Tag: medieval matters

Medieval Matters: Week 2

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01/05/2023

10:14

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Happy May Morning! The May Morning celebrations in Oxford traditionally mark the official arrival of Spring. If you were up early celebrating at Magdalen Bridge, I hope that you had a wonderful time. Here is some wisdom from Alcuin regarding mornings, whether literal or more metaphorical:

Mane, florentibus per aetatem studiis, seminavi in Brittania
[In the morning of my life, with my spirit flowering during that time, I sowed the seeds of learning in Britain. Ep. 8]

May your May Morning be filled with the seeds of learning! To help you along the way, here are some wonderful events happening this week:

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 1st May:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will meet at 12:30-14:00 via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Paul Ulishney (University of Oxford), The Crisis of the Chalcedonian Episcopate in Egypt, c. 652-c. 710. To register, please contact james.cogbill@worc.ox.ac.uk. 
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. This term we will read some satirical poetry from a thirteenth-century manuscript, the so-called ‘Bekyngton anthology’ (Bodl. MS. Add. A. 44). Sign up for the mailing list to receive updates and the Teams invite, or contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk for more information.
  • The Queer and Trans Medievalisms Reading and Research Group meets at 3pm at Univ College, 12 Merton St Room 2. This week’s theme is Creaturely lais: Marie de France, Bisclavret and Yonec. All extremely welcome! To join the mailing list and get texts in advance, or if you have any questions, email rowan.wilson@univ.ox.ac.uk.
  •  The Medieval History Seminar meets at 5pm at the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Tom Johnson (York) ‘Reckoning and Economic Life in Late-Medieval England‘. The seminar will also be available remotely via Teams. The Teams session can be accessed by logging in to Teams with your .ox.ac.uk account and joining the group “Medieval History Research Seminar” (team code rmppucs). If you have any difficulties please email: medhistsem@history.ox.ac.uk.

Tuesday 2nd May:

  • The Medieval English Research Seminar will meet at 12:00 in Lecture Theatre 2, St Cross Building. This week’s speaker will be Jeremy Smith (University of Glasgow), Reinventing medieval English liturgy: the lives and afterlives of The Lay Folks’ Mass Book.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at the Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College, with tea & coffee from 5pm; papers begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Virginia Bainbridge (freelance researcher), ‘Taking advantage? Syon Abbey and regime change in the Wars of the Roses’. Everyone is welcome at this informal and friendly graduate seminar!

Wednesday 3rd May:

  • The Medieval German Seminar will meet at 11:15-12.45pm at St Edmund Hall Old Library. In Trinity Term, we are continuing to discuss Heinrich von Neustadt’s texts, focussing on ‘Von Gottes Zukunft’. We will meet in person in the Old Library of St Edmund Hall. This week we will be discussing the prologue. Further information and reading recommendations via the teams channel; if you want to be added to that: please email Henrike Lähnemann.
  • The Old High German Reading Group at 11-12 in 41 Wellington Square, 2nd floor (Henrike Lähnemann’s office). It will be an opportunity to read and analyse some simpler OHG texts and give people the chance to read the oldest form of German if they’ve not been exposed to it before. It will be very informal, and all are welcome. Led by William Thurlwell william.thurlwell@wolfson.ox.ac.uk – contact him for updates
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar meets at 5pm at Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St. Giles. This week’s speaker will be Nikolas Vryzidis (Aristoteleio Panepistimio, Thessaloniki), ‘Transitional threads: Textiles in the late medieval Balkans, 14th-16th centuries’.

Thursday 4th May:

  • The Environmental History Group meets at 12-2pm in the Rees Davies Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Jake Hatton, “‘Land for Improvement’: extraction and ecosystem in mid-18th century Nova Scotia”. We try to keep discussions informal, and we encourage anyone at all interested in these kinds of approaches to join our meetings, regardless of research specialism or presumed existing knowledge. For those interested in joining the group, you can join our mailing list by getting in touch with us at environmentalhistoryworkinggroup-owner@maillist.ox.ac.uk.
  • The Searobend Masterclass and Focus Group for Linked Metadata for English Language Texts, 1000-1300 will take place at 2-5pm at the Weston Library. This event will showcase the project’s sources and methods, including a masterclass on Bodley 340+342, and an introduction to linked open data, knowledge graphs, and metadata structure. It aims to gather feedback from undergraduates, postgraduates, and early career researchers, which will influence the size, structure and scope of the project’s final website interface, scheduled to launch in July 2024. Tea and coffee break will be provided. Participants will need to bring a laptop. To register, sign up on EventBrite: https://tinyurl.com/56b8z8e6 For more information, please contact Matthew Holford (matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk), Colleen Curran (ccurran2@tcd.ie), or Mark Faulkner (mark.faulkner@tcd.ie).
  • The Medieval Women’s Writing Reading Group meets at 3-4pm at Lincoln College: meet at the lodge. This week’s theme will be Female foremothers: imitating and building on the authority of past women. Please email katherine.smith@lincoln.ox.ac.uk to be added to the mailing list and get texts in advance, or to find out more.
  • Simon Horobin is leading this week’s Piers Plowman in Context discussion group, which meets in the Butler Room at Univ (please note the change of college room) from 4:30-5:30pm. This week’s session will be on Passus V of the B-text, which we’ll be discussing in relation to the following short contexts: the section on ‘Sloth’ from the Book of Vices and Virtues; sermon 11A from Lollard Sermons; and the section ‘De Invidia’ from Chaucer’s Parson’s Tale; all available through this link: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ecmqwQpuxmxbEn7e9Pu0uFCMVONSCdRC?usp=share_link All welcome! Email jacob.ridley@univ.ox.ac.uk with any questions.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15-6.45pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Richard Gameson (Durham University), British Medieval Illuminators’ Blues. For further information, contact Elena Lichmanova (elena.lichmanova@merton.ox.ac.uk).
  • The Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term Lecture will take place at 5:30-6:30pm in St Edmund Hall, Old Library. Alison Ray (Archivist at St Peter’s) and Heather Barr (Library Trainee at St Edmund Hall) will be speaking on “GLAMorous work: Medievalist Pathways in Archives and Libraries”. Join us for a careers talk with a twist and with coffee and cake PLUS the chance to see an exhibition in the Old Library and handle some of the special collections!

Friday 5th May:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library (instructions how to find it) with presentation of items from the special collections, coffee and the chance to see the view from the 5th floor terrace.

Of course, whilst being up at 5am to welcome in the seeds of learning is all very well and good, there’s also a lot to be said for enjoying a bank-holiday lie-in! Alcuin, of course, also has some wisdom for those less inclined towards early mornings:

pia compassione fessum concedat requiescere
[With compassionate sympathy, let the tired rest, Ep. 198]

Wishing you all a week of rest and learning in equal measure!

[A Medievalist feeling rather tired after waking up early for May Morning]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 62 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 0

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19/04/2023

14:33

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Welcome back to Oxford, and to the Oxford Medieval Studies Trinity Term programme! We have so many exciting things in store for you this term, and I’m really looking forward to once again being your guide for all of Oxford’s Medieval Matters. In the words of Alcuin:

nos semper suspensi de reditu tuo
[I will be continually in suspense until your return, Ep. 64]

To kick the term off to a triumphant start, we have two very special events. Firstly, the Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference: Names and Naming, takes place on April 20th and 21st, both Online & In-Person at Ertegun House, Oxford. Secondly, this Saturday, April 22nd, join us for the annual Medieval Mystery Plays at St Edmund Hall! This is sure to be a day of merriment and festivity, and a chance to celebrate the diverse languages, departments and medievalists of our community. For the short programme, see the pdf attached to this week’s email, and please see the event listings below for further details.

The full OMGC and Mystery Play programmes can be found here, along with a sneak-peek at some of the offerings in the draft of this term’s Medieval Booklet. If you have not sent in your booklet submissions yet, please do so ASAP to ensure inclusion in time for the full release on Monday.

The full newsletter will begin again on Monday, but for now, a sample of the delights in store upon our return to term time:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • SAVE THE DATE: 26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5pm UK time: In celebration of the release of vol. 2 of the Journal of Manuscript and Text Cultures (MTC) by the Centre for Manuscript and Text Cultures (CMTC), which takes an explicitly experimental approach of involving digital tools for the presentation of research in manuscript cultures, CMTC are holding a round table 26 APRIL (Wednesday week 1 of Trinity Term), 5pm UK time at the Memorial Room of The Queen’s College, Oxford. The topic of the round table will be digital publishing and future research in manuscript studies. The round table will be chaired by Richard Ovenden, OBE, Professorial Fellow and Bodley’s Librarian. More information to follow.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Thursday 20th April:

  • The Oxford Medieval Graduate Conference 2023: Names & Naming takes place at 9-6pm, both online and at Ertegun House. Attendance is free, but you must register in advance. To register to attend, either online or in person, please visit the conference website here.
  • A Special Lecture for the Churches Conservation Trust will take place at 1pm, online via Facebook Live. Shelley M. Williams will be presenting at this lecture, which will consider how the twelve signs of the zodiac were incorporated into ecclesiastical architecture between c. 1100-1250 CE. To attend, please click this link.

Friday 21st April:

Saturday 22nd April:

  • The Medieval Mystery Plays take place at 12-3:30pm at St Edmund Hall. Join us on this merry multilingual journey featuring plays dating from between the 12th and the 16th century! This highlight of the Oxford medieval calendar offers a variety of plays in different medieval and modern languages, staged at several stations in the beautiful grounds of St Edmund Hall. Cycles of plays retelling stories from the Bible were a popular form of entertainment in the Middle Ages, which we are only too happy to revive for modern audiences. Admission is free and you are welcome to turn up at any time. For more details about the programme, please see our blog post here.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • “Noblesse Oblige? Barons and the Public Good” Network: Last Call for Associate Membership! Though there might be another call next year, if you wish to take part in this year’s conference and associated events, please email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk with your CV and a brief cover letter. Full details can be found at http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/2023/03/05/new-ahrcnetwork-noblesse-oblige/ and https://noblesseoblige.exeter.ac.uk/.”
  • Three-year Senior Researcher Position at the University of Oslo, Deadline May 14th: A three-year Senior Researcher position in medieval studies has been just announced at the University of Oslo with the application deadline on May 14th. The job will be available  from the fall of 2023. The position is funded by the ERC Advanced Grant project 101018645 MINiTEXTS “Minuscule Texts: Marginalized Voices in Early Medieval Latin Culture (c. 700–c.1000),”. A more detailed description of this position and the application requirements are provided at the job announcement at https://www.jobbnorge.no/en/available-jobs/job/242179/senior-researcher-in-medieval-studies.
  • 10 funded PhDs opportunities within the Marie Skłodowska-Curie doctoral network “From Antiquity to Community: Rethinking Classical Heritage through Citizen Humanities” (AntCom): Interested applicants will find information on the training program, on each fellowship as well as details on specific requirements and the application process on the consortium’s website: https://antcom.eu/call-for-applications/. For further questions you are welcome to contact the project’s PI Aglae Pizzone (pizzone@sdu.dk).
  • The Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies is excited to hire a new postdoctoral research scholar in premodern critical race studies. This position is open to PhDs in language, history, religion, philosophy, classics, or related humanistic fields. The postdoctoral research scholar will join our ongoing Mellon Foundation-funded RaceB4Race initiative for a two-year appointment starting Fall 2023 at a stipend salary of $75,000/fiscal year. More information and how to apply can be found at our website.

I will return to your inboxes on Monday with the Medieval Booklet and the Week 1 events. In the meantime, we hope to see many of you on Saturday for the mystery plays. For those of you contributing to the plays, some words of wisdom from Alcuin:

modo vero viriliter fac et fortiter!
[Play your part powerfully and bravely! Ep. 72]

Wishing you all a week of power and bravery in all of your medieval endeavours!

[A brave and powerful performance at the mystery plays!]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 27 v.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 8

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06/03/2023

06:44

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Around Oxford, events

,

It feels like term has just begun, but here we are in week 8 already! That said, the medievalist happenings at Oxford are far from over. In fact, we have an especially full week of exciting events and seminars lined up for you! This isn’t surprising: even Alcuin knew that week 8 was sometimes the richest of all the weeks:

saepe posterior adfert hora, quod prior non poterat
[Often the later hour brings what the earlier hour could not, Ep. 239]

Please do peruse the announcements, events and opportunities listed below, to see all of the joys that the ‘late hour’ of Week 8 has brought to us:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • New AHRC Network: Noblesse Oblige? ‘Barons’ and the Public Good in Medieval Afro-Eurasia (10th-14th Centuries). This network is a forum for the re-evaluation of ‘baronial’ government and the common good between the tenth and fourteenth centuries across different Afro-Eurasian polities. For full details, please see the network website here. The network is also offering two opportunities: a conference and call for associate membership — see the “opportunities” section of this email for full details!
  • The Oxford Interfaith Forum will be hosting a talk of interest to Medievalists next week, on 13th March, 6-7pm, via Zoom. The talk will be Dr Nick Posegay (University of Cambridge), ‘Material and Linguistic History of Arabic Manuscripts in Muslim and Jewish Contexts‘. To register, please click here.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 6th March:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Juliana Santos Dinoá Medeiros (Uniwersytet Warszawski), Hagiography and miracle performance in seventh-century Gaul. 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 Ulrich von Liechtenstein’s Frauendienst. 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 today is CANCELLED.
  • A Workshop for the Medieval Mystery Plays will take place in the Pontigny Room, St Edmund Hall, with David Wiles and Jim Harris, for all actors and directors, 4:30-6pm.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Jacopo Gnisci (UCL), Ethiopia and Byzantium: Reframing the Evidence. (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). 
  • The Lincoln Leads seminar takes place at 5.30–7pm at Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College. This week’s panel is ‘How do we define ‘child’ and ‘adult’?’, and features Harriet Soper (Fellow in English Literature) on life courses in Old English poetry. Book a free place here.

Tuesday 7th March:

  • 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 Duncan Hardy, University of Central Florida, ‘Reform and crusade at the imperial diets: towards a new explanatory framework for political change in the late medieval Holy Roman Empire‘.
  • The third and final lecture of this year’s E. A. Lowe Lectures in Palaeography takes place at 5pm in the MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College. This year’s lectures are given by Prof. Niels Gaul, A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Today’s lecture will be on the subject of  “Authority”, and relates expressions of authorial ethos to matters of mise-en-page, with particular attention to marginal spaces. All welcome.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets in the Charles Wellbeloved Room, Harris Manchester College. Paper starts at 5.15pm, with tea, coffee, biscuits and friendly Medievalist chat from 5pm! This week’s speakers will be Henrietta Leyser (St Peter’s) and Samuel Fanous (Bodleian Library): The Vision of the Monk of Eynsham
  • Concert ‘Inn stetter hut’: The Linarol Consort of Viols and James Gilchrist present a songbook from the court of Emperor Maximilian 7.30-9.30pm at the Holywell Music Room, preceded by a free pre-concert talk 5.55-6.45pm at the same venue with Henrike Lähnemann. Tickets for both can be obtained at https://www.ticketsource.co.uk/linarolconsort. Listen to the concert playlist.

Wednesday 8th March:

  • The Medieval German Seminar features a special guest lecture by Dr Aletta Leipold (Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch, Leipzig), 11.15-12.45 in the island room, Oriel College.
  • The Medieval Crafternoon will take place at 1.30-4.30pm at 21 St Giles, St John’s College. Come along for an afternoon of medieval textile crafts! The guided workshop will focus on four textile techniques, and refreshments will be served. To sign up, click here. For question, email Eleanor Birch.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 3.30pm at G. Martin Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Nicola Carotenuto (Oxford, St Hugh’s): ’Trade, traders, and institutions in late medieval Venice’.
  • The Medieval Latin Document Reading Group meets on Teams at 4-5pm. We are currently focusing on medieval documents from New College’s archive as part of the cataloguing work being carried out there, so there will be a variety of hands, dates and types. A document is sent out in advance but homework is not expected. Contact Michael Stansfield for further details and the Teams link.
  • The Late Antique and Byzantine Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, 66 St Giles. This week’s speaker will be Zachary Chitwood (Univ. of Mainz), ‘A Cloister for the (Grand) Komnenoi: Dynastic Rivalry and Memoria at the Foundation of Dionysiou Monastery on Mount Athos’.
  • 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 Niamh Kehoe (University of Düsseldorf), ‘Humour and Horror in Ælfric´s Passion of St Vincent’.

Thursday 9th March:

  • 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 Alistair Minnis, Emeritus Professor, Yale, ‘Reconciling amour and yconomique: The significance of the Chess of Love commentary by Evrart de Conty (c.1330–1405)’. Please direct all questions to Cosima Gillhammer, or visit the website
  • The Seminar in Medieval and Renaissance Music will take place on Zoom at 5pm. This week’s speaker will be Emily Zazulia (University of California at Berkeley), The Fifteenth-Century Song Mass: Some Challenges. 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 5.15pm via Teams and in The History of the Book Room, English Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Nora White (Maynooth), ‘Multimedia ogham and digital epigraphy‘. Please contact David Willis if you need a link.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Mary Carruthers New York University, All Souls College, Oxford, ‘Envisioning Thinking: Geometry and Meditation in  the Twelfth Century‘.
  • The Medieval Vestments Conference takes place at St John’s College on March 9-10. This conference is inspired by the college’s collection with a mixture of impressive speakers, interactive workshops, and dynamic displays. To register, visit the eventbrite page.

Friday 10th March:

  • Weston Library Medieval Coffee Morning, 10.30-11.30, will feature Old High German glosses, scratch and otherwise, presented by Luise Morawetz. For more information on newly found glosses in the Bodleian cf. http://medieval.seh.ox.ac.uk/2022/12/13/ms-canon-pat-lat-57/
  • Double bill on etymology in German and English with Aletta Leipold (Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch) rûna, rîzan, scrîban – A Cultural History of Writing based on examples from the Old High German dictionary, 3-4pm, and Philip Durkin (Oxford English Dictionary): Lexical Borrowing – Fremdwörter, Lehnwörter and German words in English, 4-5pm, in 47 Wellington Square, 1st floor, lecture room 1 (access via the second staircase, end of the corridor), the final session of Henrike Lähnemann’s lecture series on German Historical Linguistics.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Conference and Call for Associate Membership: Noblesse Oblige? ‘Barons’ and the Public Good in Medieval Afro-Eurasia (10th-14th Centuries). We would like to welcome any who might be interested in our research to join a conference, which will take place in Oxford between the 25th and the 27th May 2023 – 5th week of Trinity. In addition, we would like to open our network to associate members: this is especially aimed at early career academics or students interested in questions of governance, elites, and the common good in this period. Any student or ECR interested in joining as an associate member should email max.lau@worc.ox.ac.uk with a CV and short personal statement on their research and what they would contribute to the network. For full details, please see the OMS blog here and the network website here.
  • CfP: Dissolving Kinship in the Early Middle Ages, ca. AD 400-1000: The University of York, 1-2 June 2023. Proposals for 30-minute papers are invited from late-stage postgraduates and ECRs. Due to the generosity of the Past & Present Society and the Department of History, University of York, accepted speakers who wish to present in person will receive at least a 150-pound bursary towards travel and accommodation. We also welcome applications for virtual presentations. Please send ca. 300 word abstracts and a brief bio to both organisers, Dr Alex Traves (alex.traves@york.ac.uk) and Dr Becca Grose (becca.grose@york.ac.uk), by 7 April 2023. For full details, please click here.
  • Invitation to Attend an International Conference “Episcopal Leadership. Shaping Power in Gaul and Hispania (IVth-VIIth centuries)”, organized by Prof. Dr. Sabine Panzram (RomanIslam Center, Universität Hamburg), Prof. Dr. Marc Heijmans (Aix Marseille Université, Centre Camille Jullian) and Dr. Paulo Pachá (RomanIslam Center, Universidade Federal di Rio de Janeiro). The workshop will take place on 6-8 March 2023 (in person and on Zoom). For full details, please click here.

Of course, whilst this week marks the last week of teaching term, it’s not the end of Medieval happenings in Oxford. In fact, I’m sure many of us are looking forward to the opportunity to hunt down some elusive research time! Here is Alcuin on the difficulty of finding research time:

Fateor siquidem: propemodum ante annos triginta voluntatem huius habere operis; sed quievit calamus meus…
[I confess, I had a desire to write this work thirty years ago: but my pen was at rest… Ep. 159]

Wishing you all a week full of exciting medievalist gatherings, and a vac full of bountiful and productive research time!

[Medievalists hunt for the rare beast known as “research time”]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 10 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 7

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27/02/2023

10:48

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Around Oxford, events

,

Teaching term may be starting to wrap up, but things are still extremely busy here at OMS. There are so many exciting events and upcoming free-to-attend online conferences for us to enjoy that it’s hard to remember that we are entering the final fortnight of term! That said, I am sure I am not alone in feeling quite tired at this point in the term. For those of you feeling likewise, here is some wisdom from Alcuin:

Saepe […] bos lassus fortius figit ungulam
[The tired ox always puts his hoof down more strongly, Ep. 85]

In other words, though we might be tired this week, we might still do our best work! Here is the week’s roundup of events – there’s lots to take strength from:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • Medieval Vestments Conference at St John’s College (March 9-10). Taking inspiration from the college’s unique gallery of stunning medieval vestments, this conference will feature two day’s worth of speakers and presenters. These presentations will be enriched by displays from both the college and Bodleian Library archives as well as a dynamic exhibition of works created during the conference workshops. Please register for the segments that you are interested in and able to attend here on eventbrite.
  • The After Constantine Journal, Medievalists.net, and the Orthodox Academy of Crete invite you to attend the conference Easter in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, which will take place on Zoom and YouTube on April 1st, 2023. This conference will examine how Easter was celebrated and viewed from Late Antiquity throughout the medieval period. Every year this would be a high point of the Christian life, and late antique and medieval people were keenly interested in many aspects of this event. For full details, please see here.
  • There will be a half-day colloquium on the quattrocento scholar, Sicco Polenton, and his magnum opus – the first extended history of Latin literature to have been written in modernity – at Faculty of Classics in Oxford on Friday, 14 April 2023. It will begin at 13:45. Attendance is free, but please register attendance by writing to Tristan Franklinos.

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 27th February:

  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar will not take place today. The seminar resumes next week!
  • The Medieval Latin Manuscript Reading Group led by Matthew Holford and Andrew Dunning is meeting as usual via Teams from 1-2pm. We will continue 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 speaker is Kat Smith on ‘The female pursuit of  knowledge through the Virgin Mary’s breasts in 15th century Castile’. 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 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 Laura Light (Les Enluminures), “Latin Bibles in England c. 1200-c. 1230“. For further information contact matthew.holford@bodleian.ox.ac.uk or andrew.dunning@bodleian.ox.ac.uk.
  • A special lecture on Islamic Law in Norman Sicily, by Professor Jeremy Johns, will take place at 5pm in the L. W. Auditorium, Wolfson College.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Liesbeth van Houts (Cambridge), ‘Towards a new biography of Empress Matilda: what can be known about the women of her acquaintance?.‘ (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). 
  • The Lincoln Leads seminar takes place at 5.30–7pm at Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College. This week’s panel is ‘Failure and First Drafts’. Book a free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/lincoln-leads-2023-1539199

Tuesday 28th 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 Peter Crooks, Trinity College Dublin, ‘Chimera of Conquest: Colonial Warfare in Late Medieval Ireland‘.
  • The Codicology and the material book seminar takes place at 2-3.30pm in the Weston Library, Lecture Theatre. This week’s speaker will be Teresa Webber, on Medieval Libraries.
  • Dr Nelson Goering will be talking about Old High German and Old Saxon metre from 2:15 to 3:45 on the ground floor of the Linguistics Faculty on Walton Street as part of the Comparative Linguistics Seminar.
  • The Medieval French Research Seminar takes place at 5pm at the Maison française d’Oxford (www.mfo.ac.uk). Drinks at 5pm, presentations begin at 5.15pm. This week’s speaker will be Dominique Lagorgette (Université Savoie Mont Blanc), ‘“Par sainct Copin, je suis tanné”. Jurons et blasphèmes dans quelques textes des en moyen français : représentations de l’oralité et transgression’. For more information, to be added to the seminar maillist, or for the Teams link to join a seminar remotely, contact helen.swift@st-hildas.ox.ac.uk.
  • Medieval Church and Culture meets on Tuesday at Harris Manchester, 5pm (tea and biscuits) for a 5.15pm paper. The speaker will be  Elena Lichmanova (Merton), on Humour in the Margins: the interpretative problem.
  • The first of this year’s E. A. Lowe Lectures in Palaeography takes place at 5pm in the MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College. This year’s lectures are given by Prof. Niels Gaul, A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Today’s lecture will be on the subject of “Codex”, and explores the phenomenon of Byzantine literati curating their own writings in codex format and possible ancient and patristic models; with glances at similar practices in other medieval manuscript cultures. All welcome.

Wednesday 1st March:

  • No Medieval German Seminar this week – watch out for some special events in week 8 with guest Dr Aletta Leipold from the Althochdeutsches Wörterbuch (Leipzig)!
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar has been changed to Friday: please see full details there.
  • 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 Nikos Zagklas (Univ. of Vienna), ‘Τhe Cinderella of Byzantine Literature: Rethinking Schedography in Middle and Late Byzantine Periods’.
  • 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 Tom Grant (University of Utrecht), ‘In Defence of Bjarki: Reappraising Beowulf’s Links with Scandinavian Legend’.
  • A taster session for the Old Frisian Summer School will take place at 5.15pm, at the Taylor Institution Library, Room 2. We will be discussing the similarities between Old Frisian and Old English and aspects of the settlement history of Frisians. No booking required. For further information, please contact by the organiser Dr Johanneke Sytsema.

Thursday 2nd March:

  • The Celtic Seminar will take place at 5.00pm via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be Dimitra Fimi, ‘Magic writing: Representations of the Og(h)am script in contemporary fantasy‘. Please contact a.elias@wales.ac.uk for the link.
  • The second of this year’s E. A. Lowe Lectures in Palaeography takes place at 5pm in the MBI Al Jaber Auditorium, Corpus Christi College. This year’s lectures are given by Prof. Niels Gaul, A G Leventis Professor of Byzantine Studies and Director of the Centre for Late Antique, Islamic and Byzantine Studies at the University of Edinburgh. Today’s lecture will be on the subject of “Ethos”, and examines the ways in which such codices were thought to display the author’s character, and what the concept entailed in this context. All welcome.

Friday 3rd March:

  • The Medieval Coffee Morning meets as usual 10:30am in the Visiting Scholars Centre of the Weston Library with presentation of items from the special collections.
  • A taster lecture for the Old Frisian Summer School will take place at 3-4pm, at 47 Wellington Square, 1st floor, Lecture Room 1, about Old Frisian among the other Germanic languages (part of the Paper IV German Historical Linguistics series). No booking required. For further information, please contact by the organiser Dr Johanneke Sytsema.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 3.30pm at G. Martin 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’.
  • 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.

Saturday 4th March:

  • A Church Monuments Society Online Lecture takes place at 5pm, online. Dr Karen Blough (Professor Emerita of Art History at SUNY Plattsborough) will be speaking about Abbatial Effigies from Quedlinburg in the Medieval and Early Modern Era. For full details and to register, please click here for the eventbrite page.

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Columbia University is hosting A Colloquium for Early Medieval Studies, Indigenous Futures / Medieval Pasts: “Analogues and Kinship: A Talking Circle”, taking place on March 10, at 10:30am-3:30pm ET / 15:30 – 20:30 GMT. This CEMS talking circle and workshop facilitates a broad discussion about the politics, power structures, and potentials of thinking about medieval pasts in concert with Indigenous futures. To register to attend via zoom, please click here.

Finally, some wisdom on Alcuin on prudent library use when you are tired:

quod pondera librorum nobiscum portari nequeunt, ideo aliquotiens brevitati studendum est, ut […]habeat fessus ex itinere viator, quo se recreet: licet ex pondere portantis manus non gravetur
[Because we cannot carry heavy books, we have sometimes had to aspire to brevity, so that the traveller weary from the road might have what restores them, without their hands being weighed down by the weight of it Ep. 49]

In other words, take lightly from the libraries this week: don’t let your weary hands be weighed down by great stacks of books!

[A Medievalist struggles with a particularly weighty tome…]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 28 r.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

Medieval Matters: Week 6

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20/02/2023

08:41

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We are well into term and also into February. I don’t want to be too optimistic, but I think I saw some sunshine in Oxford last week! Brighter days are coming. Of course, all days are bright when they have wisdom in them, so here is some advice for fellow teaching staff this week:

Ergo magistri minuitur auctoritas, si doctrina eius destruitur opere
[The authority of a teacher will be diminished if their teachings are refuted by their own works. Ep. 217]

In other words: those who can do, teach! Of course, what better way to supplement your own works (and by extension, your teaching) with some of our fabulous seminars and reading groups? Let’s lead by example this week:

ANNOUNCEMENTS:

  • The Oxford Centre for Textual Editing and Theory is organising a workshop on ‘Genetic Narratology’ – combining genetic criticism and narrative analysis (23-24 February 2023, Jesus College, Oxford), with Karin Kukkonen as keynote speaker. Please find the preliminary programme and free registration via Eventbrite.
  • Please note that the time and date of The Medieval Italian Seminar has changed: this week’s paper will now take place on Friday at 11.30am at Colin Matthew Room, History Faculty.
  • From the Breast, an interdisciplinary hybrid seminar series and workshop whose central theme revolves around representations of breastfeeding and infant feeding in pre-modern culture will have a seminar relevant to medievalists on Wednesday 22 February, advertised below, but also several other seminars and a workshop on pre-modern breastfeeding more broadly. Please see the Eventbrite here to register for all upcoming events!
  • Valentine’s Day at the Medieval Church and Culture seminar featured a enthralling talk from Dr Federica Gigante, Curator of the Collection from the Islamic World at the History of Science Museum in Oxford.  Federica showed us the many places where Islamic textiles can be found in medieval Christian religious settings – places we’ve all seen, but never realised what we were looking at! If you missed Federica’s talk, please see our blog post here for some of the highlights.
  • Save the date! We will be running another workshop on voice projection and staging for the Medieval Mystery Cycle. This will take place on Monday 6 March (Week 8), 4.30–6pm, in the Pontigny Room at St Edmund Hall. All actors and directors interested in taking part are welcome! Beyond general voice projection exercises, there will also be an opportunity to work out staging constellations on site at St Edmund Hall (as well as an opportunity to enjoy tea and cake). The workshop will be led by Dr Jim Harris, the Mystery Cycle’s Master of Ceremonies and Teaching Curator at the Ashmolean Museum. Please let us know if you’re able to join us by emailing michael.angerer@ccc.ox.ac.uk.
  • CALL FOR TIKTOK PARTICIPANTS As you should know by now, OMS has a new TikTok account, and we want to use it to highlight the work of medievalists at Oxford (and beyond)! https://tiktok.com/@OxMedStud. If you’d be willing to film a short TikTok for us talking about what you’re working on or some interesting aspect of the medieval world, email ashley.castelino@lincoln.ox.ac.uk!

EVENTS THIS WEEK:

Monday 20th February:

  • The Childhood and Youth Studies Network is delighted to announce our first pedagogy session, with a focus on sources for integrating childhood and youth studies into teaching for undergraduate or postgraduate students. This session is run in conjunction with the Centre for the Study of the Book at the Bodleian Library, and is open to teaching staff of all career stages who hold a University or Bodleian Reader card. For full details, see here. Register via Eventbrite for the first session at 11.30-12.30 or the second session at 12.30-1.30, both Horton Room at the Weston Library. 
  • The Byzantine Graduate Seminar takes place at 12.30-2pm online via Zoom. This week’s speaker will be James Duncan (University of Liverpool), Mechanical Dragons and Underground Cults: Quodvultdeus’s Hidden Pagans. 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 continuing with the natural history theme. 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 Dietrich von der Glezze’s Der Borte. 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 Dr Corisande Fenwick, UCL, ‘The transformation of medieval Morocco: State formation and everyday life‘.
  • The Medieval History Seminar takes place at 5pm in the Wharton Room, All Souls College. This week’s speaker will be Erin Dailey (Leicester), and her talk’s title is Domestic Slavery, Sexual Exploitation, and the Transformation of the Late Roman World, AD 300-900 (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 ). 
  • The Lincoln Leads seminar takes place at 5.30–7pm at Oakeshott Room, Lincoln College. This week’s panel is ‘What is the use of the modern museum?’. Book a free place here: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/cc/lincoln-leads-2023-1539199

Tuesday 21st 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 Maria João Branco, Universidade Nova, Lisbon, ‘Status, Service and Function: Revisiting Royal Councillors and Governance in 12th-13th-Century Portugal‘.
  • The Medieval Church and Culture Seminar meets at 5-6pm in the Charles 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 Laura Light (Les Enluminures), The Paris Bible: what is it, and why its name matters.
  • The concluding Carlyle Lecture in Medieval Law with Prof. John Hudon (St Andrews) takes place at 5pm in South School, Examination Schools. This lecture reflects on the problems and possibilities of comparative legal history before moving on to the differences and similarities in patterns of England, France, and north Italy in the period c.1160-1270. All are welcome.

Wednesday 22nd February:

  • The Medieval German Graduate Seminar will meet at 11:15am in the island room of Oriel College with Marlene Schilling presenting the personification of Frau Minne and Frau Venus in Heinrich von Neustadt’s Apollonius von Tyrland. If you are interested to come along, contact Henrike Lähnemann, to be added to the teams chat.
  • 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 Thucydides, Peloponnesian War, 6.26.1–27.3. 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 Robert Wizniewski (Univ. of Warsaw), ‘The labourer is worthy of his hire? Clerics and their income in Late Antiquity’.
  • 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 Cosima Gillhammer (University of Oxford), ‘For to telle treuly holy writ and schortly and pleynly: The Wycliffite Gospel Commentaries’.
  • From the Breast, an interdisciplinary hybrid seminar series will meet at 6-7pm online. This week’s speakers are Mazi Kuzi, Tel Aviv University, Breastfeeding Culture in Twelfth-Century France, and Anna Packman, University of Birmingham ‘modes meolc’ (‘milk of the mind’): Milk as Metaphor in Old English Literature. Please see the Eventbrite here to register!

Thursday 23rd 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 Miri Rubin, Queen Mary University of London, ‘Nigra sum: What Song of Songs Commentaries Can Tell Us About the Meanings of Blackness’. Please direct all questions to cosima.gillhammer:chch.ox.ac.uk, or visit the website.
  • The Celtic Seminar by Stuart Dunmore (Edinburgh), ‘Language acquisition motivations and identity orientations among Scottish Gaelic diasporas in Nova Scotia and New England‘ has been POSTPONED to 2 November. Please contact david.willis@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk for further info.
  • The Medieval Visual Culture Seminar meets at 5.15pm at St Catherine’s College, Arumugam Building. This week’s speaker will be Jack Hartnell University of East Anglia, ‘Visualising Wombs and Obstetrical Fantasies in Late Medieval Germany‘.

Friday 24th 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, this week some manuscripts of the Rigveda, presented by Barbora Sojkova, a graduate trainee librarian at All Souls College (who has also been helping with the Bodleian Sanskrit cataloguing). Watch here the last medieval presentation by Dr Thea Gomelauri on the layout of Hebrew Bibles.
  • The Medieval Italian Seminar will take place at 11.30am at Colin Matthew Room, History Faculty. This week’s speaker will be Trevor Dean (Roehampton): ‘Female killers in late medieval Bologna‘. Please note the change of time and venue!

OPPORTUNITIES:

  • Utrecht University is looking for two researchers (1 PhD candidate and 1 Postdoc) to complete the team of the NWO VIDI project Lettercraft and Epistolary Performance in Early Medieval Europe, 476–751 CE, running from 2023-2027. The PhD candidate (1,0 fte, 4 years, details here) will conduct a case study of the consensus-building powers of lettercraft in the context of Merovingian episcopal successions. The Postdoc (0,8 fte, 2 years, details here) will work together with the project leader, Dr Robert Flierman, to develop and explore two new research tools for the study of lettercraft in early medieval Europe. The application deadline is 12 March. The projects are set to start on 1 July 2023.
  • The History Department at Hamilton College invites applications for a one-year position at the rank of Visiting Assistant Professor, beginning July 1, 2023. We seek candidates to teach courses on Late Antiquity and Early Medieval Histories. Candidates with ABD will be considered, although candidates with a Ph.D. are preferred. The teaching load for this position is five courses. Candidates should submit a cover letter, c.v., and two letters of recommendation via interfolio at http://apply.interfolio.com/121331. Questions regarding the search may be directed to John Eldevik, Search Committee Chair, at jeldevik@hamilton.edu. Our review of applications will begin on March 20, 2023.
  • Two postdoc posts (five years) are now being advertised to work on Professor Helen Fulton’s ERC/UKRI project, ‘The Medieval March of Wales, c. 1282–1550’. Closing date is 16 March. Please circulate widely. Enquiries to helen.fulton@bristol.ac.uk. For full details and to apply, see here.

I began this email by addressing teaching staff, but don’t worry, I haven’t forgotten the students of our community! Some advice on the importance of taking charge of your own learning:

Et si quid minus accepistis, non meae, credo, culpae deputari potest!
[And if anyone didn’t learn sufficiently, I don’t think they can assign the blame to me [the teacher]!, Ep. 34]

May we all learn sufficiently this week, and blame nobody for our lapses! Wishing you a sunny Week 6 full of learning and teaching.

[“Whose fault is it that we didn’t learn enough this week?”]
Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library MS. Ashmole 1511, f. 25 v.
Viewable in full at Digital Bodleian

‘Nolumus mutare…’: further reflections

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16/02/2023

01:22

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Tuesday 21 February, 5:00pm 

South School, Examination Schools 

This concluding lecture reflects on the problems and possibilities of comparative legal history before moving on to the differences and similarities in patterns of England, France, and north Italy in the period c.1160-1270.

All are welcome.

Link to their page here.

‘Secreted in the interstices of procedure’: actions, ideas, and legal change

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16/02/2023

01:20

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Tuesday 14 February, 5:00pm 

South School, Examination Schools 

This 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.

Link to their page here.

Old Frisian Summer School

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16/02/2023

01:18

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Old Frisian: a gem within the Old Germanic languages

9-16 July 2023, University of Oxford, St Edmund Hall

Link to their page here. For anybody interested, watch a lecture by the organiser Dr Johanneke Sytsema johanneke.sytsema@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk:

Introductory Lecture as part of the series Topics in German Historical Linguistics

What is the OFSS about?

Students will learn about Old Frisian language, text corpus, culture and history in the context of Old Germanic languages. Linguistic comparisons will be drawn between Old Frisian and the other (West) Germanic languages. Settlement history of Frisians in Britain, Old Frisian Law and Literature and Old Frisian manuscripts will be discussed in lectures. Library visits will focus on the Old Frisian manuscripts in Oxford. The OFSS will close with a social day in Oxford. The OFSS is about learning to read Old Frisian and to place Old Frisian in a wider linguistic, literary and historical context.

Who is the summer school for?

The summer school is aimed at students, PhD candidates and early career researchers with an interest in (Old) Germanic languages who want to familiarise themselves with Old Frisian.

What will the day programme look like?

There will be two lectures in the mornings and a translation workshop or library visit in the afternoons. The programme will cover the Old Frisian grammar in lectures by experts in the field and in translation workshops. Students will read Old Frisian texts in the afternoon workshops with help of modern handbooks and learn about the Old Frisian text corpus

By the end of the week, students should be able to translate a medium level Old Frisian text with the help of handbooks and have gained a good level of knowledge of the place and importance of Old Frisian within the Old Germanic language family

A visit to the Bodleian Library will enable students to view the Old Frisian manuscripts that are kept at Oxford.

Blog about the 2019 OFSS http://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/taylorian/2019/09/25/the-first-oxford-groningen-old-frisian-summer-school/

And video report https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIkV2PkKf48 (by Fardau Visser)

Confirmed speakers:

  • Prof Andreas Deutsch, Deutsches Rechtswörterbuch, Heidelberg
  • Dr Peter-Alexander Kerkhof, Frisian Academy, Ljouwert/Leeuwarden
  • Prof Simon Horobin, University of Oxford
  • Dr Rafael Pascual, University of Oxford
  • Mr Hilbert Vinkenoog (YouTube channel History with Hilbert)
  • Mr Anne Popkema MA, Groningen University
  • Dr Johanneke Sytsema, University of Oxford

What does it cost?

  • In person fees: £350 (Early bird rate £300 if booked by May 1st)
  • Hybrid fees: £150.00

Fees for in person attendance will include

  • Tuition and workshops
  • Study materials
  • Coffee/tea
  • Daily 3-course lunch
  • Saturday social activities
  • Library visits
  • Conference dinner

Hybrid fees will include access to all streamed lectures and electronic access to the grammar and dictionary during the week.

Accommodation:

Participants can book accommodation in student halls belonging to St Edmund Hall (email address susan.mccarthy@seh.ox.ac.uk first come first served) or find accommodation in another college in Oxford via https://www.universityrooms.com/

For further information about the Summer School please contact: oldfrisian@ling-phil.ox.ac.uk (for all interested) or ofss@rug.nl (for students of Groningen University)

Deadline for registration:

  • 1st May for early birds – (in-person)
  • 31st May for in-person participation
  • 15th June for online attendance.

Register

Please complete the application form and payment details will be sent to you by email.

Registration QR code

Travel and Venue

Heathrow Airport is most convenient for Oxford. The Airline Bus Service to Oxford is frequent and cost-effective.

Directions from the train station

Most lectures and workshops will be held at St Edmund Hall. Information about travel to St Edmund Hall can be found here.

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

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