Monday 6 March 2023 (Week 8), 4.30–6pm, at St Edmund Hall, Pontigny Room
In this workshop, we will be offering voice projection exercises and practical advice for the Medieval Mystery Cycle. All actors and directors interested in taking part are invited to attend! Beyond general exercises, there will also be an opportunity to work out staging constellations on site at St Edmund Hall (as well as an opportunity to enjoy tea and cake).
The workshop will be led by Dr Jim Harris, the Medieval Mystery Cycle’s Master of Ceremonies and Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum. Let us know if you’re able to join us by emailing Michael Angerer, the graduate convenor.
This concluding lecture reflects on the problems and possibilities of comparative legal history before moving on to the differences and similarities in patterns of England, France, and north Italy in the period c.1160-1270.
This lecture explores the ways in which deliberate legal change came to have unintended effects, especially on substantive law. It considers the interplay of legal learning, legal reasoning, and legal change. In so doing, it ponders Sir Henry Maine’s view of substantive law being secreted in the interstices of procedure.
Students will learn about Old Frisian language, text corpus, culture and history in the context of Old Germanic languages. Linguistic comparisons will be drawn between Old Frisian and the other (West) Germanic languages. Settlement history of Frisians in Britain, Old Frisian Law and Literature and Old Frisian manuscripts will be discussed in lectures. Library visits will focus on the Old Frisian manuscripts in Oxford. The OFSS will close with a social day in Oxford. The OFSS is about learning to read Old Frisian and to place Old Frisian in a wider linguistic, literary and historical context.
Who is the summer school for?
The summer school is aimed at students, PhD candidates and early career researchers with an interest in (Old) Germanic languages who want to familiarise themselves with Old Frisian.
What will the day programme look like?
There will be two lectures in the mornings and a translation workshop or library visit in the afternoons. The programme will cover the Old Frisian grammar in lectures by experts in the field and in translation workshops. Students will read Old Frisian texts in the afternoon workshops with help of modern handbooks and learn about the Old Frisian text corpus
By the end of the week, students should be able to translate a medium level Old Frisian text with the help of handbooks and have gained a good level of knowledge of the place and importance of Old Frisian within the Old Germanic language family
A visit to the Bodleian Library will enable students to view the Old Frisian manuscripts that are kept at Oxford.
Prof Andreas Deutsch, Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch, Heidelberg
Dr Peter-Alexander Kerkhof, Frisian Academy, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden
Prof Simon Horobin, University of Oxford
Dr Rafael Pascual, University of Oxford
Mr Hilbert Vinkenoog (YouTube channel History with Hilbert)
Mr Anne Popkema MA, Groningen University
Dr Johanneke Sytsema, University of Oxford
What does it cost?
In person fees: £350 (Early bird rate £300 if booked by May 1st)
Hybrid fees: £150.00
Fees for in person attendance will include
Tuition and workshops
Study materials
Coffee/tea
Daily 3-course lunch
Saturday social activities
Library visits
Conference dinner
Hybrid fees will include access to all streamed lectures and electronic access to the grammar and dictionary during the week.
Accommodation:
Participants can book accommodation in student halls belonging to St Edmund Hall (email address susan.mccarthy@seh.ox.ac.uk first come first served) or find accommodation in another college in Oxford via https://www.universityrooms.com/
For further information about the Summer School please contact: oldfrisian@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk (for all interested) or ofss@rug.nl (for students of Groningen University)
17-19 March 2023, Corpus Christi College & All Souls College, Oxford
The 54th Annual Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held in Oxford on the theme of Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond. The Symposium brings together Byzantine studies with a series of innovative approaches to the material nature and realities of religion – foregrounding the methodological, historical and archaeological problems of studying religion through visual and material culture. Taking a broad geographical and chronological view of the Byzantine world, the Symposium will range across Afro-Eurasia and from Antiquity to the period after the fall of Constantinople. Sessions will be arranged around the themes of ‘Objects in motion’, ‘Religion in 3D’, ‘Religious landscapes’, ‘Things without context’, ‘Things and their context’ and ‘Spatial approaches to religion’.
Confirmed speakers include: Béatrice Caseau, Paroma Chatterjee, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Ivan Foletti, David Frankfurter, Ildar Garipzanov, Troels M. Kristensen, Anne Lester, Birgit Meyer, Brigitte Pitarakis, Myrto Veikou, and Anne-Marie Yasin.
The Symposium will be hybrid, taking place at Oxford – Corpus Christi College and All Souls College –, and on Zoom.
Fees and registration:
In person, for three days: Full: £130; Members of the SPBS: £110; Students/Unwaged: £60.
In person, for one day: Full: £65; Members of the SPBS: £55; Students/Unwaged: £30.
On-line: Full: £35; Members of the SPBS: £20; Students/Unwaged: £10
For more information, the Symposium programme and registration, please visit the Symposium website here.
The Fair Field of Folk. Piers Plowman: A Potted Adaptation of the B Text When: 11 February 2023, to be repeated partially during the Medieval Mystery Cycle 22 April 2023 Where: St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, OX1 4AR Oxford
Director: Eloise Peniston
Trailer filmed and edited by Natascha Domeisen, music by Alexander Nakarada
Welcome to our mervelous sweven, the Middle English prose B text of Piers Plowman dramatized and brought to stage by an eclectic mix of English students, medievalists, business students, historians, even a mathematician! Starring
😴 Sòlas McDonald as Will the Dreamer
😜 Jonathan Honnor as Piers Plowman/False Tongue
⛪ Clare-Rose McIntyre as Holy Church
✝️ Chantale Davies as Theology/Priest
🤔 Rei Tracks as Conscience
🌾 Alexane Ducheune as Mede’s Handmaid
👑 Kate Harkness as The King
💃 Eloise Peniston as Envy/Lady Mede
💰 Sabrina Coghlan-Jasiewicz as Simony/Pride
😡 Sonny Pickering as Wrath
👩⚖️ Zelda Cahill-Patten as Civil Law/Covetousness
With original music by Anna Cowan (harp) and Rachael Seculer-Faber; ceremonial trumpet: Henrike Lähnemann, special advice: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. Supported by Oxford Medieval Studies and St Edmund Hall
Video filmed and edited by Natascha Domeisen, cover image by Duncan Taylor
Plot summary
The play follows a man named Will, who falls asleep beside a stream on a May morning in Malvern Hills with a succession of dreams, beginning with a tower on a hill, a dungeon, and a fair field of folk. On his quest for Truth, Will meets a host of allegorical personifications, wandering through the marriage and later trial of Lady Mede, the confession of the Seven Sins, the Crucifixion, and the Harrowing of Hell. In the midst of all, Piers Plowman emerges, taking only momentary repose from his plough to guide Will towards Truth and, rather scandalously, chastise members of the clergy.
Scenes
Introduction from Holy Churche and Mede Holy Churche and Mede will explain what to expect from our play.
Prologue The bugle breaks through the air, and the dulcet tones of our bard and piper will lead you to a May Morning on Malvern Hills
Holy Churche and Will Will searches for Truth, imploring guidance of Holy Churche. Truth is, of course, that one must Do Well, Do Better, and Do Best.
Lady Mede Mede, the incarnation of financial reward, bribery, corruption, arrives.
Marriage of Mede False and Mede attempt to marry but the King requests their presence at the court, as False is not deemed a suitable husband for the noble lady.
Trial of Mede Mede pleads her case, explaining the importance of ‘mede’ or reward in the world at large.
Seven Deadly Sins Pride, Lechery, Envy, Wrath, Covetousness, Gluttony, and Sloth come and confess their sins.
Piers Plowman Piers Plowman arrives and agrees to show the field of folk where Truth is, if they help him plough his half acre.
Tearing of the Pardon Truth sends a pardon for Piers, however it is discovered not to be a real pardon at all. Piers tears it in two and interprets the Latin better than a priest ever could.
Background
Piers Plowman is an allegorical text that exists in different versions. The A text is the incomplete earliest version, the B text is the most broadly translated and edited, while also being highly scandalous, and the C text is highly censored, notably failing to mention the Peasants Revolt and the Tearing of the Pardon, which our performance presents.
The B text can be approximately dated to 1388, and has quite the volatile position in history, especially in relation to the peasant’s revolt and heresy. While locked inside Maidstone Castle, John Ball penned his radical Letter to Essex Men, citing Piers Plowman and Robin Hood as comrades in the fight. In short, Piers Plowman is a working class hero, a Billy Bragg if you will, representing the right of common man. The concept of class struggle is deeply entrenched into the text, carrying the relics of the Domesday Book serfdom, to the climbing taxes in the midst of the 100 years war, the dwindling population as the Black Death roamed the country. All of these tensions boiled over on the 30th of May, 1381, as John Bampton arrived in Essex to collect unpaid poll taxes. In consideration of 1990 Poll Tax riots, the UK Miners’ Strikes in 1984, and the recently unveiled Strike Laws, clearly class struggle repeats itself. With a ploughman at the helm, the voice of the working people is vital in the text. With all that in mind, sit back, relax, and enjoy the chaos. God spede þe plouȝ!
Director’s Story
Read a full version of Eloise Peniston’s reflection on her blog. Elise writes: I first discovered Piers Plowman at a bus stop. I was characteristically lost with a dead phone and only a charity shop book to keep me company. While no one murmured ‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness’, at me, I was acutely aware of being in the presence of the literary as I thumbed through the wind-swept pages. I was intensely confused, which, at the age of fifteen, I supposed was the hidden intention of all literature. With the charmed hand of A. V. C. Schmidt to guide me, I followed Will fallling asleep. I remember after being “found” an hour later how I, rather breathlessly, recounted the events of the B text to my mother as she, mid-flap, chastised me about reckless spontaneity and the need for charged phones.
At that bus stop, I knew that, by the fortuity of an Oxfam find, I had discovered something wonderful, but I had no idea that seven years later, I would be scavenging liripipes and slit-mittens in an attempt to bring this dream-vision to life. Now, I often take that humble copy with me to Malvern Hills, and it is positively crammed with pressed, may-morning flowers. However, little did I know then how deeply entrenched this text was in the public sphere or about the literary and literal rebellions that have emerged beneath the mouldboard.
From the pen of a man who described Piers Plowman as “not worth reading”, Gerard Manley Hopkins perfectly captured the flesh-good of the text:
And features, in flesh, what deed he each must do – His sinew-service where do.
He leans to it, Harry bends, look. Back, elbow, and liquid waist In him, all quail to the wallowing o’ the plough: ‘s cheek crimsons; curls Wag or crossbridle, in a wind lifted, windlaced – See his wind – lilylocks – laced; Churlsgrace, too, child of Amansstrength, how it hangs or hurls Them – broad in bluff hide his frowning feet lashed! raced With, along them, cragiron under and cold furls – With-a-fountain’s shining-shot furls. Harry Ploughman G. M. Hopkins
This particular poem encapsulates the essence of Piers Plowman: pure inscape, or as Stephen Medcalf calls it, an “extraordinary combination of roughness and a delicate magic.” It is incredibly difficult to describe what happens in Piers Plowman but “churlsgrace” is certainly the perfect descriptor for the essence of the text. A mere ploughman knows the way to Truth and is gracious enough to guide the reader, in return for help in plowing and sowing a half-acre.
Piers Plowman is ultimately a text that encourages mental labour, in a field, at a bus stop, or even in the gardens of St Edmund Hall…
We invite you to toil with us at Teddy Hall. From a tower on toft, a trumpet shall hail the dream, before the gentle plucking of a harp will guide you to sleep. Come and set forth on a dream-pilgrimage, exploring political satire, social upheaval, and spiritual crisis. We hope to see you soon in the fair field. God spede þe plouȝ!
When: Monday, 3 April 2023, 5-6.45 pm Where: Weston Library, Lecture Theatre Speaker: Dr Lisa Fagin Davis (Medieval Academy of America) Admission: free, but registration is required
About the Keynote Lecture Applying the theme of Use and Reuse to the practice of manuscript fragmentation, this lecture will address the material and ontological “framing” of leaves of dismembered manuscripts. Manuscript leaves undergo multiple types of “framing” as they journey from their medieval haptic origins to the digital realm. A parchment leaf begins as the hide on an animal’s skeletal framework, a fleshly origin whose shape is permanently imprinted on the folio. That hide is then stretched on a pergamenter’s frame for scudding and preparation for trimming and writing. The book’s binding is another framelike container that holds the leaf and provides its spatial boundaries. If a manuscript is dismembered, the leaf may find itself contained not in a binding but in a matte, the matte then framed for presentation on a wall. As we move into the digital space, images must be themselves contained in the frame of a viewer. What can we make of these various transformations and the frames that contain and constrain them?
About the Speaker Lisa Fagin Davis received her Ph.D. in Medieval Studies from Yale University in 1993. She is a paleographer, codicologist, and bibliographer with a particular interest in pre-1600 manuscript fragments and collections in North America. She has served as the supervisor or principal investigator for several digital reconstructions of dismembered manuscripts using shared-canvas viewers and IIIF-compliant images. She has served as Executive Director of the Medieval Academy of America since 2013 and was elected to the Comité international de paléographie latine in 2019.
How to Register for the Event If you wish to attend the keynote lecture, please register via this link.
Contact Details For any enquires regarding the event, please contact: JProf. Dr Julia von Ditfurth (julia.von.ditfurth@kunstgeschichte.uni-freiburg.de), Dr Hannah Ryley (hannah.ryley@ell.ox.ac.uk) or Carolin Gluchowski (carolin.gluchowski@new.ox.ac.uk).
This event this generously supported by the Oxford Berlin Research Partnership, New College, Balliol College, the Centre for the Study of the Book, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Bodleian Library. We are delighted to collaborate with Henrike Lähnemann, Alexandra Franklin, Andrew Dunning, and Jim Harris.
When: Thursday, 6 April 2023, 2-3.45 pm Where: Weston Library, Lecture Theatre Speaker: Prof Kate Rudy (University of St Andrews, UK) Admission: free, but registration is required
As Hannah Ryley and others have eloquently discussed in recent articles, medieval book materials—especially parchment—were costly but also durable. These two features of parchment encouraged its reuse. In this talk I survey objects that undergo a shift in media in the process of being repurposed. Folios become objects, prints become miniatures, texts become images, folios become bindings. I will look in particular at the processes of transformation, considering cases in which the old, fragmented object is put on display, and cases in which the frame between the old and the new is smoothed over and minimalized. The status of the old material determines the length to which a craftsperson will go to either underscore, or minimalize, the disjunction between the repurposed material and its new housing.
About the Speaker
Kathryn Rudy (Kate) earned her Ph.D. from Columbia University in Art History, and a Licentiate in Mediaeval Studies from the University of Toronto. Before coming to St. Andrews, she held research, teaching, and curatorial positions in the US, the UK, Canada, The Netherlands, and Belgium. Her research concentrates on the reception and original function of manuscripts, especially those manufactured in the Low Countries, and she has pioneered the use of the densitometer to measure the grime that original readers deposited in their books. She is currently developing ways to track and measure user response of late medieval manuscripts.
How to Register for the Event If you wish to attend the keynote lecture, please register via this link.
Contact Details
For any enquires regarding the event, please contact: JProf. Dr Julia von Ditfurth (julia.von.ditfurth@kunstgeschichte.uni-freiburg.de), Dr Hannah Ryley (hannah.ryley@ell.ox.ac.uk) or Carolin Gluchowski (carolin.gluchowski@new.ox.ac.uk).
This event this generously supported by the Oxford Berlin Research Partnership, New College, Balliol College, the Centre for the Study of the Book, the Ashmolean Museum, and the Bodleian Library. We are delighted to collaborate with Henrike Lähnemann, Alexandra Franklin, Andrew Dunning, and Jim Harris.
Emory University and the Medieval Academy of America are pleased to announce the launch of a Zoom working group on Race & Gender in the Global Middle Ages. The aim is to bring together scholars from various disciplines (history, art history, and literary studies) who work on Europe and the Mediterranean, the Islamic world, Africa, and Asia to discuss works-in-progress that deal with race and gender from 500 CE to 1600 CE. The working group is open to all medievalists, including graduate students.To participate in the working group, please register at https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/raceandgenderglobalmiddleages/
Spring 2023 schedule of meetings:
February 17 at 12pm-1:30pm EST Angela Zhang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University “Charity and Slavery: Childcare and Race in the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Premodern Florence”
March 24 12pm-1:30pm EST (9am Pacific time) Roland Betancourt, Professor of Art History, University of California, Irvine”The Case of Manuel I Komnenos: Articulating Identity through Gender, Sexuality, and Racialization”
April 28 at 12pm-1:30pm EST Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, Associate Professor of History, CUNY: Borough of Manhattan Community College and Graduate Center”Shifting Concepts of Race: Italy through the Earlier Middle Ages”
May 19 at 12pm-1:30pm EST Sierra Lomuto, Assistant Professor of English, Rowan University “Mongols in Medieval Europe: Exoticism and the Legend of Prester John”
June 9 at 12pm-1:30pm EST Alexa Herlands, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago”Juan Martínez Silíceo as Historian: Toledo’s 1547 Blood Purity Statute Revisited”
We are pleased to announce the Hilary Term Lecture of the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC). The lecture will take place on WED 1 March, 5-6.30 (UK time) in the Memorial Room at The Queen’s College in the University of Oxford.
Our speaker will be Yannis Assael, Intelligence Research Scientist at Google DeepMind
Title: Predicting the past with deep neural networks
Abstract: Ancient history relies on disciplines such as epigraphy for evidence of the thought, language, society and history of past civilizations. However, over the centuries, many inscriptions have been damaged to the point of illegibility, transported far from their original location and their date of writing is steeped in uncertainty. To address these challenges we present Ithaca, a deep neural network for the textual restoration, geographical attribution and chronological attribution of ancient Greek inscriptions. The goal of this presentation is to demonstrate how recent advances in the field of Deep Learning can assist and expand a historian’s workflow, and highlight the importance of joint interdisciplinary research.
