Category Archives: Member news

ANZAMEMS member news – Marcus Harmes

Dear members, Dr Marcus Harmes (University of Southern Queensland) has shared the following news of his research with us. Marcus has recently has just published a monograph Bishops and Power in Early Modern England with Bloomsbury http://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/bishops-and-power-in-early-modern-england-9781472508355/

The book examines the recreation of the power structures of the Church of England after the Reformation and covers topics including the involvement of bishops in witchcraft trials, arguments over suitable dress, and the trial and execution of Archbishop Laud.

Congratulations Marcus!

ANZAMEMS member news: Alexandra Barratt

Dear members, Alexandra Barratt (Professor Emeritus at the University of Waikato, NZ) has shared the following report on her research.

Thanks Alexandra!

In 2010 a grant of $73,000 from the ASB Community Trust to the Auckland Library Heritage Trust enabled the Auckland Libraries, Sir George Grey Special Collections, to re-catalogue 2000 books printed between 1468 and 1801. In particular, any manuscript waste (for instance wrappers, pastedowns, quire-guards, and spine liners) was noted. M. Manion, Vera F. Vines, and Christopher de Hamel, Medieval and Renaissance Manuscripts in New Zealand Collections (Melbourne, London and New York: Thames and Hudson, 1989), No. 45 (a)-(i), had already listed and partially identified nine binding fragments in the APL, and the new catalogue threw up an additional ten. At about the same time, Professor Alexandra Gillespie of the University of Toronto and I were working on the pre-1650 manuscript bindings in the Sir George Grey Special Collections, some of which also contained manuscript waste, so I was asked to examine and possibly identify the new finds.

This has proved a productive line of research. First, digital photography and the availability of so many Latin texts on-line helped enlarge our knowledge of the known fragments. Five were positively identified: for instance, No. 45 (a), ‘two small vellum strips’, we now know is from Book One of the ‘Ethica Nova’ or Translatio Antiquior of Aristotle’s Nichomachean Ethics, and No. 45 (i), ‘Manuscript on plants’, from pseudo-Aristotle, Secreta Secretorum, translated by Philip Tripolitanus, Pars 3, Cap. 3 and Caps 7-8. In addition, No. 45 (b) (i) was tentatively re-identified as from a Psalter rather than a Missal, and more information gleaned about the remaining three. Of the new fragments, the most exciting were quire-guards cut from an early Carolingian Bible (c. 800AD), in three of the four volumes of a glossed Latin bible printed at Strasbourg by Adolf Rusch for Anton Koberger, c.1480, and which belonged to the Benedictine monastery of Benedictbeuern (see my blog post for 26 June 2013, http://medievalbookbindings.com). These match larger fragments held at the Bayerischestaatsbibliothek, Munich, and are probably from the women’s house of Köchel. In addition, fragments in a further five volumes were positively identified and some information acquired about a sixth, a leaf bound at the back of Priscian, Libri omnes, Basel, 1554, which is clearly from a homiliary but so far eludes precise identification. Fragments in three more volumes were too fragmentary to identify. As a bonus, the search threw up some printed binders’ waste, including a paper sheet of early 16th century papal indulgences, unfortunately past their expiry date.

ANZAMEMS member news: Stephanie Hollis

Dear members, Stephanie Hollis (based at at The University of Auckland) has shared the following news of her research with us, including a brief list of her recent book chapter publications and a note on her current research.

Thanks Stephanie!

Stephanie Hollis – Recent publications

Stephanie Hollis, ‘Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England: an Overview’, in Secular Learning in Anglo-Saxon England: Exploring the Vernacular, ed. László Sándor Chardonnens and Bryan Corella (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012), pp. 1-42. 

Stephanie Hollis, ‘Barking’s Monastic School, Late Seventh to Twelfth Century: History, Saint-Making and Literary Culture’, in Barking Abbey and Medieval Literary Culture: Authorship and Authority in a Female Community, ed. Jennifer N. Brown and Donna Alfano Bussell (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2012), pp. 33-55.

Stephanie Hollis, ‘The Literary Culture of the Anglo-Saxon Royal Nunneries: Romsey and London, British Library, MS Lansdowne 436’, in Nuns’ Literacies in Medieval Europe: the Hull Dialogue, ed. V. Blanton, V. O’Mara and P. Stoop (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), pp. 111-20.

Current research

Stephanie is currently working on two related publications, one on texts by Goscelin of Canterbury commissioned by Barking Abbey c. 1086, which will include translations by Michael Wright. The other is a study of seven nunneries from the time of their foundation in the late Anglo-Saxon period until the dissolution (Amesbury, Barking, Nunnaminster, Romsey, Shaftesbury, Wherwell and Wilton), which focuses on the role and representation of the Anglo-Saxon past in their literary and artistic culture.


ANZAMEMS member news – Nicola Wright

Dear ANZAMEMS members, Nicola Wright (based at The University of Auckland) has shared the following news of her research with us. Nicola has recently completed her Masters thesis on the topic of early medieval Europe studies. An abstract of her research is included below:

Congratulations Nicola!

Thesis title: Palms of Blood: Christianity, Violence and Identity in Late Antiquity.

My thesis examines attitudes toward religious violence in Western Europe between c.400 and c.700 CE, with a focus on Italy and Gaul. Violence was, at one and the same time, something used to punish sinners yet also to mark out the faithful. Suffering and pain were inescapable features of life in the late antique world, but not only heathens were expected to suffer. Some Christians mortified their flesh as a safe-guard against sin, others chose the long martyrdom of asceticism, and many more still participated in ritual reenactments of the suffering and deaths of the martyrs; seeking the ‘palms of blood’ which inspired the title of my work. Sinners were disciplined with a religiously sanctioned violence and festivial celebrations were, at times, accompanied by outbursts of mob violence and rioting. Though Christianity was imbued with attitudes toward violence which are sometimes surprising to the modern mind, these attitudes and the mentalities behind them are fundamental to any consideration of the religious culture of the post-Roman world.

ANZAMEMS member news – Sarah Greer

Dear ANZAMEMS members, Sarah Greer (recently based at the University of Auckland) has shared the following news about her research with us.

Sarah has recently received my Masters degree in History from the University of Auckland, with my thesis “Behind the Veil: The rise of female monasticism and the double house in Early Medieval Francia” receiving first class honours. The abstract of this thesis is found below.

Sarah has also been selected as a Marie Curie fellow at the University of St Andrews, where she will study for my PhD in History as an Early Career Researcher as part of the international research group “Power and Institutions in Medieval Islam and Christendom”. Her research will focus on a comparative analysis of the patronage relationships constructed by elite women with female religious institutions in Wessex, Francia and Saxony in the 8th to 10th centuries, under the supervision of Dr. Simon MacLean.

Congratulations Sarah!

Abstract

Female monasticism occupied an incredibly important position in the world of early medieval Francia. Convents, and the women living within them, were key figures in the political, social, cultural and religious history of the Frankish kingdoms. Contemporary sources, from secular histories to saints’ lives to monastic rules are filled with the names of convents and nuns, and recognize their powerful roles in the Frankish world.

Yet, in modern historiography, early medieval nuns have been marginalized. Viewed by historians as less important than male monasticism, or as an example of the misogyny of the Carolingian world, female monasticism has not received the scholarly attention it deserves. Indeed, there is a lack of information on some of the most fundamental questions on this subject. Why did monasticism become increasingly attractive in the sixth to ninth centuries? What was the experience of
women inside monasteries? How did communities of nuns interact with the world outside their walls? What can we learn from the monastic regulae about the perceptions of women and the religious life?

This thesis addresses these questions, among others, in order to reveal the complexity and variety that existed in Frankish female monasticism. The flexibility of early medieval women to adapt the monastic life to their own needs and requirements set up the foundation for female monasticism in the centuries to come. The story of monastic women in the Frankish kingdoms is not one of misogynistic repression of female religious freedom, but rather illustrates the ability of women to shape their own lives with the support of various kings, noblemen, bishops and male clergy. My research is an attempt to restore medieval monastic women to the position of importance and respect accorded to them by their contemporaries.

Launching ANZAMEMS Member News – new feature of the newsletter

Dear members,

I am launching a new feature of the newsletter. As well as publishing CFP and notices of interest, starting from today I will also be publishing more news concerning the work and research of medievalists and early modernists based in Australia and New Zealand. Any news concerning recent publications and projects, forthcoming conferences and symposia, for example, are welcome.

The following comes from ANZAMEMS committee member Chris Jones, who shares the following following web-based project of interest.

With the financial assistance of a University of Canterbury Summer Scholarship, the collaboration of Canterbury’s Web Support services and the hard work of Chris’ former Honours student Maree Shirota, they have recently completed a website that offers a scrolling version of Canterbury’s fifteenth-century genealogical roll, archive quality photographs and a basic introduction to the document’s content:

www.canterbury.ac.nz/canterburyrol

By making this unique document available to a worldwide audience their aim is to both increase awareness of the Canterbury collection and to contribute to the wider research environment. Maree is now an MA student and working on a new edition of the roll’s text as part of her thesis.

As well as this web project, Chris is presently putting the finishing touches to collection about John of Paris. The volume will include twelve essays and a substantial introduction. Chris, along with his colleague Jennifer Clement, are also presently planning a proposal for a jointly-edited special edition of a journal that would deal with medieval and Early Modern manuscripts and books in New Zealand and Australia. Expressions of interest from collaborators will be solicited in the near future.

Elizabeth Freeman awarded Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship’s2013 prize

Readers of and contributors to Parergon may be interested to note that Elizabeth Freeman’s article “The Priory of Hampole and its Literary Culture: English Religious Women and Books in the Age of Richard Rolle”, Parergon 29 (2012), pp. 1-25 was awarded the Society for Medieval Feminist Scholarship’s 2013 prize for the Best Article of Feminist Scholarship on the Middle Ages.


Go to http://smfsweb.org/ to see the notice.


Many congratulations to Liz!

European Perceptions of Terra Australis – Book Annoucement

A new book which may be of interest to members, especially those in Australia:

European Perceptions of Terra Australis

Edited by Anne M. Scott, University of Western Australia, Alfred Hiatt, Queen Mary, University of London, UK, Claire McIlroy, University of Western Australia, and Christopher Wortham, University of Western Australia.

Hardback, 334 pages, includes 52 b&w illustrations
ISBN: 978-1-4094-2605-9
RRP £65.00

Terra Australis, the southern land, was one of the most widespread concepts in European geography from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, although the notion of a land mass in the Southern seas had been prevalent since classical Antiquity. Through interdisciplinary contributions, ranging across history, the visual arts, literature and popular culture, this volume considers the continuities and discontinuities between the imagined space of Terra Australis and its subsequent manifestation. It will be of interest to, among others, intellectual and cultural historians, literary scholars, historians of cartography, the visual arts, women’s and post-colonial studies.

For more information, including the contents page, bios of the editors, and to read an extract from European Perceptions of Terra Australis please visit the Ashgate web catalogue page: http://www.ashgate.com/isbn/9781409426059.

To order, please visit: www.ashgate.com. Please note that all online orders made via the Ashgate website receive a discount.