Welcome to week 2! Please find below all of the medieval events across Oxford in the coming week.
The wonderful team behind the medieval mystery plays that took place at the beginning of this term have put together a full report of the event, which includes a number of amazing photos. A video of last week’s performance of The Netherhold Martyr is now available here.
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10:30 pm in the Weston Library.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Amanda Power (St Catherine’s College Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Salvation, alienation and sacrifice zones from medieval to modern thought’.
Tuesday
Medieval English Research Seminar – 12.15 in the English Faculty. Raphaela Rohrhofer (University of Oxford) will be speaking on ‘Nothing Matters: The Contemplative Poetics of Nought in Julian of Norwich and Beyond’.
The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
Centre for Early Medieval Britian and Ireland Seminar ‘Sacrilizing the Everyday’ – 4pm in the Rees Davies (History Faculty).
Medieval Church and Culture – tea and biscuits from 5pm in the Wellbeloved Room, with talks from 5.15. Shaw Worth (Magdalen) will be speaking on ‘‘Bien est avoiré sur vous le langage’: practising allegory between text and image in three manuscripts of Alain Chartier’s Livre d’Espérance, 1450–1470’. Sophie Boehler (St Hugh’s) will be speaking on ‘Seeress to Abbess: women’s evolving dreams, visions and prophecies during the Icelandic conversion period’.
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar – NB In second week, the seminar will not take place. Instead there will be a workshop on Christiane Mariane von Ziegler, the first female German Poet Laureate, in St Edmund Hall, starting at 10am. If you are interested to participate, please contact Henrike Lähnemann.
The ‘science of the stars’ in context: an introduction to medieval astronomical and astrological manuscripts and texts – 2pm in the Horton Room (Weston Library). Session 2: The daily rotation of the celestial sphere (primum mobile) [1/2].
Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies Seminar – 5pm in the Oxford Centre of Islamic Studies. Professor Christophe Jaffrelot (Kings College London) will be speaking on ‘Beyond Castes and Regions: The Socio-Economic Decline of Muslims in Contemporary India’.
Merton College History of the Book Group Lecture – 5pm, Mure Room (Merton College). Professor Orietta Da Rold (Professor of Medieval Literature and Manuscript Studies, University of Cambridge) will be speaking on “The many crafts of paper”. Attendees will have the opportunity to view medieval works on paper from the Merton Library and Archives. The talk will be followed by refreshments. All are welcome, and we would appreciate an RSVP to julia.walworth@merton.ox.ac.uk
Thursday
Middle English Reading Group (MERG) – 2pm in the Beckington Room (Lincoln College). Join us to read the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde in a weekly reading group. We will be reading from the end of Book IV. For more information or to be added to the mailing list, please email rebecca.menmuir@lincoln.ox.ac.uk.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15 in the KRC Lecture Room. Richard Piran McClary (University of York) will be speaking on ‘Lajvardina: A Re-evaluation of Distinctive Ilkhanid and Golden Horde Overglaze Painted Wares’.
Friday
Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
Upcoming
Additional spaces are available on the ‘Big Data’ and Medieval Manuscripts workshop – please sign up here.
Registration is open for the Masterclass by Patrick Boucheron – Pourquoi des médiévistes ? Penser le contemporain depuis le Moyen Âge – 29 May, 2:30pm, Maison Française d’Oxford.
Registration is open for Patrick Boucheron’s lecture entitled ‘The Birth of the Black Death: New Approaches in World History’ – 29 May, 5:00pm, Pembroke College.
The Digital Medieval Studies Institute is hosting a set of workshops on digital scholarly methods specifically tailored for medievalists as part of the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds. More information can be found here.
Opportunities
CfP for ‘Staging Silence from Antiquity to the Renaissance’ – more information here.
CfP for ‘Music and Reformation: A Symposium at Lambeth Palace Library, 16 September 2025’
A regular pub trip is being organised on a Friday at 6pm at the Chequers, from 0th week to 8th week, for all medievalists at Oxford. Email maura.mckeon@bfriars.ox.ac.uk
The fourth iteration of the Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays took place on 26 April at St Edmund Hall. And it was a truly marvellous day! A total of 13 plays were put on by about 150 participants – actors, directors, singers, costume designers, musicians, and many more. Throughout the day, about 350 audience members popped in and out of Teddy Hall, some staying for shorter periods, others for several hours or the whole day. Audience members and participants included a wonderful range: undergraduate and graduate students and academics from within and without Oxford, a full children’s choir, tourists, and members of the public found their way to Teddy Hall and partook in the medieval shenanigans.
And what shenanigans they were! This year, we are particularly proud of the incredible diversity of languages, plays, and different approaches on display. But see for yourself … (All photo credits are at the bottom of the post)
The day started – how could it be otherwise – with a trumpet blast from Henrike Lähnemann herself (Picture 1).
Once again, we were expertly guided through the day by Jim Harris, the Master of Ceremonies. Armed with Bruce Mitchell’s doctoral gown and the ceremonial scroll (consisting of the baking roll to the chaplain of St Edmund Hall, half a coat hanger and numerous layers of paper and sellotape), he introduced each play with a modern English prologue (Picture 2).
We began at the beginning, with the creation of the world and The Fall of the Angels,performed mostly in Middle English, but with modern English elements, and in a modern office setting.
Picture 3: The Holy Trinity is being fawned over by the two good angels … but trouble awaits: the two bad angels are getting arrogant, before their inevitable ejection from Heaven.
From the angels, we moved swiftly on to humans: next was the German Adam and Eve play by Hans Sachs, featuring a particularly good use of the well (the two humps underneath the spare green coat are Adam and Eve, about to be created).
Picture 4: All could be well in Eden, if it wasn’t for Lucifer, Belial, Satan, and the Serpent conspiring.
Picture 5: Adam and Eve might have fallen into desperation, but the cast have good reason to be proud of themselves, having made it to the front page of both the Oxford Mail and Oxford Times.
Skipping a few biblical ages, we next saw the Flood, presented in the Middle English Chester version.
Picture 6: The flood has come! Luckily, Noah and his family are safe on the ark, together with the animals – expertly made and portrayed by the children of St Giles’ and St Margaret’s churches.
The Old Testament concluded with the Middle English York version of Abraham and Isaac.
Will he really do it? Abraham is getting ready to sacrifice his oldest son, Isaac (Picture 7) … but fear not! The angel of the lord approaches and shows him a sheep to sacrifice instead – the little guy, hand-crocheted by one of the cast members, rapidly became the true star of the day (Picture 8).
After a refreshing tea break, we moved from the Front Quad into the Churchyard, and from the Old to the New Testament. The fifth play of the day was the Annunciation, or rather Die Eerste Bliscap van Maria (‘The First Joy of Mary’). It was performed in Middle Dutch: a first (but hopefully not last) for the Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays!
Picture 9: The angel Gabriel announces the happy news to the reading Mary.
True to the Gospels, the Annunciation was followed by the Nativity. It was a particular pleasure to welcome back Les Perles Innocentes, who travelled all the way from Fribourg to wow us with their expert performance of the Comédie de la Nativité, written by none other than Marguerite de Navarre.
Picture 10: Mary and Joseph are desperately looking for a place for Mary to give birth. – Picture 11: If the stable looked as gorgeous as the library of Teddy Hall, it surely wasn’t the worst place to be born in!
Our next play skipped ahead, showing us the grown-up Christ at the Wedding at Cana. This play was a world premiere, reconstructed from only 1.5 surviving lines in the York cycle!
Picture 12: Panic at Cana – the wine has run out at the wedding! What to do?
Picture 13: Christ is there to save the day and transforms the water into wine. The servants are amazed!
From Cana, we moved straight to Golgotha and a Middle English performance of the Crucifixion. The York Crucifixion, strangely, is a comedy, and the four soldiers crucifying Christ were accordingly equipped with ‘Cross flatpack instructions’ and giant inflatable hammers. Certainly not inflatable, however, was the cross, which was purpose-built just for this production and turned into a much-coveted prop for numerous plays.
Picture 14: The poor, overworked soldiers struggle to lift up the heavy cross.
Once the soldiers had vacated the grassy mound in Teddy Hall’s Churchyard, the mourners came: the three Marys (the Virgin, Mary Magdalen, and Mary, Mother of John) and John arrived for the Lamentation, represented by the Bordesholmer Marienklage and beautifully sung in a mixture of Latin and Low German.
Picture 15: Owe, owe nu ys he dot…
Moving directly from the cross to the crypt, we were told about the Harrowing of Hell by the Choir of St Edmund Hall through sung Latin sequences.
Hell having been harrowed, it was time for another tea break, after which we were welcomed back by the angelic hosts of the Choir (Picture 16). And then it was time for some good news: the Resurrection! Performed in the Middle English of the York version, this play truly had it all: sleeping soldiers, lamenting Marys, bickering priests, and a highly enthusiastic angel.
Picture 17: An outraged Pilate commands the soldiers to find out the truth about the rumours concerning Christ’s resurrection. At least Caiaphas and Annas, the extremely well-dressed high priests, are there to back him up. Picture 18: Mary lamenting at the tomb – thankfully, she, too, receives moral support from the angel.
Leaving the Gospels behind, we moved on to the only non-biblical story of the day: The Martyrdom of the Three Holy Virgins by Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, performed mostly in (absolutely flawless!) Latin, with a few bits in modern English.
Picture 19: Governor Dulcitius has been ridiculed by his prisoners, the holy virgins Agape, Chionia, and Irena … his embarrassment will not go unpunished.
Picture 20: The two older sisters are burned, while the youngest is forced to watch. But never fear: all three will be rewarded in Heaven for their martyrdom.
Last, but by no means least, it was time for … the Last Judgement! Performed in a modern English adaptation of different Middle English versions, this wonderfully cheerful and funny play was the perfect end for a fantastic day.
Picture 21: Hey guys, it’s Gabe! The archangels Gabriel and Michael open Judgement day, while the soon-to-be-raised souls rest in the ditch between library wall and lawn.
Picture 22: Who will get more souls? Jesus and the angels, or Lucifer and the demons?
And … that was it! Thirteen plays, five languages, two tea breaks, and five hours later, we had travelled all the way from the Creation to Judgement Day, from Heaven to Hell, from Bethlehem to Golgotha, and from Front Quad to the far side of the library.
Our heartfelt thanks goes to everyone who made this day possible: on and off stage, casts, crews, organisers, helpers, and so many more. We are particularly grateful to Jim Harris, our Master of Ceremonies; David Maskell, who wrote the modern English prologues; and Tristan Alphey and the other helpers for their support during the day. This year’s Medieval Mystery Plays are by far the best-documented yet: Ben Arthur, James May, Archie Dimmock, and Tea Smart filmed the entire day; their recordings will be released on the St Edmund Hall Mystery Cycle page at a film launch party at the end of Trinity Term. Ashley Castelino took many fantastic pictures, and Robert Crighton and Liza Graham recorded impressions from audiences and participants for their podcast Beyond Shakespeare.
Of course, what a play really needs is its audience. We were delighted to see so many of you there, and overwhelmed by the amount of positive feedback we received. Here are just some of the comments we collected in our visitor book – many audience members had their favourite play from the host of performances:
“Brilliant! Loved the Nativity especially!”
“Great job! Love the Wedding feast!”
“Terrific! Thank you very much. I particularly enjoyed Adam and Eve, and Satan with his acolytes in [the Last Judgement]!”
“Really enjoyed the camp Satan!”
“The singing [in the Nativity, Lamentation, and Harrowing of Hell] was superb. Altogether a delightful event!”
The best audience members are naturally those who were themselves surprised by how much they enjoyed themselves: one person wrote that they had a “very unexpectedly enjoyable day supporting a friend in one play, but then enjoy[ed] all the others!” Many also appreciated the use of medieval languages in keeping these plays “alive” through modern performance and praised the “pace, diversity, and inventiveness” of the troupes, the beautiful medieval setting of St Edmund Hall, and the overall “vibrant and entertaining” environment of the Cycle. One particularly nice comment described our day of performances as “full of whimsy” – made even more whimsical by the little stars they drew around their comment. Thank you very much to each and everyone of you!
Are you sad you missed out? Can you not wait to get back into medieval drama? Watch this space! The Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays will be back …
Picture Credits
Pictures 2 and 8: Ashley Castelino
Picture 6: Rahel Micklich
Picture 17: Antonia Anstatt
Header and Pictures 1, 3, 4-6, 9-16, 18-22: Stills from the video recordings made by Ben Arthur, James May, Archie Dimmock, and Tea Smart.
Are you curious about what manuscripts can tell us beyond their texts? Join Digital Scholarship @ Oxford and the Bodleian Libraries for a hands-on workshop using data from manuscript catalogues to explore trends and patterns in medieval manuscript production.
You’ll learn:
What kinds of data can be recorded about manuscripts
How to interpret and analyse manuscript catalogue entries
Ways to identify trends and patterns using simple tools like Excel
You’ll have the opportunity to work directly with manuscripts from the Bodleian’s collections, learning new skills that you can apply in your future studies and research. You’ll also get to contribute to the ongoing development of the manuscript catalogues, with your contributions credited on the Bodleian website.
No technical experience is required, just a basic familiarity with Excel.
Spaces are limited and will be filled on a first-come, first-served basis.
Workshop dates:
Thursday of 3rd week (15th May), 1–5pm – undergraduates
Thursday of 4th week (22nd May), 1–5pm – undergraduates
Thursday of 7th week (12th June), 1–5pm – postgraduates
Please still fill in the form if you are unavailable on these dates, as we may be able to make additional workshops available if there is demand.
Signup deadline: Midday, Friday of 2nd Week (9th May)
When? 26 April 2025, from 12 noon. Where? St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, OX1 4AR
Come One, Come All! Free entry, no booking required.
On Saturday, 26 April 2025, a cycle of medieval mystery plays will be performed by various troupes around St Edmund Hall’s grounds. Medieval mystery plays were performed throughout the Middle Ages by and for everyday townspeople, and we’re excited to put on quite a day of shows for you!
Worried that you won’t understand the performances done in medieval languages? Never fear! Each play will be accompanied by a modern English prologue, which will help to summarise the play.
12 noon: OldTestamentPlays (Front Quad):
The Fall of the Angels (Angels of Oxford) – Middle English
Adam and Eve (Oxford German Medievalists) – Hans Sachs, German
The Flood (The Travelling Beavers) – Middle English
Abraham and Isaac (Shear and Trembling) – Middle English
1.30pm: New Testament Plays (Churchyard):
The Annunciation (Low Countries Ensemble) – Middle Dutch
The Nativity (Les Perles Innocentes) – Marguerite de Navarre, French
The Wedding at Cana (Pusey House) – Modern English, with Middle English archaisms
The Crucifixion (The Wicked Weights) – Middle English
The Lamentation (St Edmund Consort) – Bordesholmer Marienklage, Low German and Latin
The Harrowing of Hell (The Choir of St Edmund Hall) – Latin Sequence
3.30pm: New Testament Plays Continued:
The Resurrection (St Stephen’s House) – Middle English
The Martyrdom of the Three Holy Virgins (Clamor Validus) – Hrosvitha of Gandersheim, Latin and modern English
The Last Judgement (MSt English, 650–1550) – Modern English
6.15pm: Evensong (Chapel)
No tickets or booking is required, and it is free to attend. You are welcome to drop in and out throughout the afternoon. All performances will take place outside, so please dress comfortably for the weather conditions. There will be two small tea breaks, at around 1.15pm and 3.15pm.
The Wicked Weights admire their purpose-built cross – all ready for the Crucifixion! Picture: Rebecca Menmuir
If you have any questions about the cycle or the performances, email the co-heads of performance: Sarah Ware (sarah.ware@merton.ox.ac.uk) and Antonia Anstatt (antonia.anstatt@merton.ox.ac.uk). And look out for updates to our website, where detailed information about the individual plays will be published.
For a trailer of the type of Medieval Mystery play which awaits you, have a look at the extract from the Towneley Last Judgement play performed for a HistoryHit programme about the Apocalypse
When? 28 March, 18:30–20:15 Where? Research Centre, Thatched Barn, Christ Church Meadow
The anonymous English Enterlude of Godly Queene Hester (c. 1529) is a fascinating play, unperformed since the 16th century. Ostensibly in praise of Esther, heroine of Jewish history, the play is actually a political satire about the demise of Cardinal Wolsey. The fall of Wolsey, who had been the monarch’s right-hand man, was a key moment in the reign of Henry VIII. Assuerus, King of Persia, stands for Henry, while Aman, the model of the evil counsellor, for Wolsey. Henry’s wife, Katherine of Aragon, is idealised in the figure of Hester, who fills a traditional role for virtuous royal women by interceding with her husband, but also boldly argues that queens should exhibit the same virtues as kings and can perfectly well govern kingdoms when their husbands are away fighting wars! She thus anticipates the strong secular heroines of Shakespearean comedy.
Originally, the play would have been performed by a boys’ company so it is appropriate that it will be staged by Edward’s Boys. This company, from King Edward VI School, Stratford-upon-Avon, has, over the last two decades, revolutionised our understanding of the early modern repertoire. Alongside the English Enterlude, they will also present a short purimshpil, a Jewish folk play. The purim plays (still a living tradition in Yiddish) tell the story of Esther in a very different mode, celebrating the rescue of the Jewish people by their heroine in farcical style. The production is part of the WOMARD project, which explores connections between Jewish, Christian and Islamic Theatre and is sponsored by the SNSF.
Invitation to a tea party with LIVING STONESonSATURDAY 15 MARCH 3.00-4.30in the Church Hall, Church Way, Iffley OX4 4EG. Come along and find out about LIVING STONES. Meet the Living Stones volunteers. Join in: Living Stones is looking for volunteers of any age, background or beliefs
Living Stones is the heritage and educational arm of St Mary’s, the church at the heart of Iffley village, Rose Hill and Donnington. Volunteers welcome visitors to the church. They also run activities, events and talks on its history and architecture. They will start welcoming visitors to the church on Sunday afternoons on Palm Sunday, 13 April. They also have three events planned:
SATURDAY 10 MAY 10.00-4.30 – Drawing Iffley Church, day-school with artist Micah Hayns.
SATURDAY 17 MAY 11.00-7.15 – Day of chant in celebration of St Dunstan, patron saint of bellringers and music. The day ends with a special service in the church sung to music composed by St Dunstan and first written down in the 12th century.
SUNDAY 7 SEPTEMBER – Patronal Festival for St Mary the Virgin, picnic and family fun.
The Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures’ Hilary Term ‘Work-in-Progress’ colloquium – Tuesday 18th February (5.15-6.45pm, the Memorial Room at Queen’s)
The CMTC is delighted to be hosting the following speakers:
Dr Riccardo Montalto (Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II): From manuscripts to history: The reconstruction of the Greek manuscript library of Achilles Statius (1524-1581)
Achilles Statius was a Portuguese humanist active in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century. Committed to editorial and propaganda activities and, in particular, in the edition of the texts of the Fathers of the Greek Church, Statius set up one of the largest private libraries in Renaissance Rome, peculiar for its size and intellectual value. Starting from the material data detectable from the manuscripts, compared with the data available from different sources – primarily historical, archival and library science – the research aims to reconstruct a part of Achilles Statius’s library and to identify some methods and working practices of the late Renaissance humanists.
Holly Dempster-Edwards (University of Liverpool): Emotions, Gender and Crusading in Fifteenth-Century Burgundian Prose Epics and Chronicles
This paper will give an overview of my PhD thesis, which examines the social function of emotions at the fifteenth-century court of Duke Philip the Good of Burgundy (r. 1419-1467). My methodology is based on that of the historian Barbara Rosenwein, whose concept of ‘emotional communities’ has been highly influential within Medieval Studies. My study is based on emotion words in three Burgundian mises en prose Les Croniques et Conquestes de Charlemaine by David Aubert, La Belle Hélène de Constantinople by Jehan Wauquelin, and Mabrien (attrib. Aubert). I have built on Rosenwein’s framework by employing quantitative analysis of the gendered and ‘racial-religious’ distribution of emotions within each text, alongside qualitative textual analysis and examination of text-image relations. This paper demonstrates how emotions have a social function within this specific emotional community of Burgundian knights and would-be crusaders in response to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453, and how these texts function as literary propaganda which presents itself as didactic; in so doing they attempt to achieve their more subtle aim of maintaining emotion norms within the context of Burgundian chivalric masculinity, hoping to persuade Philip’s courtiers to go on crusade with him in response to the defeat of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks.
1. A. D’Angelo (Rome ‘Sapienza’), ‘Catullan marginalia in the 16th century: the books of Piero Vettori’.
The Bayerische Staatsbibliothek in Munich preserves three printed editions of Catullus’ Liber with marginal notes by Piero Vettori (1499-1585). This important scholar edited dozens of Classical authors, but never published anything on Catullus: thus, these books are the main extant evidence of his work on this poet. The notes contain variant readings, original conjectures and loci similes, and they offer new insights on Vettori’s philological method and his library. Through these marginalia, I will try to point out Vettori’s main interests in Catullus’ poetry and the sources he used for his Catullan studies.
2. Marlene Schilling (Oxford), ‘A special form of devotion – personifications of time in late medieval prayer books from Northern Germany’.
Addressing liturgical holidays, for example welcoming Mr Easterday, is a particular characteristic of late medieval vernacular prayer-books from North German female convents. They highlight a distinct form of poetics, because describing and interacting with specific points in time – personifying them – allows an intercommunication with the divine that conveys a certain form of agency to the speaker. In this paper, we explore the particular type of prayer-books these personifications are found in, talk about their material indicators within the text, and think about the special role of the prayer-books from the Cistercian convent Medingen within this distinct manuscript landscape.
The sun is out (for how long remains unclear), and third week is upon us. Please find below the events and opportunities for this week: the full booklet, as always, can be found here. Let me draw your particular attention to Brepols’ upcoming webinar introducing their International Medieval Bibliography (12th Feb at 4pm, see below). There is still time to sign up for the Medieval Mystery Plays on 26 April – just contact Antonia Anstatt and Sarah Ware who are finalising the list of plays this week!
Events
Monday
French Palaeography Manuscript Reading Group – 10.30am in the Weston Library. Those interested should email Laure Miolo.
Medieval History Seminar – 5pm at All Souls College. Alice Rio (KCL) will be speaking on ‘Twelve Migrant Women and the History of Early Medieval Europe’
Tuesday
Old Norse Seminar – 12.15 in the English Faculty’s History of the Book room. Ela Sefcikova (Berlin) will be speaking on ‘læ, lygð and slǿgð: Loki in Old Norse Literature’. The seminar will be followed by a sandwich lunch in the Graduate Common.
The Latin Palaeography Reading Group meets 2-3.30pm. Please email Laure Miolo for more information.
Medieval Church and Culture – 5pm in the Horton Room, Weston Library (NB. change of location! orginal manuscripts will be shown!) Lesley Smith (HMC) will be speaking on ‘The Repair Shop: How We Took Apart a Manuscript of Henry VIII and How We Put it Back Together’.
Medieval French Research Seminar – 5pm in the Maison française d’Oxford. Chimene Bateman, University of Oxford will be speaking on ‘Flight, Founding and Foreignness in the Roman d’Eneas’,
Wednesday
Medieval German Graduate Seminar on ‘Geistliche Spiele’ on the ‘Eisenacher Zehn-Jungfrauenspiel’ with Rebecca Schleuß – 11.15am in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. Contact Henrike Lähnemann if you would like to be added to the teams group
History and Materiality of the Book Seminar – 2pm in the Weston Library, Horton room. Julia Bearman and Robert Minte will be speaking on ‘Inks and Pigments’.
Medieval Latin Document Reading Group – 4pm, online, please contact Michael Stansfield.
Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar – 5pm in the Ioannou Centre. Dan Gallaher (Oxford), ‘Beyond a Boundary: Armenia and Byzantium in the Ninth Century’
Medieval English Research Seminar – 5.15pm, Lecture Theatre 2, St. Cross Building. Marilina Cesario (Queen’s University, Belfast) will be speaking on ‘The windsele in Christ and Satan: Demonic Winds in Medieval Literature’.
Thursday
Medieval Hebrew Reading Group – 10am in the Clarendon Institute.
Middle English Reading Group – 4pm, Beckington Room, Lincoln College. The text this term will be the ‘double sorwe’ of Troilus and Criseyde.
Germanic Reading Group ‒ 4pm on Teams. Speaking names in Werner’s ‘Helmbrecht’ and Hugo von Trimberg’s ‘Der Renner’ with Bradley G. Weiss (Texas). Please contact Howard Jones to request the handout and to be added to the list.
Ford Lecture – 5pm in the Examination Schools. Jocelyn Wogan-Browne will be giving the third of her lectures, titled ‘Expansions: ‘Everyone knows that French is better understood and more widely used than Latin’: Matthew Paris (in French, 1253×59).
Seminars in Medieval and Renaissance Music – 5pm on Zoom. James Tomlinson (University of Oslo) will be speaking on ‘A Reassessment of Cambridge, Gonville and Caius College, MS 512/543 and its Implications for the Production and Transmission of Polyphony in Late Medieval England’.
The Khalili Research Centre For the Art and Material Culture of the Middle East: Research Seminar – 5.15pm in the in the Ioannou Centre/Faculty of Classics’ Lecture Theatre. Tuğrul Acar (Harvard University) will be speaking on ‘Enacting the Divine Love and Remembering the Dervish-Sultan Murad II: the Inscriptions of the Muradiye Mevlevi Lodge in Edirne (1435–36)’.
Friday
Medievalists Coffee Morning – 10.30am at the Weston Library. All welcome, coffee and insight into special collections provided. This week, Alyssa Steiner (BL) will speak on the extensive Ship of Fools collection of Francis Douce.
Exploring Medieval Oxford through Lincoln & Magdalen Archives – 2pm in the EPA Centre (Museum Road) Seminar room 1. Please contact Laure Miolo for more information.
Medieval Manuscripts Support Group – 2pm in the Horton Room. Come along or contact Matthew Holford in beforehand if you have a manuscript to discuss!
Oxford Medieval Manuscripts Group – 3pm. This week, the group will be visiting the The Queen’s College Library.
Anglo-Norman Reading Group – 5pm in the Farmington Institute in Harris Manchester College and online. For more information on the texts, email Jane Bliss.
Upcoming
Brepols are running a short online webinar introducing their International Medieval Bibliography, on the 12th Feb at 4pm. This is a great chance to get to grips with this useful resource, and is especially recommended for MSt/ MPhil students.
“The Jewish Recipes in a 13th C Andalusian Cookbook” by Hélène Jawhara Piñer will be on Zoom at 5 pm Wednesday 19 February. Event details and the link to register is here.
The Ashmolean is looking for a University Engagement Lead. This is a parttime fixed term role to research and possibly pilot opportunities for University Engagement. This is a good role for someone that knows the students in Oxford and is looking at a parttime role – and, obviously, loves museum collections! Full job description
The CfP for the ‘Sorrowful Virgin’ is now closed; contact Anna Wilmore if you missed the deadline or simply would like to take place in the workshop at St Hughs, 24 March 2025
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne on Cultural Politics and Social History, c. 1100-c. 1500
Thursdays at 5pm, Weeks 1-6 Hilary, Examination Schools
French played a major, though not the only role, in the pervasive multilingualism of British history and culture. As Britain’s only medieval ‘global’ vernacular, it was also important to a wide range of people for their participation in external theatres of empire, trade, culture, conflict, and crusade. Displacing the long shadow of nineteenth-century nationalizing conceptions of language and their entrenchment in modern university disciplinary divisions, emerging histories of French in England and increasingly of French in Ireland, Wales, and Scotland offer new ways of understanding language and identity. These lectures trace francophone medieval Britain in a chronological sequence across its four main centuries, interpolating two thematic lectures on areas especially needing integration into our histories, medieval women and French in Britain, and French Bible translation in medieval England.
About the Lecture Series: The Ford Lectures in British History were founded by a bequest from James Ford, and inaugurated by S.R.Gardiner in 1896-7. Since then, an annual series has been delivered over six weeks in Hilary term. They have long been established as the most prestigious series in Oxford and an important annual event in the University’s calendar.
Jocelyn Wogan-Browne in her allotment on Osney Island in Oxford
About the speaker: Professor Jocelyn Wogan-Browne is Professor emerita of both the University of York, where she held the Chair of Medieval Literature from 2005 to 2010, and Fordham University in New York, where she was the Thomas F.X. and Theresa Mullarkey Chair in Literature from 2010 to 2019.
Her wide-ranging scholarship has most recently focused on the reconceptualization of English medieval literary culture as a multilingual community. She has created a fundamentally new understanding of the importance attached to knowing, speaking, reading and/or writing French in later medieval England: work on the culture of late medieval England is now unthinkable without taking her insights into account. The approach was spearheaded in her Vernacular Literary Theory from the French of Medieval England: Texts and Translation (with Thelma Fenster and Delbert Russell) (Cambridge, D. S. Brewer, 2016), which built on the earlier The Idea of the Vernacular: Middle English Literary Theory c. 1280-1520, with Nicholas Watson, Andrew Taylor, and Ruth Evans. A book of essays, The French of Medieval England: Essays in Honour of Jocelyn Wogan-Browne(2017), speaks to the extensive influence of her work and the esteem in which she is held by the scholarly community.
Jocelyn came to Oxford from Australia to study for the BPhil in Medieval Language and Literature at St Hilda’s College under the supervision of Elspeth Kennedy, one of Oxford’s most inspirational teachers. Her fellow countryman, Bruce Mitchell, another medievalist, became her mentor, and she became established in Oxford at the events he hosted for students from the southern hemisphere. Jocelyn started a DPhil in Old Norse and Old French, but accepted a lectureship in Early Middle English and Anglo-Norman at Liverpool, later receiving a doctorate on the strength of her numerous publications. Liverpool was followed by positions at York and Fordham, where her dedication to students and teaching won her a basket of teaching awards, in addition to her distinguished research profile.
Now living in Oxford and a member of St Edmund Hall, Jocelyn Wogan-Browne remains a dynamo of multi-disciplinary research. Her Ford Lectures will undoubtedly turn our concept of ‘English History’ on its head.
On Friday 8th and Saturday 9th November, the online workshop Epiros: The Other Western Rome was held, platforming twenty-one papers from sixteen universities. As the second phase of a new international project, the workshop investigated the Byzantine successor-state of Epiros (1204–1444). Formed from the Fourth Crusade, this Balkan state existed as an alternative narrative and third Byzantine-Roman context, encompassing a vast variety of peoples of the former empire.
Originally envisioned as a one-day workshop, the programme was expanded to two days to accommodate so many excellent submissions. As a result, we were able to offer panels on, The ‘Post-Komnenian System’, ‘Epiros and Bulgaria’, ‘Epiros and its other Neighbours’, ‘Network Analysis,’ ‘Hybrid Material Culture,’ and more. The workshop’s convenors are hugely grateful for the participation of speakers and attendees, as well as the support of both The Oxford Centre Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Oxford Centre for Byzantine Research (OCBR).
An edited volume of papers is planned, and a selection of images below.
