Category: News

The weekend saw the glitz, glam, and questionable music of the Eurovision song contest! Whether you tuned in or not, here is some wisdom on songs, from the Old English Maxims:

Longað þonne þy læs þe him con leoþa worn.
[He who knows many songs is less troubled by longing]

But what, I hear you ask, does Eurovision have to do with Medievalists? Well, this week we have not only musical events like Singing the Reformation: With Living Stones, but also a whole range of languages and cultures! Our schedule for the week includes Greek, Old High German, French and Middle English, and takes us all around the medieval world. The After Rome and Further East seminar takes us to the Caliphate and Byzantium; the Medieval Commentary Network gives us a glimpse into the Carolingian Empire; and the Medieval History Seminar lets us explore migration in the Viking North. And this is only the tip of the iceberg! Have a look at all of our offerings this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Save the date: The Oxford Medieval Society is pleased to announce Marriages, Unmarriages, and Subjectivities: A Roundtable Discussion with Sara McDougall and Hannah Skoda on Thursday 26th May at 1-2.30, in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College. Participants will be able to ask questions and engage in discussion with Professor McDougall and Professor Skoda on a shared area of their research, Marriages, Unmarriages, and Subjectivities. Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions at oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com. 
• Small grants are open once again! 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. For full details, see the blog post here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 16th May:

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar will take place on Zoom at 12.30-2pm. This week’s speaker is Alice van den Bosch (Exeter), ‘Creating the Female Martyr in Late Antiquity‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list.
• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm 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.
• The Oxford Medieval Commentary Network meets at 4pm at Lecture Theatre 2, Christ Church. This week’s speaker is Zachary Guiliano, ‘Biblical Commentary and Royal Patronage in Carolingian Europe’. For further information, email cosima.gillhammer@chch.ox.ac.uk.
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm online on Teams. Please note that there is no in-person seminar this week. This week’s speaker is Pragya Vohra (York), ‘Feminising Migration in the Viking North‘. 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.

Tuesday 17th May:

• The Oxford Numismatic Society meets at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Dr. Aneurin Ellis-Evans & Dr. Leah Lazar ‘Early silver coinage of Lampsakos’. For further information please contact the secretary: giorgia.capra@new.ox.ac.uk.
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers are Jonah Skolnik (Trinity), ‘Impeachment, Treason, and Good Governance in the Age of Richard II: 1386-1397‘ and Gabrielle Samra (St John’s), ‘Anthropophagous Predation: An Examination of the Middle English Richard Coer de Lyon in the Framework of Medieval Anti-Jewish Blood Libels‘.
• The Lyell Lectures From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900-1150, by Professor Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge) takes place at 5pm in Weston Library Lecture Theatre. This is Lecture 5: Assimilation or change? Normans at Winchester. Registration is essential for attending in person, and booking is for the whole series, for the sake of simplicity. Your booking entitles you to attend as many lectures in the series as you are able. Book here.

Wednesday 18th May:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. We are going to discuss Seuse’s ‘Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit’. For more information, please email henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk.
• The Medieval Trade Reading Group meets at 1pm in the Mertze Tate room of the History Faculty and online. Anyone interested in any element of medieval trade and its study are very welcome to join, from any department. To be added to the mailing list and team please email Annabel Hancock at annabel.hancock@history.ox.ac.uk.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker is Matthieu Cassin (CNRS-IRHT), ‘From Princes Islands to Oxford: Greek Manuscripts from the Holy Trinity of Halki‘.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Anne Mouron (Regent’s Park), ‘“In pious hearts, a tree must grafted be”: Mechthild of Hackeborn’s The Boke of Holy Grace and The Desert of Religion’ (chaired by Ayoush Lazikani). For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Thursday 19th May:

• The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This term’s topic is ‘Maeren’. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
• The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College – meet at Jesus lodge. This week’s text is Lucian, The Dream (or, the Cock). Contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
• The After Rome and Further East Seminar takes place at Trinity College (Levine Garden Room). This week’s speaker is André Binggeli (CNRS, IRHT), ‘Neomartyrs between the Caliphate and Byzantium: around the publication of “Les nouveaux martyrs à Byzance”’. Zoom meeting link.

Friday 20th May:

• The Medievalists Coffee Morning makes its triumphant return! Meet at 10.30-11.30am at Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!). The coffee mornings feature the opportunity to meet other Medievalists as well as a) coffee, tea, and biscuits, b) access to the roof terrace, c) sneak previews of new acquisitions. Here a link to last-but-one’s week’s presentation by Andrew Honey of a very early curious copying machine. All welcome!
• The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm. This week will focus on Old High German: A few minor monuments (lead by Will Thurlwell) Anybody interested in joining the discussion, please email Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk.

Saturday 21st May:

• Singing the Reformation: With Living Stones takes place in Iffley from 3pm. Come and explore with Henrike Lähnemann some of the music that may have been sung by church-goers in Iffley during the 16th century, and trace developments in the music that was sung in churches, homes and royal chapels while major theological debates and liturgical changes were taking place. Tickets for the afternoon with tea and coffee cost £10 and are available online at https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/singing-thereformation-tickets-261162011607 or on the door. The service of Evensong is, as always, free

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Conference: The conference “Margins at the Centre – Practices of Annotation. Scholarly Networks, Teachers and Audiences in ninth-century East Francia” will take place in hybrid form at the Viennese Institute for Medieval Research on Monday 23 and Tuesday 24 May 2022, starting at 9.00am CEST (Vienna time). Further information, the programme of the conference and the forms for registration (via Zoom or in person) can be found here on the conference website.

Finally, some further wisdom on song from Maxims I:

Ræd sceal mon secgan, rune writan, leoþ gesingan, lofes gearnian.
[One should talk sense, write down secrets, sing songs, and earn praise]

This reads like something of a to-do list for the week ahead. I hope that your week is filled with talked sense, written down secrets, lots of songs, and earned praise!

It is with very great sadness that I have to pass on the news that Nigel F. Palmer, Emeritus Professor of German Medieval and Linguistic Studies, Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, FBA, died yesterday, Sunday 8 May 2022. Lesley Smith and Henrike Lähnemann write: Nigel Palmer was one of those scholars defining medieval studies. He was everywhere in Oxford – always in the Library, attending seminars, always asking fundamental questions – but he also reached out across the world to colleagues in Germany and far beyond. He was also one of the kindest and most generous friends and colleagues. He treated everyone with the same respect and good humour, whether they be visiting professor, or first-year student. Oxford without Nigel will never be the same. Details of the funeral for family and close friends at the end of the month and plans for a celebration of his academic and personal life for spring next year will be announced later. Tributes and cards for his widow, Sue Palmer, can be sent to St Edmund Hall via mail or Henrike Lähnemann via email.

Please see below for the week’s events:

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 9th May:

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar will take place on Zoom at 12.30-2pm. This week’s speaker is Silvio Roggo (Cambridge), ‘Justin II and the Miaphysites‘. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list.
• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. Sign up here for the mailing list to receive details of each week’s sessions: https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/info/medieval-latin-ms-reading. Contact Matthew Holford, Andrew Dunning Tuiija Ainonen for further details.
• The Medieval Commentary Network meets at 4pm at Research Centre, Christ Church (in the thatched barn at the top of Christ Church Meadow, behind the tourist shop). This week’s speaker is Maria Czepiel, ‘From curiosa to criticism: Benito Arias Montano and Encyclopedism in Sixteenth-Century Biblical Commentary‘. Drinks and nibbles will be provided after the lecture.
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is 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.

Tuesday 10th May:

• The Oxford Numismatic Society meets at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Dr. Jeremy Piercy – ‘Just a name on a coin: What epigraphy can tell us about labour organisation and social networks in Pre-Conquest England‘. For further information please contact the secretary: giorgia.capra@new.ox.ac.uk.
• The Lyell Lectures From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900-1150, by Professor Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge) takes place at 5pm in Weston Library Lecture Theatre. This is Lecture 3: St Augustine’s and Christchurch, 950–1091. Registration is essential for attending in person, and booking is for the whole series, for the sake of simplicity. Your booking entitles you to attend as many lectures in the series as you are able. Book here.
• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speakers are Harriet Strahl (Oriel), ‘Emotions in the Aftermath of the Wreck of the White Ship‘, and Nia Moseley-Roberts (Jesus), ‘An Immortal Work’: ideas of scribal labour at Witham Charterhouse c. 1200‘.

Wednesday 11th May:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. We are going to discuss Seuse’s ‘Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit’, chapter 6 this week. For more information, please email henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker is Anca Dan (CNRS, Paris Sciences & Lettres), ‘Kosmokrator: the origins of the iconographic tradition, between East and West‘.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Carl Phelpstead (University of Cardiff), ‘“If you will listen patiently”: conversion, conversation and cosmopolitanism in Old Icelandic sagas of Apostles’ (chaired by Gareth Evans). For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.
• The CMTC Festival: Launch of the Journal Manuscript and Text Cultures takes place at 5.15-7pm in Memorial Room, The Queen’s College.
  

Thursday 12th May:

• The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This term’s topic is ‘Maeren’. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
• The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College – meet at Jesus lodge. This week’s text is Suetonius, Life of Tiberius 34-36. Contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
• The After Rome and Further East Seminar takes place at Trinity College (Levine Room 5) at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Étienne de la Vaissière (École des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris), ‘Manichaean Roads‘. Follow the link to the Zoom meeting.
• The Lyell Lectures From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900-1150, by Professor Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge) takes place at 5pm in Weston Library Lecture Theatre. This is Lecture 4: From Neumes in campo aperto to Neumes on Lines (at Christchurch, Canterbury). Registration is essential for attending in person, and booking is for the whole series, for the sake of simplicity. Your booking entitles you to attend as many lectures in the series as you are able. Book here.
• The Old English Reading Group takes place at 5.30pm. For more information and to receive the text in advance email eugenia.vorobeva@jesus.ox.ac.uk.
• The Oxford University Heraldry Society meets online at 6.30pm. This week’s speaker is David Broomfield, ‘The Heraldry of Eton College‘. To receive the link to attend, please email secretary@oxford-heraldry-org.uk.

Friday 13th May:

• The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10.30pm 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 5pm in Taylorian Room 2 and on Zoom. This term, Luca Crisma (EPHE, Paris) will lead reading of the Anglo-Norman Letter of Prester John. For texts, joining instructions, and further information, please email Stephanie Hathaway or Jane Bliss.

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Revoicing Medieval Poetry – May-June 2022: Call for participants. Revoicing Medieval Poetry will offer a workshop-conversation space for researchers, artists and practitioners who are engaged in exploring how, why, and to what effects medieval poetry is translated, reused, and resourced in twentieth- and twenty-first-century creative practices. Confirmed speakers include Caroline Bergvall, Vahni Anthony Capildeo, Becca Drake, and Clare A. Lees. We hope you will join us at one or more of our four workshops! Read the full CPF here, and register your interest here.
• The Oxford Trobadors return to the stage on Sunday 5th June, at the Sheldonian Theatre, at 6 pm. Tickets from www.ticketsoxford.com / 01865 305305. £12, £25, £50. Medievalists may like to know that the Oxford Trobadors are returning to the Stage again after the lockdowns. The concert will include performances of several medieval trobadors and trobairitz, including Arnaut Daniel, Peire Vidal, Bernard de Ventadorn, Jaufre Rudel and Marcabru, as well as some modern Occitan songs. The concert has been arranged as a fusion event with leading Bengali musicians in the UK, who perform in a tradition that derives from a trobador-like song tradition very similar to that of the Occitan trobadors. Students: a sponsor has made some complimentary tickets available for registered students in medieval studies. Email denis.noble@balliol.ox.ac.uk if you wish to apply for a complimentary ticket. Include your college and stage of study in your email.
• Registration is now open for the Freedom & Work in Western Europe c.1250-1750 conference, organised by the FORMSofLABOUR project (led by Prof Jane Whittle) and hosted in Exeter on 6-8 July 2022. Full programme and registration here. The conference will explore the historical relation between freedom and work across different forms of labour, cultures, legal systems and time periods. Please send any questions to FORMSofLABOUR@exeter.ac.uk.

Finally, some wisdom from the Old English Dicts of Cato, in honour of Nigel, who was a friend to many on the mailing list:

Help ægðer ge cuðum ge uncuþum þær þu mæge.
[Help both friends and strangers, wherever you can]

May is here, and with it, the long-awaited return of May Day celebrations in Oxford. Whether you managed to attend the May Morning revelries or not, here is some celebratory wisdom for the occasion, from the Durham Proverbs:

Hwilum æfter medo menn mæst geþyrsteð.
[Sometimes people are thirstiest after drinking mead]

What the anonymous poet forgot to mention, of course, is the accompanying Proverb: ‘sometimes people are happiest after drinking tea‘. You may put this theory to the test at our newly reinstated Medievalist Coffee morning, which takes place on Friday at the Weston Library – all are welcome!

It is only second week, but we have already had many wonderful events – so many, in fact, that you may have missed some! Luckily, you can catch up with how things went on our blog. We kicked term off, of course, with the Mystery Plays – read here Dr Alison Ray’s post about how the plays went, and here Prof. David Wiles’ reflections on the experience of directing a medieval play in French. Last week we enjoyed Caroline Danforth’s fabulous OMS Lecture on Paper, Linen, Silk, and Parchment – Material Fragments from an Extinguished Convent : many thanks to all who tuned in! For those who missed it, you can now watch the recording on the OMS Youtube channel. As for future events, we have a wonderful schedule this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

• Save the date: The Oxford Medieval Society is pleased to announce a public lecture by Dr Charlotte Cooper-Davies on Thursday 9th June 2022. Dr Cooper-Davies will speak on the topic of “Christine de Pizan: Guilty Feminist?”. The lecture will take place in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College, 13:00-14.30.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 2nd May:

• The Oxford Byzantine Graduate Seminar will take place on Zoom at 12.30-2pm. This week’s speaker is Yan Zaripov (Oxford), ‘Literary Imitation (mimesis) in Twelfth-Century Byzantium: The Case of Theodore Prodromos’. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. Please note that there is no need to register if you have previously subscribed to the seminar mailing list.
• The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm 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.
• The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at The Wharton Room, All Souls College and online on Teams. This week’s speaker is Rebecca Rist (Reading), ‘When is a Pope an Anti-Pope? The Medieval Papacy and the Concept of Schism’. 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.

Tuesday 3rd May:

• The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm in Warrington Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker is Lucia Akard (Linacre), ‘Cultures of Rape and Resistance in 15th Century Dijon‘
• The Lyell Lectures From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900-1150, by Professor Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge) takes place at 5pm in Weston Library Lecture Theatre. This is Lecture 1: Sound and its Capture in Anglo-Saxon England. Registration is essential for attending in person, and booking is for the whole series, for the sake of simplicity. Your booking entitles you to attend as many lectures in the series as you are able. Book here.
• The Medieval French Research Seminar will take place at 5.15pm at Maison Francaise, MFO Auditorium and Online. This week’s speaker is Emma Campbell (University of Warwick): ‘Translanguaging and Multimediality in Philippe de Thaon’s Medieval “French” Bestiaire‘. Please email helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk for video-conference link for remote joining.

Wednesday 4th May:

• The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15-12.45 in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. We are going to discuss Seuse’s ‘Büchlein der ewigen Weisheit’. For more information, please email henrike.laehnemann@seh.ox.ac.uk.
• The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker is Marie-France Auzépy (emerita, Université Paris 8), ‘The siege of Constantinople in 717-718: the embarrassing memory of a triumph‘.
• The Medieval English Research Seminar meets at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, Faculty of English. This week’s speaker will be Emily Corran (UCL), ‘Polemicising doubt in late medieval England: adaptations of Latin casuistry in Wyclif, Dives and Pauper and Margery Kempe’ (chaired by Kantik Ghosh). For further information, contact daniel.wakelin@ell.ox.ac.uk.

Thursday 5th May:

• The Middle High German Reading Group meets at 10am at Somerville College Productivity Room (Margery Fry). This term’s topic is ‘Maeren’. If you have any questions or want to participate, please send an e-mail to melina.schmidt@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
• The Greek and Latin Reading Group meets at 4pm in Harold Wilson Room, Jesus College – meet at Jesus lodge. This week’s text is Aristophanes, Clouds, 223-75. Contact John Colley or Jenyth Evans to be added to the mailing list.
• The After Rome and Further East Seminar takes place at Trinity College (Levine Auditorium) at 5pm. This week’s speaker is Thomas Benfey (Oxford), ‘The Qom Documents and Their Post-Sasanian Context: Change and Continuity in Early Islamic Iran’. Zoom meeting link.
• The Lyell Lectures From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900-1150, by Professor Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge) takes place at 5pm in Weston Library Lecture Theatre. This is Lecture 2: A Community of Scribes at Worcester. Registration is essential for attending in person, and booking is for the whole series, for the sake of simplicity. Your booking entitles you to attend as many lectures in the series as you are able. Book here.

Friday 6th May:

• The Medievalists Coffee Morning makes its triumphant return! Meet at 10.30-11.30am at Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!). The coffee mornings feature the opportunity to meet other Medievalists as well as a) coffee, tea, and biscuits, b) access to the roof terrace, c) sneak previews of new acquisitions. Here a link to the last week’s presentation of newly acquired Artists Books. All welcome!

OPPORTUNITIES:

• Conference: Orosius Through The Ages: 25th-27th May. Booking is essential and will be open until 4 May. The conference will take place in person at Senate House, London, and on Zoom. If you will be attending partly in person and partly online please email valerie.james@sas.ac.uk with the dates when you will be attending in person. If no in person places remain, please book to attend online instead.
• Call for participants. Revoicing Medieval Poetry will offer a workshop-conversation space for researchers, artists and practitioners who are engaged in exploring how, why, and to what effects medieval poetry is translated, reused, and resourced in twentieth- and twenty-first-century creative practices. Confirmed speakers include Caroline Bergvall, Vahni Anthony Capildeo, Becca Drake, and Clare A. Lees. We hope you will join us at one or more of our four workshops! Read the full CPF here and register your interest here.
• Doctoral Funding Opportunity: an ARHC-funded Collaborative Doctoral Studentship between the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at Kent and the Bodleian in Oxford to work on manuscript fragments. Full details are here. Deadline is 26^th May.

Finally, some further wisdom from the Durham Proverbs regarding coffee mornings:

Eall on muðe þæt on mode.
[All in the mouth that’s in the mind.]

I take this to mean: great biscuits promote great scholarship. May your week be filled with both!