Newsletter 15

7th International Conference
The Medieval Chronicle / Die mittelalterliche Chronik/ La Chronique au Moyen Age
7 – 10 July 2014, Liverpool, UK

The Society’s seventh triennial conference convened in Liverpool on Monday 7th July this year, hosted by Sarah Peverly, Godfried Croenen and Rebecca Dixon, together with their delightful team of student helpers who took care of us throughout the four-day event. Once again we had an array of excellent papers from the 80 members in attendance, many of which led to lively and valuable discussions. The key-note speakers were Marcus Bull of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, who gave a paper on the eyewitness as the chronicler’s source; Chris Young and Mark Chinca of Cambridge, who spoke about their project on the Middle High German Kaiserchronik; and Anne Hedeman of Kansas on artwork in the Grandes chroniques de France. The technical facilities in the Rendall Building were excellent, and a fine buffet lunch was provided each day in Vine Court, where many of the conference participants were also sleeping. On the Wednesday evening we enjoyed a banquet in the central hall of the Victoria Gallery and Museum. Our General Meeting was held on the Thursday afternoon. On behalf of all those who attended, we extend our congratulations and warmest thanks to the conference organizers for the wonderful welcome and for their smooth running of the whole event.

Graeme Dunphy, International President MCS

In addition to our President’s brief account of the Liverpool conference in general, two decisions of the General Meeting should be mentioned:

1. After an enthusiastic and alluring presentation by Rodrigo Furtado, members accepted the proposal of the Portuguese team, and decided that the next International Conference should take place in Lisbon, Portugal.
2. As is well known, the MCS is a virtual society in the sense that, apart from the International President, we do not have an International Executive Committee or any other kind of governing body, nor do we have membership fees. But occasionally some money is needed, e.g. for the upkeep of our website, or as seedmoney for a conference. It was therefore decided that in future from every participant of our international conferences 10 euro will be asked as a contribution to these general MCS expenses. These contributions will be collected by the conference organisers, but kept apart from the regular conference administration. After the conference the money will be transferred to the MCS bankaccount, which for this purpose will be opened by Erik Kooper.

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8th International Conference
The Medieval Chronicle / Die mittelalterliche Chronik/ La Chronique au Moyen Age
July 2017, Lisbon, Portugal

The Organisers

Isabel de Barros Dias – Universidade Aberta, Lisboa

Maria João Branco – Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Carlos Carreto – Universidade Aberta, Lisboa

Ana Paiva Morais – Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Margarida Alpalhão – Universidade Nova de Lisboa

Rodrigo Furtado – Universidade de Lisboa

For more information write to: Isabel de Barros Dias – Isabel.Dias@uab.pt
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The Medieval Chronicle Series

IMPORTANT NOTICE

Earlier this year Editions Rodopi, the publishing firm with whom we have had such good relations for many years, was taken over by Brill Publishers, the old, well-established Dutch academic publisher. For vol. 9 will still appear in the old Rodopi format, but after this the series will be continued under Brill | Rodopi. This means that from vol. 10 a few things will be different, e.g. the layout will be made to conform to Brill’s house style. However, for Brill continuity is a key concept, and any changes will be as few as possible.

The Medieval Chronicle 9 – Has been sent to the publisher and is expected to appear later this year or early in 2015.

The Medieval Chronicle 10 – Complete; to appear in 2015.

The Medieval Chronicle 11 and 12 – To appear in 2016 and 2017; they will include many of the papers presented at the 2014 conference in Liverpool, but of course members of the MCS are welcome to submit essays or short text editions as well.

Volumes of The Medieval Chronicle can be ordered from bookstores or directly from the publisher: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?SerieId=MC

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New Publications

General

Elisabeth Mégier, Christliche Weltgeschichte im 12. Jahrhundert: Themen, Variationen und Kontraste.

Untersuchungen zu Hugo von Fleury, Ordericus Vitalis und Otto von Freising.

Beihefte zur Mediaevistik hg. von Peter Dinzelbacher 13. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 2010. 437 S.
ISBN 978-3-631-60072-6 (Softcover). € 81.

England

Lisa Ruch, Albina and Her Sisters: The Foundation of Albion.

Amherst, NY: Cambria Press, 2014.

Many cultures, including Greeks, Romans, French, and British, have taken great pride in legends that recount the foundation of their society. This book demonstrates the contexts in which a medieval British matriarchal legend, the Albina narrative, was paired over time with a patriarchal narrative, which was already widely disseminated, leading to the attribution of British origins to the warrior Brutus. By the close of the Middle Ages, the Albina tale had appeared in multiple versions in French, Latin, English, Welsh, and Dutch. This study investigates the classical roots of the narrative and the ways it was manipulated in the Middle Ages to function as a national foundation legend. Of especial interest are the dynamic qualities of the text: how it was adapted over the span of two centuries to meet the changing needs of medieval writers and audiences.

The currency in the Middle Ages of the Albina narrative is attested to by its inclusion in nearly all the extant manuscripts of the Middle English Prose Brut, many of the French and Latin Bruts, and in a variety of other chronicles and romances. In total, there are over 230 manuscripts surviving today that contain versions of the Albina tale.

Michelle R. Warren, ed. Situating the Middle English Prose Brut.

Published in The Journal of Digital Philology 3.2 (2014) – out this December

(See their website: http://muse.jhu.edu/journals/digital_philology/)

Contents:

Michelle R. Warren, ‘Situating Digital Archives’

Deborah Howe and Michelle R. Warren, ‘The Dartmouth Brut: Conservation, Authenticity, Dissemination (a photo essay)’

Edward Donald Kennedy, ‘Fifteenth-Century Historiography and the Dartmouth Brut’

Lister M. Matheson†, ‘Contextualizing the Dartmouth Brut: From Professional Manuscripts to “The Worst Little Scribbler in Surrey”’

Ryan Perry, ‘Making Histories:  Locating the Belfast Fragment of the Middle English Prose Brut’

Elizabeth J. Bryan, ‘Deciphering the Brut: Lambeth Palace MS 6 and the Perils of Transmission’

Emily Ulrich, ‘Echoes in the Margins: Reading the Dartmouth Brut in Early Modern England’

Julia Marvin, ‘Making Sense of Annotations in Brut Manuscripts’

Matthew Fisher, ‘Encountering the Dartmouth Brut in the Midst of History’

Wales / England

Alicia Marchant, The Revolt of Owain Glyndŵr in Medieval English Chronicles. York Medieval Press/ Boydell and Brewer, 2014. ISBN: 9781903153550. Pages: 290. £ 60.

The revolt of Owain Glyndŵr (1400-c.1415) was a remarkable event in both English and Welsh contexts, and as such was narrated by a number of chroniclers, including Adam Usk, John Capgrave, Thomas Walsingham and Edward Halle. They offer a range of perspectives on the events, as well as portrayals of the main characters (especially, of course, Glyndŵr himself), the communities involved, and Wales.

This book studies the representations of the revolt in English chronicles, from 1400 up to1580. It focuses on the narrative strategies employed, offers a new reading of the texts as literary constructs, and explores the information they present.

Alicia Marchant is a Research Associate in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions at the University of Western Australia.

 Germany

Patrizia Carmassi / Eva Schlotheuber / Almut Breitenbach (Hgg.), Schriftkultur und religiöse Zentren im norddeutschen Raum. Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien Bd. 24. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014. ISBN978-3-447-10016-8; 548 S., 87 Schwarzweiß- und 19 Farbabbildungen. € 108.
Viele der 11 Beiträge behandeln oder benutzen immer wieder norddeutsche Chroniken des 12.-15. Jahrhunderts. Besonders wichtig: Hedwig Röckelein, Schriftlandschaften – Bildungslandschaften – religiöse Landschaften in Norddeutschland, S. 19-139 – der erste Überblick über norddeutsche Schreiborte des Mittelalters überhaupt. Zwei Beiträge behandeln den Einfluß deutscher Schriftlichkeit auf Finnland und Schwedisch-Finnland, einer den Kulturtransfer der Devotio moderna.

(Rezension von Volker Honemann, zu erscheinen in der Revue d’Historie Ecclésiastique 2015)

Lars-Arne Dannenberg / Mario Müller (Hgg.), Studien zur neuzeitlichen Geschichtsschreibung in den böhmischen Kronländern Schlesien, Oberlausitz und Niederlausitz, Görlitz-Zittau 2013. Beihefte zum Neuen Lausitzischen Magazin 11. 378 S. ISBN: 978-3.938583-99-9. € 30.

Tino Fröde (Hg.), Chronik der Stadt Zittau 1255-1623. Scriptores rerum lusaticarum Bd. VIII. Görlitz 2013. ISBN 978-3-9814990-4-9. € 25.

Sehr interessante deutschsprachige Chronik mit vielen Liedern, makkaronischen Texten, Sprüchen etc. Die Oberlausitzische Gesellschaft der Wissenschaften nimmt damit die alte, renommierte Publikationsreihe der SS rerum lusaticarum wieder auf.

Speer, Christian, ‘Die „Historicae Relationes“ des Sebastian Frank († um 1676). Zur Rückkehr einer verschollenen Chronik nach Görlitz.’ In Görlitzer Magazin. Geschichte und Gegenwart der Stadt Görlitz und ihrer Umgebung 26 (2013): 90–96.

This is a short article about a chronicle that was lost in the Second World War and came back to Görlitz in 2013. This chronicle is a ‘History of Görlitz and the Upper Lusatia’ which is composed of late medieval and early modern chronicles and other sources (partly lost today).

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Calls for Papers

Identity, Ethnicity and Nationhood before Modernity: Old Debates and New Perspectives

24–26 April, 2015, The Oxford Centre for Research in Humanities

The keynote lectures will be given by Caspar Hirschi, Len Scales, Walter Pohl, Susan Reynolds and Tim Whitmarsh.

Scholars working on pre-modern collective identities too often avoid the challenge of modernism, either by using allegedly unproblematic terminology of ethnicity or by employing the vocabulary of nationhood uncritically. This conference, therefore, aims at tackling these difficult theoretical issues head on. This can only truly be achieved by bringing together a range of researchers working on ancient, late antique, early medieval, high medieval, late medieval, and early modern ethnicity and nationhood. Thus we hope to reinvigorate discussion of pre-modern ethnicity and nationhood, as well as to go beyond the unhelpful chronological divisions which have emerged through surprisingly fragmented research on pre-modern collective identities.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit abstracts of approximately 300 words. Submissions should include name, affiliation and contact details. The deadline for submissions is 1 November 2014. For more information about the conference or to submit an abstract, please email the committee at:

ilya.afanasyev@history.ox.ac.uk or nicholas.matheou@pmb.ox.ac.uk.

William of Malmesbury and his Legacy

3–5 July 2015, The Ioannou Centre for Classical and Byzantine Studies, University of Oxford

Keynote lectures will be given by Rod Thomson, Michael Winterbottom and John Ward.

The organizing committee of the conference ‘William of Malmesbury and his Legacy’ invites paper proposals from prospective speakers. This three-day conference, supported by Oxford’s Faculties of History, English and Classics and the Oxford Research Centre for Humanities (TORCH), is timed to coincide with the completion of Michael Winterbottom’s and Rodney Thomson’s edition of William of Malmesbury’s Miracles of the Virgin. When this volume is printed, all works of William will have been published in modern scholarly editions—a momentous occasion which our conference intends to celebrate. In bringing together scholars working on all aspects of William’s works, the goal of the conference is twofold: 1) to review and reflect on existing scholarship, and 2) to encourage further research on one of the most important authors of twelfth-century Europe.

Prospective speakers are invited to submit abstracts of 200–300 words. Submissions should include name, affiliation and durable contact details. The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2014. For more information about the conference, to join the conference mailing list or to submit an abstract, please email the committee at:

william.malmesbury@history.ox.ac.uk.

Organizing committee: Rod Thomson, Ilya Afanasyev and Emily Winkler

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Brief Notices

Boydell & Brewer’s Medieval Chronicles Series

Prospective editors of medieval chronicles are invited to contact Dan Embree, Editor of Boydell and Brewer’s Medieval Chronicles Series, at sothsegger@comcast.net orcroiniceoir@gmail.com, to discuss projects. We encourage discussions at any stage from vague stirrings to substantial drafts. We are interested in editions of medieval texts in various languages, of collections of short, related texts, and of  previously (but inadequately) edited texts.

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Please pay attention, once again, to this request for assistance from János Bak, one of the keynote speakers at our 2011 Medieval Conference in Pécs:

Announcement and request

Chronicon. Medieval narrative sources A chronological guide with introductory essays. Edited – with the cooperation of several scholars – by János M. Bak and Ivan Jurković (Turnout: Brepols, 2013). 496 pp. ISBN 978-2-503-54833-3. EUR 85.

This is an updated and much expanded version of the Bak-Hollingsworth-Quirin guide (New York: Garland 1987, German version Stuttgart: Steiner 1988). While not a critical encyclopedia as Graeme Dunphy’s Encyclopedia of the Medieval Chronicle (EMC), it differs from other reference works in that it is not organized by alphabetical sequence but by region and chronology. Simply put: if you want to know what was written in (or about) a given area in a given time period (incl. a selection of saints’ lives), this guide would put you on your way by listing editions, translations and – if available – electronic versions, with reference to the detailed discussion in the EMC or the Repertorium (or the relevant Bibliographia Hagiographica). It covers ‘Europe’ in a wider sense, including narratives – beyond the traditional core of medieval Europe – not only from Byzantium, but also a selection from the Christian East and the Muslim world, from ca. 400 AD to ca. 1500 AD listing 1221 titles. There are three indexes: author/title, personal names, and geographical terms. In addition, eight essays (by Patrick Geary, Hans-Werner Goetz, Courtney Booker, Niall Christie, István Perczel with Irma Karaushvili, Gábor Klaniczay, Norbert Kersken, and Balázs Nagy) discuss genres and types of narratives or regional characteristics of chronicles and biographies.

However, the publishers did not keep their word to bring out this guide for a student-affordable price. Therefore we are planning to rework the material contained in the tables (in another form, thus not covered by Brepols’s copyright) in a year or so – in a digital version, open to all via a www-site.

 We now ask members of Medieval Chronicle and other colleagues to check the published data and communicate to us any mistakes and additions. Since the digital version will not face volume restrictions (which the printed one did) we are now open to additions, including those that were sent to us earlier but had to be dropped (and probably got since lost in one of our computers).

We are looking forward to these with thanks in advance. Should any one need a copy of sections of particular interest to her/him (if the book is not available in a library at hand), we are glad to scan and send specified pages. Our addresses are:

János Bak – bakjm@ceu.hu

Ivan Jurković – ivanj@unipu.hr

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Research Stipends

Notre Dame’s programs for visiting medievalists (from Julia Marvin)

The Medieval Institute at the University of Notre Dame has several year-long and short-term programs for visiting scholars, including an A. W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship in Medieval Studies (for faculty at US institutions), Stipends for Short-term Postdoctoral Research, Stipends for Ambrosiana Microfilms Collection Research,  and the SIEPM Fellowship in Medieval Philosophy. For more information, see

http://www.nd.edu/~medinst/funding/funding.html
Notre Dame has substantial collections of microfilms and facsimiles, which may be searched here:

http://medieval.library.nd.edu/mss_microfilms/
http://medieval.library.nd.edu/mss_facs/

http://homepages-nw.uni-regensburg.de/~dug22463/FAZ_22May2011_p60-63.PDF

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MCS Twitter Account

The Medieval Chronicle Society now has a Twitter account to accompany its website. The account is being run by Dr Sarah Peverley (University of Liverpool) and will be used to provide short updates about chronicle conferences and symposia (which have reached the ‘call for papers’ stage), large funded research projects involving medieval chronicles, and newly published editions and/or monographs on chronicles. If members would like Dr Peverley to ‘tweet’ about any of the above on their behalf please contact her at S.Peverley[@]liv.ac.uk. Twitter messages are limited to 140 characters and to avoid being overwhelmed with requests Dr Peverley will only ‘tweet’ about publications and events that are chronicle related. The Twitter account is
@medievalchron so please follow us and spread the word.

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The Medieval Chronicle Society – https://medievalchronicle.org/

For information contact:

Dr Erik Kooper

Dept of English – Trans 10 – 3512 JK Utrecht – The Netherlands

E-mail: e.s.kooper[@]uu.nl