shapes and strokes with minimal ligatures and abbreviations to more cursive and complex forms. A study of the diverse scripts found between the twelfth and early sixteenth centuries in manuscripts and documents written in Old French, Middle French, and Anglo-Norman — and produced in various geographical areas —will allow participants to gain familiarity with a wide range of scripts and abbreviations. The reading of literary texts in parallel with the analysis of manuscripts and their scripts serves to complement both the lectures and transcription practice.

Oxford, St John’s College MS 164, fol. 1r

2. Exploring Medieval Oxford through Surviving Archives

Every Friday 2-3pm Weston Library (Horton Room)

This weekly one-hour seminar offers participants the opportunity to work directly with original documents from various Oxford parishes, held in the Bodleian Libraries. Focusing primarily on thirteenth-century deeds, these documents provide rich insight into everyday life in medieval Oxford. Open to undergraduates, postgraduates, and early career researchers, the seminar welcomes all those interested in working with primary sources and conducting in-depth contextual analysis of historical records

Working individually or in pairs on a self-selected original document, participants will closely examine its physical and material features (such as writing surface, layout, and signs of use), carry out transcription and translation, and identify the individuals and locations mentioned in order to situate the document within its historical context. Particular emphasis will be placed on the seals attached to the documents.

Alongside collaborative work on these unpublished or little-studied sources, participants will gain experience in the digitisation and cataloguing of archival materials, and will have the opportunity to present their research and original documents to a wider audience during a one-day workshop in Trinity Term.

This seminar is held at the Weston Library (Horton Room) in collaboration with Matthew Holford, Tolkien Curator of Medieval Manuscripts. Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo via email: laure.miolo@history.ox.ac.uk. Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo

3. Latin Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group

(advanced beginner, intermediate and advanced levels)

For those wishing to develop, deepen or maintain their skills in Latin palaeography, we meet every Tuesday between 2pm and 3.30pm in the Weston Library (Horton Room or Visiting Scholars Centre). We explore a wide variety of medieval manuscripts and documents dating from the 9th to the 15th centuries. Each session combines hands-on analysis of different scripts, abbreviations, and codicological features. Regular practice is key to building palaeographical skills and gaining confidence in reading a range of scripts, from clear book and documentary hands to more cursive and heavily abbreviated ones. This reading group is designed to introduce the essential features of each script and abbreviation, enabling participants to read and interpret manuscripts directly and with confidence. Those who are interested can contact the convenor, Laure Miolo

Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS. Laud Misc. 562, fol. 1r

Probatio pennae

Dear Oxford Medievalists, 

Hello from your new Social Medial officer! 

As we prepare for the start of term, I want to encourage anyone and everyone to contribute ideas for content on the Oxford Medieval Studies social media.

We are active anywhere and everywhere — Beacons (this platform),  BlueSky, Instagram, and Threads  and eagerly awaiting your suggestions.

If you want an event, workshop, or seminar advertised, please let me know and I will spread the word! 

If (when!) something exciting happens in your research, we can raise awareness about that too! 

I hope to hear from many of you throughout the year. Wishing everyone a great start to a new term, with a reflection on the weird and wonderful of medieval manuscripts:

Customer: I’d like a letter ‘E’ please.
Scribe: A normal one, or a snail-helmeted warrior with an ostrich leg and plums down his pants?
Customer: The plums one, obviously.

Cheers,
Elizabeth Crabtree
elizabeth.crabtree@bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Interim Medieval Matters (Long Vac)

Term draws near. Please send all entries for next term’s OMS booklet to medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk, by Wednesday of -1 week at the latest (1st October). Until then, please see below a number of upcoming deadlines and opportunities:

  • CFP: CHASE Medieval and Early Modern Research Network (MEMRN) postgraduate conference – deadline 12 September. More info here.
  • Oxford School of Rare Jewish Languages classes. The deadline to apply is 12 September at 12 noon UK time. More info here.
  • The Medieval Academy of America’s podcast series The Multicultural Middle Ages is accepting episode proposals for their 5th season. More info here.
  • CFP: Cambridge Medieval History Graduate Workshop. Deadline 29th September. More info here.
  • Applications are open for the John W. Baldwin Post-Doctoral Fellowship. The Post-Doctoral Fellow will be a scholar whose research aligns with the goals of the study of “Europe in the world” and who has demonstrated evidence of innovative methodologies. Deadline 10th Nov. More info here.
  • The West Horsley Place Trust seeks a researcher. More info here.

Medieval Vernacular Bibles

‘In our own tongues’: The Medieval Vernacular Bible and its European Contexts’ is organised jointly by the Oxford and Augsburg research teams of the ‘Medieval Vernacular Bibles as Unity, Diversity and Conflict’. The project is based at the universities of Oxford and Augsburg and is supported by the UK-German Funding Initiative in the Humanities (Arts and Humanities Research Council and Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) and the Bavarian Academy. As part of the conference, we will be hosting the following session on Wednesday 1st October 2025:

3pm-5pm Bodleian Library, Lecture Theatre
Chair: Andrew Dunning (University of Oxford)

Emily Davenport Guerry (University of Oxford), MS. Duke Humfrey c. 1: Illuminating the French New Testament and its readers, from Jean le Bon to Duke Humfrey https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/d5298278-6c9f-4eeb-a5a7-b6a3afa10720/

Freimut Löser (University of Augsburg), MS. Laud Misc. 479: The Paradisus-collection  https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/3d773133-2ecd-4dcb-b330-6879de4250ec/

Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford), MSS. Bodl. 969-970: A Fifteenth-century German Bible https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/c7d33325-585c-4b2c-9a8b-e5689b58f893/

Catherine Mary MacRobert (University of Oxford), MS e Mus. 184: The Vicissitudes of the Church Slavonic Psalter https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/catalog/manuscript_9100

Cosima Gilhammer (University of Oxford), MS. Bodl. 243: Wycliffite Glossed Gospels https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/49847fce-6618-481d-b7f5-2e31985995f4/

Elizabeth Solopova (University of Oxford), MS. Bodl. 441: Gospels in Old English https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/759999c2-7a29-46a7-9182-734449e2b8c3/


The full conference programme is as follows:
30 September

9am-10.30am St Stephen’s House

Chair: Elizabeth Solopova (University of Oxford)

Elizabeth Solopova (University of Oxford), Welcome

Hannah Schühle-Lewis (University of Oxford), ‘Þe pope, maister of bischopps’: Translating an Episcopal Oath in 1380s England

Michael Kuczynski (Tulane University), Hebrew and Greek Words in the Wycliffite Bible

10.30am – Coffee

11am-12.30pm St Stephen’s House

Chair: Nadine Popst (University of Augsburg)

Domenic Peter (University of Augsburg), ‘Als Daniel gesprochen hat’: The Book of Daniel in the Work of the Austrian Bible Translator and Beyond

Stefanie Katzameyer (University of Augsburg), ‘Ungefüerte pfaffen’, ‘Stiffter alles kriegs vnd streytz’, ‘Discipuli Antichristi’: Criticism of the Clergy by the Austrian Bible Translator, Austrian Heretical Movements, and the Wycliffites

Angila Vetter (Hamburg University), Modelling Lay Authority in Digital Editions: When the Austrian Bible Translator Invokes Wolfram von Eschenbach

1-2pm Lunch at St Stephen’s House

Afternoon: Walk to the Norman church of St Mary, Iffley, with Henrike Lähnemann, followed by viewing of the Old Library, St Edmund Hall.

Evening: Buffet dinner, followed by Compline in the Norman Crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East (library church of St Edmund Hall).

1 October 

9am-10.30am St Stephen’s House

Chair: Catherine Mary MacRobert (University of Oxford)

Kateřina Voleková (Charles University / Czech Language Institute), Old Czech Glosses on the Psalms in Latin Biblical Dictionaries

Andrea Svobodová (Czech Language Institute), Colophons in Late-medieval Bohemian Biblical Manuscripts

Katarzyna Jasińska-Różycka (Institute of Polish Language, Polish Academy of Sciences), Scriptural Echoes in the Prologues to Medieval Dictionaries: Motifs, Citations, and Inspiration

10.30am – Coffee

11am-12.30pm St Stephen’s House

Chair: Freimut Löser (University of Augsburg)

Vladimir Agrigoroaei ( CNRS / Centre for Medieval Studies, Poitiers), The Cultural Implications of God’s Preference for the French Speech in the Old Testament Poem Written by Évrat (Late–Twelfth Century)

Corentin Delattre (University of Poitiers / Centre for Medieval Studies, Poitiers), ‘To furnish the priests to maintain the law’: Structures and Contents of London, British Library, MS Arundel 230

Ágnes Korondi (Fragmenta et Codices Research Group of the Hungarian Research Network, National Széchényi Library), Converting the Gospel of Nicodemus into a Sermon: The Old Hungarian Adaptation of the Apocryphon and its Latin Homiletic Background

1-2pm Lunch at St Stephen’s House

3pm-5pm Bodleian Library, Lecture Theatre

Chair: Andrew Dunning (University of Oxford)

Emily Davenport Guerry (University of Oxford), MS. Duke Humfrey c. 1: Illuminating the French New Testament and its readers, from Jean le Bon to Duke Humfrey

Freimut Löser (University of Augsburg), MS. Laud Misc. 479: The Paradisus-collection  

Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford), MSS. Bodl. 969-970: A Fifteenth-century German Bible 

Catherine Mary MacRobert (University of Oxford), MS e Mus. 184: The Vicissitudes of the Church Slavonic Psalter

Cosima Gilhammer (University of Oxford), MS. Bodl. 243: Wycliffite Glossed Gospels 

Elizabeth Solopova (University of Oxford), MS. Bodl. 441: Gospels in Old English

7pm Conference Dinner at St Stephen’s House


2 October

9am-10.30am St Stephen’s House

Chair: Vladimir Agrigoroaei (CNRS / Centre for Medieval Studies, Poitiers)

Ana-Maria Gînsac (Institute of Interdisciplinary Research, Alexandru Ioan Cuza University of Iași), The Practice of Alternative Translation in Two Seventeenth-century Romanian Psalters

Ileana Sasu (University of Tours), Translating Saint Audrey:Images, Motifs, and Cultural Adaptations Across Europe

Élisa Marcadet (University of Tours), From Latin to Middle English: Vernacular Adaptations of Psalm 135 in the Surtees Psalter 

10.30am – Coffee

11am-12.30pm – St Stephen’s House

Chair: Ian Johnson (University of St Andrews) 

Ondřej Fúsik (Charles University and National Library of the Czech Republic), Latin Gerunds and Gerundives and their Old English Translational Equivalents as Evidenced in Old English Biblical Translations

Audrey Southgate (University of Oxford), Wyclif on Scripture and Islam

Mishtooni Bose (University of Oxford), The Sword of Solomon: John Bury, Reginald Pecock and the Authority of Scripture

1-2pm Lunch at St Stephen’s House

Image credit: Pentecost, Sherbrooke missal, fol. 169v, c. 1320

MT 25 Booklet: Call for Contribution

Time marches ever on, and the new term is on the horizon.

It will soon be time to put the next iteration of the OMS booklet together. If you are organising a seminar series, reading group, or one-off event (conference, medievally-themed social event, workshop etc), please email the details to medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk ASAP. If you are still awaiting confirmation on the finer points of your event (eg. paper titles), please send a place-holder email so that an entry can be made in preperation.

The 2025 Dorothy Whitelock Lecture

This year’s Dorothy Whitelock Lecture will be given by Profesor Jane Roberts (University of London) on ‘Guthlac: What the Early Medieval Records Tell Us’. The lecture will take place on 3 December at 5.15pm at St Peter’s College chapel, New Inn Hall Street, Oxford, OX1 2DL. 

To secure your (free) ticket, please use the Eventbrite link here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/dorothy-whitelock-lecture-tickets-1368622870849?aff=ebdssbdestsearch

The lectures in this series honour Prof. Dorothy Whitelock’s remarkable contributions to medieval studies and to improving the status of female scholars at Oxford and beyond. The first lecture in this series took place on 4 December 2024. Professor Gale Owen-Crocker spoke on ‘Social History and False Friends: From Anglo-Saxon Wills to the Bayeux Tapestry via Material Culture’. Read a review of the lecture to find out more.

Image: Courtesy British Library, Harley/Guthlac Roll Y 6, fol. 6r




Penn’s LJS 267, De ludo schacchorum seu de moribus hominum et officiis nobilium, fol. 4r

Making the Medieval Archive: Celebrating Elizabeth A. R. Brown at Penn

September 12, 2025, 10:00am–7:00pm

Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts
Van Pelt-Dietrich Library Center, University of Pennsylvania, Philadephia
And online via Zoom

On September 12, 2025, the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts at the University of Pennsylvania will host a day-long symposium commemorating Elizabeth (Peggy) A. R. Brown’s extraordinary legacy in the field of Medieval Studies. The event will also mark the official launch of the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ archive, a new initiative at Penn Libraries to collect the professional papers of scholars of the Middle Ages and of associated professional organizations. The goal of the symposium is to honor Peggy’s legacy and gift by celebrating research on her area of specialty, namely Medieval France.

The symposium will consist of three panels of short papers devoted to subjects featured in Peggy’s work: Source and ArchivePolitics and Kingship; and Liturgy and Sacred Image.

The day will also include an introduction to the research possibilities and historical interest of the medievalists’ archive at Penn, presented by the inaugural Elizabeth A.R. Brown Archivist, an endowed position in the Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts. The day will conclude with reminiscences by friends, students, and mentees, and a reception for all attendees.

Co-organized by Nicholas Herman (Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Penn) and Ada Kuskowski (Department of History, Penn). Closing reception generously sponsored by the New York Medieval Society.

See here for event details, program, and abstracts.
For Registration, click here.
Donations to the Elizabeth A. R. Brown Medieval Historians’ Archivist Fund can be made here.
Public messages honoring Peggy Brown’s contributions to the field of medieval studies can be left here.

The Latin Hymn as Scriptural Exegesis – from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages

25–26 September 2025.
Ioannou Centre for Classical & Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles’, Oxford, OX1 3LU
Registration is free but compulsory https://www.classics.ox.ac.uk/event/the-latin-hymn-as-scriptural-exegesis-from-late-antiquity-to-the-middle-ages

The Latin hymnic tradition is one that spans over a millennium from Late Antiquity through the Middle Ages to the Reformation (and beyond). In that period, there are aspects of it that have remained in many ways stable and enduring, but individual and local contexts and usages at various junctures in its long-lived history have required it to change and to adapt. The corpus also represents a group of texts that would, in many cases, have been very well known beyond the narrow confines of the intellectual and social elite who operated at the highest levels of Latinity and – even if largely penned by incredibly adept Latinists – had a much wider reach than many other Latin texts because of the performed nature of hymns. The relationship of hymns to other exegetical traditions and to the liturgical and para-liturgical contexts in which they were used is also noteworthy.

This conference brings together an international group of scholars at varied career stages from different disciplinary backgrounds with interests that include the Latin hymnic tradition and scriptural exegesis across a period covering a little over a thousand years. We intend to explore the ways in which the widespread but understudied phenomenon of hymnody has been used as a means of elaborating on, engaging with, and complementing the teachings of Christian scriptures by homing in closely on the texts themselves.

Organisers: Tristan Franklinos and Cosima Gillhammer

Thursday, 25 September 2025

Arrivals from 1330.

1400–1445 Simon Whedbee (Loyola) Hymnus est laus Dei cum cantico: Teaching with and about hymns in the cathedral schools of twelfth-century Paris.

1445–1530 Tristan Franklinos (Oxford) Exegesis in Abelard’s hymns for the Feast of the Ascension.

1530–1600 Tea & Coffee

1600–1645 Marie Zöckler (LMU Munich) Ave mundi creator – Nature, its creator, and the fusion of scholastic philosophy and scriptural exegesis in Latin hymns.

1645–1730 Juan Montejo (LMU Munich) The Flores Psalmorum of Gregory of Montesacro: exegesis through abbreviatio.

1730 Reception

Friday, 26 September 2025

1015–1100 Cillian O’Hogan (Toronto) Martyrs as exegetes in Prudentius’ Peristephanon.

1100–1145 Katie Painter (Oxford) Nature and scripture in the Liber Kathemerinon: Prudentius on the kaleidoscope of creation.

1145–1230 Joshua Caminiti (Oxford) Singing alone: the private hymns of Marius Victorinus.

1230–1400 Lunch

1400–1445 Danuta Shanzer (Vienna) Voices and sources: revisiting Hilary, Hymn 2.

1445–1530 Cosima Clara Gillhammer (Oxford) Lux vera gentis Anglice: Latin hymns in Anglo-Saxon England

1530–1600 Tea & Coffee

1600–1645 Nicholas Richardson (Oxford) mellifluis nostras musis qui impleuerat aures: Scripture and sweet music in the hymns of St Paulinus of Aquileia.

1645–1730 Christoph Uiting (Zurich) Festa Christi – Notker’s sequence on Epiphany in a late medieval commentary.

This event is generously supported by the Faculty of Classics Board, the Craven Committee, the Institute of Classical Studies, and Oxford Medieval Studies (sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities [TORCH]).

Manuscripts by Numbers

Using Data to find Interesting Manuscripts in the Bodleian’s Medieval Catalogue

On Friday 25th July 2025, the Bodleian Coffee Morning presentation was given by Matthew Holford and Sebastian Dows-Miller, who are working on a project on the Bodleian’s western medieval manuscript catalogue data.

The purpose of the project, funded by Digital Scholarship @ Oxford, is to open up the library’s TEI catalogues for use by students and non-digital scholars by extracting the data into spreadsheets, which allow cross-comparison of over 11,000 medieval manuscripts held in Oxford’s collections.

Being able to compare manuscripts by details like their size and layout means that we can identify particularly interesting outlier manuscripts, and that was the topic of this presentation. Those present were treated to an introduction to:

  • MS. Lat. th. b. 4: the manuscript with the most lines per page (105+).
  • MS. Canon. Liturg. 28: the manuscript with the thinnest binding (9mm).
  • MS. Rawl. G. 26: one of just 4 manuscripts in the catalogue recorded as having 5 columns per page.
  • MS. Auct. F. 2. 6: the narrowest manuscript in the catalogue (that is, the one with the lowest ratio of leaf width to leaf height).
  • Canon Class. Lat. 84: one of the manuscripts in the catalogue with the biggest margins (that is, the lowest ratio of text to blank page).
  • MS. Bodl. 787 (endleaves): the manuscript unit with the greatest average height between lines.

If you’re interested, you can download the raw data by clicking here.

Watch the full recording of the talk below! The slides shown are included beneath the video.

View the Slides below: