events – Oxford Medieval Studies

An Introduction to Middle High German

by Henrike Lähnemann

02/08/2024

16:06

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Workshop and Launch

The new Introduction to Middle High German by Howard Jones and Martin H. Jones (OUP 2024), is a dedicated student edition of The Oxford Guide to Middle High German, designed for taught courses and self-study. It provides an accessible overview of the grammar and lexis of the language suitable for introductory-level students and includes thirty extensively-annotated texts with explanatory notes suitable for use in teaching. It is accompanied by a companion website which gives open access to further online resources for the study of Middle High German.

The workshop is designed as a test case to show ways of using the ‘Introduction’ within a university setting or for self-study . Participants will get access to the online version and work with it in groups ranging from beginners to experts on aspects of Middle High German. There will be a “Translathon”, a group competition to translate and comment on passages of the Middle High German text ‘Helmbrecht’.

When: Saturday 2 November 2024, 2-6pm

Where: Taylor Institution Library, Room 2, University of Oxford

For Whom: Students from first-year undergraduate to doctoral level – level – anyone, in fact, who would like to acquire, practise, and improve their knowledge of Middle High German. No previous knowledge of Middle High German required

By Whom: Led by the authors and a group of medievalists from Oxford and London

How: In-person, with an option to participate online via Zoom

Costs: Free of charge but registration required with the organisers Sarah Bowden, Howard Jones, and Henrike Lähnemann. Registration form to follow shortly.

Funded Doctoral Position: The Seven Sages of Rome

by Henrike Lähnemann

31/07/2024

21:23

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The research project “The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History” invites applications for one doctoral research associate: FU Berlin advertisement of the position

The project is funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin as part of the Berlin University Alliance/Oxford University Einstein Visiting Fellowship scheme. The selected postholder will work closely with the PIs of the project, Professor Dr Jutta Eming, Freie Universität Berlin and Dr Ida Tóth, University of Oxford (Einstein BUA/Oxford Visiting Fellow 2024-27).

Please note that the application deadline is 20 August 2024.

The position is funded by the Einstein Foundation Berlin as part of the Berlin University Alliance/Oxford University Einstein Visiting Fellowships scheme. The Doctoral Research Associate will participate in the project “The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History”. The selected postholder will be jointly supervised by the PIs of the project, Professor Dr Jutta Eming, Freie Universität Berlin and Dr Ida Toth, University of Oxford (Einstein BUA/Oxford Visiting Fellow 2024-27).
The research project “The Seven Sages of Rome Revisited: Striving for an Alternative Literary History” focuses on one of the most popular and least studied works of pre-modern world literature. Transmitted in over thirty languages and attested through hundreds of manuscripts and early printed editions, this tradition provides ample scope for exploring the extant material from textual, intercultural, and intersectional literary perspectives. The Einstein BUA/Oxford research project proposes to undertake an interdisciplinary, collaborative and comparative philological, literary, and cultural analysis in Byzantine/Medieval Latin and Medieval German and Early Modern Studies. Its goal is to reassess and redefine the traditional approach to the SSR and to medieval literature in general.

Job description:
The Doctoral Research Associate will study one specific set of motifs – Wisdom, Power, and Gender – that is common to all surviving traditions of the Seven Sages in the German and/or Greek textual tradition. The main duty will be to conduct research on a doctoral project designed along these research lines. The postholder will work under the direction of Professor Dr Jutta Eming and Dr Ida Toth as well as collaborating with the other members of the research group. The postholder will assist in planning and organisation of scholarly events (lectures, seminars, workshops, outreach programmes), in publication projects, and will play a key role in securing the online visibility and digital presence of the project.
This is an exciting opportunity for a highly motivated doctoral candidate with strong interests in wisdom literature, intersectionality, and concepts of power. The successful candidate will join a team of textual and literary scholars, who play an active role in the current efforts to reassess traditional literary canons and to create an alternative, and much more nuanced, understanding of pre-modern global literary history.

Requirements:
• A Master’s degree qualification (MA, MSt, MPhil or the equivalent) in a subject/field relevant to the Project (German Studies, Byzantine Studies/Medieval Latin)

Desirable:
• Above-average Masters’ degree grade
• Doctoral project on the Seven Sages of Rome
• Excellent command of the spoken and written English language
• Demonstrable interest in the project’s focus area (Wisdom – Power – Gender)
• Ability to work independently
• Commitment to team-building and teamwork
• Willingness to engage in interdisciplinary exchange

Application materials:
• An application letter/statement of purpose (one page)
• An outline of the planned dissertation project (two pages)
• A curriculum vitae with list of publications (if applicable)
• Official transcripts of all previous degrees and university diplomas
• A copy of master’s thesis or a sample of written work (max. 25 pages)

How to apply:
Your application materials should state the identifier Predoc_JE_BUA_SSoR_2_24. They should be combined in a single PDF document and sent electronically to Ms Sylwia Bräuer (s.braeuer@fu-berlin.de). Two letters of recommendation from university-level teachers should be submitted separately. They should be addressed and emailed to the project PIs Jutta Eming (j.eming@fu-berlin.de ) and Ida Toth (ida.toth@history.ox.ac.uk).

Report on the Oxford-Berlin Workshop ‘The Seven Sages of Rome as a Global Narrative Tradition’

11-12 November 2022, organised by Ida Toth (Oxford) and Jutta Eming (Berlin)

The Seven Sages of Rome (SSR) is a title commonly used for one of the most widely distributed pre-modern collections of stories, which – remarkably – also happens to be barely known today, even among medievalists and early modernists. Several early versions of the SSR exist in Greek (Syntipas), Arabic (Seven Viziers), Hebrew (Mishle Sendebar), Latin (Dolopathos, Historia septem sapientum), Persian (Sindbād-nameh) and Syriac (Sindbād) as well as in the later translations into Armenian, Bulgarian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, German, English, French, Hungarian, Icelandic, Polish, Russian, Scottish, Serbian, Swedish, Spanish, Romanian, Turkish and Yiddish. The multilingual traditions of the SSR, with their many intercultural links, cannot be adequately understood within the current division of research disciplines into distinct medieval and modern linguistic areas. To mend this deficiency, the workshop has invited specialists in affiliated fields to address the problems of surveying the long history of creative adaptations associated with the SSR. The participants will consider the complexities of the philological, literary, and historical analysis of the SSR in many of its attested versions across the pre-modern and early modern periods. The workshop is envisaged as a forum for a robust discussion on possible ways of advancing the current scholarship of the SSR, and as an opportunity to strengthen the inter-institutional collaboration involving specialists based at the universities in Oxford and Berlin, and more broadly.

The workshop will start with a session in the Weston Library on Friday morning where the group will meet other Oxford medievalists at the Coffee Morning, followed by a view of special collections in the library. While this is for speakers only, their is limited capacity to attend the following talks at the Ioannou Centre. If interested, please contact the workshop co-ordinator Josh Hitt.

FRIDAY, 11 NOVEMBER 2022, THE IOANNOU CENTRE

2 pm – 3 pm: Beatrice Gründler, Kalīla and Dimna – AnonymClassic: Methodology and Practical Implementations (via Zoom, 1^st-fl Seminar Room)

4 pm – 5 pm: Daniel Sawyer, Forgotten books: The application of Unseen Species Models to the Survival of Culture (In person, Outreach Room)

SATURDAY, 12 NOVEMBER 2022, THE IOANNOU CENTRE

10 am – 11.30 am

Jutta Eming, The Seven Sages of Rome in Literary History and Genre Theory
David Taylor, Re-examining the Evidence of the Syriac Book of Sindbād
Ida Toth, The Byzantine Book of Syntipas: Approaches and Directions
Emilie van Opstall, The Representation of Women in Byzantine Syntipas and Latin Dolopathos

12 pm – 1.30 pm

Bettina Bildhauer, Consent in the German Version of the Seven Sages of Rome
Rita Schlusemann, Genre, Dissemination and Multimodality of the Septem sapientum Romae, especially in Dutch and German
Niko Kunkel, Statistics and Interpretation: Annotating the German Sieben Weise Meister
Ruth von Bernuth, Yiddish Seven Masters

4.30 pm: Tea and a guided tour of St Edmund Hall with Henrike Lähnemann

5.45 pm: Evensong at New College

Appendix: List of manuscripts and early printed books in the Bodleian Library:

Arabic: Pococke 400
Greek: Barocc. 131 and Laud. 8
Armenian: MS. Arm. e. 33 and MS. Canonici Or. 131
Hebrew (Mishle Sendebar/Fables of Sendebar): MS. Heb. d. 11 (ff. 289-294) and MS. Bodl. Or. 135 (ff. 292-300r)
Yiddish: Opp. 8. 1115 Mayse fun Ludvig un Aleksander and Opp. 8. 1070 Zibn vayzn mansters fun Rom
Welsh Jesus College MS 111
Middle English: B. Balliol College MS. 354
English, early printed book: The History of the Seven Wise Masters of Rome. Now newly Corrected better Explained in many places and enlarged with many pretty Pictures etc. London, Printed for John Wright, next to the Globe in Little-Brittain, 1671

Image: British Library, Add. MS. 15685, f. 83r (XIV century, Venice)

Launch of the ‘Life of Nuns’

by Henrike Lähnemann

17/06/2024

13:50

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During the Medievalist Coffee Morning on Friday, 21 June 2024, Henrike Lähnemann launched her new book The Life of Nuns. Love, Politics, and Religion in Medieval German Convents, Cambridge: Open Book Publishers 2024, open access: https://www.openbookpublishers.com/books/10.11647/obp.0397
To purchase a paper copy with a 20% discount, use the code LONHL_24 at checkout

On show were the following five manuscripts, all available digitised via https://medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/, three from the Cistercian convent of Medingen near Lüneburg (http://medingen.seh.ox.ac.uk/) and two Rules for female convents:

Medingen O1: Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. liturg. f. 4: Prayer book: Easter (end 15th to early 16th cent.), fol. 174v: the community of nuns; fol. 288r: Music notation
Medingen O2: Bodleian Library, MS. Lat. liturg. e. 18: Manual for the Medingen Provost (1472/1479), fol. 36v/37r: liturgical drawings; fol. 47vb: Harrowing of Hell initial
Medingen O4: Bodleian Library, MS. Don. e. 248: Psalter by Margarete Hopes (early 16th cent.), fol. 173r: Harrowing of Hell; fol. 196r: Resurrection
Rule of St Augustine https://editions.mml.ox.ac.uk/editions/rule-of-st-augustine/: Bodleian Library, MS. Germ. e. 5 (c. 1395)
Rule of St Clare: Bodleian Library, MS. Lyell 68, 1457

Following this, there was a presentation by Stacie Vos (Ann Ball Bodley Visiting Fellow in Women’s History) talk about Women doing medieval studies in the early 20^th century. Stacie reflected on the legacies of several early-20^th-century women medievalists who pursued academic and extra-academic careers. She started the group ‘Enclosure’ which January 2021 to February 2024 was hosted at the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages under enclosure.mml.ox.ac.uk, now archived at the Bodleian Library Web Archive.

***

It all started with a mistake: ‘Der Spiegel’, a widely read news magazine in Germany, ran a double-spread article on the big research project which Eva Schlotheuber and I direct, the edition of 1.200 letters from the Benedictine convent Lüne in North Germany. In the interview for it, we had talked about how important education by the nuns was for the ‘Lehrkinder’, children educated at the convent. The girls would come into the community, aged 7 to 9, and then get a thorough grounding in a wide range of discipline such as music, as pictured in the scene from a text book from Kloster Ebstorf.

Teaching Music in the Convents (Ebstorf, Klosterarchiv V 3, 15th century, fols 200v–201r)

Der Spiegel’ turned our phrase of ‘Lehrkinder’ into ‘die Kinder der Nonnen’ (the children of the nuns) – hinting at sex and scandal behind convent walls (in 2/2020 ‘So colourful was the life of nuns in the Middle Ages’).

This sparked further media interest and the Ullstein publishing house approached us because it had piqued their interest. When we explained that the attention-grabbing headline about “the nuns had children” was based on a misunderstanding, they were slightly disappointed – but then offered us the opportunity to set the record straight. And, arguably, what we could offer was much more exciting: the colourful and detailed accounts of lively, intellectual, strategic, argumentative, powerful women, shaping religion and politics of their times, looking after the girls (despite or even because they were their spiritual and not biological daughters!), negotiating business deals, writing, painting, composing and influencing the way we live today through their books, songs, and art.

‘The Life of Nuns’ tries to capture the richness of the life of these medieval nuns by incorporating as much primary source material as possible. Each of the big topics – such as Education, Music, and yes: Love and Friendship – starts with an account taken from the diary of a nun who lived at the end of the 15^th century in the convent St Crucis in Braunschweig. The anonymous author covers the high feasts – celebrating the entry of new nuns, welcoming illustrious visitors – and the everyday mundane events – lice, Lebkuchen (gingerbread), laundry. And we end every of our chapters with the presentation of a significant art work from the convents: the impressive wall paintings done in the 14^th century by “three nuns all called Gertrud” in Wienhausen, the largest medieval world map in Ebstorf (30 goatskins sewn together), tapestries, statues, stained glass, the oldest spectacles in the world (fallen through the floorboard cracks in the nuns’ choir) – an embarrassment of riches from a world that few people even know existed. That is particularly true for an Anglophone audience since so much of the evidence is lost due mainly to the dissolution of the monasteries but also a repurposing of surviving architecture and treasures. Compare Kloster Wienhausen and Godstow Abbey: in Wienhausen we have got the full set of monastic buildings, cloisters, huge grain stores, cells, corridors, imposing Gothic nuns choir and more – and everything that furnished it: stained glass, wall paintings, sculptures, down to the different set of dresses for the statues.

The Cistercian Convent of Wienhausen from the South: Magazine (left) and Nuns’ Choir. Photograph: Henrike Lähnemann

Filming at the ruins of one Godstow Abbey near Oxford

In Godstow, on the other hand, we can sense the dimensions of its former power by looking at the impressively long surrounding wall of enclosure and glimpse some of its stylish beauty from the ruined chapel at the back – the rest is only possible to reconstruct from scant archival evidence. Looking at the German counterparts, who shapeshifted through the Reformation, transforming into Protestant female communities who still look after the rich tapestry of medieval life, offers the chance to rectify this in part – and encounter the Life of Nuns at their fullest, mystical, worldly, polyphonous and very much relevant still today.

Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024: Exchanging Words

by Marlene Schilling

17/06/2024

10:02

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The Medieval Women’s Writing Research Group Conference 2024 will be held on 18th June 2024 with the theme of “Exchanging Words” in Room 2 of the Taylor Institution Library both in person (presenters/attendees) and online (attendees).

Tuesday 18 June 2024, 9am – 5pm
Online and In-person, Room 2, Taylor Institution Library, Saint Giles’, Oxford OX1 3NA
Free but registration required
Register here for in-person attendance – Sold out
Register here to join the conference online
Online registration closes 15 minutes before the start of the event. You will be sent the joining link within 48 hours of the event, on the day and once again 10 minutes before the event starts.

The aim of this conference is to explore the concept of exchange, whether it be textual or material, to, for and between women in the global Middle Ages. As a research group based upon the concept of exchanging ideas, we wish to explore medieval women’s own networks of exchange and transmission, and the influence of this upon both the literature and culture of the period as well as the present day.

We are delighted to present the programme for the day:

9:00-9:30 Registration
9:30-9:45 Welcome and Opening Remarks
9:45-11:15 Session 1 “Scholarly Networks”
Katrin Janz-Wenig (SUB Hamburg) & Lenka Panušková (The Czech Academy of Sciences) | Communication Strategies Through Change: Translations, Compilations and Ekphrasis
Ved Prabha Sharma (Independent Researcher) | Women Scholars and Knowledge Exchange in Medieval Indian shāstrārth Tradition
Tatiana Barkovskiy (University of Cambridge) | A Beguinian Learning Network, or How to Approach ‘Medieval Women Mystics’ as Philosophers
11:15-11:45 Break with Refreshments
11:45-13:15 Session 2 “Relationships With and Between Women”
Costas Gavriel (University of Oxford) | Gaining the Queen’s Confidence: The Relationship Between Leonor López de Córdoba and Catherine of Lancaster, Queen of Castile
Lucia Akard (University of Oxford) | Talking About Rape and Exchanging Knowledge in Medieval Dijon
Meg Greenough (Independent Researcher) | The Wilton Matrix: Mothering in Goscelin of Saint Betin’s Liber Confortatorius
13:15-14:30 Lunch Break
Exploring the Taylorian’s Treasures, with Professor Henrike Lähnemann (University of Oxford)
14:30-15:45 Keynote Address
Professor Diane Watt (University of Surrey) | Medieval Women Writers: Troubling a Feminist History of British Women’s Writing
15:45-16:15 Break with Refreshments
16:15-17:45 Session 3 “Nuns’ Words”
Francesca Maria Villani (University of Bari) | Eloise’s Psalmody: Body and Voice Through the Epistles
Jane Bliss (Independent Researcher) | The Nun Changes her Library Book
Hilary Pearson (Independent Researcher) | Teresa de Cartagena’s Models of Female Authority
17:45 Closing Remarks
18:00 End of Conference

Please direct any questions to any of the conference organizers:
Katherine Smith (katherine.smith@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)
Marlene Schilling (marlene.schilling@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)
Carolin Gluchowski (carolin.gluchowski@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)
Santhia Velasco Kittlaus (santhia.velascokittlaus@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)

The research group and the conference are generously funded by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and their “Critical-Thinking Communities” Initiative.

COLSONOEL 2024 in Review

by Ashley Castelino

05/06/2024

09:24

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Putting a halt to in-person events, face-to-face conversations unmediated by a digital screen, and forcing people around the world to re-think how the interacted with each other, COVID-19 also placed a stranglehold on much academic dialogue and conferences experiences. One of the victims of the pandemic era was the Cambridge, Oxford, and London Symposium on Old Norse, Old English, and Latin (COLSONOEL). The last COLSONOEL was due to take place in St. John’s College, University of Oxford in May 2020 but which was sadly cancelled due to COVID-19 restrictions.

In 2024 a new committee at the University of Oxford, headed by Natasha Bradley, and comprising of Ashley Castelino, Simon Heller, and Mary Catherine O’Connor, took up the reins to bring this symposium back to life. In the spirit of its return to the world of conferences and academic discourse, the theme of COLSONOEL 2024 was ‘Rebirth, Renewal, Renaissance’. This symposium for post-graduate students and early career researchers was set up as a supportive and welcoming academic environment for presenters to test new ideas and to share their research. And it is in this vein, that COLSONOEL began again and hopes to continue for many years to come.

COLSONOEL 2024 kicked off on a wet and dismal Friday 3rd May in St Hilda’s College in the Garden Room Suite, which transformed into an exciting day of papers and conversations. Exquisite views stretching over Oxford with its dreaming spires rising to the rain-sodden heavens framed the speakers and their presentations at St Hilda’s as we welcomed ten speakers from Oxford, Cambridge, and Birkbeck.

Considering the question of reception and intertextual relationships in the first session, David Bond West opened COLSONOEL with his paper on ‘Rhetorical Storytelling in Bergr Sokkason’s Mikjáls saga’. Moving from Old Norse to Old English, Mingwei Lu examined the relationships between psalms and elegies in the paper ‘“Hu lange wilt þu, Drihten” – A Comparison of Religious Revival in the Old English Psalms and the Old English Elegies’. Leaping forward to the modern era, Emily Dixon asked what it meant to think through soil and landscapes in her paper ‘Rebirth through soil: The earth of Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Beowulf and The Wanderer’.

Following this line of movement to earth-centred evidence and thinking about what can be uncovered through archaeology, Katie Beard opened the second session with her investigation into amulets, ‘Armaments as Amulets in Old Norse in Old Norse Literature and Archaeology’. Daisy Bonsall worked through the theme of the conference in thinking about the multiple uses and re-purposing of textiles in Anglo-Saxon England in ‘A Case for Regifting: Reusing Textiles to Create and Renew Connections in Anglo-Saxon England’.

The inter-relationship of life and death and the possibility of comparing through these ontological concerns took centre stage in session three as Alexia Kirov discussed images and themes of birth and death in ‘Re: birth and death – from (pre-)cradle to grave in Early English Literature’. What are the appropriate responses to the death of king and what is the emotional performance a poet may engage in when his king dies? Molly Bovett looked at some of these questions and more in ‘The Death of the King in Hallfreðar saga vandræðaskálds’. Staying in the realm of Old Norse literature but migrating from the historical world of medieval Norway and Iceland to the world of the mythological texts, Kendra Nydam closed the third session with her paper ‘Thrice-burnt, Thrice-born: Revisiting the Fateful Role of Gullveig in Norse Mythology’.

How different medieval historians and societies think about and write about the past formed a key concern of the concluding papers in the fourth and last session of the day. In ‘Reviving the Gothic Past and justifying a Swedish present in the Festum patronorum regni Suecie’ Adrián Rodríguez turned attention to historiographical concerns in fifteenth-century Sweden. Moving one last time from Scandinavia back to medieval England, Emily Clarke gave the closing paper ‘Reforming the Past: History and Antiquarianism in the English Benedictine Reform’.

An intellectually curious atmosphere and friendly environment created a fertile and productive day of discussions in the form of question-and-answer sessions after the papers as well as more informal conversations in the tea breaks and lunch. The COLSONOEL Committee would like to thank everyone who attended this year’s symposium. We would also like to extend a special thanks to our sponsors, Oxford Medieval Studies and TORCH, who made COLSONOEL 2024 possible. We look forward to the return of COLSONOEL 2025.

Mary Catherine O’Connor, June 2024

Reconsidering Contrafacts

by Philip Wetzler

03/06/2024

13:35

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Practices of Contrafacture in Monophonic Song (1150–1550)

When: 20 June 2024 (week 9), 10am-7pm
Where: Committee Room, Faculty of Music
Convenor: Philip Wetzler

Looking at different repertories of monophonic song between 1150 and 1550, the aim of this workshop is to explore different approaches to the widespread spectrum of practices and concepts of contrafacture: composing new texts for pre-existing melodies. The fact of a song being a contrafact will not be taken as a result but as a starting point for further inquiries. In this workshop we will encounter similarities, analogies, and differences between different regions, languages, genres, and times between 1150 and 1550, looking at Trouvère, Sangspruch and Minnesang, religious song (geistliches Lied), Meistersinger and puy societies.

The schedule will be split into two parts: the first half is reserved for presentations of individual papers with a following discussion, in the second half we will collectively examine and interpret further selected case studies. Anybody interested is welcome to attend the presentations and take part in the discussions. If you want to attend or if you have questions, please email Philip Wetzler.

The workshop is generously funded by the Evangelisches Studienwerk Villigst e.V.

Preliminary schedule with provisional titles

10:00 – 10:30 Coffee/Tea
10:30-11:00 Introduction
11:00 – 11:45 Joseph Mason, Satire, allusion, erasure: approaches to contrafacture in trouvère songs of war
11:45 – 12:30 Philip Wetzler, From Contrafact to Practices of Contrafacture: Middle High German Sangspruch and Practices of Contrafacture
12:30 – 13:30 Light Lunch Break
13:30 – 14:15 Anna Wilmore, Ludic Lyrics: Play and Piety in Marian Contrafact
14:15 – 15:00 Agnes Rugel, “geistlich lieder, doch in weltlichen weysen”. How practices of contrafacture structure the landscape of religious songbooks in late medieval Germanspeaking areas
15:00 – 15:30 Tea/Coffee Break
15:30 – 17:00 Collective Discussion of Case Studies
17:00 – 17:30 Tea/Coffee Break
17:30 – 18:30/19:00 Collective Discussion of Case Studies
19:00 Dinner (self-paying)

Image from the Hohenfurt Songbook (Hohenfurter Liederbuch), fol. 65r, Hohenfurt / Vyssí Brod (Bohemia), Stiftsbibliothek Ms. 8b

CAT – Conversations Across Time

by Henrike Lähnemann

02/06/2024

15:27

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Art, physics, theatre, trinity 23

CAT is back! After a successful run in June 2023, artist in residence at the Physics Department Pam Davis has developed a second art-piece ‘Conversations Across Time’. Free tickets for the performances moving from the Ashmolean to a second secret hidden location are available via the website https://www.citizensai.com/

Dates: June 15th (preview at 11am – 1:20pm) | June 15th | June 16th

Schedule: 15:20 Meet on the steps at the Ashmolean Museum
15:30 Prequel
16:00 Departure for Scene Two
16:15 Scene II is in a Quantum Anomaly [hidden location]
17:40 End | Conversation to Follow

Players: Giovanni De Felice, Sirui Ning and, Juliette Imbert, PDK, Costi Levy,
Directors: PDK and Costi Levy
Composer: Cheryl Frances-Hoad

From the announcement in 2023: What do horses, medievalists, black hole orbits, boardrooms, and quantum computers have in common? Inspired by the Medieval Mystery Plays, artist in residence at the Physics Department Pam Davis has developed an art-piece ‘Conversations Across Time’ which links medieval theatre, women in science, and Quantum future.

‘Mythical and Monstrous’ Exhibition at New College, Oxford

by Caitlín Kane

28/05/2024

11:52

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Tuesday 4 June 2024, 12 noon–4PM
Lecture Room 6, New College, Oxford

We are delighted to announce New College Library’s upcoming exhibition ‘Mythical and Monstrous: Fantastical Creatures at New College Library’.

Hunt for weird and wonderful beasts in items from the College’s fabulous special collections, from dragons and unicorns, to centaurs, blemmyes, and merpeople.

Among the wide variety of items on display will be a beautiful thirteenth-century Psalter, a fantastic fourteenth-century apocalypse manuscript, a famous fifteenth-century chronicle, and a spectacular sixteenth-century astronomical text.

Discover how depictions and understandings of mythical monsters changed over time and explore what these creatures reveal about how people saw themselves and the societies in which they lived.

*New College Library, Oxford MS 284, f. 21r*

*New College Library, Oxford MS 65, f. 30 r*

The exhibition is free and open to all. Signs will be in place to direct visitors to the exhibition from the Porters’ Lodge, located halfway down Holywell Street.

If you have any questions, please email library@new.ox.ac.uk.

The Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi

by Henrike Lähnemann

28/05/2024

10:25

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Wednesday, 29 May 2024, 5.15-6.45 UK time
Memorial Room: The Queen’s College, Oxford

Dr Peter Tóth (Cornelia Stark Curator of Greek Collections at the Bodleian Libraries, Oxford) will speak on “In Quest of a Medieval Best-Seller: The Authorship of the Meditationes Vitae Christi” as term lecture for the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures

The Meditationes Vitae Christi, an anonymous medieval retelling of the life of Christ, appended with a number of extra and emotional details, has been described as the single most influential Franciscan text of the Middle Ages. A real best-seller that has come down to us in hundreds of manuscripts and versions in Latin and almost all the vernaculars of Medieval Europe. The text is known to have exercised an immense influence on Western spirituality and devotion and had decisive impact on Renaissance art and played pivotal role in the evolution of medieval Passion Plays and European theatre in general. Despite this enormous significance, the origin, date and authorship of the work has remained obscure and been in the focus of heated scholarly debates. After a brief survey of the problems of the text and the current scholarly consensus about its origins, the present paper will make an attempt to identify the author of the text and reconstruct its adventurous early history to explain its subsequent anonymity.

Bibliography in the New light on the date and authorship of the Meditationes vitae Christi (2015) by Peter Tóth & al. (Brepols 2015, Open Access version in the Oxford Research Archive)

Image: Meditationes vitae Christi. English translation by Nicholas Love. Bodleian Library MS. Hatton 31, fol. 28v, mid-15th century. On medieval.bodleian.ox.ac.uk

Recording Oxford’s Medieval Lives

by Laure Miolo

24/05/2024

06:27

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