Tag: events

Marriages, Unmarriages, and Subjectivities: A Roundtable Discussion with Sara McDougall and Hannah Skoda

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09/05/2022

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The Oxford Medieval Society is pleased to announce our first event of Trinity Term 2022, a Roundtable Discussion with Professors Sara McDougall and Hannah Skoda. 

We invite all interested parties to attend the event on Thursday 26th May at 13:00-14.30, in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College. Participants will be able to ask questions and engage in discussion with Professor McDougall and Professor Skoda on a shared area of their research, Marriages, Unmarriages, and Subjectivities. 

Professor Sara McDougall is Associate Professor of History at John Jay College of Criminal Justice (City University of New York) and coordinator of the Medieval Studies Certificate Program at the CUNY Graduate Center. Specialising in legal history, her research focuses primarily on women and crime in medieval France and explores topics such as gender, marriage, religion and illegitimacy. Her publications include Royal Bastards: The Birth of Illegitimacy, 800-1230 (Oxford University Press, 2017) and Bigamy and Christian Identity in Late Medieval Champagne (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012). Professor McDougall is in Oxford this term as an Astor Visiting Lecturer.  

Professor Hannah Skoda is Fellow and Tutor in Medieval History at St. John’s College, Oxford, and specialises in the cultural and social history of the later Middle Ages. She has particular interests in education, conflict, ownership, slavery and constructions of deviance in late medieval Europe. Her monograph Medieval Violence: Physical Brutality in Northern France, 1270-1330 (Oxford University Press, 2013) won the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship’s 2014 Best First Book Prize, in which year she was also awarded a Philip Leverhulme Prize to explore nostalgia in the fourteenth century. 

Please do not hesitate to get in touch with any questions at oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com. 

We look forward to seeing you there!

Public Lecture – Christine de Pizan

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28/04/2022

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The Oxford Medieval Society is pleased to announce a public lecture by Dr Charlotte Cooper-Davis on Thursday 9th June 2022.

Dr Cooper-Davis will speak on the topic of “Christine de Pizan: Guilty Feminist?”.

The lecture will take place in the New Seminar Room in St. John’s College, 13:00-14.30.

About the speaker: Dr Charlotte Cooper-Davis is an Honorary Research Fellow of the Faculty of Medieval and Modern Languages at the University of Oxford, and the author of Christine de Pizan: Life, Works, Legacy (Reaktion Press, 2021). Her DPhil thesis explored text-image relations in de Pizan’s works, and a resulting monograph is currently under contract with ARC Humanities Press.

Please direct any queries to oxfordmedievalsociety@gmail.com.

Image credit: British Library MS Harley 4431, f.259v (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

Catch-up: Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays 2022

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27/04/2022

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Following a two-year pandemic break, it was a joyous occasion for all to be able to attend in-person the second annual performance of the Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays hosted by St Edmund Hall on 23 April last week. The production was led by Professor Henrike Lähnemann, St Edmund Hall Fellow and Professor of Medieval German Literature and Linguistics, and Professor Lesley Smith, Fellow and Tutor in Politics and Senior Tutor at Harris Manchester College, and expertly managed by Dr Eleanor Baker, Project Support Officer for the Post-GCSE Inspire Programme at St John’s College and medieval literature specialist. The full cycle was live-streamed by Natascha Domeisen and is available for watching on the St Edmund Hall Youtube Channel and also linked in to the website dedicated to the Oxford Medieval Mystery Plays.

We’ll be your guide to every play: Mystery Cycle organisers (left) and Jim Harris as Master of Ceremonies (right)

Featuring 11 plays in 6 languages (Middle and Modern English, Spanish, French, German and Latin), the ‘spectaculum’ opened with a performance of period music by the Anonymous Minstrels before The Revd Dr Zachary Guiliano rang the Chapel bell to mark the opening of the Mystery Cycle. We were introduced to each play through prologues prepared by the linking verses creator, Prof David Maskell, and wonderfully performed by our Master of Ceremonies, Dr Jim Harris, who guided attendees across college to each play location. These prologues were essential not only to the day’s enjoyment, but also to making the medieval materials accessible to a modern audience providing plot summaries and descriptions of what we were about to see through rhyming verse!

A marvellous boat will shortly appear: Scenes from the Killing of Abel (Left) and Noah’s Ark (right)

The Mystery Plays presented Biblical stories from Creation to the Resurrection, and were brought to life by an incredible cast of actors, academics and students with links to Oxford Medieval Studies. The Faculty of English kicked things off in the Old Dining Hall with the stories of Creation and the Fall, accompanied by a digital video featuring manuscript illustrations by Prof. Dan Wakelin. We were then led into the front quad to witness the Holloway Mystery Players perform the killing of Abel, followed by the story of Noah’s Ark by Medieval Studies students, which receives an honorary mention here for the best props of the event, including fabric waves and an inflatable parrot standing in for the dove (link to the recording). The morning concluded with the sung Magnificat in a play of the Visitation by Jasmine and the Kilnsians.

You’ll see a dog but it’s a sheep: Timmy waits for his cue (left) and James Howarth as King Herod (right)

Following a short tea break, the play cycle continued in the atmospheric churchyard of St Peter-in-the-East (now College Library). The Pastoral Players provided comic relief as grumpy shepherds and a thief in the Shepherd’s Play, with the Principal’s dog Timmy stealing the show as a reluctant ‘sheep’ and kindly supported by Prof Kathy Willis and her daughter Alice. The entertainment continued with the story of the Wise Men performed by the Wise Women in Spanish, and the Massacre of the Innocents with College Librarian James Howarth playing Herod the Great alongside the 5th Week Blues.

Now to a new location for John the Baptist’s decollation: A scene of the saint’s beheading (left) and the Lazari players (right)

The best special effects of the cycle featured in the playgroup Les Soeurs de Sainte-Hilde, with their version in French of St John the Baptist’s arrest and grisly beheading (read a reflection on the process of directing a play in French by Prof. David Wiles, the director of the play). This was followed by the English MSt students performing the story of Lazarus, with 6 players of Lazarus rising from the churchyard to great effect (here the recording). Undergraduate students then performed a Middle English depiction of the Crucifixion from the York Mystery Cycle dating from the 14th century. The Mystery Plays concluded with a delightful performance in Middle High German, Latin and English by the Mercantile Minstrels, with mischievous merchants, a fight scene, and a chorus of angels merrily announcing the miracle of Christ’s Resurrection (here the recording).

Christ ist erstanden: The Crucifixion (left) and the announcement of the Resurrection (right)

This year’s Mystery Play Cycle was incredibly fun and a fantastic opportunity to engage with medieval culture through the wide-ranging skills of staff and students of Oxford Medieval Studies. The day ended with an exhibition display of works relating to the Easter story in the Old Library. A filming crew worked hard throughout the day to provide a livestream of events for online viewers, that can now watched back on St Edmund’s Hall YouTube Channel (four streams: 1: Creation to Noah, 2: Visitation to Herod, 3: Herod ctd. and 4: John the Baptist to Resurrection). We’re excited to see the continuation of what surely now has become an Oxford tradition!

Dr Alison Ray is a medievalist and the archivist at St Peter’s College, Oxford.

Reflections on directing a mystery play in French

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26/04/2022

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by Prof. David Wiles

The French play was part of the Oxford Medieval Mystery Cycle performed on 23 April 2022 in St Edmund Hall, University of Oxford. The Playgroup: Les Soeurs de Sainte-Hilde (avec la participation de quelques paysans d’Iffleï) had been formed for the occasion by director: David Wiles The play is part of a cycle, ‘Le mystère de la passion’, written in the mid C15th by Arnoul Gréban, organist at Notre Dame cathedral, and doubtless also choirmaster. Full text available open access.

People ask me: “Why did you decide to do a play in French?”  Implication: it’s an English-speaking audience, and they won’t understand – middle-English bad enough.  Three responses to this one. 1. Political:  not good to live in a monoglot culture, and unlike modern scholarship the medieval world did not view life through the lens of the nation-state. 2. Theatrical:  to communicate through action and the body is a challenge which forces actors to engage with language on a different level, and reach out to their audience. 3. Intellectual:  venturing into Gréban’s text was a journey of discovery, as impenetrable hieroglyphs yielded slowly through rehearsal into recognisable speech patterns, with every phrase having its theatrical work to do. What looks like literary doggerel turns out to be theatrical gold.

An interesting research question follows – what are the cultural continuities that make Gréban’s mighty four-day passion play recognisably French, when set alongside the familiar English cycles?  Centralisation is one feature – responsibility not subdivided to autonomous guilds, but a single integrated work for an urban community to mount.  Another is the French ability to listen and maintain concentration upon the word.  In the English texts, action typically takes place between stanzas, but in the French text couplets conjoin speeches, so each new speaker has a rhyme to echo in order to come in on cue, a feature we found invaluable.  The sustained rhythmic flow ratchets up the tension, with enough variety of register and poetic form to hold the spectator’s attention. Like the alexandrines of Racine, the eight-syllable medieval line has a lilt that asks to be animated by the arms, so different from English metres which asked to be stamped with the feet.

After seeing the performance, a friend asked me: “What lesson was the play is supposed to impart?”  Implication: medieval theatre was didactic, a case of the church telling the peasants what to think. There is no simple moral to the John the Baptist sequence.  In the artistic structure John’s martyrdom is there because it foreshadows Christ’s.  People didn’t need telling that tyrants are venal, rather, it’s the recognisable social reality upon which a drama is built. Herod has his reasons for acting, and he washes his hands like Pilate. The medieval Salome is an enigma – we are free to draw our own conclusions, not told what to think. The urge to create theatre or art is a human constant, responding to the sensation of life as a cosmic mystery.  The idea that medieval theatre is ‘didactic’ is a handy modernist cliché, serving the narrative of progress, and all the cultural arrogance which that narrative commonly instils.  My preferred picture of the longue durée is one of progressive fragmentation, and I find in medieval theatre a holistic model of how theatre used to embrace and address a complete community in all its diversity, along with the gamut of human experience – comic and tragic, bestial and sublime – before dedicated theatre buildings and professionalism in acting and penmanship locked theatre into its lonely compartment.

David Wiles is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Exeter, and lives in Iffley. He is a theatre historian whose main specialisms have been Greek and Shakespearean drama. He wrote the entry on medieval theatre for the Oxford Illustrated History of the Theatre. His medieval CV includes a student production of the plays of the Wakefield Master in the gardens of Westminster Abbey, Mankynde in the Burton Taylor rooms, a crucifixion on a farmer’s trailer in Buckingham marketplace, staging three plays by the C10th nun Roswitha, and a community production of the N-Town Creation/Fall and York Noah in Iffley.

Repeat performance of the play at Iffley Church on 24 April 2022. Cast: John the Baptist – Laurence Nagy Manasses (disciple) – Alice Hawkins Sophonias (disciple) – Laura Laube Herod – Alex Marshall Herodias – Irina Boeru Salome – Alice Hawkins Groignart A (servant) – Kate Bunn Groignart B (servant) – Andrew Stilborn Amphiarus (noble) – David Wiles Radigon (noble) – Laura Laube God – Henrike Lähnemann Crew: Director: David Wiles Consultant: Sebastian Dows-Miller Head Creator: Andrew Stilborn Filmed by Isabel Reichenbach

Trinity Term 2022 OMS Lecture: Caroline Danforth

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26/04/2022

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Paper, Linen, Silk, and Parchment – Material Fragments from an Extinguished Convent

Tuesday 26 April 2022, 5p. Watch the recording on the OMS Youtube Channel

Apollonia von Freyberg was a Poor Clare nun living in the medieval village of Mülhausen (today, Mulhouse, France). We know of Apollonia through an artefact housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC – a colored woodcut by Lienhart Ysenhut (1959.16.15) which is housed inside a box made, in part, of recycled materials. Among these materials is the fragment of a letter addressed to Apollonia. Apollonia enriched her convent with manifold gifts and subsequently experienced the dissolution of her cloistered home during the Protestant Reformation. Beginning with Ysenhut’s print and the clues hidden in its enclosure, learn more about Apollonia’s family, wealth, and fate following her departure from Mülhausen in the early 16th century.

Caroline Danforth holds an MFA in painting from The George Washington University and a BA in German, Art History, and Fine Arts from Mary Washington College. She also studied art history in Germany for two years, in Munich and Tübingen. Since 2008, she has worked as a preservation framer of prints, drawings, and photographs at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC. Her research interests include the history and manufacture of parchment, German to English translation, and the Poor Clares of late medieval Germany. Most recently, Caroline served as guest editor for a special issue on parchment for Art in Translation and co-authored Letters for Apollonia for Franciscan Studies.

Medicine and Healing: The 18th Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference

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19/04/2022

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The 2022 Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference organising committee is pleased to announce the programme for Medicine and Healing.

Medicine and Healing: The 18th Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference

21st-22nd April, online and in-person at Ertegun House, St Giles, Oxford, OX1 3LD.

Sponsored by the Ertegun Graduate Scholarship Programme in the Humanities, Oxford Medieval Studies, the Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature.

Organising Committee: Katherine Beard, Ashley Castelino, Corinne Clark, James Cogbill, Nia Moseley-Roberts, Diana Myers, Grace O’Duffy, Caleb Prus and Eugenia Vorobeva.

To register for online or in-person attendance, please visit our website.

Programme

THURSDAY 21st APRIL

9:30-9:55 Registration (in-person)

9:55-10:00 Opening Remarks

10:00-11:30 Session 1: Charmed (chair: Katherine Beard)

  • Grace Pyles, ‘The Medicinal Unicorn Horn in the European Middle Ages’
  • Emer Kavanagh, ‘Shape and Form: The Use of Sympathetic Magic in Irish Charming Tradition’
  • Radka Pallová, ‘Humane Treatment? Animal Bodies in Alexander of Tralles’

11:30-12:00 Break with refreshments

12:00-13:30 Session 2: Call the Midwife (chair: Diana Myers)

  • Ailie Westbrook, ‘‘Mulieribus non est dicendum’: Mediated Knowledge in Women’s Health in Medieval Denmark’
  • Shir Blum, ‘Appositusque Iuvat Mulierem Parturientem: the Material Variety of Amulets as Obstetrical Aides’
  • Rachel Chenault, ‘Experiencing Childbirth: The Search for Female Voices, 1000-1200 C.E.’

13:30-14:30 Lunch

14:30-15:30 Session 3: The Seventh Seal (chair: James Cogbill)

  • Ben Hatchett, ‘‘A suitable medicine against all crimes’: John of Rupescissa’s Purgative Plague’
  • Stephen Pow, ‘Was Bubonic Plague behind the Epidemic that Affected the Mongol Army in China in 1259?’

15:30-16:00 Break with refreshments

16:00-17:00 Keynote Address 1

  • Dr Hannah Bower, ‘Locating Authority in Medieval Medical Writing: Playing with Presence and Absence’

17:00 Drinks Reception

19:00 Conference Dinner (optional)

FRIDAY 22nd APRIL

9:30-10:15 Medicine & Healing at Oxford: Manuscript & Social Session (with refreshments)

10:15-11:15 Session 4: Being Human (chair: Caleb Prus)

  • Melanie Socrates, ‘Impatient Medicine: Agency and Urgency in Middle English Medical Works’
  • S. Doğan Karakelle, ‘Knowing Horses and Thyself: Spiritual Healing and Rulership Practices in Ottoman-Turkish Veterinary Manuals 1400-1600’

11:15-11:45 Break with refreshments

11:45-13:15 Session 5: Inside Out (chair: Corinne Clark)

  • Ruth Rimmer, ‘Healing Through Lists in Lacnunga’
  • Colette Sarjano Utama McDonald, ‘A Stitch Through Time: the Besloten Hofjes at Mechelen, Alberto Burri, and Judith Scott’
  • Madeleine Killacky, ‘Challenging the Monopoly of 16th-Century Anatomical Knowledge through Pop-up Paper Figures’

13:15-14:15 Lunch

14:15-15:45 Session 6: Sister Act (chair: Eugenia Vorobeva)

  • Magdalena Buszka, ‘Saint Barbara of Medieval French Mystery Plays – Healer of Bodies and Souls’
  • Hólmfríður Sveinsdóttir, ‘The Use of Lead Tablets and Anatomical Votives in Medieval Healing Practices: Case studies from the Museum of Cultural History, University of Oslo’

15:45-16:15 Break with refreshments

16:15-17:15 Keynote Address 2

  • Professor Emilie Savage-Smith, ‘Modern Myths and Medieval Medicine’

17:15-17:20 Closing Remarks

Image: Medieval dentistry, from the fourteenth-century Omne Bonum of James le Palmer (courtesy of Wikimedia Commons).

Workshop Report: ‘The Murbach Hymns (MS. Junius 25) – Vernacular Glossing in the Early Middle Ages’

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15/04/2022

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The workshop ‘The Murbach Hymns (MS. Junius 25) – Vernacular Glossing in the Early Middle Ages’ (17–18 February 2022) highlighted a remarkable text ensemble: the Murbach hymns, a Latin hymnal with Old High German interlinear glosses. Taking this text, one of the oldest sources of Old High German, and its manuscript MS. Junius 25 (Oxford, Bodleian Library) as starting point, the importance of vernacular glossing and writing in the Early Middle Ages became clear: It sits at the crossroads of theological, linguistic, and layout approaches to the text.

Helen Gittos and Luise Morawetz discussing MS. Rawl. C. 697 (Oxford, Bodleian Library) at the Weston Library.

Participants from all over the world were able to participate thanks to the hybrid conference format, accessible online as well as in person. To allow all participants the same close-up insights into the materiality of the valuable and fragile manuscripts, the workshop opened with a presentation of the manuscript MS. Junius 25. Due to the excellent equipment of the Bodleian Library, it came to life in the expert hands of the curators, who turned the pages and the whole volume as real-time reaction to questions and requests from the audience, who were introduced to the material and linguistic peculiarities of the rare object. The speakers present at Oxford had the chance to consult and discuss the original manuscripts beforehand.

Over the course of further sessions, scholars from different research communities came together and presented their work on linguistics, pragmatics and material studies. Combining different disciplines resulted in a comprehensive survey of the use and characteristics of vernacular in the Early Middle Ages, including Old High German, Old Frisian and Old English. The theoretical insights were put into practice in a Latin-Old High German compline, which demonstrated how the oldest variety of the German language could be brought back to life. For the first time in history, the glosses of the Murbach hymns were set to music, among other Old High German texts read during the service. The workshop was brought to a close with a consultation of further glossed manuscripts of the Bodleian Library (MS. Auct. F. 1. 16, MS. Rawl. C. 697, MS. Canon. Pat. Lat. 57), partly neither digitised nor edited, which put the focus again on the object – the foundation of historical linguistic studies.

The St Edmund Consort performing the Latin-Old High German compline in the crypt
of St-Peter-in-the-East in Oxford.

The event was designed as a workshop and was intended to allow the participants to interact with each other and develop ideas collectively. Extended breaks were included in which discussions could continue in person as well as online. This opportunity was used by many, despite sessions already overrunning to address all questions. During the sessions, breakout groups allowed smaller groups of participants to share their thoughts before entering the main discussion, enabling equal contributions from listeners and speakers and leading to lively participation.

The interdisciplinary approach to early vernacular and the workshop format worked well, as the high numbers of registrations and intense and vibrant discussions showed. The workshop brought the exciting text and manuscript of the Murbach hymns back into the focus of linguistic research.

We hope to deepen the collaborations established during the event and continue the debates about the status of the vernacular in the Early Middle Ages in future, exploring the interdisciplinary approach further and testing it on other material from the rich collections of Oxford and beyond.

The manuscript in focus. The setup of the workshop in St Edmund Hall (Oxford) during the presentation of Auct. F. 1. 16 (Oxford, Bodleian Library).

I want to thank all participants and supporters of this workshop, above all the speakers (in order of their presentations): Prof. Dr Daniela Mairhofer (Princeton); Prof. Dr Michael Stolz (Bern); Dr Elke Krotz (Vienna); Dr Matthias Standke (Berlin); Prof. Dr Alderik Blom (Marburg); Dr Helen Gittos (Oxford); Prof. em. Dr Elvira Glaser (Zurich); Prof. Dr Stephan Müller (Vienna).

I also want to thank the team of the Bodleian Libraries, Dr Alexandra Franklin, Dr Matthew Holford and Dr Andrew Dunning; Tom Revell, who produced this event; James Whitbourn, who set the Murbach hymns to music, and the St Edmund Consort, who performed the compline; and Will Thurlwell, Prof. Dr Howard Jones and Prof. Dr Henrike Lähnemann, who supported the workshop in person.

In association with the Bodleian Libraries and Oxford Medieval Studies, sponsored by the Centre for the Study of the Book (CSB), The Oxford Research Centre in the Humanities (TORCH) and the University Council of Modern Languages (UCML).

Convenor: Luise Morawetz (luise.morawetz@mod-langs.ox.ac.uk)

The Lyell Lectures 2022: From Memory to Written Record: English Liturgical Books and Musical Notations, 900–1150

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31/03/2022

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You can book to attend the lectures in person or watch Lecture 1 live online. Click here to register.

3 May 2022, 5–6pm (BST)
Lecture 1: Sound and its Capture in Anglo-Saxon England

5 May 2022, 5–6pm (BST)
Lecture 2: Lecture 2: A Community of Scribes at Worcester

10 May 2022, 5–6pm (BST)
Lecture 3: St Augustine’s and Christchurch, 950–1091

12 May 2022, 5–6pm (BST)
Lecture 4: From Neumes in campo aperto to Neumes on Lines (at Christchurch, Canterbury)

17 May 2022, 5–6pm (BST)
Lecture 5: Assimilation or change? Normans at Winchester

Booking information

In-person

Registration is essential for attending in person at the Lecture Theatre, Weston Library. 

Booking is for the whole series, for the sake of simplicity. Your booking entitles you to attend as many lectures in the series as you are able.

View our guidance about attending in-person events in the Lecture Theatre.

Online

An alternative way to see Lecture 1 in the series is online via livestream. Registration is required. 

All lectures will be available as recordings after the conclusion of the series.

(11 April) Workshop: ‘The Literary heritage of Anglo-Dutch relations, 1050-1600’

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31/03/2022

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On 11 April, the research team working on the Leverhulme-funded project ‘The Literary heritage of Anglo-Dutch relations, 1050-1600’ holds an informal workshop / reading group in the Weston Library at the Bodleian, 14:00-16:00.

The format are three papers by Laura Cleaver (School of Advanced Studies, University of London: ‘Illuminated Manuscripts and the Shaping of English and Flemish Identities’; Thea Summerfield, University of Utrecht, ‘Lodewijk van Velthem on Edward I’), and David Murray (University of Utrecht, ‘The Circulation of Lyrics between England and the Low Countries’).

If you are interested to join the workshop please contact Ad Putter, A.D.Putter@bristol.ac.uk

(11 April) The Masters of the Dark Eyes in England

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31/03/2022

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Date: Monday 11 April 2022
Time: 5.15–6.15pm
Location: Lecture Theatre, Weston Library & online
Speaker: Professor Kathleen Kennedy, British Academy Global Professor, University of Bristol
The event is free but booking for in-person tickets is required.
Click here to register for the event

The Masters of the Dark Eyes in England and the invention of the Tudor court artist

This lecture re-examines the corpus of the Masters of the Dark Eyes in England and argues that their work played a part in the developing role of the King’s Painter. In the Netherlands, the Masters of the Dark Eyes were premier decorators of luxurious books of hours. Their English patrons recast the Masters as courtly, Renaissance painters. Moreover, in England the Masters were sometimes primarily miniaturists, and other times valued instead for their border and initial art. Unrecognized before now, the Masters in England completed some commissions without any illustrations at all. Finally, the Masters of the Dark Eyes in England sometimes also partnered with English artists, a direct collaboration illuminating the topic at the heart of the North Sea Crossings: Anglo-Dutch Books and the Adventures of Reynard the Fox exhibition. In proving that Dutch artists could adapt to the wide-ranging artistic needs of the early Tudor court, the Masters of the Dark Eyes in England paved the way for more formal employment of the better-known Horenbout and Holbein.

The lecture will be followed by a drinks reception 6.15-7.15pm for those attending in-person. Attendees will be able to access the North Sea Crossings exhibition throughout the public event.