Category: News

Medieval Matters: Week 6

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14/11/2022

07:53

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Welcome to Week 6. We’re now well and truly into the second half of term, and even though it has been unseasonably warm, winter is clearly coming: the sun is going down horribly early! If emerging from the library or a seminar to find that it’s already gone dark is getting you down, here is some advice from Alcuin:

maneat vero in vobis lumen scientiae
[let the light of learning dwell amongst you, Ep. 88]

Luckily we have plenty of bright lights of learning to keep us going through these dark winter months! See below for many events and seminars that might brighten up your week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Save the Date: Invisible East Lecture on 21st November. Injustice, Corruption, and Partisanship in the Eastern Seljuq Lands of the Early Twelfth Century – Lecture by Deborah Tor (University of Notre Dame). 21 November 2022, 3PM, Spalding Room, FAMES.
  • Norman Sicily and Ifrīqiya – Documents, Scripts and Islamic Law: Thursday 1st December 2022 14:00 – 18:30, at The Buttery, Wolfson College, University of Oxford. To reserve a place, please email susannah.cogan@orinst.ox.ac.uk before 26th November. Places are limited and entrance will be strictly limited to those holding confirmation of a reserved place. For full details, see here.
  • Online Seminar Group: Medieval Wales and the Marches: The Mortimer History Society is working in partnership with Professor Helen Fulton (Bristol), Dr Emma Cavell (Swansea), and Dr Sara Elin Roberts (Chester) to create an Online Seminar Group: Medieval Wales and the Marches, to provide a forum for academics and independent scholars to share research papers. The online seminar group, which will be multi-disciplinary, welcomes membership and papers on aspects of the social, economic, cultural, legal, and political history of medieval Wales and the Marches. A mailing list of members is being assembled this term, along with a call for papers, with a view to seminars starting in spring term 2023. Please email Philip Hume at philip.r.hume@gmail.com if you would like to be added to the mailing list (indicating if you would be interested in giving a paper).

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 14th November:

  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning, and Tuija Ainonen is back! Matthew writes: We reconvene until the end of term, meeting as usual via Teams on Mondays from 1-2pm. Tuija will lead the first session – in keeping with Luisa’s emails we’ll read some passages from the early 13th century Ashmole bestiary (MS. Ashmole 1511), starting with Elephant (f. 15v).
  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Elvira Miceli (University of Oxford)The Byzantine Heritage of the Liber ad honorem Augusti. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar takes place at 3pm in the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Helena Hamerow, ‘Women of the Conversion Period’. A biomolecular investigation of mobility‘.
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is Transmasc sainthood: Euphrosyne/Smaragdus. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.   
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams (Teams link here). This week’s speaker will be Jane Kershaw (Institute of Archaeology), ’A new look at silver in the Golden Age of Islam’. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk 
  • The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30-7.30pm. Please email grace.oduffy@sjc.ox.ac.uk for more information and to be added to the mailing list.

Tuesday 15th November:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 12.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Megan Cavell (Birmingham), ‘Before Attenborough: Early Medieval Natural History, Animal Diversity and “Edutainment”‘. The paper will be followed by lunch with the speaker. All welcome.
  • The Governability across the medieval globe Discussion Group meets at 12:30 in the History Faculty. Everyone welcome, staff, students and researchers, of all historical periods. We encourage you to bring lunch along. This session we will be discussing ‘Mountains and Uplands’.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Seneca, Thyestes. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar takes place at 5pm at Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. The theme for this term is ‘Women’. This week’s speaker will be Hannah Skoda (St John’s): ‘Eius filia incepit sugere mammillam dicte eius matris’ (Life of St Nicholas of Tolentino):  breast-feeding mothers in the later Middle Ages. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 16th November:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets for a paper by Julia Lorenz on battles in ‘Dietrichs Flucht’ at 11:15am in Somerville College – ask at the Lodge for directions. If you want to be added to the medieval German mailing list, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Marie-Hélène Blanchet (CNRS) & Raúl Estangüi Gómez (Sorbonne), The Byzantine World in the Palaeologan Era: Empire(s) and Emerging Nation-States.

Thursday 17th November:

  • A special lecture on The linguistic relationship between the Gothic Bible and its Greek source by Professor Carla Falluomini (University of Perugia) will take place at 4−5pm as part of the Germanic Reading Group in the Oxford Linguistics Faculty – Common Room and via Zoom. All welcome!
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speaker will be Konstantin Voigt (University of Freiburg): From Lyre to Staff – Relating Diagrams, Neumes and Diastematic Notation. If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have questions, contact Matthew Thomson.
  • The Oxford Medieval Visual Culture Seminar will take place at 5pm in St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Spike Bucklow Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, The Seven Ages; a medieval theory of growing up and aging, as illustrated by artists’ lives.
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.15pm via Zoom and The History of the Book Room, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Sarah Hill (Oxford): ‘Legacies and failures: Rethinking Welsh pop history’. Please contact david.willis@jesus.ox.ac.uk if you need a link.

Friday 18th November:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning which features treasures of the Bodleian Library takes place at 10:30-11.30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!).

Saturday 19th November:

  • The Quarterly Meeting of the Slavonic and Eastern European Medieval Studies Group takes place at 11am–4pm in Wolfson College, Seminar room 2. Speakers will be Elena Draghici-Vasilescu (Oxford) “Byzantine objects in mediaeval Rus’: a case study”; Lilian Ann-Charlotte Gutsjö (Gothenburg) “Змнн and львъ with the -ov- suffix in the Codex Suprasliensis“; Angus Russell (Cambridge) “Taxation or bribery? The semantics of bureaucracy in fifteenth-century Moscow” and Ralph Cleminson (Oxford) “Pilgrimage literature in mediaeval Rus’: fact or fiction?”. All four talks are free and open to the public.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Funded PhD position: ‘Slavery and the Households of Sixth-Century Gaul’. The position is funded to cover fees according to the UK domestic rate, with an additional annual stipend of £16,062. It will be conducted at the project’s host institution, the University of Leicester. Application deadline: 25 November 2022 Start date: as early as 9 January 2023 and no later than 25 September 2023. For more information, and to apply, please visit the University of Leicester’s application page.
  • The Invisible East Programme is looking for a Programme Finance Co-ordinator to join the team. Deadline for applications: 21 November 2022. More information at this link.

Finally, some more advice on coping with darkness from Alcuin:

religio vestrae conversationis fulgeat quasi claritas lucis in tenebris
[The goodness of your way of life should shine like a bright light in the dark, Ep. 187]

This advice never felt more necessary than in the British winter months! May your week be full of lights of some kind or another, even if the sun is setting before your seminars end for the day.

[A Medievalist peeks out of the library and is unimpressed to see the sun setting at 4.15pm]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 83 v.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 5

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07/11/2022

14:28

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Where did the term go? Somehow we are already at fifth week. This is an infamous week in the Oxford calendar, rumoured to bring stress and tiredness as we begin the second half of term. Here’s some advice on self-care from Alcuin if you are feeling the fifth week blues:

Cui largus eris, si tuae animae tenax; vel quis tibi fidelis erit, si tu tibi ipse infidelis erit?
[To whom will you be generous, if you are miserly to your own soul? Who will be loyal to you if you are disloyal to yourself?, Ep. 23]

Luckily fifth week also brings many gifts and joys: we are generously supplied with many wonderful events this week to keep your spirits up! It’s cold and it’s dark, but there are plenty of inspiring talks and papers to keep your spirits warm. If you’re feeling that winter is coming, this week’s Book at Lunchtime on Wednesday 9th at 12.30 focuses on Professor Carolyne Larrington’s All Men Must Die; if you’re dreaming of somewhere warmer, the Seven Sages of Rome as a Global Narrative Tradition Oxford-Berlin Workshop takes place on 11-12 November 2022; if you want to see new life breathed into Old English, make your way to WOOPIE at 5.15pm in New College, Room LR4 for Prof. José Luis Martínez-Dueñas (Universidad de Granada)’s lecture on ‘Jorge Luis Borges’s Old English Poetics‘; and if you want a taste of things to come in the summer months, see ‘Old Frisian, a Gem of Old Germanic Studies’ by Dr Anne Popkema at 5.15pm on Wednesday 9th, a taster session for the Old Frisian Summer School that will run later in the year. And that’s only a small sample of the many delights on offer this week! Here is the full roundup:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group is back! Mondays 1-2pm, starting 14 November (i.e., next week) on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning or Tuija Ainonen for further details.
  • This year the British Archaeological Association Postgraduate Conference will be hosting a fantastic array of papers by Early Career Researchers from across the world on topics ranging from medieval art, architecture, and archaeology. It will take place online on Tuesday 22 and Wednesday 23 November 2022.  Here is a pdf copy of the programme and you can also see it on the Medieval Art Research website. Register for the conference here: https://bit.ly/3FDDsAI.
  • Violent Victorian Medievalism exhibition, Voltaire Room, Taylor Institution Library, 7th and 8th week (21 Nov-2 Dec): This exhibition tells part of the story of how ‘medieval’ often becomes synonymous with ‘violence’ in later responses to the Middle Ages. It brings together some of the Bodleian’s collection of Victorian and Edwardian English-language adaptations of the Nibelungenlied and related material. These publications are accompanied by eye-catching images, often focusing on some of the more violent aspects of the narrative. The digital exhibition is now live, as is registration for the closing reception on 2nd December, 17:00-18:15 (Friday of 8th week). Registration closes 24 Nov or when places are filled. 
  • The Seven Sages of Rome as a Global Narrative Tradition: Workshop and Talks. 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. For full details, please see our blog.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 7th November:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Niels De Ridder (KU Leuven / Universität zu Köln), Representations of Jews in Middle-Byzantine hagiographical apocalypses. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams (Teams link here). This week’s speaker will be Lucia Akard (Oxford SU), ‘Rape and Survival in Late Medieval France and Burgundy‘. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk 
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.30-7.30pm. Please email Ashley Castelino (ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list.

Tuesday 8th November:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 12.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Brittany Schorn (Oxford), ‘Reading the Codex Regius of the Poetic Edda‘. The paper will be followed by lunch with the speaker. All welcome.
  • The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures meets at 3.30pm at Memorial Room, The Queen’s College and on Zoom for a Work in Progress Colloquium. The speakers will be Benedetta Bessi (Venice/Stanford): ‘Towards a Digital Edition of the Liber insularum by Cristoforo Buondelmonti’ and Joseph Mason (New College, Oxford): ‘Oral and Written Transmission in Old French Song: a reassessment’. Please register here (whether you are planning to attend in person or online)
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Sophocles, Antigone. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Maison française d’Oxford (www.mfo.ac.uk). Presentations begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Dr David Murray (Universiteit Utrecht): ‘The Crusades and Flemish Literary History: Home and Away?’. For more information and to be added on the seminar’s mailing list, contact sophie.marnette@balliol.ox.ac.uk 
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar takes place at 5pm at Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. The theme for this term is ‘Women’. This week’s speaker will be Alice Spiers (St Anne’s): Situating the Visionary:  the politics of Mechthild of Magdeburg and Henry Suso. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 9th November:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets for a paper by Marlene Schilling on Personification in the Dietrichsepik at 11:15am in Somerville College – ask at the Lodge for directions. If you want to be added to the medieval German mailing list, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • Book at Lunchtime with Professor Carolyne Larrington meets at 12.30pm (Lunch), 1-2pm (Discussion) in Radcliffe Humanities Seminar Room. For full details, see our blog.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Federica Scognamiglio (Scuola Normale Superiore), Before isometry: metrics and style of Ignatios the Deacon (and Pseudo-Ignatios).
  • Special Lecture: ‘Old Frisian, a Gem of Old Germanic Studies’ by Dr Anne Popkema will take place at 5.15pm in Taylor Room 2. The lecture is also a taster session for the Old Frisian Summer School which will run in July 2023 in St Edmund Hall. For full details, see our blog.

Thursday 10th November:

  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.15pm via Zoom and The History of the Book Room, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Charlene Eska (Virginia Tech), ‘Let’s do it in the garden: A tale of temptation and redemption in NLS MS 72.1.26‘. Please contact david.willis@jesus.ox.ac.uk if you need a link.
  • WOOPIE (Oxford Old English Work-in-Progress) takes place at 5.15pm in New College, Room LR4. The speaker will be Prof. José Luis Martínez-Dueñas (Universidad de Granada): ‘Jorge Luis Borges’s Old English Poetics‘. The paper will be followed by drinks reception. All welcome. For further details, contact: rafael.pascual@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Friday 11th November:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10:30-11.30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library and the presentation will feature the launch of the edition of a Douce collection of material relating to St Margarete of Antioch by Lucian Shepherd plus the showing of this and two further books (Douce 155: Marcolphus and Douce S 195: Bidpai) demonstrating Francis Douce’s “cut-and-paste” approach to pre-modern books (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!).
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at St Hilda’s College, in the Julia Mann Room. The text will be extracts from the Chronicle of Langtoft; pdf will be provided. For access to the text and further information, please email: Stephanie Hathaway or jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • The Department of Medieval Studies at Central European University (Vienna) is pleased to announce its call for applications for the 2023/2024 academic year. The deadline is February 1, 2023. Central European University is a graduate-level, English-language university with a multi-disciplinary Medieval Department that offers the following programs: 1-year MA in Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies; 2-year MA in Comparative History: Late Antique, Medieval and Renaissance Studies; 2-year MA in Cultural Heritage Studies; PhD in Late Antique, Medieval and Early Modern Studies. CEU provides a variety of need- and merit-based scholarships and various other types of financial support available to students at all levels and from any country (tuition waiver, stipend, housing awards, health insurance coverage): https://www.ceu.edu/financialaid. Interested applicants can contact us at medstud@ceu.edu. For further information, visit: https://medievalstudies.ceu.edu/.

Finally, some more advice from Alcuin on self-care to see you through the perils of fifth week:

Cur in alium spem ponis et tu tibi ipsi benefacere non vis?
[Why are you willing to put hope in another but not to do good to yourself?, Ep. 23]

May you be willing to do good to yourself and to others this week!

[A Medievalist is feeling the 5th week blues sneak up on them]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 30 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 4

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31/10/2022

12:17

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This week marks the feast of All Saints’ and All Souls’ Day. In more secular celebrations, today is, of course, Halloween. I bring you some festive wisdom for the occasion from Alcuin:

Non te diaboli seducat astutia, non corporalis voluptas evertat
[Do not let the devil’s tricks mislead you, and do not let physical treats destroy you, Ep. 301]

In other words: beware of both tricks and oversweet treats! Don’t worry: we have more treats than tricks this week, and since they are mostly treats of the mind, they even come Alcuin-approved! In particular, check out the blog post by Alison Ray on Medium Ævum Prizes and Grants to discover potential funding and prize-winning opportunities. We also, of course, have the much anticipated OMS / Astor Visiting Lecturer Lecture by Professor Ardis Butterfield, which takes place tonight, Monday 31st at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty. We look forward to seeing many of you there: all are warmly invited to enjoy what is sure to be a fascinating and stimulating lecture and are welcome for drinks afterwards. Professor Butterfield will also be hosting a Manuscripts Masterclass on Tuesday 1st at 2-4pm in the Weston Library Lecture Theatre.
Of course, we have a whole range of other treats this week too – please see below for full details:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Save the Date: Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference. The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference will be back on April 20-21, 2023 with the theme of ‘Names and Naming’! The conference will be fully hybrid, in Oxford and online. Keep your eyes peeled for a full Call for Papers in the coming weeks, and make sure you’re following us on Twitter @OxMedGradConf to be the first to see it! For more information, see the blog post here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 31st October:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Nuna Terri (Université libre de Bruxelles), Saint Thekla’s popularity in Rough Cilicia. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar takes place at 3pm in the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Gabor Thomas, ‘Not so much a backwater: New archaeological research on the early medieval Middle Thames‘.
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is Transfemme prayer: Kalonymus ben Kalonymus. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.   
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams (Teams link here). This week’s speaker will be Julia Crick (KCL), ‘Staffing the Conquest: Mobility, Stasis, and Scribal Work in England, 1066-1100‘. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk 
  • The OMS Lecture / Astor Visting Lecture will take place at 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty. The speaker will be Professor Ardis Butterfield, ‘Do we mean lyric or song? Modern lyric theory in history’. All are welcome to attend.
  • The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30-7.30pm. Please email grace.oduffy@sjc.ox.ac.uk for more information and to be added to the mailing list.

Tuesday 1st November:

  • There will be no Medieval English Research Seminar this week.
  • Prof. Ardis Butterfield, the Astor Visting Lecturer, will hold a Manuscripts Masterclass at 2-4pm, Weston Library Lecture Theatre. The theme will be ‘Medieval lyric and song manuscripts from Bodleian collections’. All welcome: no need to book, just turn up.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Seneca, Thyestes. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk.  
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar takes place at 5pm at Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. The theme for this term is ‘Women’. This week’s speaker will be Chimene Bateman (LMH): Christine de Pizan and Saint Christine: the power of women’s speech. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 2nd November:

  • No Medieval German Graduate Seminar this week.
  • The Codicology and the Material Book Seminar takes place at 1.30-3.30pm, in the Weston Library. Today’s seminar is on Structures of the manuscript book. The seminar is open to all current Oxford students. To attend: email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Medieval Misuse discussion group will meet at 5-6pm in The Merze Tate room (history faculty). All welcome!
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Georgi Parpulov (Lincoln College), Middle-Byzantine Evangelist Portraits.

Thursday 3rd November:

  • The Old French Reading Group will meet at St Hilda’s College, 4pm. Please direct any questions about the group to Alice (alice.hawkins@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk) or Irina (irina.boeru@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk).
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5pm on Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Llewelyn Hopwood (Oxford): ‘Beth oedd ‘Cymraeg da’ (1300–1600)?‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.
  • The Oxford Medieval Visual Culture Seminar will take place at 5pm in St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speakers will be Laura Cleaver and Danielle Magnusson, University of London, The market for medieval illuminated manuscripts and the making of a canon, c. 1900-1925.

Friday 4th November:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10:30-11.30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!).
  • The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm on Zoom. This week we will be looking at two Old Saxon texts under Will’s guidance. They are the ‘Essener Heberolle’ and the ‘Allerheiligenhomilie’ in the Müllenhoff edition. To receive the materials and be added to the mailing list, please contact howard.jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • 2023 Medium Ævum Essay Prize: Race your Word-Wyvern to glory! Postgraduates and those recently graduated with a higher degree are invited to submit an essay on a topic that falls within the range of the interests of Medium Ævum in the medieval period (up to c. 1500). The winner of the Essay Prize will receive a cash prize and funding for books and conference attendance. The winning article will also be considered for publication in Medium Ævum, subject to the usual editorial procedures of the journal. Entries must be submitted by Thursday, 2 December 2022 and further details on entry criteria and how to submit are available on our website: https://aevum.space/EssayPrize
  • Conference Funding and Research Travel Bursaries: Planning an event or research trip? The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature are now open for physical and online conference funding applications, and are particularly interested in providing sponsorship which facilitates wide conference access and participation for unwaged graduate and early-career medievalists. Conference grant applications are generally open to Society members and should be made at least three months ahead of the planned conference date, please find the Society’s guidelines for applicants on our website: https://aevum.space/conferences/funding.

That’s all for our round-up this week. Finally, some more advice from Alcuin:

non tristitia pusillanimem reddat, non laetitia immoderatum efficitat
[Do not let sadness dispirit you, nor immoderate joy overexcite you, Ep. 301]

In other words: do not be too saddened by tricks, nor overly distracted by treats! That said, I think the OMS treats of this week are the exception: even Alcuin surely could not have objected to becoming overexcited by learning! May you have a joyful week full of Medievalist treats.

[A Medievalist is feeling ready for Halloween]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 63 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

The 2023 Medium Ævum Essay Prize and Grants

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29/10/2022

08:46

1 Comment on The 2023 Medium Ævum Essay Prize and Grants

News, opportunities

The Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature is delighted to share details of the 2023 Medium Ævum Essay Prize and available grants:

2023 Medium Ævum Essay Prize

Race your Word-Wyvern to glory! Postgraduates and those recently graduated with a higher degree are invited to submit an essay on a topic that falls within the range of the interests of Medium Ævum in the medieval period (up to c. 1500).

The winner of the Essay Prize will receive a cash prize of £500, together with £250 for any books available from Bennett & Kerr Booksellers (including any from the Society’s own catalogue) & £250 of funding towards conference attendance. The winning article will also be considered for publication in Medium Ævum, subject to the usual editorial procedures of the journal. Entries must be submitted by Thursday, 2 December 2022 and further details on entry criteria and how to submit are available on our website: https://aevum.space/EssayPrize

Conference Funding and Research Travel Bursaries

Planning an event or research trip? Apply for the Society’s available conference funding and travel bursaries! We are now open for physical and online conference funding applications, and are particularly interested in providing sponsorship which facilitates wide conference access and participation for unwaged graduate and early-career medievalists. Conference grant applications are generally open to Society members and should be made at least three months ahead of the planned conference date, please find the Society’s guidelines for applicants on our website: https://aevum.space/conferences/funding

The Society’s Research Travel Bursaries are to support relevant research by scholars, at any stage in their career, who are not in receipt of the requisite funding from other sources. The value of all grants is between £300 and £1000. There are two application rounds each year, with the deadlines falling on 1st September and 1st March; applicants will be informed of the Society’s decision within three weeks of the deadline. We also welcome applications for financial support to obtain images of manuscripts from libraries or archives to which the applicant is unable to travel. Details on how to apply may be viewed on our website: https://aevum.space/bursaries

Two men giving out money from a chest, from Bodleian Library, MS Auct. D. 4. 17

Society Membership

Not yet a member of the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature? Consider subscribing for the low cost of £20 a year, or £10 a year for graduate students. Membership benefits include receipt of the Medium Ævum journal in print and digital formats, and a range of discounts on the Society’s monograph series and events. Take a look and register online our website: https://aevum.space/user/register

Medieval Matters: Week 3

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24/10/2022

11:18

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Welcome to Week 3. Some timely advice from Alcuin for the stormy weather we had this weekend:

Hodie tempestas inminet, sed cras serenitas arridet
[Today a storm hangs over us, but tomorrow pleasant weather will smile upon us, Ep. 173]

I would like to draw particular attention to an especially pleasant event that will be smiling upon us this time next week, when we will be hosting the long-awaited termly OMS lecture / Astor Visiting Lecture by Prof. Ardis Butterfield. The lecture will take place on Monday 31 October, 5.15pm, in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty (St Cross Building). For full details, please see our blog post. This said, we are not fairweather Medievalists, and come rain or shine this week, there will be plenty of events and opportunities to enjoy. Please see below for everything happening this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Sign-ups Now Open for the Medieval Mystery Cycle! Just follow this link to propose a play and to join one of the highlights of the Oxford Medieval Studies calendar, which will be held on Saturday 22 April 2023 at St Edmund Hall. For full details on the kinds of play that you can put on and a wealth of inspiration from past years, see our blog post here.
  • OMS Small Grants Now Open: The TORCH Oxford Medieval Studies Programme invites applications for small grants to support conferences, workshops, and other forms of collaborative research activity organised by researchers at postgraduate (whether MSt or DPhil) or early-career level from across the Humanities Division at the University of Oxford. The activity should take place between the beginning of November 2022 and end of March 2023. The closing date for applications is Friday of Week 4 of Michaelmas Term = 4 November). Grants are normally in the region of £100–250. For full details, see our blog post here.
  • Meet your OMS Team 2022/23! Oxford’s medieval studies community continues to get bigger and better every year. This year we have our largest OMS team to date to help keep you informed about Medieval goings on in and around Oxford. To meet the team, please visit our blog post here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 24th October:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Joaquin Serrano (University of Edinburgh), The reliquary-cross of Saint Constantine and the military use of holy relics. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams (Teams link here). This week’s speaker will be Ildar Garipzanov (Oslo), ‘Early Medieval Minuscule Texts: What, where, and why?‘. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk 
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5.30-7.30pm. Please email Ashley Castelino (ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list.

Tuesday 25th October:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 12.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty. This week’s speakers will be John Colley (Oxford), ‘Skelton and the Commonweal: Greek History in Quattrocento England’ Lucy Fleming  (Oxford), ‘ “A Racket at the Mill”: The Reeve’s Tale for a Century of Young Readers’. The paper will be followed by lunch with the speaker. All welcome.
  • The Governability across the medieval globe Discussion Group meets at 12:30 in the History Faculty. Everyone welcome, staff, students and researchers, of all historical periods. We encourage you to bring lunch along. This session we will be discussing ‘What is governability and how can we study it?’.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Sophocles, Antigone. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar takes place at 5pm at Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. The theme for this term is ‘Women’. This week’s speaker will be Philippa Byrne  (Somerville): Making Germans Sicilian in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 26th October:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets for a paper by Luise Morawetz on the ‘Hildebrandslied’ at 11:15am in Somerville College – ask at the Lodge for directions. If you want to be added to the medieval German mailing list, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Codicology and the Material Book Seminar takes place at 1.30-3.30pm, in the Weston Library. Today’s seminar is on Paper & Parchment/Inks & Pigment. The seminar is open to all current Oxford students. To attend: email bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk. Please note that this takes place at 1.30pm, not at 2pm as previously advertised!
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Ine Jacobs (Oxford), The Byzantine Dark Ages at Stauropolis/Karia (FKA Aphrodisias).

Thursday 27th October:

  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speaker will be Laurie Stras (University of Southampton): Music, musicians, and community at the Florentine convent of San Matteo in Arcetri (1540-1630). If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have questions, please just send me an email (matthew.thomson@ucd.ie).
  •  The Launch of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Medieval Women’s Writing in the Global Middle Ages takes place at 5pm via Zoom. To celebrate the launch of this exciting volume, there will be a round table on Women’s Writing in the Global Middle Ages, featuring Diane Watt (University of Surrey), Ruth Lefevre (Palgrave), Michelle M. Sauer (University of North Dakota), Liz Herbert McAvoy (Swansea University), Ayoush Lazikani (University of Oxford), Kathryn Maude (American University of Beirut), Will Rogers (University of Louisiana at Monroe), and Alexandra Verini (Ashoka University). A Q&A will follow the roundtable. For full details, and to sign up, see the eventbrite page.
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.15pm via Zoom and The History of the Book Room, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Jon Morris (Caerdydd), ‘The interplay between social structures and language variation in Welsh-speaking communities‘. Please contact david.willis@jesus.ox.ac.uk if you need a link.
  • At 9:20pm, the St Edmund Consort will sing Compline at Candlelight in the Norman Crypt under St-Peter-in-the-East, the library church of St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, featuring a hymn written in 1522 by Elisabeth Cruciger.

Friday 28th October:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10:30-11.30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!).
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at St Hilda’s College, in the Julia Mann Room. The text will be extracts from the Chronicle of Langtoft; pdf will be provided. For access to the text and further information, please email: stephanie.hathaway@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk or jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org.

Finally, here is some parting wisdom from Alcuin to keep in mind as you venture around town this week:

Non sis harundo agitata, non flos aura tempestatis decidens
[Do not be a reed shaken by the wind, a flower blown down by the storm, Ep. 72]

I interpret this to mean: be careful of your umbrella choice when navigating Oxford in the autumn winds!! In less literal understanding: don’t give up if you hit stormy seas in your research. Wishing you a week of sunny skies both literally and metaphorically.

[Medievalist struggles with an umbrella whilst on the way to the library]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 19 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Your OMS Team for 2022/23

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23/10/2022

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The cover image shows the new OMS team united on the roof terrace of the Weston Library with the Sainte Chapelle architectural quotation as backdrop. From left to right: Coral Kim, Luisa Ostacchini, Lesley Smith, Henrike Lähnemann, Ashley Castelino, Michael Angerer, Eugenia Vorobeva

Henrike Lähnemann (Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics) and Lesley Smith (Professor of Medieval Intellectual History) are Co-Directors of the Oxford Medieval Studies Programme at TORCH. They also co-direct, now for the third time, the Medieval Mystery Cycle! Henrike is a German medievalist, currently mainly working on the rich material and textual legacy of the North German convents Medingen and Lüne, including editing 1.800 letters exchanged by the nuns of Lüne between 1480 and 1550. Lesley works on the medieval Bible, as both a physical and intellectual object. This ranges from close technical work with manuscripts of Bibles, biblical commentary, theology and pastoralia, to the exposition of commentary and theology, to investigation of the intellectual milieu of the schools in which the Bible was studied – the people and the products of this early university system, from the twelfth century onwards.  In particular, Lesley explores the two-way link between the manuscript evidence and the intellectual evidence of these early schools – in modern terms, how technology affects what we learn and know, and vice versa.  The study of the Bible has also led them to contribute to the study of medieval Jewish-Christian scholarship and relations.

The new OMS teams presents itself at the Coffee Morning in the Weston Library on 14 October 2022

Dr Luisa Ostacchini: Communications Officer

Luisa is the Communications Officer for Oxford Medieval Studies, and is responsible for the weekly Medieval Matters email/blog posts, the Google calendar, and the termly Medieval Booklet.

Luisa read her BA in English Literature at the University of Warwick. She then studied for a Masters in Medieval English Literature (650–1550) at Wolfson College, Oxford, and remained there for her subsequent DPhil in Old English and Latin Literature. She is now a stipendiary lecturer in Medieval Literature at St John’s and Exeter colleges and teaches Medieval Latin at the English Faculty. She is also a mentor for MSt/ MPhil/ DPhil students in the English Faculty and MSt students on the Humanities interdisciplinary Medieval MSt. Her research interests include the cult of saints, Medieval travel, and the global world in Early Medieval literature.

Michael Angerer: Graduate Convenor (Mystery Cycle)

Michael is a first-year DPhil student in English at Corpus Christi College. His research, funded by the E. K. Chambers Studentship, considers the changing culture of verse translation in England across the Norman Conquest and its impact on vernacular history-writing. He is also more generally interested in translation theory and multilingualism. As graduate convenor for the Medieval Mystery Cycle 2023, he will be coordinating one of the highlights of Oxford’s medieval calendar: the all-day performance of a cycle of short biblical plays, by a variety of groups and in a variety of medieval and modern languages, at St Edmund Hall on 22 April 2023. Please get in touch if you are interested in taking part or if you have any questions – and definitely have a look at the recordings of the plays from 2019 and 2022!

Eugenia Vorobeva: Events Coordinator

Eugenia graduated MSt in Medieval Studies in 2019, and now is a third-year DPhil Student in Old Norse at Jesus College. She is passionate about all things medieval and is joining the OMS team as its Events Coordinator to ensure everything runs smoothly and is on your medieval calendars!

Ashley Castelino: Social Media Officer

Ashley Castelino is a second-year DPhil student at Lincoln College working on supernatural dogs in Old Norse and other medieval literature. He is passionate about anything and everything medieval, and brings this to his role as Social Media Officer for OMS. In this role, he manages all social media accounts for OMS, including Twitter, Facebook and Instagram, all accessible via our Beacons page. Ashley is responsible for spreading the word about all of the wonderful medieval events, lectures, seminars, reading groups and other activities at Oxford, so if you have something you’d like advertised, do get in touch!

Coral Kim: Administrative Assistant

Coral Kim is an MSt English (650-1550) student at Exeter College, who just completed her BA in English (Course II) at Oxford. She enjoys reading about Anglo-Saxon metalwork and inscriptions, with an additional interest in early medieval Cumbrian history following her research internship in the region. She has joined the OMS as support for the team, helping with administrative work and the running of the OMS website.

Medieval Matters: Week 2

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17/10/2022

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Term is now well underway! Thank you to everyone who organised, gave papers, or attended any of our wonderful events last week. In the words of Alcuin:

‘Totius sapientiae decus et salutaris eruditionis ornatus per vestrae nobilitatis industriam renovari incipit‘
[The glory of all wisdom and the honour of beneficial learning are beginning to be revived by the efforts of your excellence, Ep. 112]

The Oxford Medieval community certainly feels revived and full of life. In fact, we were such a large crowd that the Bodleian ran out of mugs for us to drink from at the Coffee Morning on Friday – a real testament to the phenomenal size of our community! It was lovely to meet so many of you there. Please do continue to join throughout the term for a well-earned break. If you missed the coffee morning, you can see the presentation of manuscripts by Dr Andrew Dunning here on youtube – huge thanks to Andrew and the Bodleian conservation team for all of your hard work on this! You can also meet the team here and put faces to all of our names.

Now, without further ado, please peruse the glorious wisdom and beneficial learning on offer this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Palaeography Self-Help Groups: Students in the history and MML faculties are working together on two palaeography groups, one every week of term, alternating between French and Iberian palaeography. They are both student run, collaborative groups where people can bring something they’re working on to get help from others and work through things together, and improve their skills. We also share resources and course recommendations. If you’d like to be involved please email Clare Burgess at clare.burgess@univ.ox.ac.uk, and state which group (or both!) you’re interested in. Full details on our blog.
  • Save the Date: St John’s Film Club presents two new short films on Love, Hope, Death and Eternity on Wednesday 26th October, 5-6.30pm at St John’s College, the Mark Bedingham Room (located in St John’s Library). The first of these films, Complete Surrender (dir. Louise Nelstrop) will be of particular interest to Medievalists: it follows five celebrated Belgian artists and three religious sisters as they engage with the erotic mysticism of the female medieval mystics Hadewijch and Marguerite Porete. For full details, see our blog.
  • Save the Date: Professor Antje Richter will give a talk on the narrative role of silence in the Buddhist scripture Vimalakīrti-nirdeśa-sūtra at Pembroke College on December 1st, 2022, 14:00-16:00. Please see our blog for more information. 

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 17th October:

  • The Medieval Archaeology Seminar takes place at 3pm in the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Claus Kropp, ‘Of droughts, ‘internal climates’ and the mouldboard plough. Experimental Archaeology and the Study of the Early Middle Ages‘.
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading Group meets at 3pm at Univ College. This week’s theme is Queer longings for God. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.    
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams (Teams link here). This week’s speaker will be Christian Liddy (Durham), ‘The city and the household: Towards a social history of politics in the late medieval town‘. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk 
  • The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30-7.30pm. Please email grace.oduffy@sjc.ox.ac.uk for more information and to be added to the mailing list.

Tuesday 18th October:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 12.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Harriet Soper (Oxford), ‘Twists, Turns, and Jumping the Riverbed: The Life Course in Old English Poetry’. The paper will be followed by lunch with the speaker. All welcome.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Seneca, Thyestes. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar takes place at 5pm at Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. The theme for this term is ‘Women’. This week’s speaker will be Emily Winkler (SEH): The Many Griefs of Merlin. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar.

Wednesday 19th October:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar meets for a paper by Annette Volfing on Arthurian elements in ‘Dietrichs Flucht’ at 11:15am in Somerville College – ask at the Lodge for directions. If you want to be added to the medieval German mailing list, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Early Textual Cultures Seminar will be held at Corpus Christi College Seminar Room at 2–3pm. This week’s speaker will be Katherine S. Beard (Oxford), The Chieftain at Reykholt: Snorri Sturluson’s Impact on Old Norse/Icelandic Studies. To join remotely, please register here.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Alberto Ravani (Oxford), “Manuscripts don’t burn”: Composition and story of the text of John Tzetzes’ Homeric Allegories.

Thursday 20th October:

  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5pm via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Elena Parina (Bonn): ”Dysgeidiaeth Cristnoges o ferch’ in Aberystwyth, NLW, Peniarth 403 and its sources‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.
  • The Oxford Medieval Visual Culture Seminar will take place at 5pm in St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Sandy Heslop, University of East Anglia: Reconfiguring the Cloisters Cross: art and crusading in Cnut VI’s Denmark.

Friday 21st October:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10:30-11.30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!).

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Oxford Bibliographical Society Photography Competition: Libraries of Oxford and Oxfordshire. The Oxford Bibliographical Society marks its 100th anniversary with a photography competition celebrating libraries connected with Oxford and Oxfordshire, in 2022. Qualifying entries should depict any library, whether public, private, personal, large or small, static or mobile, old or new. The photographs may show the contents of the library, its architecture, or the library’s users. Categories & Prizes: Adult – first prize £150, second prize £100, third prize £70; Under 18 – first prize £100, second prize £50, third prize £30. For full details click here.

Finally, some wisdom from Alcuin on the importance of teachers:

‘Locus sine doctoribus aut non, aut vix salvus fieri poterit‘
[a place without teachers cannot be safe, or can scarcely be, Ep. 105]

Given the incredible number of teachers we have here at Oxford, I think that by this metric we may be able to claim to be one of the safest places on earth! Wishing you all a week of productive study and comfort in the knowledge that you are surrounded by such a large and wonderful community of Medievalists.

[A hoard of Medievalists are informed that the cups have run out at the coffee morning…]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 9 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Graduate Students: OMS is hiring!

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26/09/2022

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OMS is one of the largest forums in the world for interdisciplinary research on the Middle Ages, bringing together over 200 academics and a large body of graduate students. If you would like to be involved behind the scenes, we have three exciting (paid) opportunities to get involved! Though these are advertised as three separate posts, we welcome applications from students who would like to combine two or even all three posts:

1) OMS Social Media Officer: The Social Media Officer is in charge of connecting all of Oxford’s medievalists via the OMS Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram accounts and also occasionally posting on here, the OMS blog. You will be responsible for posting across these platforms to advertise OMS events, opportunities and news. You will work closely with the OMS directors (Profs Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith), the Communications Officer (Dr Luisa Ostacchini) and the Events Coordinator. Familiarity with social media advertising is beneficial but not essential: this is an ideal way to gain technical know-how about social media, advertising and marketing that can be used in your academic career and beyond. The post usually comprises an hour or two a week. To read more about the post from the out-going postholder, Llewelyn Hopwood, including tips and tricks for social media success, see his blog post here.

2) OMS Events Coordinator: The Events Coordinator ensures that all of our in-person and online OMS events run smoothly. You will organise the google calendar, oversee the OMS Teams and YouTube Channels, respond to email queries about events, set up Zoom streaming events, assist in the real-time running of events (mostly hybrid and online, but also in-person), and serve as a point of liaison point between events organisers and the rest of the OMS Team. You will work closely with the OMS directors (Profs Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith), the Communications Officer (Dr Luisa Ostacchini) and the Social Media Officer. Some familiarity with Teams and Zoom is necessary, but you by no means need to be an expert in these software packages as you can learn on the job. The post usually comprises an hour or two a week. To read more about the post from the out-going postholder, Tom Revell, including insight into the exciting range of events he helped to facilitate, see his blog post here.

3) Graduate Convenor for the Medieval Mystery Cycle 2023: the graduate convenor will take the mantle of the operation from Dr Eleanor Baker by organising the Medieval Mystery Cycle, which takes place on 22 April 2023. You will liase with the various Mystery Players and directors, help to coordinate workshops, and ensure that the plays run smoothly on the day. Experience in events organisation and a love of theatre are beneficial, but not essential. You will work closely with the OMS directors (Profs Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith), the Communications team, and Mystery Players from across the university and beyond. To get a sense for the scope of the project, and to see the plays performed in previous years, see seh.ox.ac.uk/mystery-cycle.
Payment for all of these roles is at the standard rate for graduate students, and is billed by timesheet — up to a maximum of six hours per week per role, although actual hours will usually comprise one or two hours per week per role.

Please send expressions of interest to Co-Directors Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith by 30 September 2022, 12noon, at medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk, including a one-page CV and a cover email explaining why you are interested in the job(s) and what experience you bring to it.

Header image: Matthew Paris Elephant from Parker MS 016II fol 152v (See the manuscript online via Parker Library on the Web)

OMCN lectures now online

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19/07/2022

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Trinity Term 2022 saw a lecture series at Christ Church on the medieval commentary tradition, organised by the Oxford Medieval Commentary Network. Video recordings of the lectures by Madalena Brito, Maria Czepiel, and Zachary Giuliano are now available to watch online, along with an extensive video archive of papers from last year’s OMCN workshop.

The CfP for the upcoming OMCN conference on 29 September is still open.

Medieval Matters: sigelbeorhte dagas

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08/07/2022

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Trinity Term has ended, and with it, the academic year! Since this is the final Medieval Matters of the year, on behalf of everyone at OMS I would like to take the opportunity to thank everyone who has enabled our many wonderful seminars, reading groups and events this year to happen. The Medievalist community at Oxford is incredibly fortunate to have such a diversity of scholarship and such a wealth of goings-on, and all of your contributions have made this year richer and more enjoyable! Here is some wisdom on doing good things, from Beowulf:

Lofdædum sceal
in mægþa gehwære man geþeon.
[By praiseworthy deeds one shall prosper among peoples everywhere.]

Wherever your summer is taking you, I am sure that your praiseworthy organisation, convening and paper-giving will lead you to prosper! Safe travels to those of you leaving Oxford and congratulations to our Masters students for finishing their studies. Please see below for the roundup of summer events, save the dates, and some important tasks to do:

Important To-Do:

  • For those leaving Oxford/changing college: if you would like to continue to receive Medieval Matters emails, please make sure to sign up with your new email address. You can do it yourself via http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/about/ or contact me. Please also alert any medievalist visitor or new student to this! For postgraduate course convenors: when your incoming students have their Oxford email addresses, please register them for the mailing list or contact me with a list of addresses and I can do this for you.

Summer events:

  • Coffee Morning with Professor William Chester Jordan, 23rd June 10.30-12 noon. The Faculty of History and Oxford Medieval Studies are pleased to invite you to an informal meet and greet coffee morning with William Chester Jordan (Professor of Medieval History, Princeton University) on the occasion of his reception of an honorary degree of the University of Oxford, in the garden of Harris Manchester College (Mansfield Road), or in the Warrington Room in the case of rain. Coffee and croissants will be provided. For catering purposes, please register your attendance if possible: https://forms.gle/AkvPUsX2Ur1hbgTU7
  • Mandeville 700 Conference, 30 June 2022. In 1322, Sir John Mandeville left his native England to travel through Europe, to the pilgrim sites of Jerusalem, and beyond to the Far East, where he served as a mercenary in the Great Khan’s army before returning home 34 years later to write an immensely popular and influential account of his travels. Or not: historical research has been unable to find any John Mandeville who can be firmly identified either as traveller or author, and the book itself was largely adapted from other sources. To mark the 700th anniversary of his supposed departure, this conference will bring together scholars working on one of the most striking and enduring inventions of the late Middle Ages. For further information and to book, please click here.
  •  Medium Ævum Annual Lecture taking place on Saturday, 2 July (4:30-6pm BST): Dr Ryan Perry (University of Kent) will deliver the annual lecture on ‘Middle English Books of Devotion and Liturgical Privatisation in Fifteenth-century England’, as part of the ‘Pfaff at 50’ conference at the University of Nottingham marking 50 years since the publication of Richard W. Pfaff’s ground-breaking New Liturgical Feasts in Later Medieval England. Registration details for in-person and online attendance are available at the following link: https://pfaff50.wordpress.com/keynote/
  • The Oxford Festival of the Arts has a smorgasbord of exciting events of interest to medievalists:
    -The Art of Illumination: makers and users of medieval manuscripts (June 25, Lecture Theatre, Weston Library, 2pm – 4.30pm)
    -Illuminated Manuscript Workshop with Patricia Lovett MBE (June 26, Magdalen College School Studio, 10am – 5pm)
    -Professor Robert Bartlett: The Middle Ages and the Movies (June 27, Festival Marquee, 8pm)
    -Treasures from Around the World at New College Library (July 2, 11am-4pm, Lecture Room 4, New College)
    -British Society of Master Glass Painters Centenary Touring Exhibition (The Chapter House, Christ Church Cathedral (throughout the festival))
    -Dr Janina Ramirez in discussion with Peter Frankopan (July 5, 7.30pm, Festival Marquee, Magdalen College School, Oxford)
    -John Leighfield: Atlases and Maps (July 6, 5pm-7pm, Magdalen College School Studio)
    For full details of these events, and links for booking, please consult our blog here.

Save the Date:

  • Prof. Ardis Butterfield giving the Michaelmas Medieval Studies Lecture: ‘Do we mean lyric or song?’ We’re very pleased to announce that Prof. Ardis Butterfield (Yale) will give the Medieval Studies Lecture in Michaelmas Term, as part of her stay in Oxford as an Astor Visiting Lecturer. She will be here in week 4 of term (31 October to 4 November), taking part in a number of events and seminars and working with students in a number of medieval disciplines, in particular on medieval lyric and song. The lecture itself is planned for Monday 31 October, and its provisional title is ‘Do we mean lyric or song?’.
  • Medieval Mystery Cycle 2023. Following the successful Medieval Mystery Cycle 2.0, plans are underway for the third iteration of what has fast become an Oxford tradition. Please reserve the date of 22 April 2023 (Saturday before Trinity Term) and spread the word! 

Opportunities:

  • Oxford Medieval Commentary Network Second Conference, 29 September 2022: Call for Papers and Sign-up. Proposals are invited for the second conference organised by the Oxford Medieval Commentary Network, following the successful launch of the Network last year. The one-day conference will take place at Christ Church, Oxford, on 29 September 2022. For full details, please see our blog.
  • Graduate Convenor for the Medieval Mystery Cycle 2023: we are looking for a graduate convenor who will take on the mantle of Eleanor Baker in masterminding the operation. Have a look at seh.ox.ac.uk/mystery-cycle for getting a sense of the scope and watching the plays performed in 2019 and 2022. Please send expressions of interest for the Graduate Convenor by 30 June 2022 to Co-Directors Henrike Lähnemann and Lesley Smith under medieval@torch.ox.ac.uk.
  • CFP: Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. We invite papers for a conference (and planned edited volume) on Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. This conference is designed as a pre-publication workshop for a planned edited volume on Christian Political Cultures in Late Antiquity. The deadline for proposals is 30 June 2022. Please send a title and an abstract (no longer than 500 words) to robin.whelan@liverpool.ac.uk. If you have questions, do not hesitate to get in touch with one of the organisers. For full details, click here.
  • CFP: Early Book Society University of Limerick, 11th-15th July 2023: Meaning, Memory, and the Making of Culture: Manuscripts and Books, 1350–1550. The 18th biennial conference of the Early Book Society will be hosted by Carrie Griffin and Eleanor Giraud at the University of Limerick from 11th to 14th July 2023, with an excursion on 15th July. Confirmed keynote speakers include John Thompson, Emeritus Professor, Queen’s University Belfast, and Lisa Fagin Davis, Executive Director, Medieval Academy of America. Planned activities include an early music concert and hands-on use of the university’s printing press. Please mark your calendars.  We invite proposals for 20-minute papers, themed panels (three papers and a chair), roundtables, and 5-minute lightning papers (ideal for work-in-progress updates). Scholars at all levels, including graduate students and early career researchers, are cordially invited to participate. 

Finally: It has been an honour and a delight to be your guide to all things Medieval in Oxford this academic year. Here is my final piece of Old English wisdom for the academic year, taken from the Old English Maxims:

Ræd biþ nyttost,
yfel unnyttost.
Good advice is the most useful, bad the least useful.

I hope that some of this year’s Old English Wisdom has fallen into the former category! I am delighted to be remaining in my role as Comms Officer for 2022-23, so I will be back in your inboxes come September. Until then, I wish you all a productive and restful summer – may you enjoy these ‘sigelbeorhte dagas’ (sun-bright days)!

Medievalists leaving Oxford for the summer encounter some strange adventures…
Merton College, MS 249, f. 7r.
View image and text in the Taylor Edition by Sebastian Dow