Category: events

A Special Relationship? Gender on Medieval Mount Athos

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20/09/2023

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Third Workshop for the ERC Starting Grant “Mount Athos in Medieval Eastern Mediterranean Society: Contextualizing the History of a Monastic Republic (ca. 850 – 1550)”

As is well-known, Mount Athos is today an exclusively male monastic preserve governed by the so-called baton (“untrodden”) rule, which prohibits the access of both women and female animals to the peninsula. Nonetheless, throughout history, women were connected with the Holy Mountain in manifold ways, in dynamics of patronage, spiritual advice and familial ties. The aim of this workshop is not only to uncover this largely neglected aspect of Athos’ history during the medieval period but also to explore other forms of gender, such as that of masculinity (including eunuchs).

Please click the link below to join the conference online:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/83545343731?pwd=cGMQGLtWk2g7MLIQv-CaiQmONC2ADA.0K4t6FiJQkDMMR-B

Wednesday, September 27th

2:00-2:30 p.m.
Welcome, Opening Remarks

2:30-4:30 p.m.
Session 1: The Virgin and Mount Athos

Mary Cunningham “Gregory Palamas and the Hesychastic Virgin Mary: Female Sanctity from a Male Monastic Perspective”

Tinatin Chronz “’Rejoice, Opener of the Gates of Paradise!’ Liturgical Veneration of the Keeper of the Gate (Portaitisa) in Iviron on Mount Athos”

Georgi Parpulov “The Virgin’s Garden”

4:30-5:00 p.m.
Coffee/tea break

5:00-6:30 p.m.
Session2: Women and Liturgical Commemoration

Kirill Maksimovič “Liturgical Commemoration of Women at the Serbian Athonite Monastery of Hilandar (13th–15th centuries): a Prosopographic Approach”

Emanuela Mindrila “The Commemoration of Women in the Liturgical tradition of Vatopedi Monastery: Remarks on Ms. Vatopedi 1945”.

6:30 p.m.
Reception and then Dinner for Conference Participants

Thursday, September 28th

9:00 a.m.-11:00 p.m.
Session 3: Female Patronage

Taisiya Leber “The Role of Women in the Patronage of Mount Athos and Athonites from a Transottoman Perspective

Alice Isabella Sullivan “New Forms of Athonite Patronage: The Impact of Royal Women from Moldavia and Wallachia in the Late  Middle Ages”

Lilyana Yordanova “Slavic Female Patronage on Mount Athos and its Socio-Political Context”

11:00-11:30 a.m.
Coffee/tea break

11:30 a.m.-1:00p.m.
Session4: The abaton in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries

Zachary Chitwood “Both Athonite and Antiochene?: The abaton in the writings of Nikon of the Black Mountain”

Rosemary Morris “The Diegesis Merike Revisited”

1:00-2:00 p.m.
Catered Lunch for Conference Participants

2:00 p.m.-3:30 p.m.
Session 5: Gendered Space

Ekaterina Mitsiou “Double Monasteries, abaton and the Gendered Space of Athos”

Leonora Neville “Masculinity, Ethics, and Power on Mount Athos”

3:30 p.m.-4:00 p.m.
Coffee Break

4:00 p.m.-6:00 p.m.
Session 6: Legal and Technical Aspects

Olivier Delouis “Une loi impitoyable between Economics and Morality: The abaton in Bithynia, Mount Athos and Elsewhere, and Its Reception through the Ages”

Anastasios Nikopoulos “The Institution of the Ban on the Monastic Republic of Mount Athos as a Legal Component of its Status”

Alexander Watzinger “How to Digitally Map Sex and Gender in Research Projects-Pitfalls and solutions”

7:30 p.m.
Dinner for Conference Participants

Friday, September 29th

10:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m.
Session 7: Women and Outside World

Mihailo Popovic “Serbian Noble women and the Clergy in the Middle Ages: A Comparison between Mara Branković and Jelena Anžujska regarding Athonite Monks and Franciscan Friars”

Vanessa de Obaldía “Women in the Life of SimonopetraMonastery: The Multifaceted Nature of a Special Relationship”

12:00-12:30 p.m.
Concluding Remarks and Discussion

12:30-1:30 p.m.
Catered Lunch for Conference Participants

(Ill: Mount Athos and its saints © Σκήτη Προδρόμου Μονῆς Μεγ. Λαύρας, Γεννάδιος Μοναχός, 1859)

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SYMPOSIUM ‘The First Generations of the Conquest. Norman Worlds, 9th-12th Century’

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19/09/2023

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This conference will address the notion of “first generations” in relation to the medieval Norman conquests in England, Wales, Ireland, southern Italy, Sicily, and the Crusader states. Focusing on the conquerors’ departure from their places of origin, the papers will explore the rhythms, modalities, reasons and objectives for leaving.
 
The conference aims at:
 
1/ Determining how relevant the notion of “first generations of the conquest” is. All these movements were phenomena that took place over several generations and featured different kind of protagonists – soldiers, mercenaries, pilgrims, merchants, clerics and monks.
 
2/ Considering the horizons of those who departed, while avoiding teleological and unilinear assumptions. These horizons require an analysis of diverse dynamics and “push and pull” factors: political motivations, economic grounds, social mechanisms, acculturation processes, social and political creativity.
 
3/ Exploring the documentation, approaches, and tools that help to answer these questions. Our documentation was often produced in the regions where the conquerors settled, and it focuses on their new status; it must be compared retroactively with sources from Normandy (and more broadly speaking from northern France) to enlighten the dynamics that led to the mobility of these people.

This conference is part of the Pax Normanna 2022-2026 research programme of the École française de Rome (dir. Pierre Bauduin, University of Caen Normandie, and Annick Peters-Custot, Nantes University).

The Haskins Society will co-sponsor the conference, encouraging young researchers presenting a paper to apply for the Bethell Prize.

Please click the link below to join the conference online:
https://us06web.zoom.us/j/89710859004?pwd=Hc7_Tab_Yxdq3x3VOGtWoWCCl3ErEg.71VlVJmLHvZZERxv

PROGRAMME (Download the abstracts here)

Friday 22 September, Maison française d’Oxford

13:30     Welcome
14:00     Pierre Bauduin (CRAHAM, Université de Caen Normandie), Annick Peters-Custot (CRHIA, Université de Nantes): “The first generations of the conquest. Departing: presentation”
14:30     Chris Lewis (Institute of Historical Research, University of London): “Becoming a Baron in Early Norman England”
15:00     Mark Hagger (Bangor University): “Chance, Kinship, and Claim: The Normans and Anglo-Normans in Wales after 1066”
15:30    Discussion

Coffee and tea

16:15     Stephen Baxter (St Peter’s College, Oxford): “The men who made Domesday: a revolutionary intelligentsia in early conquered England?”
16:45     Tom McAuliffe (Wolfson College, University of Oxford): “Lost in Translation: textual reinterpretation and the St Augustine’s historical tradition in the generation after the Conquest”
17:15     Discussion 
18:00-19:30 Visit to the archives and manuscripts at Magdalen College (Emily Jennings)

Conference dinner (speakers)

Saturday 23 September, Maison française d’Oxford

9:00     Bastien Michel (CRAHAM, Université de Caen Normandie): “ ‘The Number of Years’. Youth and conquests in the medieval Norman worlds (11th – 12th centuries)”
9:30     Nathan Websdale (Wolfson College, University of Oxford): “The Translatio of St. Nicholas of Myra and the journeys of Norman-Greeks in the eleventh century”
10:00     Discussion 

Coffee and tea

10:45     Marie-Agnès Lucas-Avenel (CRAHAM, Université de Caen Normandie): “The departure of the ‘Normans’ to Southern Italy: from migration to conquest according to Italo-Norman historiography”
11:15     Guilhem Dorandeu (École française de Rome): “Reassessing Norman Emigrations in Southern Italy (11th-12th centuries)”
11:45     Victor Rivera Magos (Università degli Studi di Foggia): “The Norman conquest of Apulia and the «first generation»: for a working hypothesis”
12:15     Discussion
13:00     Concluding remarks

Lunch at MFO (speakers)

Convened by pi************@*****en.fr & an*****************@*********es.fr
MFO Coordinator: ol*************@***********ac.uk

Credits: Tours, Bibliothèque municipale, Ms. 568 f. 249v © BMT

Midsummer Outing to Godstow Abbey

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15/06/2023

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Oxford Medieval Studies will be celebrating the end of term with a Midsummer outing to Godstow Abbey! All are welcome to join on Saturday, 24 June from 4pm and encouraged to take part in summer activities, including singing, sketching and swimming (weather permitting). Take along a picnic too!

Please contact Alison Ray with any queries.

Directions to Godstow and Port Meadow FAQs can be found on the Oxford City Council website here.

A brief history of Godstow Abbey and further details of the medieval site can be viewed here.

Distance: Medieval and Modern Languages Conference

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09/06/2023

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When? 19 June 2023
Where? Taylor Institution Library (St Giles, OX1), Main Hall

9am Panel One ‘Distance’ in Pre- and Early Modern Times (Panel Chair: Sebastian Dows-Miller)

  • Jack Nunn, University of Oxford: ‘Distant voices’: The Making of Late-Medieval Anthologies
  • Marlene Schilling, University of Oxford: ‘Defying Distance’: The Rhetorical Potential of Personifications of Time in the Prayerbooks of the Northern German Convent Medingen
  • Samuel FitzGibbon, University of Cambridge: Windows to New Worlds: Illustrations as Conveyors of Eyewitness Testimony in 16th Century Travel Accounts

10:40 Panel 2 ‘Distance’ in Translation, Reception and Adaptation (Panel Chair: Alexia Ji Wang)

  • Edward Voet, University of Oxford: Sanskrit to Korean transliteration in the Ansimsa-pon Chinŏn chip (1569)
  • Xiyuan Meng, University of St. Andrews: Performing ‘Distance’ on Chinese Stages: Translation, Adaption, and (Re-)Performance of Euripides’ Medea
  • Mariachiara Leteo, University of Oxford: The Distant Perspective of Greek Tragedy in Woolf’s Jacob’s Room

13:00 Panel Three Distance, Oppression and Transgression (Panel Chair: Mathieu Farizier)

  • Jake Robertson, University of Oxford: Art on the Edge: Patronage and Precarity in Gulag Theaters on the Soviet ‘Periphery’
  • Audrey Gosset, Université Bordeaux-Montaigne and EHESS: From Stasis to Democratic Ex-stasis: Bridging the Distance through Shared Art
  • Georgina Fooks, University of Oxford: Susana Thénon’s Distancias: Poetry as Choreography

14:35 Panel Four ‘Distance’ in Literary Correspondences (Panel Chair: Aditi Gupta)

  • Tess Eastgate, University of Oxford: The implications of distance in Marie-Antoinette’s correspondence
  • Valery Goutorova, University of St.Andrews: “My plan is to treat you as detached spirit”: Virginia Woolf’s Effigy to Beloved Women

15:40 Panel Five ‘Distance’ in Migration and Diasporic Literature (Panel Chair: Ola Sidorkiewicz)

  • Ruming Yang, University of Miami: Orientalism and Auto-orientalism in Contemporary Peruvian Literature
  • Madeleine Pulman-Jones, SOAS University of London: The Love Poems of Debora Vogel: A Jewish-Modernist Aesthetics of Longing
  • Kendsey Clements, University College London: Through Her Eyes: An Analysis of écriture migrante au féminin in Québec

17:15 Keynote: Karolina Watroba

Conference programme flyer designed by Anna Glieden

Night Office in 15th-Century Oxford

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26/05/2023

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A re-enactment of a forgotten liturgy for St Thomas Becket

When: Tuesday 6 June at 9 pm
Where: New College Chapel

Free entry. All welcome!

The service has been prepared specially by Dr Henry Parkes (University of Nottingham), currently Albi Rosenthal Visiting Fellow in Music at the Bodleian Library. His research project ‘Music in the Shadows: Staging the Medieval Night Office’ explores the cultural history of Christian night worship through a mixture of archival, performance-led and ethnographic research.

Many Oxford colleges preserve the late evening office of Compline, once sung daily. But in medieval times there was a much more substantial service to follow, known as Nocturns, Vigils, or the Night Office.

New College Choir will enact a short-form Night Office as it might have been known in 15th-century Oxford, to explore how this now- forgotten liturgy worked in performance. In southern England from the late 14th century on, Tuesdays were commonly given over to the veneration of St Thomas Becket. This service recreates a ‘commemorative’ Tuesday Becket office, as precribed in late medieval books of the Sarum Use—many of which survive in Oxford libraries.

For an introduction to the service, watch a presentation of some of the manuscripts in the Bodleian Library

The Pursuit of Musick. The Taverner Consort at 50

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23/05/2023

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When: 1 June 2023, 3-4pm
Where: Taylor Institution Library, Room 2

Andrew Parrott will be in conversation with Henrike Lähnemann on musical life in medieval and early modern Europe. This is a celebration of 50 years of the Taverner Consort and Andrew Parrott’s The Pursuit of Musick: Musical Life in Original Writings & Art c1200–1770, a uniquely colourful compendium of almost everything to do with pre-modern musical life. The lecture will take as its starting point how the examples on music in the everyday life of medieval and early modern Germany can be used as a teaching tool and will also discuss questions of translation of premodern sources. All original source material is open access available on the publication website, e.g. https://www.taverner.org/everyday-life.

With over 60 albums under its wing, the Consort is internationally renowned not only for Parrott’s insights into early music like Taverner, Tallis and Josquin des Prez, but also for award-winning recordings of composers including Monteverdi, Purcell, Handel, Bach, and unexpected carols. To announce the 50-year milestone, the Consort has made a special two-track recording involving Fretwork and boys from New College choir with a total of some 30 assorted instrumentalists. The tracks are being released on June 16th via Avie Records:
J. S. Bach, ‘O Jesu Christ, meins Lebens Licht’ (BWV 118, version I), c1736/37
Giaches de Wert, ‘Egressus Jesus’ (a7) / Michael Praetorius
Commercial pre-save link for Apple, Spotify, etc. Previous recordings have clocked up over 1,000,000 listens (for his 2018 Bach Magnificat alone).

Followed at 7pm by a reception hosted by Merton College and Benjamin Nicholas on the cherry tree lawn outside the chapel after evensong for informal drinks and chats.
Buy the book: £35.00, 560 pages, ISBN: 978-1-915229-54-0

Provenance Unknown: A New CMTC Lecture Series  

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22/05/2023

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The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) in the University of Oxford is proud to announce a new lecture series: Provenance: Unknown 

The new lecture series on unprovenanced manuscripts/inscriptions seeks to gather a wide range of voices from academics in different fields or disciplines about the methodological pros and cons of working with unprovenanced mss/inscriptions in academic contexts.

The lectures will cover matters such as the legal concerns, ethical concerns, and academic concerns by keeping a strict focus on methodology.

The aim of the lecture series is to work towards a general framework of good academic practice in the field of manuscript cultures.

Our first speaker is Alexander Herman, Director of the Institute of Art and Law. His most recent book is ‘Restitution — The Return of Cultural Artefacts’.

Title: Don’t Turn That Page! The Legal Risks of Dealing in Unprovenanced Manuscripts

Time and place: 30 May, 5.15pm (UK time), Memorial Room, The Queen’s College, Oxford, UK

Abstract: 

Researching and curating historical manuscripts is not without its risks, and these include legal risks. Questions arise in the context of dealing in unprovenanced manuscripts, such as when it is not clear when a manuscript left its country of origin nor under what circumstances. Also at issue are manuscripts that have a clear, but controversial provenance, such as those looted during periods of armed conflict or oppression. This talk will discuss the legal risks – if any – of dealing in such material, both from a national and international perspective. It will also raise the separate, but interlinked, question of morality of such activities.

The speaker:

Alexander Herman is the Director of the UK-based Institute of Art and Law. He has written, taught and presented on an array of topics in relation to art, law and cultural property. His writing appears regularly in The Art Newspaper and he has been quoted widely in the press on art law topics (including in The Guardian, The New York Times, The Atlantic, The Telegraph, ArtNET, The Globe & Mail and Bloomberg). His work has also been cited in the UK House of Lords and before the US Supreme Court. He trained in both common law and civil law legal systems at McGill University and practised law in Canada. He is Programme Co-Director of the Art, Business and Law LLM which runs as a partnership between the Centre for Commercial Law Studies at Queen Mary University of London and the Institute of Art and Law. His latest book is Restitution: The Return of Cultural Artefacts (Lund Humphries, 2021).

Online link will be provided later

…and keep an eye out for further announcements!

Image: Beinecke MS 408, also known as Voynich Manuscript, p.32

Bodleian Library Auct. M 3.14, fol. 1r

Nigel Palmer’s Books in the Bodleian

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18/05/2023

21:00

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A presentation by Dr Alan Coates, Assistant Librarian, Rare Books, Dept. of Special Collections and Subject Librarian, Bibliography & History of the Book on the occasion of the Memorial Colloquium for Nigel Palmer and as part of the Weston Library Medievalists Coffee Mornings. This builds on the work the late Nigel F. Palmer did with the Incunable Catalogue of the Bodleian Library, available as Bod-Inc. He contributed the text of descriptions for the section on blockbooks and wood- and metalcut prints. All digitised incunabula and blockbooks are available on digital.bodleian.

The list of books is as follows:

Missale Cisterciense ([Strasbourg: Johann Reinhard Grüninger], 1487) [from Eberbach]
Shelfmark: Auct. 6Q 2.20 [= Bod-inc. M-245(1)]

Apocalypse [Edition V] [Germany, c.1468/70, impression c.1472] Blockbook
Shelfmark: Auct. M 3.14 [= Bod-inc. BB-3]

Death and the Last Judgement ([England (Syon Abbey?), c.1499])
Woodcut, with Latin typographic text
Shelfmark: MS. Rawlinson D. 403, fol. 3v [= Bod-inc. XYL-19]

St George; St Maurelius ([Italy (Ferrara), c.1520])
Woodcut book cover with Italian inscriptions
Shelfmark: Broxb. 30.13 [= Bod-inc. XYL-23]

Büchlein von den peinen (Strasbourg: Bartholomaeus Kistler, 1506)
Shelfmark: Douce L 189

Büchlein von den peinen (Strasbourg: Bartholomaeus Kistler, 1506)
Shelfmark: Vet. E1 e.217

Bodleian Library Auct. M 3.14 in the digital.bodleian viewer.

Literary, religious and manuscript cultures of the  German-speaking lands:  a  symposium  in memory of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022) 

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15/05/2023

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Friday 19 – Saturday 20 May 2023

To celebrate the life and scholarship of Nigel F. Palmer, Professor of  German  Medieval Literary and Linguistic  Studies at the University of Oxford, the academic community honoured his memory with a symposium, which brought together colleagues from around the world. Their presentations spoke to the wide spectrum of Nigel’s intellectual interests, which ranged extensively within the broad scope of the literary and religious history of the German- and Dutch-speaking lands, treating Latin alongside the vernaculars, the early printed book alongside the manuscript, and the court and the city alongside the monastery and the convent.

Friday, 19 May 2023 

10:30-11:30         Weston Library, Visiting Scholars Centre

  • Presentation of incunables and blockbooks linked with Nigel F. Palmer in the Bodleian Library by Alan Coates.

13:00-13:45             Taylor Institution Library. Main Hall

  • Welcome and introduction. Video by Jeffrey Hamburger in honour of Nigel Palmer

14:00-15:00             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Racha Kirakosian

  • Henrike Manuwald, ‘German-language pericopes between retelling, exegesis and prayer: the case of the Begerin Prayer Book’
  • Martina Backes and Barbara Fleith, Extraordinary or conventional? Überlegungen zu einem un­ge­wöhnlichen Bildmotiv im Begerin-Gebetbuch

14:00-15:30             Weston Library. Horton Room: Chair: Henrike Lähnemann

  • Erik Kwakkel, ‘The problem of dating medieval manuscripts’.  Recording.
  • Victor Millet and Lorena Pérez Ben, ‘‘Fragmentology’ around Hartmann von Aue’s Iwein’.  Recording.

16:00-17:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Almut Suerbaum

  • Ben Morgan, ‘Critiquing critique: how Erich Fromm’s reading of Meister Eckhart can transform contemporary conceptualisations of human flourishing’
  • Freimut Löser, ‘Latest news on Nigel Palmer’s Meister Eckhart’
  • Racha Kirakosian, ‘Philology meets visionary practice’

16:00-17:30             Weston Library: Chair: Martin Kauffmann

  • Andrew Honey, ‘‘I believe they were fixed in some low places in the Church, Chapell or House’: further investigations into the glue stains of Douce 248, a blockbook Biblia pauperum of c.1465-1470’. Recording.
  • Geert Warnar, ‘The Roman van Limborch in a European framework’. Recording.
  • Luise Morawetz, ‘Gregory the Great in Old High German: the newly discovered glosses of MS. Canon. Pat. Lat. 57’.

Saturday, 20 May 2023

A small exhibition of medieval German manuscripts used by Nigel Palmer for teaching Palaeography and History of the Book was on display in the Voltaire Room of the Taylor Institution Library, including the two manuscripts from Erfurt Charterhouse Taylor Institution Library MS. 8° Germ. 1 and MS. 8° Germ. 2 (comment by Balázs Nemes).

10:00-11:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Annette Volfing

  • Elke Brüggen, ‘Parzival-Lektüren im komplexen Zusammenspiel von Edition, Übersetzung und Kommentierung’
  • Daniela Mairhofer, ‘Almost lost in transmission: the peculiar case of a Staufer song’
  • Nikolaus Henkel, ‘Liturgie im Schulunterricht um 1500. Der Osterhymnus ‚Salve festa dies‘ des Venantius Fortunatus und seine deutsche Reimpaarübersetzung’

10:00-11:30             Taylorian Room 2: Chair: Stephen Mossman

  • Adam Poznański and Reima Välimäki, ‘Petrus Zwicker’s Cum dormirent homines: transmission history and prospects for a critical edition of a popular anti-heretical treatise’
  • Linus Ubl, ‘Palm(er)ing material culture – medieval German manuscripts in the
    National State Library of Israel’
  • Astrid Breith, ‘Locked away for love – the Vita Wilbirgis inclusae and the manuscript holdings of St. Florian (Upper Austria)’

13:00-14:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Sarah Bowden

  • Jonas Hermann, ‘What gives? Marquard von Lindau and the ›Buch von geistlicher Armut‹’
  • Anne Winston-Allen, ‘Sibilla von Bondorf’s art of reform’
  • Edmund Wareham Wanitzek, ‘Soror in Christo dilectissima: Learning and exchange in the correspondence of Nikolaus Ellenbog and his sister Barbara’

13:00-14:30             Taylorian Room 2: Chair: Elizabeth Andersen

  • Peter Rückert, ‘Bücher zwischen Kloster und Hof. Neues zur literarischen Topographie in Württemberg’
  • Monica Brinzei and Giacomo Signore, ‘The rise of ars moriendi at the University of Vienna before the printing press’
  • Nigel Harris, ‘“Nach dem text und etwen nach dem sin”. Heinrich Haller und das Cordiale de quattuor novissimis des Gerard van Vliederhoven’

15:00-16:30             Taylorian Main Hall: Chair: Christine Putzo

  • Ralph Hanna, ‘On exempla: “Hoc contra malos religiosos”‘
  • Peter Tóth, ‘The early history of the Meditationes Vitae Christi: quotations and references’
  • Hans-Jochen Schiewer, ‘Kollektive Autorschaft und Baukastenprinzip. Geistliche Literatur dominikanischer Provenienz um 1300’

15:00-16:30             Taylorian Room 2: Chair: Lydia Wegener

  • Sarah Griffin, ‘Unfolding time in a late medieval German concertina-fold almanac (SPKB, Libr. pict. A 92)
  • Youri Desplenter, ‘Newly discovered interlinear Middle Dutch translation of the Psalms (c. 1300?). Analysis and contextualization within the Middle Dutch and medieval Psalm translations’
  • Wybren Scheepsma, ‘Laudate dominum in sanctis eius: a Limburg sermon with French roots’

17:00-19:00 Old Library of St Edmund Hall

Followed by speeches in honour of Nigel F. Palmer

  • The Pro Principal of St Edmund Hall, Rob Whittaker. Recording.
  • A performance of a medieval poem by Ruth Wiederkehr, Monika Studer, Claudia Lingscheid-Andersen and Racha Kirakosian
  • Words of memory by Eva Schlotheuber and in dialogue by Hans-Jochen Schiewer and Michael Stolz

The event was supported by the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages, the Meister-Eckhart-Gesellschaft, SSMLL, Oxford Medieval Studies and St Edmund Hall. Here a link to the call of papers; please contact Henrike Lähnemann if you have any comments on the content of this page.

Noblesse Oblige? Barons and the Public Good in Medieval Afro-Eurasia 10th-14th Centuries

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15/05/2023

10:36

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1st and 3rd Conference – 25th-27th May 2023 St Cross College and Pusey House, Oxford

25th May Thursday

9h Registration and Coffee
9h30-10h Introduction and Problematique (Maximilian Lau Worcester College, University of Oxford and Gregory Lippiatt University of Exeter)
10h-10h30 Coffee
10h30–11h15 Political argumentation in the 1150s and 1160s: the example of the Saint-Victor Register (Alice Taylor)
11h15–12h The Maliks of Hindustan: A New Conquest Nobility? (Abhishek Kaicker UC Berkeley and
Hasan Siddiqui University of British Columbia)
12h–12h30 Questions and Discussion
12h30–13h30 Lunch
13h30–14h15 Benevolent Elites? Shared Rulership and Privileges in Early Medieval Japan (Mickey Adolphson University of Cambridge)
14h15–15h The Kouroukan Fouga and Oral History: Further Reflections on African Narratives of Noblesse oblige (Adam Simmons Nottingham Trent University)
15h–15h30 Questions and Discussion
15h30–16h Tea
16h Optional Visit to Oriel College Archives (Magna Carta, Papal Bulls and More)
19h Speakers’ Dinner

26th May Friday


9h30–10h Coffee
10h–10h45 Minority Rule in Medieval Syria: The Establishment and Maintenance of the Burids
in Damascus during the Reign of Tughtegin (1104-1128) (Alex Mallett Waseda University, Tokyo)
10h45–11h30 L’aristocratie, l’empereur et le bien commun dans l’empire romain d’Orient (Jean-Claude Cheynet l’Institut universitaire de France)
11h30–12h15 The common good and baronial rebellion in England, c. 1199-1327 (Sophie Ambler University of Lancaster)
12h15–12h45 Questions and Discussion (Alice Taylor King’s College London)
12h45–14h Lunch
12h–12h30 Questions and Discussion
14h–14h45 A Shatterzone on an Ecotone: Fortifying the Steppe-Sown Frontier and Contending for Authority in the Ordos Region of Asia, Circa 800- 1200 (Ruth Mostern University of Pittsburgh)
14h45–15h30 Defining Elite Alterity in the medieval Maghrib and al-Andalus, c. 1000-1300
(Amira Bennison Magdalene College, University of Cambridge)
15h30–16h Questions and Discussion
16h–16h30 Tea
19h Conference Dinner

27th May Saturday


9h30-10h Coffee
10h–10h45 The Limits of Leadership: Cities, Frontiers, and Incursion in the Narratives of North-Western
Europe, 1100–1300 (Emily Winkler St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford)
10h45–11h30 Basqaqs, darughas or envoys? Transience, mobility and Mongol elites in Rus (Angus Russell Trinity College, Cambridge)
11h30–12h15 The Rich, The Poor, and The State: Ideas of Good Government in Song Dynasty China (Sukhee Lee Rutgers University)
Questions and Discussion
12h30–13h30 Concluding Remarks, Round Table Discussion, Next Steps (Gregory Lippiatt University of Exeter and Maximilian Lau Worcester College, University of Oxford)
13h30-14h30 Lunch and Farewell

About the Noblesse Oblige? Project

This project and its conference is a forum for the re-evaluation of ‘baronial’ government and the common good between the tenth and fourteenth centuries across Afro-Eurasian polities. By bringing together emerging and established international scholars, it challenges the traditionally Eurocentric approach to this problem and uses new methodologies to reassess our framework for studying the medieval period, leading to a fundamental reappraisal of the teleological narrative that has previously explained the rise
of modern states.
The story of the medieval barons is commonly a negative one. Because aristocracies have been almost universally eclipsed by centralised states in the modern world, they are often cast as regressive forces whose self-interest held back ‘progress’. Nor is this exclusively a European narrative: the historiographical
attention paid to the ‘rise of the State’ has privileged the Latin Christian experience of political formation and shaped the way in which non-royal élites are seen in other historical contexts. As a result, ‘private’ rulers such as lords, amirs, jun and kshatriya are often assumed to have been at odds with the needs of the wider society.
This network is challenging this understanding of the role of ‘barons’ in their relation to public good in two important and complementary ways. First, we are exploring case studies of how these non-royal élites conceived and implemented responsible government, whether for themselves or for others. Second, we are comparing these case studies in a bold transnational framework, reaching from western Europe to China, that spans the collapse of major centralised imperial projects in the ninth century to the destabilising experience of the Great Death in the fourteenth.

We would like to thank the following organisations for their support of this project and the organisation of this conference:

Supervisory Board
Nandini Chatterjee – University of Exeter
Bernard Gowers – Keble College, University of Oxford
Catherine Holmes – University College, University of Oxford
Yasuhiro Otsuki – Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo
Nicholas Vincent – University of East Anglia


Associate Members
Fernando Arias – University of Valladolid
Susannah Bain – Jesus College, University of Oxford
James Cogbill – Worcester College, University of Oxford
Lars Kjaer – Northeastern University London
Mario Lafuentee – University of Zaragoza
Carlos Laliena – University of Zaragoza