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The Calamitous Fourteenth Century in England: All Doom and Gloom?
Posted on May 28, 2013 | No CommentsThis was a fantastic paper given at the Crown and Country in Late medieval England session at KZOO. There were only two papers but both were interesting and enjoyable. This paper delved into the history of science in late medieval England and examined why the fourteenth century, a time that is usually synonymous with doom and gloom, plague and uprising, wasn't all that bad upon closer observation. -
Are We Post-Queer? A Roundtable on the Present and Future of Queer Theory in Medieval Studies
Posted on May 14, 2013 | No CommentsThis was part of an excellent panel discussion on the future Queer Theory, pedagogy, gender and the cross over between Queer Studies and politics. -
Student Violence at the University of Oxford
Posted on May 9, 2013 | No CommentsMy first foray of KZOO 2013 couldn't have been off to a better start with, “I just don’t want to die without a few scars”: Medieval Fight Clubs, Masculine Identity, and Public (Dis)order. There were only two papers in this session and both were riveting. I felt like I couldn't type fast enough to get it all in! The first paper was given by Professor Andrew Larsen of Marquette University. Professor Larsen published a book on high and late medieval student violence and the Saint Scholastica's Day Riot at Oxford university. -
‘Fromm thennes faste he gan avyse/This litel spot of erthe’: GIS and the General Prologue
Posted on May 2, 2013 | No CommentsThis paper was given at the Canada Chaucer Seminar on April 27, 2013. -
The Greek Renaissance in Italy
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsFor various reasons north Italy toward the end of the fourteenth century seemed peculiarly adapted to become the seat of another classical renaissance, though of one some what different in character and results from that which had already run its course. -
Teaching the Creed and Articles of Faith in England: Lateran IV to Ignorantia sacerdotum
Posted on April 14, 2013 | No CommentsThe broad conclusion of this thesis is that the available evidence shows that the basic principles of Christian doctrine were available both to the lower clergy who would preach and teach the Creed and Articles of Faith and also to the laity who would receive this preaching and instruction. -
Notes on a private library in fourth/tenth-century Baghdad
Posted on March 3, 2013 | No CommentsStudies on medieval Arabic bibliophilia have mainly focussed on public and semi-public institutions, for some of which we have detailed information. Less is known about private libraries and their physical arrangement. This paper looks at the library of Abū Bakr al-Ṣūlī (d. 335/947), which is described by the sources in unique terms, contextualising it with al-Ṣūlī’s own words on collecting and organizing books. -
The Making of Men, not Masters: Right Order and Lay Masculinity According to Dhuoda and Nithard
Posted on January 27, 2013 | No CommentsSetting Nithard’s and Dhuoda’s works in dialogue with one another, this study seeks to explore how the conflicts of the early 840s may have triggered reevaluations of contemporary ideals regarding lay masculinty. At the core of both authors’ works is the understanding that the problems the realm was facing at that time were primarily due to no- blemen’s expression of unmanly modes of conduct. -
Differences in the Purpose of Medieval Schools in England
Posted on January 26, 2013 | No CommentsHere four books will be examined that describe schooling in the Medieval and early Renaissance periods in England, with a deeper look at universities. -
The Trebuchet
Posted on January 13, 2013 | No CommentsRecent reconstructions and computer simulations reveal the operating principles of the most powerful weapon of its time -
The Oxford Calculators
Posted on January 7, 2013 | No CommentsOxford’s medieval philosophers deserve greater recognition, says Mark Thakkar -
Edition, Translation, and Exegesis: The Carolingians and the Bible
Posted on December 23, 2012 | No CommentsIn their attention to philological procedures and details, to the work of editing, revising, and translating, ninth-century scholars made a lasting contribution to the ways in which Europeans would think about the Bible. -
Exegesis According to the Rules of Philosophy or the Rule of Faith?: Methodological Conflict in the Ninth-Century Predestination Controversy
Posted on December 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe development of biblical exegesis, as Contreni shows, was rapid, but not homogeneous. On the one hand, one of the main ways to acquire biblical wisdom was to rely on the interpretations and teaching of the Holy Fathers, whose texts were studied, assimilated, simplified, collected, and taught. On the other hand, Alcuin’s revival of the liberal arts6 paved the way for the rise of another method of biblical exegesis. -
Jacopo da Firenze and the beginning of Italian vernacular algebra
Posted on December 15, 2012 | No CommentsWhatever the reason, nobody seems to have taken an interest in the treatise before Warren Van Egmond inspected it in the mid-seventies during the preparation of his global survey of Italian Renaissance manuscripts concerned with practical mathematics. -
The education of noble girls in medieval France: Vincent of Beauvais and De eruditione filiorum nobilium
Posted on November 16, 2012 | No CommentsThe educational treatise by Vincent of Beauvais (1184/1194-1264), De eruditione filiorum nobilium (On the Education of Noble Girls), was the first medieval educational text to both systematically present a comprehensive method of instruction for lay children and to included a section devoted to girls. -
Medieval Book History Week Lecture: “Practical Latin and Formal English in the 14th-15th Centuries”
Posted on November 13, 2012 | No CommentsThis lecture is part of Medieval Book History Week. Renown Professor Jeremy Catto spoke about literacy and language in England during the later Middle Ages at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies at the University of Toronto. -
Christian Living Explained: Alcuin’s De virtutibus et vitiis liber in a Carolingian Instructional Manual
Posted on November 3, 2012 | No CommentsAnother paper from the yesterday's SESSION I: Lived Religion in the Middle Ages. This paper focused on Alcuin of York's contribution to the standardisation of Carolingian Christian texts for pastoral instruction. -
Cathedral Schools: The Institutional Development of Twelfth-Century Education
Posted on October 24, 2012 | No CommentsA student of the generation around 1100, who sought learning beyond the ordinary and was desirous of hearing the best masters, would have to travel from school to school. -
A Late Byzantine Swan Song: Maximos Neamonites and His Letters
Posted on October 16, 2012 | No CommentsMaximos Neamonites’ epistulae depict their author as a schoolmaster of primary education active in the second and the third decades of the fourteenth-century Constantinople (fl.1315–1325), true to generic conventions (and the realities of life), eking out a meager income on the basis of his teaching activities, and occasionally lifting his pen to interfere on behalf of others. -
Technologies of authority in the medical classroom in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
Posted on October 12, 2012 | No CommentsIn this paper I would like to explore the strategies developed by the university medical master towards the recognition and establishment of authority for himself and for those contemporary authors who, like himself, worked within the medieval Studia. I would develop this possibility by analysing a uniquely academic product, the medical commentary. -
Gesturing in the Early Universities
Posted on October 12, 2012 | No CommentsA notable feature of research into the early universities is that it usually pays close attention to the oral and literary traditions that underpinned scholastic education. By focusing exclusively upon these logocentric traditions, however, the significance of the word (whether written or spoken) in late medieval pedagogy has often been over- emphasized. In this essay I wish to correct this perspective by investigating the use of gestures in early university education as a non-verbal means of communication. -
Bernard Ayglier and William of Pagula: Two Approaches To Monastic Law
Posted on October 10, 2012 | No CommentsThe paper examines the role of canon law in two monastic works, the Speculum monachorum (SM) (1272x74) of Bernard Ayglier (d.1282), abbot of Montecassino, and the Speculum religiosorum (SR) (c.1322) of William of Pagula, a canonist and secular priest (d.1332) -
Dining at King’s College in the 15th century
Posted on October 8, 2012 | No CommentsPerhaps unsurprisingly, fish and seafood formed a major component in the diet of the fellows and scholars. -
The Librarius and Libraire as Witnesses to the Evolving Book Trade in Ducal Brittany
Posted on October 7, 2012 | No CommentsIn monasteries and cathedrals of the medieval West, the « custos librariae » functioned primarily as a custodian or keeper of bound codices, and we see a similar role emerge from extant medieval registers from Breton cathedral chapters. -
“The King’s Library: Construction, Representation and Reception of the Ideal Kingship in the Late French Middle Ages”
Posted on October 6, 2012 | No CommentsThis paper on Charles V of France and his contribution to education was given on October 5th, 2012 as part of a workshop between Freiburg and the University of Toronto.