Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce 308 preserves and re-copies the lyrics of over 500 songs, ranging from those written in the late twelfth century, to those composed only a few years before the manuscript was copied in the early fourteenth. Its lack of both musical notation and authorial attribution make it relatively unusual among Old French songbooks. Its arrangement by genre instead invites an investigation of the relationship between a long tradition of sung courtly lyric and the real lives of the people who enjoyed it, in particular their emotional, intimate, sexual lives, something for which little direct evidence exists.
Medieval Sex Lives
Using the other main inclusion in the original plan for Douce 308, Jacques Bretel’s poetic account of a tournament, TheTournament at Chauvency, Medieval Sex Lives argues that song offered musical practices which provided fertile means of propagating and enabling various sexual scripts.
With a focus on parts of Douce 308 not yet treated in detail elsewhere, Medieval Sex Lives offers an account of the manuscript’s contents, its importance, and likely social milieu, with ample musical and poetic analysis. In the process it offers new ways of understanding Marian songs and sottes chansons, as well as arguing for a broadening of our understanding of the medieval pastourelle, both as a genre and as an imaginative prop. Ultimately, Medieval Sex Lives presents a provocative speculative hypothesis about courtly song in the early fourteenth century as a social force, focusing on its ability to model, instill, inspire, and support sexual behaviours, real and imaginary.
Three ideas in the book
The idea that medieval people consumed cultural products (in this case, songs) that fed and moulded their sexual imaginations;
The idea that an unnotated songbook might be very noisy with the sounds of sex and tournaments;
The idea that minority sexual practices (queer sexualities and paraphilias of various kinds) were present in the distant past.
What inspired me to write the book?
This book arose from two different but related questions. First, I wondered why the sung lyric tradition of Western Europe that is generally called “courtly” love had such a long and successful history. Second, I wanted to know why the unnotated songbook, Oxford, Bodleian Library MS Douce had bothered to preserve and re-copy the lyrics of over 500 such songs, ranging from those written in the late twelfth century, to those composed only a few years before the manuscript was copied in the early fourteenth. The lack of musical notation, which was never planned for its songs, makes this manuscript unusual among Old French songbooks. Nonetheless, curating nearly 150 years of this long-lived tradition was clearly important to the patrons, compilers, owners, and users of this manuscript: but why?
How will this book make a difference in my field of study? In what way is my argument a controversial or one that will shake up preconceived ideas?
Overall, the book challenges the idea that medieval song has nothing (or little) to do with the real lives of its audiences. Ch2’s proposal of love songs as sexual scripts is a controversial use of sociological theory to treat medieval literature. In Ch3 it offers a new way of approaching the sotte chanson (‘silly song’) as something not merely humorous or satirical, but as a potentially serious erotic possibility. Ch4 treats The Tournament at Chauvency from the perspective of sound studies. And Ch5 offers a controversial reading of the medieval pastourelle that firstly expands the definition of the genre to include songs rarely considered as pastourelles (but collected by Douce 308 as such), and secondly makes a difficult argument about some of them as offering fantasies of sexual domination and rape that might have appealed (and been useful) to some audience members, specifically women and queer people.
On behalf of everyone here at OMS, I’d like to wish you a huge welcome (or welcome back) to Oxford Medieval Studies! Whether you are returning from your vac, or joining us for the first time, we are thrilled to have you here. This newsletter, and the medieval booklet (attached as a reduced-sized pdf to this week’s email, or viewable in full glory online here) will serve as your guide to all things medieval happening in and around Oxford.
In 2023/24, I will be taking the opportunity to feature extracts of letters from the Epistolae project, headed by Professor Joan Ferrante and based at Columbia University. Epistolae catalogues letters to and from medieval women. This open-access work was pioneering in digital humanities, feminist scholarship and open-access dissemination. In 2022, Epistolae was preserved as a static project and is now published by Columbia University Libraries. Featuring quotations from these letters is intended not only to link Oxford’s medievalists to an exciting resource outside of Oxford, but also to provide an inspirational and aspirational model for exciting interdisciplinary, boundary-pushing, open-access and digital humanities work. The values of the project align strongly with what OMS is trying to achieve as an international and interdisciplinary community invested in digital outreach, and I hope you enjoy reading the weekly quotations as much as I have enjoyed selecting them. To learn more about the Epistolae project, see this youtube video.
On the same note, but turning closer to home: in 2023/24 each email will be accompanied by an image from the extremely newly digitised St John’s College MS 61, which is now available thanks to hard work by Sophie Bacchus-Waterman (Special Collections Photographer) and the Bodleian Digital Library Systems and Service.
Over the past ten years, OMS has become one of the largest communities of medievalists worldwide. There is a phenomenal breadth and diversity of research taking place at Oxford, and a wide range of exciting creative practice and public engagement activities. This year at OMS, we are hoping to feature one blog post each week to highlight the range of work going on, and to draw attention to the range of work that goes on here. We have a range of exciting blog posts coming up for you in future weeks, but this week we are starting with a blog post on blogging itself! Have a look for lots of helpful tips on using blogging to share your medieval research with a broader audience.
Please see below for the week’s announcements, events, and opportunities:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Meet the Medievalists: Join us on Tuesday 10th October at 5pm at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College for a social start to the year! This will include an announcement for the
OMS Small Grants scheme MT23 which is 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. For full details, see our blog post or meet us at Meet the Medievalists to see what small grant recipients did last year!
New Journal: We are pleased to announce the publication of a new journal, Manuscript and Text Cultures, from the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures, Oxford. The Centre is an academic hub for interdisciplinary activities related to the study of pre-modern manuscript and epigraphic traditions from around the world. Issues 1 & 2 of the journal are now available. Issue 2, Navigating the Text: Textual Articulation and Division in Pre-Modern Cultures can be read online at https://mtc-journal.org
New Book Publication: Jane Bliss is pleased to announce the publication of Douglas Gray’s last book From Fingal’s Cave to Camelot. Jane writes: ‘After Gray’s death, I was given access to his files and, since I knew what he was working on, produced two books. The first, Make We Merry More and Less, is available from Open Book Publishers in the normal way. This one was published by me privately.’ For the pdf, please contact (jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org). Print copies are also available: Jane will send a copy on receipt of 17 pounds plus postage (to cover the printing costs).
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 9th October:
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group meets at 1-2pm on Teams. A friendly venue to practice your Latin and palaeography on a range of texts and scripts over the year. Sign up to the mailing list to receive weekly updates and Teams invites.
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Andrew Jotischky (RHUL) ‘Graze, Forage, Cook: authenticity and authority in medieval monastic reform‘. The seminar will also be available via Teams: 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). Alternatively, it can be accessed via this link. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.
Tuesday 10th October:
The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12.15 in Lecture Theatre 2. This week’s speaker will be David Wallace (University of Pennsylvania), National Epics [nationalepics.com]: The Elusive Case of England. There will be a sandwich lunch provided afterwards. All welcome!
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5pm at Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week is ‘Meet the Medievalists’ – a special social event, with introduction to Oxford Medieval Studies (OMS). Come for a cuppa and hear what’s in store with OMS this term. All are welcome!
The Medieval French Research Seminar will meet at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford on Norham Road. Drinks will be available from 5pm; presentations start at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Laura Endress (Zurich) ‘Missing links or contaminated witnesses? Exploring the manuscript tradition of the Suite-Vulgate du Merlin‘. All are welcome! For more information or to be added to the seminar maillist, please contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
Wednesday 11th October:
All Souls Library Open Day for Oxford Students will be held at 10-12 and 1-5pm at All Souls, Catte Street Entrance. Come and see the Library and apply to be a Reader. No food and drink, but for today only, photography is allowed! No booking needed, but you will need to bring your University Card to get in through the entrance.
The Medieval German Seminar meets at 11.15am, at Somerville College. In Michaelmas Term, we are going to discuss the forthcoming study edition by Christine Putzo of Konrad Fleck’s ‘Flore und Blancheflur’. We will meet in Almut Suerbaum’s office in Somerville College. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann. This week we will have a shorter organisational meeting.
The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on Teams. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Please contact Michael Stansfield (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies 66 St Giles and online via Microsoft Teams by clicking here. This week’s speaker will be Stratis Papaioannou (National Hellenic Research Foundation, Athens), ‘Portraits of the Reader during the Middle Byzantine Period’.
Thursday 12th October:
The Medieval Hebrew Reading Group meets at 10-11am in Catherine Lewis Lecture Theatre, Clarendon Institute, and online via Zoom. In order to attend via Zoom, please register here. This reading group is an opportunity to practice reading directly from images of medieval Hebrew manuscripts in an informal setting. All skill levels are welcome! There will be coffee, tea and cake afterwards in the Common Room of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies for those attending in person. For further information, please email joseph.ohara@ames.ox.ac.uk.
The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm, online via Zoom. Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to request the handouts and to be added to the list. This week’s reading will be OHG Otfrid extracts (Howard Jones leading).
The Celtic Seminar meets at 5pm, online via Zoom. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link. This week’s speaker will be Martin Crampin (CAWCS), ‘Emblems of the Past: saints, stained glass and early medieval antiquitie’.
The Oxford Bibliographical Society meets for a lecture at 5.15pm in the Weston Library lecture theatre. This week’s speaker will be William P. Stoneman (formerly Curator of Early Books and Manuscripts at Harvard University’s Houghton Library), ‘A Golden Collector of the Golden Age’: Charles Walker Clark (1871-1933) and his library of incunables’. The talk is hosted jointly with the Bodleian’s Centre for the Study of the Book. We will also be streaming the talk on Zoom; if you would like to get the link, do please get in touch with sarah.cusk@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
The Old Occitan Literature Workshop meets at 5-6pm at St Hugh’s College, 74 Woodstock Road, Office A4. The topic of this week’s meeting will be ‘Is this… Fin’amor?’ (Jaufre Rudel (1125-48): Vida, “Lanquand li jorn son loc en mai”; Bernart de Ventadorn (1147-70): Vida, “Can vei la lauzeta mover”). To sign up, or for any other queries, email Kate Travers: katherine.travers@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk.
Friday 13th October:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm, in the Julia Mann Room, St Hilda’s College, and Zoom. Please let us know if you would like to attend, either in person or on Zoom; reminders including the Zoom link will be sent to those who have expressed interest. To register interest, or for more information, please contact Jane Bliss jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org and/or Stephanie stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com.
OPPORTUNITIES:
Codicology Workshops: 25 October, 15 November and 29 November, 1:30-3pm, Horton Seminar Room, Weston Library. This series of workshops using the Bodleian Special Collections is aimed at Oxford University postgraduate students who wish to learn more about the history of the book, with a particular focus on its construction and materiality. Sessions will cover various aspects of medieval and early modern codicology, from ink to binding, from page to provenance. The originality of this series lies in the fact that the sessions are taught by Bodleian curators, researchers and conservators, bringing together their expertise and different approaches to the book. Sessions focus on inks and pigments, writing surfaces, bindings, decoration and provenance, and are offered in Medieval Studies, History and English. For more information and to register: bookcentre@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
Teaching with manuscripts. Monday 4 Dec. (week 9), Horton Room, Weston Library, 2-3.30pm. This workshop is for anyone involved in small-group teaching who is considering incorporating medieval manuscript material in their classes. We will cover the practicalities of arranging classes and selecting material and explore what works and doesn’t work in the classroom. Contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk to register.
Call for Social Media Contributions: Are you passionate about medieval studies and public engagement? Would you like to share your research with a wider audience? Oxford Medieval Studies is looking for volunteers at any and all career stages to share fun medieval facts and stories or the most interesting parts of their research in one-minute video clips that will be posted across all our social media channels. Get in touch with ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk for more details.
It is always such a joy to welcome everyone back to Oxford, but also see new faces. Whether you have been here many years or just a few days, here is some wisdom from the Epistolae project as we start the term (and year):
quamdiu vigilatis, aut lectione aut […] aliqua utili cogitatione sive intentione sit occupatum [as long as you are awake, keep your heart busy always and everywhere with reading or […] some useful reflection or intention] A letter (1094) from Anselm, archbishop of Canterbury to Matilda of Wilton
I wish you all a productive and reflective term, and look forward to appearing in your inboxes every week with the latest Medievalist happenings. May you have a week filled with reading and / or useful reflection, and may your heart be ‘busy always’ during this academic year!
[A busy Medievalist always keeps their copy of the Medieval Booklet close to hand] St John’s College MS. 61, f. 40 r. By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
It is now 0th week, which means that the new academic year has officially begun! We have so much in store for you this year at OMS, but whilst we wait for full term to begin, this week will bring a look back over everything that happened in 2022/23. Our impact report for 2022/23 is now published! I hope this will whet your appetites for things to come, and start the year off right by celebrating the amazing strength of our interdisciplinary community!
When I first joined OMS as a new postdoc in 2021, I was immediately struck by the tremendous scope of Oxford’s medieval community. Two years have passed, and I am still continually delighted and surprised by the great range of offerings we have, and the great diversity of work going on at Oxford. In 2022/23, there were an astounding 39 different medieval seminars, societies and reading groups, ranging from the Celtic Seminar to the Invisible East Seminar to Queer and Trans Medievalisms. There were eleven different language-specific groups (from Anglo-Norman to Old Norse); work ranging from the post-classical (Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar) to the immediate present day (Medieval Misuse Reading Group); and an incredible disciplinary range including archaeology, heraldry, history, literatures and languages, manuscript studies, music, numismatics, theology, and visual culture. Every year, there are new contributions, and one of the greatest joys of this work has been seeing new reading groups and societies blossom into long-standing mainstays of the weekly newsletter.
But don’t just take my word for it: here are some statistics that highlight the astounding size and reach of our work. Over 850 people receive the Medieval Matters newsletter every week, and last year we had over 1,300 different visitors to the blog. Our reach extends far beyond Oxford itself: last year we had significant numbers of blog hits from the USA, Australia, Spain, Poland, Germany, China, France and Singapore. We have accounts on Twitter (currently at a strong 5823 followers), Facebook (914 followers), Instagram (654 followers), Mastodon (503 followers), YouTube (266 subscribers), TikTok (160 followers), and Threads (106 followers). Actual engagement is more difficult to judge and varies quite widely across platforms and their respective ever-changing algorithms but our most popular TikTok, which was Alison Ray talking about transferable skills in an archivist career, has 127 likes and 2001 views as of today, and our most viewed YouTube video appears to be James McGrath’s Bodleian Coffee Morning on Mandaean manuscripts, with 618 views.
All of this is to say: medieval studies is flourishing at Oxford. As Communications Officer, my primary job is to bring together this enormous, vibrant community to foster interdisciplinary communication and to spotlight the very many happenings across the university (and beyond!). I am also extremely lucky to be able to work alongside both Oxford’s most long-serving academics and its very youngest, newest researchers. My role is twinned with work for the Humanities Division mentoring the Interdisciplinary Medieval Studies MSt students, and it has been a consistent joy to see so many bright young medievalists bringing new and exciting interdisciplinary approaches to our community.
I hope you enjoy the impact report, which sums up the wealth of offerings and scholarship that happened at Oxford last year. It has been an honour to be at the helm of this, and I look forward to continuing to be your guide for 2023/24.
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Medieval Booklet Michaelmas Term 2023. The first draft of the booklet is now available for viewing! To get a sneak peek at everything happening this term, please click here. If you have forgotten to send in your submission, please send it in before next Friday, when the final pdf version will be uploaded ready for distribution with Medieval Matters Week 1.
Medieval Blog Submissions. This year we are hoping to feature a greater range of blog posts to highlight Oxford’s vibrant medievalist community. We would like to have one blog post per week, and are currently looking for volunteers for MT. If you have a project / book release / manuscript that you would like to highlight, please do contact me. The OMS blog is seen by medievalists in and outside of Oxford and is a great place to showcase the achievements of our medieval community.
New Graduate Students / Staff Members. If you are the convenor of a medieval-focussed MSt/MPhil, have new DPhil students, know of new medieval staff members or are hosting visiting scholars, please send me a list of all of their email addresses so that I can sign them up for the mailing list. Alternatively, please distribute the following self-service link to allow them to sign up: https://web.maillist.ox.ac.uk/ox/subscribe/medieval-news.
SAVE THE DATE:
Tuesday 10th October:
Oxford Medieval Studies Social and Steering Group: We warmly invite you to join us for medievalist revelry to welcome in the new academic year, kindly hosted by the Medieval Church and Culture seminar. Further details to follow!
OPPORTUNITIES:
CFP: The Medieval Translator. Translation, Memory, and Politics in the Medieval World – To be hosted by the Universidade de Lisboa, Portugal, 17-21 June 2024. We invite submissions that address these themes and related topics in the context of the medieval world. Papers may be given in English, French or Portuguese, and should be twenty minutes long. Please send a 500-word abstract, an essential bibliography and a brief curriculum vitae by 15 October 2023 to: medtransl_lisbon2024@letras.ulisboa.pt . For full details, please see the blog post here.
Assistant/Associate Professor of Medieval Literature & Language (University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The English Department at the University of Tennessee invites applications for a tenure-track assistant or associate professor in medieval literature and language, capable of teaching courses in both the Old English and Middle English periods, with a research specialization in either field. We particularly welcome candidates with interest in one or more of the following areas: digital humanities, medical humanities, and the global Middle Ages. (Deadline: November 1, 2023)https://apply.interfolio.com/130790
Assistant Professor of Classics in Medieval Latin & Digital Manuscript Studies(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The Department of Classics has been authorized to make an appointment in Latin language and literature at the rank of tenure-track Assistant Professor. The expertise sought is Medieval Latin with a special interest in digital manuscript studies. This faculty member will teach undergraduate students in our department as well as train graduate students in UT’s Marco Institute for Medieval and Renaissance Studies. The successful candidate will have strong promise of scholarly achievement, demonstrated excellence in teaching Latin, as well as the ability to teach Medieval and Classical Latin, paleography, and digital manuscript studies, and to contribute to our departmental curriculum of large and small courses in classical civilization, literature, or mythology. (Deadline: October 31, 2023) https://apply.interfolio.com/130669
Assistant Professor in Early Modern French Studies(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The Department of World Languages and Cultures at the University of Tennessee flagship campus in Knoxville is seeking applications for a full-time, 9-month tenure-track position at the rank of Assistant Professor in early modern French studies, with a focus on the 18th century, to begin August 1, 2024. To broaden our programs, innovative and interdisciplinary approaches to the field, such as Transatlantic studies, diaspora studies, medical humanities, and/or environmental humanities, are especially welcome. Expertise in theater is also desirable. (Deadline: November 1, 2023)https://apply.interfolio.com/131961
Assistant Professor in the History of Gender and/or Sexuality(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The History Department at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professor appointment in history with a focus on gender and/or sexuality from any world region or chronological period. Scholars whose research and teaching will complement the department’s current areas of strength are urged to apply. The position has a 2/2 teaching load. The successful candidate will teach introductory-level survey courses as well as upper division and graduate courses in the candidate’s area of expertise. (Deadline: October 1, 2023) https://apply.interfolio.com/130760
Assistant Professor in the History of Early Modern or Modern East Asia(University of Tennessee, Knoxville): The Department of History at the University of Tennessee invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship in the History of Early Modern or Modern East Asia (since 1500) outside of China. The research specialty is open and may treat any country or region within that scope. Applicants working in borderlands, cross-cultural contact, environment, migration, or science and medicine are encouraged to apply. The successful candidate will teach an undergraduate world history survey (1500 CE-present) and offer upper division and graduate courses in the area of specialty to complement our current strengths. (Deadline: October 15, 2023) https://apply.interfolio.com/130738
Associate Professor or Professor of Old Norse(St John’s College / English Faculty, Oxford): St John’s College and the Faculty of English invite applications from suitably qualified candidates for a Tutorial Fellowship and Associate Professorship in Old Norse, to be appointed with effect from 1 September 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter. The successful candidate will be both an Official Fellow and Tutor in English at St John’s, and a member of the Faculty of English. For full details, please click here.
Official (Tutorial) Fellowship in English at The Queen’s College and Associate Professorship or Professorship of Literature in English: The Queen’s College and the Faculty of English are seeking to recruit an Official (Tutorial) Fellow in English and Associate Professor or Professor of Literature in English to start on 1st September 2024 or as soon as possible thereafter. Applications are invited from well-qualified candidates with research expertise in the field of literature in English in the period from 1450-1550. This may include specialisms in areas such as medieval and early Tudor drama, early Scottish literature, women’s writing, or Henrician court literature. We also encourage applicants with comparative and global interests. The Faculty and College are strongly committed to encouraging diverse and inclusive approaches to literary study. For full details, please click here.
Finally, some wisdom from the Epistolae project on my hopes for the year as the Communications Officer:
Epistolam non ficta, sed fideli caritate et firma tibi a me missam suscipere, legere, audire atque exaudire dignare. [Deign to receive, read, listen to and take notice of this letter which I am sending to you not with feigned but with faithful and strong charity] A letter (1102-03) from Matilda of Scotland, queen of the English to Anselm of Canterbury
I interpret this to mean: may all of your emails be received, read, listened to, and answered with charity! Wishing you a week of charitable email replies, and I look forward to sending you our first full Medieval Matters of the year next week.
[A Medievalist looks at once back on the successes of the year just passed, and forward to the exciting year to come!] St John’s College MS. 61, f. 47 v. By permission of the President and Fellows of St John’s College, Oxford Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
In the last ten years, Oxford Medieval Studies has grown into a stunningly successful interdisciplinary Humanities community for research and teaching, with a reach that now goes far beyond Oxford. Time to take stock and to bring together the offerings of just the last academic year, 2022-2023 in form of a booklet. Enjoy the read below as pdf or download a printable version here.
Begun on the initiative of Prof. Chris Wickham, and transformed from a TORCH network into a permanent programme under the directorship of Prof. Sophie Marnette, Oxford Medieval Studies now encompasses the local – such as the interdisciplinary MSt. in Medieval Studies – to the global, with 1,300 visitors to our blog last year alone (http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk). The termly booklet of offerings around the University, Faculties and Colleges gives some idea of the breadth and variety available to (and from) Oxford’s medievalists: as the statistics on the next page show, we are finding an eager audience for the Middle Ages both inside and outside the city.
Our regular seminars, reading groups, one-off workshops and social events make for a rich and lively culture. We are the biggest and most diverse group studying the Middle Ages in any UK university, with links to the most important US and European institutions. Just as much as its reputation in science or medicine, the Middle Ages puts Oxford on the map.
As co-directors our job is made simple by the enthusiasm and expertise of our graduates and post-docs. Over the last two years Luisa Ostacchini has done a brilliant job of producing a weekly Monday morning newsletter of the week’s offerings, which comes with the wit and wisdom that only an expert in Old English and medieval Latin can claim. Her piece in the report below paints a vivid picture of what goes on each year – not forgetting the fun (anyone for haruspices?) that is a hallmark of so many medieval manuscripts, and of our gatherings today. We thank Luisa and all those who help make Oxford a wonderful place to be a medievalist, and we look forward to ten more successful years. This report is an experiment to bring the lively culture and documentation of the Oxford Medieval Studies blog http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/ into a material form and gather together the rich offerings of seminars, reading groups, regular and one-off events in a booklet.
Here we are at the end of the academic year! It seems like just yesterday that I was sending the first email of Michaelmas. Thank you to everyone who has organised seminars and reading groups, given papers, hosted events and conferences, and contributed to our rich community at Oxford. It’s been the busiest OMS year on record, and it’s been so wonderful to see our medievalist community thriving. In the words of Alcuin:
Nihil laudabilisest in homine, quam sapientiae decus et caritatis affectus [Nothing is more praiseworthy in a person than the glory of wisdom and the goodwill of love, Ep. 290]
According to this, Oxford’s medievalists are very praiseworthy indeed! We would like to celebrate our community in an annual record publication, recounting the highlights of the year. All events included in the newsletters will be included as a matter of course, but if you have published a book, held a special event, or given a special paper, or would just like to send a paragraph about your seminar/reading group, we would love to hear from you! See our blog post for more information. All submissions must be received by August 20th.
We have a bumper list of events this week. For a list of all events taking place after the end of this week, please see the end of the events section:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Celebrating OMS 2022/23: Call for Submissions: The OMS Record will be completed in time for the new academic year, both online and in (limited) print format. We welcome all submissions detailing events or book releases from the academic year 2022/23. Please send submissions to luisa.ostacchini@ell.ox.ac.uk. All submissions must be received by August 20th 2023.
CAT – Conversations Across Time: What do horses, medievalists, black hole orbits, boardrooms, and quantum computers have in common? Inspired by the Medieval Mystery Plays, artist in residence at the Physics Department Pam Davis has developed an art-piece ‘Conversations Across Time’ which links medieval theatre, women in science, and Quantum future. Free tickets for the performances in the unique Beecroft Building (Physics) on June 15th, 17:30-18:30, June 16th, 17:30-18:30, June 17th, 14:30-15:30, and June 17th, 17:30-18:30 available via the website https://www.citizensai.com/.
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 12th June:
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Jack Dooley (Royal Holloway, University of London), Between the self and the other: the case of the gasmouloi in Late Byzantium, and the respondent will be Dr Yannis Stouraitis. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teamsfrom 1-2pm. This term we will read some satirical poetry from a thirteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘Bekyngton anthology’ (Bodl. MS. Add. A. 44). Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information.
The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is The medieval hyena: Emma Campbell, ‘Visualizing the Trans-Animal Body’. 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 meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Emilia Jamroziak (Leeds), ‘Understanding the cult of saints in the late medieval Cistercian order‘. The seminar will also be available remotely viaTeams. 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 Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Professor Katherine Southwood, Senior Fellow of the Oxford Interfaith Forum, Associate Professor in Old Testament, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford, and Tutorial Fellow in Theology and Religion at St John’s College, Oxford, will be leading a session on ‘Metaphor, Illness, and Identity: Psalms 88 and 102‘ as part of the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group.To register, please click here.
Tuesday 13th June:
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Peter Kidd (freelance researcher), ‘Tracing the Provenance of a Medieval Manuscript: from start to finish‘. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar! As an appetizer, have a look at the latest blog post RECEPTIO Redux.
Wednesday 14th June:
The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. In Trinity Term, we are continuing to discuss Heinrich von Neustadt’s texts, focussing on ‘Von Gottes Zukunft’. We meet in person in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall, this week with the topic: Apocalypse! Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
The Old High German Reading Group at 11-12 in 41 Wellington Square, 2nd floor (Henrike Lähnemann’s office). This week’s text will be Wessobrunner Gebet. It will be an opportunity to read and analyse some simpler OHG texts and give people the chance to read the oldest form of German if they’ve not been exposed to it before. It will be very informal, and all are welcome. Led by William Thurlwell william.thurlwell@wolfson.ox.ac.uk – contact him for updates.
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 for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s seminar will be a Special OCBR lecture by James Howard-Johnston (emeritus, Corpus Christi), ‘The Last Great War of Antiquity: Course and Consequences’. You can also join the seminar remotely via Teams, click here.
Thursday 15th June:
The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm at Lincoln College: meet at the lodge. This week’s theme will be Hierarchies: ecclesiastical, non-ecclesiastical and “alternative” hierarchies of power used and created by medieval women. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
The Piers Plowman in Context discussion group will be led by Kantik Ghosh in the Main Quad Boardroom at Univ from 4:30-5:30pm. For this last session we will be discussing Passus XX of the B-text, in relation to some texts by Bonaventura, Aquinas, and Pecock, available online through this link. All welcome! Email Jacob Ridley (jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk) with any questions.
The Invisible East Group is co-hosting a webinar with the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies online at 5pm. The speaker will be Prof Geoffrey Khan, University of Cambridge, ‘The Arabic documents from early Islamic Khurasan‘. Registration and more information at this link.
The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15-6.45pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Sara Lipton, Stony Brook University: ‘Blood Piety and Anti-Judaism in an Early Fourteenth-century Illuminated Prayer Book from Liège‘. For further information, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
WOOPIE (Oxford Old English Work in Progress Seminar) meets at 5.15-6.30pm in the Ferrar Room, Hertford College. This week’s speaker will be Mar Gutiérrez Ortiz (University of Seville), ‘Isidore’s Etymologies, A Source for Boniface’s Classification of Metrical Feet in the Caesurae uersuum‘.
The Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Professor Matthew Milliner, Senior Fellow of the Oxford Interfaith Forum, and Professor of Art History at Wheaton College, USA, will be leading a session on ‘The Tao of Mary: Images of the Virgin in the Church of the East‘ as part of the ART in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group. To register, please click here.
Friday 16th June:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
Exhibition Launch: Early Modern Monsters At 5pm, History of the Book students from MML and the MSc Digital Scholarship are jointly launching the digital editions and a Monster Exhibition in the Taylor Institution Library, Main Hall (with the exhibition open in the Voltaire Room from now until 26 June). The focus will be on early modern monstruous birth pamphlet but there will also be medieval monsters and their modern successors to marvel at.
SUMMER EVENTS:
Monday 19th June:
Distance: Medieval and Modern Languages Conference will take place at 9am-6pm in the Taylor Institution Library. For the full programme, see our blog here.
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Rachel Catherine Patt (Princeton University), From Pliny’s Potter to Proclus’ Vision: Tracing the Role of Pothos in Byzantine Visual Culture, and the respondent will be Dr Maria Lidova. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
The Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Ilana Tahan OBE, Lead Curator of Hebrew and Christian Orient Collections, The British Library, will be leading a session on ‘British Library Hebrew Treasures Reveal Interfaith Narratives: The Sana’a Pentateuch‘ as part of the International Interfaith Reading Group on Manuscripts in Interfaith Contexts. To register, please click here.
Wednesday 21st June/ Thursday 22nd June:
The Joint Oxford-Princeton Conference: State Documents from the Medieval Islamicate World takes place from 21st June 8.45am to 22nd June 5pm at Trinity College, Oxford. For full details, click here. To attend the colloquium, please register using the form at this link. Participation is free of charge, but advanced registration is requested.
Thursday 13th July:
WOOPIE (Oxford Old English Work in Progress Seminar) meets at 5.15-6.30pm in the Lange Room, St Cross College. This week’s speaker will be Rachel Burns (Oxford), ‘“I will open my mouth in parables”: A new biblical context for early medieval English riddles’.
For those of you moving on to new things outside Oxford, I’d like to wish you luck in your endeavours on behalf of all of us at OMS. If you would like to stay in contact via the mailing list, please let me know so that I can update your details. For everyone else, I look forward to returning to your inboxes in October – I am remaining in post as communications officer for 2023/24:
Sequenti vero anno certius aliquid de nobis audies vel videbis [You will see me next year, or hear more definite news of me,Ep. 17]
It has been an honour and a pleasure to be your guide to the year’s medieval happenings. At a time when humanities are in decline, it’s been such a joy to see our community flourishing and thriving. On behalf of everyone at OMS, I’d like to extend a huge thanks to everyone for making this such a wonderful year. Wishing you a restful and productive summer, and I will see you again in October!
[Medievalists sailing off on Summer adventures. Bon voyage, and see you next year!] Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 86 v. Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
As we wrap up the year, we here at OMS have been reflecting on the amazing accomplishments of Oxford’s medievalists in the last year. 2022/23 saw even more seminars and reading groups than ever before, covering an extremely diverse range of languages, themes, and ideas. We have also seen a considerable number of publications, special lectures, and practice-as-research events, like the Medieval Crafternoon and Mystery Plays.
Beginning this year, we will be creating an annual record publication to sum up the year’s events and spotlight the wonderful achievements of Oxford’s Medievalist community. This will be a place to celebrate major publications, highlight new and ongoing seminars/reading groups, and remember the special events that were held in the academic year.
If you have something to celebrate, we would love to hear from you! Submissions on the following would be much appreciated:
Book publications (monographs or edited volumes) by Oxford Medievalists in 2022/23 with a short summary or abstract (no more than 250 words).
Write-ups of special lectures, conferences, or events hosted at Oxford. If you have pictures of your event in progress, these would be particularly gratefully received! (no more than 500 words).
A paragraph about your reading group / seminar series, and what you did in 2022/23. We are particularly keen to hear from those who started new reading groups/seminars in the academic year 2022/23 (no more than 250 words).
Please send submissions to luisa.ostacchini@ell.ox.ac.uk. All submissions must be received by August 20th 2023. The OMS Record will be completed in time for the new academic year, both online and in (limited) print format.
As we move into seventh week, the term and indeed the whole academic teaching year is beginning to wrap up. It has been an extremely busy year with more medieval events than ever before. It’s been a particular delight to see so many new seminars and events joining our roster this year, and to see the range of Oxford Medieval Studies expanding ever further. That being said, our busy programme is the product of extremely hard work, and I’m sure that many of us (especially our MSt students, currently working on their dissertations) are feeling rather tired. For those who need a little motivation to keep up the good work until the end of term, here is some advice from Alcuin:
non incipiens sed perseverans in finem salvus erit [It is not the person who begins who will be saved, but the one who perseveres to the end, Ep. 276]
Some of our seminars have now finished for the year, but others are “persevering” to the end of the term! For your guide to everything happening this week, please see below:
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 5th June:
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Peter Boudreau (McGill University), Keeping Time in Byzantium: Temporal Imagery and Thought in the Calendars of Later Byzantium. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teamsfrom 1-2pm. This term we will read some satirical poetry from a thirteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘Bekyngton anthology’ (Bodl. MS. Add. A. 44). Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information.
The Invisible East Group is hosting a seminar at 3pm in the Spalding Room, FAMES, Pusey Lane. This week’s speaker will be Prof Edmund Herzig, University of Oxford, ‘Closing a bank account in early 18th century Isfahan‘. More information at this link
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Sara Lipton (Stony Brook/All Souls), ‘Iconography Against the Grain: Looking at and Learning from Art in the High Middle Ages‘. The seminar will also be available remotely viaTeams. 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 6th June:
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Samuel Oliver (Queen’s), Envisioning Beguines’ ideas of community after the Council of Vienne, with a special focus on the Vita et Revelationes of Agnes Blannbekin. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
There will be a reconstruction of the Night Office in 15th-Century Oxford in New College Chapel at 9pm prepared by Henry Parkes. Come along to experience of listening to the Office for Thomas Becket! More information and a glimpse of the manuscripts on which this is based in this blogpost.
Wednesday 7th June:
The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. In Trinity Term, we are continuing to discuss Heinrich von Neustadt’s texts, focussing on ‘Von Gottes Zukunft’. We will meet in person in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email 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 for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker will be Asli Niyazioglu (Exeter College), ‘Ottoman Istanbul’s Talismanic Antiquities’. You can also join the seminar remotely via Teams, click here.
Thursday 8th June:
The Discussion Group: Governability across the medieval globe meets at 12.30 in the Sainsbury Common Room in Worcester College. Everyone welcome: staff, students and researchers, of all historical periods. We encourage you to bring lunch along. This week’s topic is ‘Plants and animals 🐄🌳’.
The Piers Plowman in Context discussion group will be led by Helen Barr in the Main Quad Boardroom at Univ from 4:30-5:30. This week’s session will be on Passus XIX of the B-text, which we’ll be discussing in relation to the Wycliffite ‘On the Ecclesiastical Hierarchy’ (available through this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1LSWHJAX2abXPsd_9PwC-540qcBTXrucB) and Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale. All welcome! Email Jacob Ridley (jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk) with any questions
Friday 9th June:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm on Zoom. To receive the materials and be added to the mailing list, please contact howard.jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk.
The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at the Julia Mann room, St Hilda’s College and online. This term we are reading extracts from Hue de Rotelands’s Protheselaus. Please contact Jane Bliss and/or Stephanie Hathaway to let us know if you can come in person (so we know whom to expect), also to obtain copies of the texts, and for the Zoom invitations.
Finally, some more wisdom from Alcuin on the importance of staying focussed even as the term draws to a close (always a difficult task):
non segniter labora [don’t work half-heartedly!Ep. 18]
Wishing the best of luck to all of our graduate students finishing up dissertations or taking exams in the next few weeks. For everyone else: may you work whole-heartedly this week!
[Never wake a sleeping medievalist in seventh week] Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 80 v. Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
It’s another beautiful sunny bank-holiday Monday here in Oxford. The parks are looking especially lovely, and provide a particularly lovely break from work. Indeed, Alcuin tells us that we can find lots of examples for good behaviour in nature. In particular the bee, famed for its careful selection of good pollen, might be a useful model for research:
Sicut apis sapientissima, omnia, quae honestatis sunt, discendo probate; et quae optima esse videntur, eligendo retinete [By learning confirm what is important, and by choosing keep hold of whatever seems good – just like the wisest bee. Ep. 72 ]
It’s easy to follow such advice given that there are so many wonderful seminars, reading groups and events for you to examine and learn from this week. The great difficulty is, of course, choosing which to attend: Alcuin unfortunately did not give us any advice on how to select seminars when all of them ‘optima esse videntur’! Please see below for the many wonderful things happening in Oxford this week:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
Rethinking Lyric Communities in Premodern Worlds will take place at Christ Church Research Centre, Oxford, on 20-21 June. This symposium is part of the collaborative research project Rethinking Lyric Communities, which had its first two workshops in Oxford and Berlin last year. This third instalment will focus on questions of lyric and community in premodern times in both European and Middle Eastern worlds. Bringing contemporary lyric theory into dialogue with medieval and early modern studies, the fundamental questions we intend to explore are: what is it that makes the lyric particularly shareable? How was it actually shared? And what kind of community formation did it enable or envision? This is a hybrid event. To receive the link, please write to Nicolas Longinotti by Thursday 15 June 2023: n.longinotti@fu-berlin.de. For more information and the full programme, please click here.
The Night Office in 15th-Century Oxford: on Tuesday 6th June at 9pm in New College Chapel, New College Choir will enact a short-form Night Office as it might have been known in 15th-century Oxford, to explore how this nowforgotten liturgy worked in performance. In southern England from the late 14th century on, Tuesdays were commonly given over to the veneration of St Thomas Becket. This service recreates a ‘commemorative’ Tuesday Becket office, as precribed in late medieval books of the Sarum Use—many of which survive in Oxford libraries.
Medieval Mystery Play Recordings are now available! If you missed the Medieval Mystery Plays or just want to relive the fun of them, you can now watch the recordings on our blog. For a taster of the medievalist merriment, please see the trailer here. Huge thanks to Natascha Domeisen for her hard work filming and editing these.
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 29th May:
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will not meet today, but resumes next week.
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teamsfrom 1-2pm. This term we will read some satirical poetry from a thirteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘Bekyngton anthology’ (Bodl. MS. Add. A. 44). Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information.
The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is Animal magics: The Mabinogion, fourth branch (Mab uab Mathonwy). 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 meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be José Maria Andres Porras (St Hugh’s) ‘Violence, Blood, and Vendetta: A Girardian Interpretation‘. The seminar will also be available remotely viaTeams. 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 30th May:
The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building. This week’s speaker will be Euan Roger (National Archives), Life Records and The National Archives.
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Lucas Dorschel (St Hugh’s), Recontextualizing the Donestre: Queer Cannibalism in the Wonders of the East Manuscripts, c. 1000-1125. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
The first lecture of the New CMTC Lecture Series: Provenance Unknown will take place at 5.15-7pm in the Memorial Room, Queen’s College. The speaker is Alexander Herman (Institute of Art and Law, London), Don’t Turn That Page! The Legal Risks of Dealing in Unprovenanced Manuscripts. You can also join the lecture online via Zoom: to register for the link, please click here. Sign-ups will close at 10,00am on Tuesday 30th May. We cannot guarantee that we will be able to provide a Zoom link if you email us after this time. If you have not received a link by 12.00noon on 30th May, please email Gabriele Rota (gabriele.rota@queens.ox.ac.uk).
Wednesday 31st May:
The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. In Trinity Term, we are continuing to discuss Heinrich von Neustadt’s texts, focussing on ‘Von Gottes Zukunft’. This week Magdalena Butz will present findings from her doctoral thesis on the transformation of religious knowledge into vernacular storytelling. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
The Old High German Reading Group will not meet this week.
The Old French Reading Group takes place at 4-5pm at St Hilda’s College (meet by the lodge) on Wednesdays of Even Weeks in association with Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). We welcome readers of Old French of all abilities. For further information, please email alice.hawkins@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk or irina.boeru@st-hildas.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 for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker will be Cristina Rognoni (Università degli Studi di Palermo), ‘The Greek monastery of S. Salvatore di Bordonaro (Messina, Sicily, 12th century): a short history and a long tradition’. You can also join the seminar remotely via Teams, click here.
Thursday 1st June:
The Environmental History Group meets at 12-2pm in the Gary Martin Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be G. J. Morgan, “The Hagiocene: ‘the Age of the Saints’ and environmental thought”. We try to keep discussions informal, and we encourage anyone at all interested in these kinds of approaches to join our meetings, regardless of research specialism or presumed existing knowledge. For those interested in joining the group, you can join our mailing list by getting in touch with us at environmentalhistoryworkinggroup-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk.
The Pursuit of Musick. The Taverner Consort at 50 will take place at 3-4pm at the Taylor Institution Library, Room 2. Andrew Parrott will be in conversation with Henrike Lähnemann on musical life in medieval and early modern Europe. This is a celebration of 50 years of the Taverner Consort and Andrew Parrott’s The Pursuit of Musick: Musical Life in Original Writings & Art c1200–1770, a uniquely colourful compendium of almost everything to do with pre-modern musical life. The lecture will take as its starting point how the examples on music in the everyday life of medieval and early modern Germany can be used as a teaching tool and will also discuss questions of translation of premodern sources. All original source material is open access available on the publication website, e.g. https://www.taverner.org/everyday-life. For more information, see our blog here.
The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm at Lincoln College: meet at the lodge. This week’s theme will be Holiness and sainthood: forms of holiness and sainthood, and their effect on authority both by women and for women. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
This week’s Piers Plowman in Context discussion group will be led by Mishtooni Bose in the Main Quad Boardroom at Univ from 16:30-17:30. This week’s session will be on Passus XV of the B-text, which we’ll be discussing in relation to the short contexts available through this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ecmqwQpuxmxbEn7e9Pu0uFCMVONSCdRC All welcome! Email Jacob Ridley (jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk) with any questions.
The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15-6.45pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Michelle Brown University of London, Visual Exegesis and its Deployment in Insular Illumination. For further information, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
Friday 2nd June:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
Saturday 3rd June:
A one-day-only exhibition: Maleficia: Magic, Witchcraft, & Astrology will take place at New College. We will be displaying some manuscripts, mostly astrological texts, along with a number of early modern printed books, mostly witchcraft treatises. The exhibition will be in New College’s Lecture Room 4 and is open to the public.
Of course, just as there are good examples to be found in nature, Alcuin reminds us that there are bad ones too:
Nec mirum, si tarditas aselli sustineat in dorso flagellum [It’s not surprising if a lazy donkey gets a whip across his back!Ep. 98]
I take this to mean that it’s important not to get overly carried away with walks in University Parks when there is still plenty of work to do before the end of term! Nonetheless, I hope that you all get to enjoy some sunshine today, and wish you a week of being ‘like the wisest bee’ in your learning and teaching!
[Medievalists taking Alcuin’s advice and choosing which seminars seem to them to be best] Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 75 v. Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
Last weekend medievalists from around the world gathered at Oxford to celebrate the life and scholarship of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022), Emeritus Professor of German Medieval Literary and Linguistic Studies . Many thanks to all who came along, gave papers, and organised the wonderful library exhibition. As part of the proceedings, Dr Alan Coates gave a special presentation on Nigel Palmer’s Books in the Bodleian at the Weston medievalists’ coffee morning. If you missed the presentation, you can view this on our blog here and further contributions on the programme of the symposium. Here is some wisdom from Alcuin on the importance of remembering those who teach and inspire us:
numquam eruditionis vestrae […] obliviscimini magistrum [Never forget the teacher of your wisdom Ep. 34]
We have many wonderful opportunities this week to be taught and to teach wisdom. See below for the full programme:
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
The OMS Small Grants Application for Trinity Term ’23 is 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 Trinity term 2023 and end of the summer vacation. The closing date for applications is Friday of Week 5 of Trinity Term (= 26 May); decisions will be made promptly after the closing date. For more details and the application form, click here.
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 22nd May:
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Emily Chesley (Princeton University), Collateral Damage: Eastern Women’s Experiences in the Roman-Persian Wars, 4th-6th c. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
No Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Groupthis week!
The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Lucy Parker (Wadham) ‘Monks, martyrs, and masculinity: authority and gender in early Islamic Palestine’. The seminar will also be available remotely viaTeams. 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 Oxford Interfaith Forum meets online via Zoom at 6pm. Rabbi Joshua Stanton, Director of the Leadership Formation at the National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership, and Rabbi of East End Temple in Manhattan, NY, USA, will be leading this session of the Psalms in Interfaith Contexts Reading Group. To register, please click here.
Tuesday 23rd May:
The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building. This week’s speaker will be Peter Buchanan (University of Cambridge), ‘Medieval Multiversality: Modalities in 14th Century Poetry‘.
TheCentre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) at The Queen’s College (Oxford) is hosting a “Work in progress” colloquium at 3.30–5pm in the Memorial Room, The Queen’s College and online via Zoom. The speakers will be Marius Del Core (Pisa/Oxford), ‘Omitti possunt. Evidence for abridgement and athetesis in Plautine manuscripts‘ and Stefano Milonia (Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples), ‘Super and Contra. Conversion and resemantisation of mediaeval French lyric in the Ludus super Anticlaudianum’. Please register here (whether you are planning to attend in person or online).
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Julia Schroeder (Lincoln), ‘Bokes Unbrad’: ecclesiastical court records in late medieval England. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
The Medieval French Research Seminar will meet at 5pm for drinks, with the presentation starting at 5:15pm, at the Maison Francaise d’Oxford on Norham Road. This week’s speakers will be Micah Mackay and Anna Wilmore, ‘Song? Poem? Both?: The Late Medieval Lyric in Context’. For more information, to be added to the seminar maillist, or for the Teams link to join a seminar remotely, contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
Wednesday 24th May:
The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. In Trinity Term, we are continuing to discuss Heinrich von Neustadt’s texts, focussing on ‘Von Gottes Zukunft’. We will meet in person in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. This week we will be discussing the tradition of the 15 signs of the Last Judgement within the text led by Anja Peters and Timothy Powell. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email 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 for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker will be Jean-Claude Cheynet (emeritus, Sorbonne Université), ‘Women’s Seals in Byzantium’. You can also join the seminar remotely via Teams, click here.
Thursday 25th May:
Wendy Scase from Birmingham is leading this week’s Piers Plowman in Context discussion group, which meets in the Main Quad Boardroom at Univ from 4:30-5:30. This week’s session will be on Passus XIII of the B-text, which we’ll be discussing in relation to Richard Fitzralph’s Defensio Curatorum, available through this link. Attendees are encouraged to choose a brief section of the Defensio to talk about. All welcome! Email Jacob Ridley (jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk) with any questions.
Friday 26th May:
The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4pm on Zoom. To receive the materials and be added to the mailing list, please contact howard.jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk.
The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at the Julia Mann room, St Hilda’s College and online. This term we are reading extracts from Hue de Rotelands’s Protheselaus. Please contact Jane Bliss and/or Stephanie Hathaway to let us know if you can come in person (so we know whom to expect), also to obtain copies of the texts, and for the Zoom invitations.
Fifth week is notorious in Oxford for being the point in the term when everyone feels rather tired and low in spirits. Hopefully the sun is helping to keep everyone’s spirits high: Oxford does look beautiful in the sun! As for the tiredness, Alcuin has a prescription for us all:
fessae mentis acumen levioris lectionis interpositio saepe reficit [The interposition of lighter reading often restores the sharpness of a tired mind, Ep. 300]
In addition to this advice, I offer that the interposition of Medievalist socialising may also prove restorative: please do come along to our coffee mornings if the sharpness of your mind is in need of some restoration! In the meantime, I wish you all a week of lighter reading and sunshine.
We are half way through May, and half way through the term! Everything is starting to feel summery in Oxford: the days are getting warmer and the University parks, gardens and meadows are looking beautiful as all of the plants come into flower. Of course, there is also a flowering of knowledge at this time of year, particularly as our MSt students embark upon their dissertations! Here is some wisdom from Alcuin on the subject:
Quid pulchriussapientiae floribus, quae numquam exhauriuntur? [What is more beautiful than the flowers of wisdom, which never fade? Ep. 206]
We have a truly rich array of wisdom on display this week. See the full listings below for a veritable bouquet of knowledge!
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
A workshop on The Order of St Victor in Medieval Scandinavia will be held at Aula Magna, Stockholm University, 25–26 May 2023. The workshop is open to all interested, subject to availability. Register interest by contacting roger.andersson@su.se. For a full programme and more information, see our blog post here.
The CMTC “Medieval Manuscripts Work in Progress” colloquium will be held on Tuesday 23rd May 2023, 3,30–5,00pm UK time, at Memorial Room, The Queen’s College (and Zoom). The speakers will be Marius Del Core (Pisa/Oxford), ‘Omitti possunt. Evidence for abridgement and athetesis in Plautine manuscripts’ and Stefano Milonia (Scuola Superiore Meridionale, Naples), ‘Super and Contra. Conversion and resemantisation of mediaeval French lyric in the Ludus super Anticlaudianum’. Registration is mandatory: please register here whether you are planning to attend in person or online.
Announcing a one-day-only exhibition at New College Library entitled Maleficia: Magic, Witchcraft, & Astrology at New College Library. We will be displaying some manuscripts, mostly astrological texts, along with a number of early modern printed books, mostly witchcraft treatises. The exhibition will be on Saturday, 3rd June in New College’s Lecture Room 4 and is open to the public. Contact caitlin.kane@new.ox.ac.uk for queries.
Provenance Unknown: A New CMTC Lecture Series: The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC) is proud to announce this new lecture series, on unprovenanced manuscripts/inscriptions. The series seeks to gather a wide range of voices from academics in different fields or disciplines about the methodological pros and cons of working with unprovenanced mss/insciptions in academic contexts. The lectures will cover matters such as the legal concerns, ethical concerns, and academic concerns by keeping a strict focus on methodology. Our first speaker is Alexander Herman, Director of the Institute of Art and Law, on 30 May, 5.15pm (UK time), Memorial Room, The Queen’s College, Oxford, UK
Ervin Bossányi: Stained Glass Art and Linocut Workshop: St Peter’s College is pleased to host a practical art workshop on Friday, 26 May 2023, 2-4pm in the St Peter’s College Chapel as part of a current display exploring the works of Hungarian artist Ervin Bossányi (1891-1975) in the College collections and Chapel stained glass. A guided tour of the display by Dr Alison Ray (College Archivist) will be followed by a linocut workshop led by Dr Eleanor Baker and participants will produce their own linocut designs. Attendance is free, but booking is required as space is limited. Please contact Alison Ray to reserve a place by email: archives@spc.ox.ac.uk. For more details, click here.
EVENTS THIS WEEK:
Monday 15th May:
The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Benjamin Morris (Cardiff University), ‘Against All Men’: The Movement of Military Service in Byzantine and English Treaties, 900-1200 To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teamsfrom 1-2pm. This term we will read some satirical poetry from a thirteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘Bekyngton anthology’ (Bodl. MS. Add. A. 44). Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information.
The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is Werewolf romance: William of Palerne. 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 meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Susannah Bain (Jesus) ‘Fashioning connectivity: Political communication and history-writing in late thirteenth-century Italy’. The seminar will also be available remotely viaTeams. 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 16th May:
The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building. This week’s speakers will be Annika Ester Maresia (Jesus College, Oxford) ‘‹ᚫ›s to ‹æ›s: Looking at Early Old English Front Vowel Orthography‘ and Bond West (Lincoln College, Oxford), ‘Rhetoric and Style in Old Norse Religious Prose’.
The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Andrew Beever (Corpus), ‘Anglo-Saxon Crescentic Cross Pendants in their Insular and Continental Contexts’. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!
Wednesday 17th May:
The Medieval German Seminar will not meet at the usual time (11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library) but rather concentrate all activities on the Nigel Palmer Memorial Symposium (see below Friday and Saturday); if you want to be added to the medieval German mailing list for future dates, please email Henrike Lähnemann.
The Old High German Reading Group at 11-12 in 41 Wellington Square, 2nd floor (Henrike Lähnemann’s office). This week’s text will be Wessobrunner Gebet. It will be an opportunity to read and analyse some simpler OHG texts and give people the chance to read the oldest form of German if they’ve not been exposed to it before. It will be very informal, and all are welcome. Led by William Thurlwell william.thurlwell@wolfson.ox.ac.uk – contact him for updates
The Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Network will be hosting a lecture at 1pm at Staircase 5 Lecture Room, Worcester College. The lecture will be given by Professor Charlene Eska, on the topic of ‘Stolen Sheep and Wandering Cows: Reclaiming Lost and Stolen Property in Early Medieval Ireland and Britain‘.
The LGBTQ+ Network Seminar will be held at 2-4.30pm in the Rees Davies Room, History Faculty. Today’s speaker will be Dr Conrad Leyser, ‘Purity and Sodimitic Danger in the Eleventh Century West‘.
The Invisible East Group is hosting a seminar at 3pm in the Spalding Room, FAMES, Pusey Lane. This week’s speaker will be Prof. John Tolan, ‘Tracking the Qur’ān in European Culture‘. More information at this link.
The Old French Reading Group takes place at 4-5pm at St Hilda’s College (meet by the lodge) on Wednesdays of Even Weeks in association with Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH). We welcome readers of Old French of all abilities. For further information, please email alice.hawkins@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk or irina.boeru@st-hildas.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 for further details and the Teams link.
The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker will be Mirela Ivanova (University of Sheffield) & Benjamin Anderson (Cornell University), ‘Is Byzantine Studies a Colonialist Discipline? Towards a Critical Historiography’. You can also join the seminar remotely via Teams, click here.
Thursday 18th May:
The Environmental History Group meets at 12-2pm in the Gary Martin Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Celeste van Gent, “The Materiality of Travel in Late Medieval England”. We try to keep discussions informal, and we encourage anyone at all interested in these kinds of approaches to join our meetings, regardless of research specialism or presumed existing knowledge. For those interested in joining the group, you can join our mailing list by getting in touch with us at environmentalhistoryworkinggroup-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk.
The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm at Lincoln College: meet at the lodge. This week’s theme will be Rhetorical strategies: how language is used to generate authority. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
The Invisible East Group is co-hosting a webinar with the Elahé Omidyar Mir-Djalali Institute of Iranian Studies online at 5pm. The speaker will be Dr Jennifer Jenkins, University of Toronto, ‘Presence and Silence: The Iran Archives in the German Foreign Office‘. Registration and more information at this link.
Sarah Woodfrom Warwick is leading this week’s Piers Plowman in Context discussion group, which meets in the Butler Room at Univ (please note the change of college room) from 4:30-5:30. This week’s session will be on Passus X of the B-text, which we’ll be discussing in relation to the short contextual passages available through this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ev9EWlfl-WtiZ7AzZyLDWV-G9c53Nc8e?usp=share_link All welcome! Email Jacob Ridley (jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk) with any questions.
The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15-6.45pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Hanna Vorholt, University of York, Ruled Lines and the Making of Manuscript Images. For further information, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
The Oxford Interfaith Forum will host a talk on Mandaeans: A Minority on the Move and their Manuscripts by Prof. James McGrath, online at 6-7pm. For full details and to register, click here.
Friday 19th May:
Literary, religious and manuscript cultures of the German-speaking lands: a symposium in memory of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022) will take place. Everybody is welcome for the opening session at 1pm in the Taylor Institution Library, Main Hall. Please note that the sessions later in the Horton Room are for registered participants only.
The Colloquium starts actually at the Medieval Coffee Morning which meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it). Join us for a presentation by Bodleian curators of items that have a special connection to the interests of the late Nigel Palmer or where given by him to the library. It will also be a chance to meet many German medievalists visiting for the colloquium – as well, of course, for coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.
Saturday 20th May:
Literary, religious and manuscript cultures of the German-speaking lands: a symposium in memory of Nigel F. Palmer (1946-2022) continues at the Taylorian. There is a linked pop-up exhibition of books related to Nigel Palmer in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall open 5-6pm.
Dies Latinus et Graecus: ‘Quid antiqui de antiquis censuerint’ will take place from 1pm in the Ship Street Centre, Jesus College. The highlight of the event will be a talk by Professor Eleanor Dickey on the Hermeneumata Pseudodositheana (ancient textbooks of the Latin language), incorporating a workshop in which participants can try using these learning materials the way they would have been used in antiquity; the talk and workshop will be in Latin, but questions and comments in English will be welcome. To register interest, please fill out this form. Any questions may be directed to nicholas.romanos@worc.ox.ac.uk or aron.szocs@st-hughs.ox.ac.uk.
Of course, the flowers of wisdom are always enjoyable, but they are best when they are shared. Indeed, Alcuin tells us:
Nec illis tuae decorem sapientiae abscondas, sed inriga florentes bonae voluntatis in eis areolas [Don’t hide the beauty of your wisdom from others, but water the flowers of goodwill in their garden,Ep. 206]
If you would like to share the beauty of your wisdom with others, do come to our Medievalist Coffee Mornings, every Friday at the Weston! You can also ‘water the flowers of goodwill’ there: I’m sure Alcuin would agree that nothing is better for goodwill than a healthy ‘watering’ with free tea and biscuits! Wishing you a week filled with the flowers of wisdom and the flowers of Spring alike!
[A Medievalist takes a break from the flowers of wisdom to smell the flowers of University Parks] Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 10v. Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian
