Prof. Ian Forrest (Glasgow): Telling Tails: Weaponizing Gender in the Late Medieval Church
St Edmund Hall, Old Dining Hall
Thursday 19 February 5–6.30pm, followed by drinks
All welcome!
The fringes of the institutional church in the later Middle Ages were difficult to control. Pardoners, summoners, and priests of dubious status caused headaches for bishops and scandalized the public. The stories people told about them often concerned deceptive or ambiguous gender presentation. Touching upon famous fictions like Chaucer’s Pardoner and Summoner, and Pope Joan, the lecture will also examine the political culture of violent direct action against humans and their animals which sought to regulate gender and status at the edges of the medieval clerical estate.
After the talk and the drinks, there will be the opportunity to stay for a buffet dinner a in St Edmund Hall. Please contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to take part in this. At 9:30pm, there will be the opportunity to take part in the Compline in the crypt of St-Peter-in-the-East, the library church of St Edmund Hall (more details on that in the current Medieval Studies booklet.).
This is linked with a workshop on Friday 20 February, 10am for the graduate students of the MSt. in Medieval Studies: ‘Fragments and photographs: what are we doing when we try to get close to medieval people?’ which will start using examples from medieval records and Ian Forrest’s account of publishing with the photographer Martin Stott.
Header image: Pope Joan / John VII in the Nuremberg Chronicle (Hartmann Schedel 1494)