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Medieval Matters: Week 5

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13/02/2023

10:57

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It’s fifth week, the most notorious week in the Oxford term! If you are feeling the fifth week blues, you might perhaps be comforted by the fact that Spring will be arriving soon. The days are already getting longer, and we are enjoying more sunny days in Oxford. Here is Alcuin on the importance of Spring:

Cuculum, vernalem avem, vestrae direxi sanctitati cum munusculis parvitatis meae
[“I have sent your grace the cookoo, the bird of Spring, with some little gifts from me” Ep. 167]

Though I can’t bring you Spring right away, I can offer many little gifts in the form of a delightful schedule of weekly events! Please check the weekly listings below to chase those fiften week blues away:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Piers Plowman was a great success (cf. our new TikTok account for some clips!); the costumes are now part of the OMS stock and can be used by any group performing in the mystery cycle on 22 April. Contact Michael Angerer for any questions around the performance!
  • The 54th Annual Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held on 17-19 March 2023, at Corpus Christi College & All Souls College, Oxford, on the theme of Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond. The Symposium brings together Byzantine studies with a series of innovative approaches to the material nature and realities of religion – foregrounding the methodological, historical and archaeological problems of studying religion through visual and material culture. For more information, the Symposium programme and registration, please visit the Symposium website here.
  • The Week 7 Medieval History Seminar coincides with a strike day (27th Feb), and will be CANCELLED. Prof Liesbeth van Houts will deliver the paper on the Empress Matilda in Michaelmas Term. 
  • The third Old Frisian Summer School will take place from 9-16th July in St Edmund Hall. After the in-person edition in 2019 and the online edition 2021, the third edition will be a hybrid event. We still hope as many students and early career researchers will be able to attend in person, but the hybrid part should enable students and scholars around the world to take part. There will also be a taster session with Johanneke Sytsema in week 7: Friday, 3 March 2023, 3–4pm in 47 Wellington Square, 1st floor, lecture room 1: Johanneke Sytsema: Old Frisian and its place among the Germanic Languages. For more information please see the OFSS website.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 13th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Nathan D. C. Websdale (University of Oxford), The Humbled Generation: Racial Otherization and Ethnic Contraction in Byzantium in the Witnesses of the Fourth Crusade. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. We will start with natural history from a medieval encyclopaedia. 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 Seminar in Manuscript Studies and Palaeography will take place at 2.15-3.45pm, in the Weston Library, Horton Room. This week’s speaker will be Sonja Drimmer (University of Massachusetts Amherst): “The ‘Genealogy Industry’: Codicological Diversity in England, c.1400–c.1500.” For further information contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Ingrid Ivarsen (Cambridge), ‘Law in the late seventh century: the case of Theodore, Hlothhere, Wihtræd and Ine‘. (You may also attend remotely, Teams link here: or log in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and join the group “Medieval History Research Seminar”, team code rmppucs. If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk ). 

Tuesday 14th February:

  • The Governability across the medieval globe Discussion Group is CANCELLED, in solidarity with UCU strike action.
  • The Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar will take place at 2–3.30pm in the New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and coffee available from 1.45pm. This week’s speaker will be Patrick Lantschner, UCL, ‘A Symbiotic Relationship? Cities and States in Europe and the Islamic World‘.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar will not take place, in solidarity with the UCU industrial action.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5-6pm in the Charlese Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Paper starts at 5.15pm, with tea, coffee, biscuits and friendly Medievalist chat from 5pm! This week’s speaker will be Federica Gigante (History of Science Museum), ‘Islamic Spoils in a Christian Context: the reuse of Islamic textiles in Medieval Italian churches‘.
  • The Carlyle Lectures in Medieval Law, with Prof. John Hudon (St Andrews) takes place at 5pm in South School, Examination Schools. This week’s lecture explores the ways in which deliberate legal change came to have unintended effects, especially on substantive law. It considers the interplay of legal learning, legal reasoning, and legal change. In so doing, it ponders Sir Henry Maine’s view of substantive law being secreted in the interstices of procedure. All are welcome.

Wednesday 15th February:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar will meet at 11:15am in the island room of Oriel College for discussing the prologue of this term’s text, Heinrich von Neustadt’s Apollonius von Tyrland. If you are interested to come along, contact Henrike Lähnemann, to be added to the teams chat.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 2pm at Rees Davies Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Elena Rossi (Oxford, Magdalen), ‘The Entangled Nature of the University and Family Spheres in Medieval Bologna’.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Ovid, Fasti, 1.1–62. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.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 (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Lilyana Yordanova (Ecole française d’Athènes), ‘In the name of the …lotus? Reinventing Christian monumental art and elite culture in the long 15th century’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, followed by a drinks reception. This week’s speaker will be Mike Bintley (Birkbeck, University of London), ‘Beowulf’s Foliate Borders and the Surrounding Forest in Early Medieval England‘.

Thursday 16th February:

  • The Early Medieval Britain and Ireland Network Hilary Term Lecture takes place at 1pm at Memorial Room, Worcester College. This term’s speaker is Jacqueline Nowakowski FSA, Director of the Tintagel Castle Archaeological Research Project, on behalf of the Cornwall Archaeological Unit and English Heritage. The paper will be ‘Cornwall in Late Antiquity: New Findings from the Tintagel Castle Excavations‘. For queries, please contact Meredith Cutrer (meredith.cutrer@worc.ox.ac.uk).
  • The Centre for Gender, Identity, and Subjectivity (CGIS) is hosting a talk at 4pm in the History Faculty. The talk will be given by Jonas Roelens of the University of Ghent, titled “The young sodomite: Age and agency in sodomy cases in the late medieval Southern Low Countries”.
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speakers will be Martin Kirnbauer and the project team Vicentino21: Anne Smith, David Gallagher, Luigi Collarile and Johannes Keller (Schola Cantorum Basiliensis / FHNW), Soav’ e dolce – Nicola Vicentino’s Intervallic Vision. If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have questions, please just send an email to matthew.thomson@ucd.ie
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.00pm via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Nathan Abrams (Bangor), ‘Capturing and Preserving North Wales’ Jewish History?‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.

Friday 17th February:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library with presentation of manuscripts from the collection. Watch here last week’s exciting presentation by Dr Thea Gomelauri on the layout of Hebrew Bibles.
  • The Anglo-Norman Reading Group meets at 5-6.30pm at St Hilda’s College, in the Julia Mann Room. The text will be extracts from the Chronicle of Langtoft; pdf will be provided. For access to the text and further information, please email: stephanie.hathaway@gmail.com or jane.bliss@lmh.oxon.org.
  • The Old Norse Reading Group meets at 5pm at The Royal Oak. Please email Ashley Castelino (ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk) to be added to the mailing list.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • CFP: Interfacing with linguistic norms, 323 BCE – 1453 CE: panel in Coimbra (14th Celtic Conference in Classics). This panel focuses on the use of linguistic norms in literature between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. From the idea of Hellenismos/Latinitas/ʿArabiyya until the development of the concept of ‘national language’, the promotion of language correctness and the imitation of canonical texts are elements of continuity in the endless compromise between norms and usage. Interested scholars are invited to submit abstracts of maximum 500 words by 20th February 2023 to the organisers (chiara.monaco@ugent.be; ugo.mondini93@gmail.com).  For full details, see the blog post here.
  • CFP: The Stanford-Berkeley English Graduate Conference 2023, Otherworlds. The Stanford-Berkeley English Graduate Conference seeks proposals for 20-minute papers that address any aspect of worldmaking in the context of otherness, alterity, subaltern studies, and literal other worlds, from any period, for a one-day conference, “Otherworlds,” to be held on April 22nd, 2023, in Stanford, CA, at Stanford University. The conference is open to any student currently enrolled in a graduate or undergraduate program in English or a related discipline. For full details, please see the full CFP here.

Of course, it is also Valentine’s day tomorrow, and it would be improper of me to leave you without an appropriate Alcuin quote on academic love:

quia semper te amabo, semper te ammonere no cessabo
[“I will always love you, and so will never cease to give you advice”, Ep. 42]

May you give and receive kind advice this week! Of course, as your devoted news herald, I will never cease in providing weekly “advice”, but you are also served by the excellent graduate students Ashley Castelino, Eugenia Vorobeva, and Coral Kim, who are keeping the twitter and calendar updated with all of the latest updates on seminars, events, and strike action! Please remember to send them some love for their hard work, and to enjoy the fruits of their labours. I look forward to returning to your inboxes next week with even more gifts!

[A Medievalist, feeling the 5th week blues, is on the lookout for the arrival of Spring…]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 20 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

The 54th Spring Symposium of Byzantine Studies: Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond

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13/02/2023

10:02

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events, opportunities

17-19 March 2023, Corpus Christi College & All Souls College, Oxford

The 54th Annual Spring Symposium in Byzantine Studies will be held in Oxford on the theme of Material Religion in Byzantium and Beyond. The Symposium brings together Byzantine studies with a series of innovative approaches to the material nature and realities of religion – foregrounding the methodological, historical and archaeological problems of studying religion through visual and material culture. Taking a broad geographical and chronological view of the Byzantine world, the Symposium will range across Afro-Eurasia and from Antiquity to the period after the fall of Constantinople. Sessions will be arranged around the themes of ‘Objects in motion’, ‘Religion in 3D’, ‘Religious landscapes’, ‘Things without context’, ‘Things and their context’ and ‘Spatial approaches to religion’.

Confirmed speakers include: Béatrice Caseau, Paroma Chatterjee, Francesca Dell’Acqua, Ivan Foletti, David Frankfurter, Ildar Garipzanov, Troels M. Kristensen, Anne Lester, Birgit Meyer, Brigitte Pitarakis, Myrto Veikou, and Anne-Marie Yasin.

The Symposium will be hybrid, taking place at Oxford – Corpus Christi College and All Souls College –, and on Zoom.

Fees and registration:

  • In person, for three days: Full: £130; Members of the SPBS: £110; Students/Unwaged: £60.
  • In person, for one day: Full: £65; Members of the SPBS: £55; Students/Unwaged: £30.
  • On-line: Full: £35; Members of the SPBS: £20; Students/Unwaged: £10

For more information, the Symposium programme and registration, please visit the Symposium website here.

Symposiarchs

Jaś Elsner, Ine Jacobs, Julia Smith

Call for Papers
Interfacing with linguistic norms, 323 BCE – 1453 CE 

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13/02/2023

09:57

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Interfacing with linguistic norms, 323 BCE – 1453 CE 

opportunities

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Organisers: Dr Chiara Monaco, Dr Ugo Mondini 

This panel focuses on the use of linguistic norms in literature between Antiquity and the Middle Ages. From the idea of Hellenismos/Latinitas/ʿArabiyya until the development of the concept of ‘national language’, the promotion of language correctness and the imitation of canonical texts are elements of continuity in the endless compromise between norms and usage. At the same time, every literature has breakpoints in which canons are contested/complemented by new (literary and/or linguistic) models; consequently, the interfacing with norms changes.  

Our aim is to study what happens when literature interfaces with norms; the following research questions are the foundation of our reflection:  

  1. To what extent do norms influence usage and vice versa? Does the use comply with the norm always and in the same way, or not?  
  2. How is the terminology of norms shaped and how does it change throughout time?  
  3. What is the relationship between literature and the formulation of linguistic norms? And which role does the idea of literary canon play in the formulation of grammatical norms? 
  4. What happens to customary norms and their use in literature when the canon changes? What is the reaction from contemporary voices?  

The panel focuses on a period longer than Antiquity (323 BCE – 1453 CE) to understand if, when and how the use of norms changes throughout time. This allows making broader considerations on the topic, which are particularly helpful to understand 1) canonical texts, their transmission, and their reception(s); 2) how linguistic norms act in diachrony; 3) how norms shape language usages and vice versa; 4) how the relationship between norms and usage changes over time.  

The aim of this panel is to gather scholars working on norms, the reception of norms, the relationship between grammatical texts and literary/non-literary usages in different traditions, and literature within its historical context. We would be particularly glad to discuss case studies that relate norms from ancient or medieval sources to their origin from past models and their use, misuse, or rejection within literary texts, in a diachronic perspective; or case studies that stress breakpoints along with their consequences. The panel will also be the perfect occasion to reflect on how past and present scholarship has dealt with this challenging topic. Latin and Greek literature and language are the fields of expertise of both organisers; however, proposals on different languages and cultures of the broader area of antique and medieval Eurasia and Africa will be considered with great favour. In this case, chronological boundaries can be discussed with organisers, although the panel focuses on premodern era. 

Interested scholars are invited to submit abstracts of maximum 500 words by 20th February 2023 to the organisers (chiara.monaco@ugent.be; ugo.mondini93@gmail.com).  

We will select speakers working on different languages, epochs, and geographical areas. After the selection, we will provide the speakers with a methodological framework, which they will be asked to consider while producing their paper. This way, consistency and dialogue are assured during the panel in Coimbra (14th Celtic Conference in Classics). 

For more details about the conference, see: https://cechfluc.wixsite.com/ccclassics2023 

Piers Plowman Performance at St Edmund Hall

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10/02/2023

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The Fair Field of Folk. Piers Plowman: A Potted Adaptation of the B Text
When: 11 February 2023, to be repeated partially during the Medieval Mystery Cycle 22 April 2023
Where: St Edmund Hall, Queen’s Lane, OX1 4AR Oxford

Director: Eloise Peniston

Trailer filmed and edited by Natascha Domeisen, music by Alexander Nakarada

Welcome to our mervelous sweven, the Middle English prose B text of Piers Plowman dramatized and brought to stage by an eclectic mix of English students, medievalists, business students, historians, even a mathematician! Starring

  • 😴 Sòlas McDonald as Will the Dreamer
  • 😜 Jonathan Honnor as Piers Plowman/False Tongue
  • ⛪ Clare-Rose McIntyre as Holy Church
  • ✝️ Chantale Davies as Theology/Priest
  • 🤔 Rei Tracks as Conscience
  • 🌾 Alexane Ducheune as Mede’s Handmaid
  • 👑 Kate Harkness as The King
  • 💃 Eloise Peniston as Envy/Lady Mede
  • 💰 Sabrina Coghlan-Jasiewicz as Simony/Pride
  • 😡 Sonny Pickering as Wrath
  • 👩‍⚖️ Zelda Cahill-Patten as Civil Law/Covetousness

With original music by Anna Cowan (harp) and Rachael Seculer-Faber; ceremonial trumpet: Henrike Lähnemann, special advice: Jocelyn Wogan-Browne. Supported by Oxford Medieval Studies and St Edmund Hall 

Video filmed and edited by Natascha Domeisen, cover image by Duncan Taylor

Plot summary

The play follows a man named Will, who falls asleep beside a stream on a May morning in Malvern Hills with a succession of dreams, beginning with a tower on a hill, a dungeon, and a fair field of folk. On his quest for Truth, Will meets a host of allegorical personifications, wandering through the marriage and later trial of Lady Mede, the confession of the Seven Sins, the Crucifixion, and the Harrowing of Hell. In the midst of all, Piers Plowman emerges, taking only momentary repose from his plough to guide Will towards Truth and, rather scandalously, chastise members of the clergy.

Scenes

  1. Introduction from Holy Churche and Mede
    Holy Churche and Mede will explain what to expect from our play.
  2. Prologue
    The bugle breaks through the air, and the dulcet tones of our bard and piper will lead you to a May Morning on Malvern Hills
  3. Holy Churche and Will
    Will searches for Truth, imploring guidance of Holy Churche. Truth is, of course, that one must Do Well, Do Better, and Do Best. 
  4. Lady Mede
    Mede, the incarnation of financial reward, bribery, corruption, arrives. 
  5. Marriage of Mede
    False and Mede attempt to marry but the King requests their presence at the court, as False is not deemed a suitable husband for the noble lady. 
  6. Trial of Mede
    Mede pleads her case, explaining the importance of ‘mede’ or reward in the world at large.
  7. Seven Deadly Sins
    Pride, Lechery, Envy, Wrath, Covetousness, Gluttony, and Sloth come and confess their sins.
  8. Piers Plowman
    Piers Plowman arrives and agrees to show the field of folk where Truth is, if they help him plough his half acre.
  9. Tearing of the Pardon
    Truth sends a pardon for Piers, however it is discovered not to be a real pardon at all. Piers tears it in two and interprets the Latin better than a priest ever could. 

Background

Piers Plowman is an allegorical text that exists in different versions. The A text is the incomplete earliest version, the B text is the most broadly translated and edited, while also being highly scandalous, and the C text is highly censored, notably failing to mention the Peasants Revolt and the Tearing of the Pardon, which our performance presents. 

The B text can be approximately dated to 1388, and has quite the volatile position in history, especially in relation to the peasant’s revolt and heresy. While locked inside Maidstone Castle, John Ball penned his radical Letter to Essex Men, citing Piers Plowman and Robin Hood as comrades in the fight. In short, Piers Plowman is a working class hero, a Billy Bragg if you will, representing the right of common man. The concept of class struggle is deeply entrenched into the text, carrying the relics of the Domesday Book serfdom, to the climbing taxes in the midst of the 100 years war, the dwindling population as the Black Death roamed the country. All of these tensions boiled over on the 30th of May, 1381, as John Bampton arrived in Essex to collect unpaid poll taxes. In consideration of 1990 Poll Tax riots, the UK Miners’ Strikes in 1984, and the recently unveiled Strike Laws, clearly class struggle repeats itself. With a ploughman at the helm, the voice of the working people is vital in the text. With all that in mind, sit back, relax, and enjoy the chaos.  God spede þe plouȝ!

Director’s Story

Eloise writes: I first discovered Piers Plowman at a bus stop. I was characteristically lost with a dead phone and only a charity shop book to keep me company. While no one murmured ‘Thou still unravished bride of quietness’, at me, I was acutely aware of being in the presence of the literary as I thumbed through the wind-swept pages. I was intensely confused, which, at the age of fifteen, I supposed was the hidden intention of all literature. With the charmed hand of A. V. C. Schmidt to guide me, I followed Will fallling asleep. I remember after being “found” an hour later how I, rather breathlessly, recounted the events of the B text to my mother as she, mid-flap, chastised me about reckless spontaneity and the need for charged phones.

At that bus stop, I knew that, by the fortuity of an Oxfam find, I had discovered something wonderful, but I had no idea that seven years later, I would be scavenging liripipes and slit-mittens in an attempt to bring this dream-vision to life. Now, I often take that humble copy with me to Malvern Hills, and it is positively crammed with pressed, may-morning flowers. However, little did I know then how deeply entrenched this text was in the public sphere or about the literary and literal rebellions that have emerged beneath the mouldboard.

From the pen of a man who described Piers Plowman as “not worth reading”, Gerard Manley Hopkins perfectly captured the flesh-good of the text:

And features, in flesh, what deed he each must do –
His sinew-service where do.

He leans to it, Harry bends, look. Back, elbow, and liquid waist
In him, all quail to the wallowing o’ the plough: ‘s cheek crimsons; curls
Wag or crossbridle, in a wind lifted, windlaced –
See his wind – lilylocks – laced;
Churlsgrace, too, child of Amansstrength, how it hangs or hurls
Them – broad in bluff hide his frowning feet lashed! raced
With, along them, cragiron under and cold furls –
With-a-fountain’s shining-shot furls.
Harry Ploughman
G. M. Hopkins

This particular poem encapsulates the essence of Piers Plowman: pure inscape, or as Stephen Medcalf calls it, an “extraordinary combination of roughness and a delicate magic.” It is incredibly difficult to describe what happens in Piers Plowman but “churlsgrace” is certainly the perfect descriptor for the essence of the text. A mere ploughman knows the way to Truth and is gracious enough to guide the reader, in return for help in plowing and sowing a half-acre.

Piers Plowman is ultimately a text that encourages mental labour, in a field, at a bus stop, or even in the gardens of St Edmund Hall…

We invite you to toil with us at Teddy Hall. From a tower on toft, a trumpet shall hail the dream, before the gentle plucking of a harp will guide you to sleep. Come and set forth on a dream-pilgrimage, exploring political satire, social upheaval, and spiritual crisis.
We hope to see you soon in the fair field. God spede þe plouȝ!

Piers Plowman poster

Medieval Matters: Week 4

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06/02/2023

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February marks LGBTQ+ history month in the UK. Alcuin, who frequently wrote of his male colleagues with romantic affection, is celebrated by many LGBTQ+ scholars as part of our history. Here are some appropriate words from the 8th Century:

Haec ideo, frater, tibi scripsi, ut scias, si tamen scire potes, qua te caritate diligo; nam me ipsum fateor edicere non posse – fordan etiam nec tu, qua me diligas – Deus scit, qui hanc infudit cordibus nostris.

[I have written you this, my brother, so that you might know how much I love you; for I confess that I cannot express it – and perhaps you too cannot say how much you love me – but God, who poured this love into our hearts, knows it, Ep. 17]

In the spirit of uplifting LGBTQ+ scholars and scholarship, I’d like to bring special attention to one of our newest additions: the Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group, which meets at 3pm on Monday at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2 to discuss the wonderful Yde et Olive! All are welcome!

On another note, please keep in mind that over the coming weeks, many seminars, reading groups etc. may be cancelled or postponed at late notice in solidarity with UCU strike action. For all the latest updates, please check our Calendar (on the right hand side of our blog) or Twitter (@OxMedStud). If you are cancelling an event, please let me know so that we can update the community!

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Registration for the Memorial Event for Nigel F. Palmer is open. To celebrate the life and scholarship of Nigel F. Palmer, Professor of  German  Medieval Literary and Linguistic  Studies at the University of Oxford, Faculty, College and academic community will honour his memory with a symposium, to be held at the Taylorian and the Weston Library on 19-20 May 2023.
  • Piers Plowman performance on Saturday 11 February, 2-3pm, in St Edmund Hall! This coincides with National Garden opening of the beautiful grounds. The charity donation of £4 includes entry to the play – or write a review (speak to the OBS members at the entrance about how to do this) and you get in for free!
  • The Dark Archives 19-21 Proceedings: Voyages into the Medieval Unread and Unreadable are going to print this week! The Dark Archives conferences examine the praxis of digitisation and its impact on medieval studies worldwide. To read more about the volume, see the blog post by Stephen Pink and Anthony John Lappin.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 6th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Daniel Alford (University of Oxford), Adults, Children and Other Animals: The Construction of the Zoroastrian Household. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. We will start with natural history from a medieval encyclopaedia. 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 Yde et Olive. 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 Archaeology Seminar meets at 3pm at the Institute of Archaeology, Lecture Room. This week’s speaker will be Prof. Oliver Creighton, University of Exeter, ‘Warhorse: The archaeology of horses in England, AD800-1600‘.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams (Teams link here). This week’s speaker will be Justine Trombley (Durham), ‘Books and the Late Medieval Landscape of Heresy and Inquisition.’. 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 Lincoln Leads seminar takes place at 5.30–7pm at Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College. This week’s panel is ‘Love and Other Emotions’, and features Em Horne (MSt in English 650-1550) on emotionality in Old Icelandic Sagas. Book a free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/lincoln-leads-2023-1539199.

Tuesday 7th February:

  • The Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar will take place at 2–3.30pm in the New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and coffee available from 1.45pm. This week’s speaker will be Cecilia Gaposchkin, Dartmouth, ‘Sacral Paris and the Capetians‘.
  • A ‘Digital Hub’ event called ‘Digital Keys to Invisible Texts’ takes place at 5.30-7.30pm in Jesus College’s new Cheng Building, with Richard Ovenden, Dirk Van Hulle, and Mike Kestemont. Free registration via Eventbrite: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/digital-keys-to-invisible-texts-tickets-488521088727

Wednesday 8th February:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar will meet at 11:15am in the island room of Oriel College for discussing Heinrich von Neustadt’s Apollonius von Tyrland. If you are interested to join, contact Henrike Lähnemann to be added to the teams chat.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 2pm at Rees Davies Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Adele Curness, (Oxford, St John’s), ‘Calabrian Hagiography and Mediterranean Connectivity in the Long Tenth Century’.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Homer, Odyssey, ll. 23–50 & 465–503. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.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 (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Yan Zaripov (St Hilda’s College), ‘Theodore Prodromos’ Epigrams on the Old and New Testament: Narrative, Rhetoric, and Classical Mimesis’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, followed by a drinks reception. This week’s speaker will be Philip Knox (University of Cambridge), ‘Usk’s Books’. All welcome.

Thursday 9th February:

  • The Oxford Medieval Commentary Network will meet at 12.45-2.15pm in Thatched Barn, Christ Church (by meadow entrance). Free lunch from 12.45, seminar paper begins at 1.15. Today’s speaker will be Jiani Sun, Oriel College, Oxford, ‘The Making of an Autobiography: Reading, Writing, and Shaping the Life of Solomon in Wisdom of Solomon 7–9′. Please direct all questions to cosima.gillhammer:chch.ox.ac.uk, or visit the website.
  • The Celtic Seminar will not run today due to UCU strike action. The paper by Myriah Williams has been postponed to the autumn.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speakers are Lauren Rozenberg University College London, ‘In the Flat Round: Brain Diagrams in Late Medieval Manuscripts‘ and Sergei Zotov, University of Warwick, ‘Christian Motifs in Fifteenth-Century Alchemical Iconography‘.

Friday 10th February:

  • The Medievalist Coffee Morning takes place at 10:30-11.30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre in the Weston Library (access via the Readers Entrance on Museum Road: straight ahead and up two floors!). This week we’ll be treated to a number of Hebrew manuscripts by Dr Thea Gomelauri, among them Bodleian Library MS. Can. Or. 28, 34, 37, 41 and 94 – do come!

Saturday 11th February:

  • A Fair Field of Folk will be performing The Potted B Text of PIERS PLOWMAN. Come and join our merveillous swevene, 2–3pm at St Edmund Hall, Broadbent Garden (behind the library church of St-Peter-in-the-East). Gardens open 2–5pm as part of the National Garden scheme. Ticket for the gardens £4.00 on the door, includes entrance to the play.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • The Vatican Film Library at Saint Louis University invites applications to short-term fellowship programs available for research in its collections. The library holds over 40,000 medieval and Renaissance manuscripts reproduced in microfilm and digital formats. Fellowships are available to graduate students and established scholars regardless of nationality. For further information on application details and submission deadlines, see our fellowship guidelines.
  • Call for Submissions: The Database of Religious History. The Database of Religious History (DRH) is currently recruiting historians, archaeologists, and religious studies scholars in all areas of expertise (PhD students and above). If you have academic expertise in the history or anthropology of religion, please consider contributing to the DRH. In an effort to build the database in as swift a manner as possible, and improve the quality of any analyses produced with it, the DRH is offering $300 CAD honoraria for each completed entry. If you are a PhD candidate or above and would like to contribute an entry on any religious group, place, or text, please contact Dr. Ian Randall (irandall@mail.ubc.ca) or sign up for the database at https://religiondatabase.org/landing/get-involved and select Dr. Randall as your entry editor. For more information please see here.
  • CFP: Priests and their Manuscripts in the Holy Land and Sinai (Vienna, 8–10 November 2023). Please send the title of your paper and an abstract (max. 300 words) to Giulia Rossetto (giulia.rossetto@oeaw.ac.at) no later than March 15, 2023. The speakers will be notified by April 15.For full details, see our blog.

I leave you with another quote from Alcuin’s letters, on the power of love, as a little preview for next week’s Valentine’s day:

Dulcedo sanctae dilectionis vestrae omnibus horis etiam et momentis aviditatem pectoris mei habundantur

[The sweetness of your righteous love makes the desire of my heart overflow every hour and every minute, Ep. 78]

May love (of this medieval community and your research) make your heart overflow this week!

[Two medievalists discover that they are birds of a feather]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 66 v.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

CFP: Priests and their Manuscripts in the Holy Land and Sinai

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06/02/2023

09:46

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Conference at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna

Institute for Medieval Research, Department of Byzantine Research

8–10 November 2023

Call for Papers

Where did priests learn to read and write? What did they copy and where? How did their libraries look? What did they do with their books? Little is known about these topics, and a general overview is missing, especially if we focus on clerics active in the Holy Land and Sinai. By addressing these and related topics, this conference will aim at gaining a better understanding about the social and cultural role of priests latu sensu (preferably priests and priestmonks, but also monks, nuns, lectors, deacons, bishops) in the Holy Land and Sinai.

We invite the submission of abstracts (300 words max.) for 20-minute papers dealing with manuscripts copied, owned, and used by priests in Sinai and Palestine during the Byzantine and immediate post-Byzantine period in the languages of the Christian Orient. Contributions by historians, archaeologists, art historians, epigraphers, liturgiologists, which aim at shedding light on the social and cultural role of priests in this region and historical period are welcome as well.

Topics that that may be addressed include the following, but participants are encouraged to develop their own questions and approaches within the parameters of the conference theme:
Social context: Which sources offer information about the social role and cultural life of priests in the Holy Land and Sinai? What can we learn from them?
Priests as copyists of manuscripts: Where and how did priests learn how to read and write? What was their level of literacy? Which script styles did they use? Which techniques of book-making did they employ? How many languages did they know and write?
Priests as owners of manuscripts: Which manuscripts did priests own? What do we know about their private ‘libraries’?
Priests and their use of manuscripts: Which signs of use (including annotations, colophons, etc.) did priests leave on the manuscripts they used? Where were manuscripts used and how?

Organizer: Dr. Giulia Rossetto (Austrian Academy of Sciences)

Please send the title of your paper and an abstract (max. 300 words) to Giulia Rossetto (giulia.rossetto@oeaw.ac.at) no later than March 15, 2023. The speakers will be notified by April 15.

If selected, we can offer you reimbursement for your travel expenses (second-class) as well as pre-paid accommodation for two nights in Vienna. 

This conference is organized within the framework of the project “Priests, Books and the Library at Saint Catherine’s (Sinai)” (T1192 – G25) funded by the Austrian Science Fund FWF.

Working Group on Race & Gender in the Global Middle Ages

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30/01/2023

09:38

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events, opportunities

Emory University and the Medieval Academy of America are pleased to announce the launch of a Zoom working group on Race & Gender in the Global Middle Ages. The aim is to bring together scholars from various disciplines (history, art history, and literary studies) who work on Europe and the Mediterranean, the Islamic world, Africa, and Asia to discuss works-in-progress that deal with race and gender from 500 CE to 1600 CE. The working group is open to all medievalists, including graduate students.To participate in the working group, please register at https://scholarblogs.emory.edu/raceandgenderglobalmiddleages/

Spring 2023 schedule of meetings:

February 17 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Angela Zhang, Postdoctoral Fellow, Harvard University “Charity and Slavery: Childcare and Race in the Ospedale degli Innocenti in Premodern Florence”

March 24 12pm-1:30pm EST (9am Pacific time)
Roland Betancourt, Professor of Art History, University of California, Irvine”The Case of Manuel I Komnenos: Articulating Identity through Gender, Sexuality, and Racialization”

April 28 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Nicole Lopez-Jantzen, Associate Professor of History, CUNY: Borough of Manhattan Community College and Graduate Center”Shifting Concepts of Race: Italy through the Earlier Middle Ages”

May 19 at 12pm-1:30pm EST 
Sierra Lomuto, Assistant Professor of English, Rowan University “Mongols in Medieval Europe: Exoticism and the Legend of Prester John”

June 9 at 12pm-1:30pm EST
Alexa Herlands, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago”Juan Martínez Silíceo as Historian: Toledo’s 1547 Blood Purity Statute Revisited”

“INVESTIGATIONS INTO ROMANIAN AND EUROPEAN BIBLICAL TRADITIONS”
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

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30/01/2023

09:34

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INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

opportunities

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“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University of Iaşi
Institute of Interdisciplinary Research – Department of Social Sciences and Humanities
Centre for Biblical and Philological Studies “Monumenta linguae Dacoromanorum”,
Romanian Association of Philology and Biblical Hermeneutics
Metropolitanate of Moldavia and Bukovina
“A. Philippide” Institute of Romanian Philology


are pleased to invite you to the

“INVESTIGATIONS INTO ROMANIAN AND EUROPEAN BIBLICAL TRADITIONS”
INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

12th Edition
Iaşi, 18-20 May 2023


The Symposium aims to encourage multi- and interdisciplinary debates on the issues raised by the publication, translation, interpretation, dissemination and reception of sacred texts into Romanian and other modern languages.
Sections

  1. Philological Challenges
    – Publication of the biblical texts. Textual criticism and palaeography. Sacred texts computerization and digitization.
    – The biblical text as a reference point in the diachronic study of language. Lexicology and biblical semantics.Biblical phraseology. Biblical onomastics.
    – Lesser known, partial translations of the Bible: books and book fragments kept in old manuscripts from the 16th and 17th centuries, and their textual relationship with popular Romanian versions.
    – Stylistic interference and demarcation: biblical, liturgical and theological-sapiential varieties of clerical styles. The role of the Bucharest Bible (1688) in the creation of the Romanian clerical style in the 18th and 19th centuries.
  2. Translation Challenges
    – Typology of biblical translations. Literal and free translation. Translation theory and sacred texts.
    – Unique source vs. multiple source. The “original texts” of the Bible – different textual traditions reflected in the Romanian translations.
    – Relationships among successive biblical versions: the Sibiu Gospels (1551-1553) and the Coresi Gospels; the Coresi Gospels and Epistles and the Bălgrad New Testament (1648); the Bucharest Bible (1688) and the Blaj Bible (1795); the Blaj Bible and the Şaguna, Filotei editions and the 1914 Bible, the Cornilescu versions etc.
    – Reference works for all time Bible translations: lexicons, dictionaries, concordances, critical editions,
    auxiliary versions, etc.
  3. Biblical Hermeneutics
    – Confessional and theological choices and conditioning (dogmatic, canonical, clerical, worship-related etc.). Theological censorship, political censorship.
    – Patristic tradition — reference points and criteria for sacred texts’ interpretation.
    – The Bible and the literary clerical system: relationships and determinations between the sacred text and clerical hymnography, worship-related literature, iconography, exegetic and homiletic literature.
  4. Sacred Texts’ Historical Reception
    – Integration, dynamics and stylization of biblical quotations in Romanian and other literatures.
    – Dissemination of Romanian Bible versions. Historical references and main Romanian biblical versions criticism (the Bucharest Bible, the Blaj Bible etc.). Textual relationships (borrowing, “corrections”, adaptations etc.) between different biblical versions.
    – Romanian culture and the Bible. Biblical motifs, symbols, structures and characters.
    – Cultural interferences and mentalities impacting the reception of sacred texts: anthropological, sociological, political or philosophical aspects.

    In addition to the traditional sections, for this edition the organizers propose two thematic sections:
    I. Saint Nicodemus of Tismana – 700 years. Production and transmission of the biblical manuscript in the Byzantine Commonwealth
    These years mark seven centuries since the birth of Saint Nicodemus from Tismana, the author of the oldest dated manuscript from Wallachia and the founder of the first Romanian monasteries. These were the first major cultural centers in the Romanian countries, which were incorporated into the network of cultural centers already existing in the Byzantine Commonwealth of Greek and Slavonic languages, which produced biblical manuscripts of great value, with circulation throughout this cultural area, on which the oldest biblical Romanian texts are based. We propose the following thematic directions, any other approaches being welcome:
    – Nicodemus’ Tetraevangelion – the oldest dated manuscript from Wallachia
    – Byzantine biblical lectionaries: production, typikon, circulation, textual tradition
    – Biblical manuscripts in the monastic scriptoria and libraries of the Byzantine Commonwealth
    – Biblical manuscript copying and diffusion centers in the Byzantine Commonwealth
    – Patrons, scribes, calligraphers, illuminators and possessors of biblical manuscripts
    – Illumination of biblical manuscrips in the Byzantine Commonwealth
    – From the Old Church Slavonic to the oldest Romanian lectionaries: Tetraevangelion, Apostle, Psalter and Prophetologion
    II. 350 years since the publication of the Dosoftei’s Rhymed Psalter. The versification of the Psalms in the Romanian and European culture
    – Dosoftei’s Rhymed Psalter: sources, genesis, reception
    – Dosoftei’s Rhymed Psalter as a monument of the Romanian language
    – The place of Dosoftei’s Rhymed Psalter in the history of Romanian literature
    – Rhymed / Metrical Psalters in the European culture
    – Versification as interpretation
    – Rhymed Psalters in Romanian literature: Teodor Corbea (ca 1705), Ioan Prale (1827), Nicolae Liciu (1846), Vasile Militaru (1933), Eugenia Adams Mureşanu (1985), etc.

    We also welcome other interpretations of the Conference theme.

    The official languages of the Symposium will be Romanian, English and French.
    The organisers invite all interested participants to fill in the registration form and send it at simpozionmld@gmail.com. Please email for the form. Selected papers will be published in Reception of the Holy Scriptures: at the crossroads between philology, hermeneutics and translation studies (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University Press, Iaşi), a CEEOL indexed journal.

    The conference fee is 180 lei (40 Euro) and will cover organisation and publication costs. You will only be required to pay this fee if you are accepted to the symposium, in which case we will kindly ask you to transfer the money to the following bank account:

    – Account holder: Asociaţia de Filologie şi Hermeneutică Biblică din România;
    – IBAN code: RO72BRDE240SV57759112400;
    – Bank: BRD, Agenţia Copou, Bd. Carol I, nr. 8, Iaşi

    (Please include Investigations into Romanian and European Biblical Traditions Symposium in the transaction details, and kindly e-mail a scanned copy of the bank receipt to simpozionmld@gmail.com)

    Important dates:
    March 1 – abstract submission deadline
    March 10 – decision for acceptance
    April 15 – fee payment deadline (180 RON / 40 EUR)
    May 18-20 – conference days
    July 15 – full paper submision for the proceedings of the conference

    Information about the previous editions:
    http://consilr.info.uaic.ro/~mld/monumenta/simpozionMLD.html

    Scientific Committee:
    Prof. Eugen Munteanu, Ph.D. (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza” University, Iaşi) (chairman)
    Rev. Dragoş Bahrim, Ph.D. (“Saint Basil the Great” Orthodox Theological Seminary, Iaşi)
    Prof. Gheorghe Chivu, Ph.D. (University of Bucharest)
    Prof. Ioana Costa, Ph.D. (University of Bucharest)
    Prof. Mihai Moraru, Ph.D. (University of Bucharest)
    Prof. Mihaela Paraschiv, Ph.D. (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza University”, Iaşi)
    Prof. Andrei Pleşu, Ph.D. (New Europe College, Bucharest)
    Rev. Prof. Gheorghe Popa, Ph.D. (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza University”, Iaşi)
    Rev. Prof. Ion Vicovan, Ph.D. (“Alexandru Ioan Cuza University”, Iaşi)
    Prof. Wilhelm Tauwinkl, Ph.D. (University of Bucharest)
    Prof. Rodica Zafiu, Ph.D. (University of Bucharest)
    Organising Committee:
    Iosif Camară, Ph.D. (secretary)
    Anca Bibiri, Ph.D.
    Ana Catană-Spenchiu, Ph.D.
    Mioara Dragomir, Ph.D.
    Ana-Maria Gînsac, Ph.D.
    Maria Moruz, Ph.D.
    Mariana Nastasia, Ph.D. student
    Mădălina Ungureanu, Ph.D.

Interdisciplinary Conference ‘Trust in the Premodern World’: An Overview

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27/01/2023

12:26

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Around Oxford, events

Written by Annabel Hancock (St John’s College, Oxford) 
Lead Organiser 
@annabel_hancock 

@PremodernTrust

After over a year of preparation, the conference took place on 13-14th January 2023 in the Oxford History Faculty, and it was a great success! We were thrilled to welcome five eminent keynote speakers as well as 26 speakers and 20 attendees. Attendance was truly international with speakers from the US, Taiwan, Israel, Australia, The Netherlands, and Spain, to name a few places. There were also participants from a range of career stages with a large number of postgraduate students and ECRs speaking alongside renowned professors.  

The call for papers generated a much greater response than expected, from researchers at a variety of career stages and disciplines. While it led to greater organisational challenges, this led to the decision to run parallel sessions, allowing the acceptance of a greater number of papers and wider conversations. This meant we had panels which focused on trust as an emotion and experience, on trust and its relationship to power, to professions, in trade, credit, and debt relationships, and in spaces and systems.  

The keynote speakers acted perfectly to direct the focus of the conference and encourage wide-ranging discussions. Dr Justyna Wubs-Mrozewicz (University of Amsterdam) started us off perfectly, thinking about generalised trust, encouraging us to think about how communities engage with trust in the common good in the medieval city. Professor Teresa Morgan (Yale Divinity School) then encouraged us to think about the ways in which language and meaning develops, showing how ideas of trust in Early Christian faith developed to relate to belief, redefining one’s relationship to God. Dr Nicholas Baker (Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia) then ended the first day perfectly. He showed us that the ways in which merchants thought about time in sixteenth century Italy was deeply complex, looking at the ways in which language related to trust and time expressed anxieties as well as positive hopes. Dr Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo (University of Lincoln) started day two with a look at trust as an emotion, specifically encouraging us to think about the ways in which women took part in the construction of trusted spaces in diplomacy in thirteenth-century Iberia. Our final keynote speaker, Professor Sheilagh Ogilvie (All Souls College, Oxford) delivered a paper encouraging us to think about the voices of premodern people and the ways theories of social capital/networks can hide the darker side of trust communities. She highlighted the ways in which economic approaches to trust can help us to look deeper into the ways in which communities functioned and encouraged us that as historians we have much to add to this conversation. 

Papers and keynote talks led to a great number of discussions and engagement with trust across a range of times and places. Perhaps one of the most exciting parts of many conversations was the realisation that though the 54 total participants all worked on varied times and places across the globe, and on various forms of trust, we all had knowledge and ideas that could be related it, and questions that could be the start of new ways of thinking.  

There is still much to think about and I know that all participants will be processing the discussions we had for a long time to come. Perhaps one of the main take aways at this early stage is the great power that comes with thinking about trust in the past. Through this focus, we can learn more about the economic, social, and cultural lives of people in premodern Europe, and consider the ways in which rationality and emotions are negotiated. 

The organising committee was thrilled to receive much positive feedback, including on social media, from attendees about the event and a great desire for conversations started at the event to continue. This will be an ongoing global network. 

This event would not have been possible without a great amount of support and encouragement from friends, colleagues, various members of the History Faculty admin team, and our generous sponsors. 

Medieval Matters: Week 2

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23/01/2023

10:46

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Around Oxford, events, News

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I hope that you have all settled back into the rhythms of Oxford life. It’s terribly cold this week, with a thick layer of fog covering Oxford’s spires. Here’s some advice from Alcuin on how to wrap up warm:

Nullatenus capitis cura obmittenda est; levius est pedes dolere quam caput
[Care of the head should never be neglected: it is less serious that the feet should suffer than the head, Ep. 114 ]

I interpret this to mean: don’t forget to wear a warm hat! If you want to care for the head in a less literal sense, we of course have a whole host of intellectually stimulating seminars, reading groups and events for you to enjoy this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Medieval Misuse discussion and reading group meets every 2 weeks, on a Thursday 5-6, for an informal discussion about the ways that medieval history, culture and literature are misused by modern political parties and extremist groups. Interested individuals should email: tristan.alphey@stx.ox.ac.uk
  • 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
  • Oxford Ancient Languages Society (OALS) is running a great programme of classes and events this term – perfect for medievalists who want to brush up or acquire Latin! For full details, see their website here.
  • Please note that the Carlyle Lectures are medieval this year! This year’s lectures will be given by John Hudson, on common law and Roman law and custom, C12-13: https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/carlyle-lectures

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 23rd January:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Rebecca Amendola (La Sapienza Università di Roma), Manuscripts in Motion: The Parma Gospel Book (Ms. Pal. 5) and Its Journey to Italy. To register, please contact the organiser at james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. We will start with natural history from a medieval encyclopaedia. 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 Heldris of Cornwall’s Le Roman de Silence. 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 takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College and on Teams (Teams link here). This week’s speaker will be Jamie Wood (Lincoln), ‘The Memory of the Martyrs: The topography of sanctity in Visigothic Toledo.’. 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 24th January:

  • The Europe in the Later Middle Ages Seminar will take place at 2–3.30pm in the New Seminar Room, St John’s College. Tea and coffee available from 1.45pm. This week’s speaker will be Catherine Holmes, Oxford, ‘Networks, brokerage and identity in the late medieval eastern Mediterranean‘.
  • The Comparative Philology Seminar: Old High German meets at 2.15-4pm in the Lecture Theatre of the Centre for Linguistics and Philology (Walton Street). This week’s speakers will Luise Morawetz and Howard Jones, Introduction/Phonology. All are welcome, basic linguistic knowledge is assumed. 
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5-6pm in the Charlese Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. This week’s speaker will be Susannah Bain (Jesus), ‘Maps, Chronicles and Treaties: defining political connections in late-thirteenth-century northern Italy‘.
  • The John Hudson Carlyle Lectures takes place at 5pm at South School, Examination Schools. This week’s lecture will be Legal development in Europe: a view from the 1190s. This lecture examines patterns of legal development in England, France and north Italy in the latter part of the twelfth century. It suggests that those patterns do not act as a clear guide to the developments that followed in the thirteenth century. This lecture will be followed by a drinks reception in North Schools. All are welcome!

Wednesday 25th January:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar will meet at 11:15am in the island room of Oriel College for discussing the prologue of this term’s text, Heinrich von Neustadt’s Apollonius von Tyrland. If you are interested to come along, contact Henrike Lähnemann, to be added to the teams chat.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 2pm at Rees Davies Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Paul Oldfield (Manchester), ‘Inquest and History in Thirteenth-Century Puglia’.
  • GLARE (Greek and Latin Reading Group) takes place at 4-5pm at Jesus College. Please meet at Jesus College Lodge. This week’s text will be Demosthenes, Against Neaera, 72–8. All welcome to attend any and all sessions. For more details and specific readings each week, or to be added to the mailing list, email john.colley@jesus.ox.ac.uk or jenyth.evans@seh.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 (michael.stansfield@new.ox.ac.uk) for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Old French Reading Group takes place at 4-5pm at St Hilda’s College (meet by the lodge). 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 Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Olivier Delouis (Maison Française d’Oxford), ‘Teaching Greek grammar to one’s son: an unpublished manual by Nikolaos Artabasdos Rabdas (14th c.)’.
  • The Medieval English Research Seminar takes place at 5.15pm in Lecture Theatre 2, English Faculty, followed by a drinks reception. This week’s speaker will be William Sweet (Independent), ‘Lydgate and Humanist Reading After Arundel’. All welcome.

Thursday 26th January:

  • The Oxford Medieval Commentary Network will meet at 12.45-2.15pm in the McKenna Room at Christ Church. Please note the change of venue! Free lunch from 12.45, seminar paper begins at 1.15. The speaker will be Tristan Franklinos, Wolfson & Oriel Colleges, Oxford, ‘Peter Abelard’s Hymns as exegesis for the sisters of the Paraclete’. Please direct all questions to cosima.gillhammer:chch.ox.ac.uk, or visit the website.
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speaker will be Julia Craig-McFeely (DIAMM, University of Oxford), The Sadler Sets of Partbooks and Tudor Music Copying. If you are planning to attend a seminar this term, please register using this form. For each seminar, those who have registered will receive an email with the Zoom invitation and any further materials a couple of days before the seminar. If you have questions, please just send an email to matthew.thomson@ucd.ie.
  • The Medieval Misuse discussion and reading group meets at 5-6pm, for an informal discussion about the ways that medieval history, culture and literature are misused by modern political parties and extremist groups. Interested individuals should email: tristan.alphey@stx.ox.ac.uk
  • The Germanic Reading Group meets at 4-5pm on zoom. This week’s topic will be Old Norse skaldic verse (Nelson Goering leading). Please contact Howard Jones Howard.Jones@sbs.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and receive the zoom link.
  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.15pm via Teams and in The History of the Book Room, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Mark Williams (Oxford), ‘Magic and violence in Pedeir Keinc y Mabinogi‘. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk if you need a link.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speakers are Sarah Griffin, Lambeth Palace Library, London, ‘From Hours to Ages: Time in the Large-scale Diagrams of Opicinus de Canistris (1296-c. 1352)‘ and Anya Burgon, Trinity Hall, Cambridge, ‘In a Punctum: Miniature Worlds in Late Medieval Art and Literature‘.
  • The Oxford Interfaith Forum is hosting a lecture by Professor Laurent Mignon, Professor of Turkish Literature at the University of Oxford, UK, at 6-7pm, online. The lecture will be ‘From the People of the Book to the Books of the People: Christian Literature and the 19th Century Ottoman Turkish Literary World‘. For full details and registration, click here.
  • The Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies is hosting The David Patterson Lectures at 6-7pm, at the Catherine Lewis Lecture Room and on zoom. This week’s lecture will be of interest to anyone who teaches papers on the Central Middle Ages, English history, and also to feminist / gender historians of all stripes. The speaker will be Dr Emily Rose, ‘The Expulsion of Jews from England (1290): It is Not What You Think’. To register for online attendance, click here. For enquiries, email enquiries@ochjs.ac.uk.

This weekend marked Lunar New Year: Happy New Year to all who celebrate! This year is the year of the rabbit. I wanted to provide a suitable quote and image but to my knowledge, Alcuin has nothing to write about rabbits, and nor are any to be found in the Ashmole bestiary. So please forgive a temporary departure from our usual material. Here is Albertus Magnus describing the importance of camraderie amongst rabbits:

Est […] animal timidum, et ideo injuriatum relinquit habitationem, quod videns grex totus de loco transit, ac si indignetur ad injurias sociorum
[It is a shy animal, and for that reason when disturbed it flees its home, and seeing this the whole colony leaves the place too, as if offended by the insult to their companion 20:29]

May we medievalists enjoy such loyal companionship!

Announcing the year of the Rabbit (no rabbits were harmed in the making of this year)
Detail from La Queste del Saint Graal, France, N., early 14th century, Royal MS 14 E III, f. 89r