Conference: The Literature and History of Anglo-Dutch Relations, Medieval to Early Modern,  Bodleian Library, University of Oxford, January 6-8 2022

Contacts between English and Dutch speakers had a profound impact on the literary landscape and book culture of England and the Low Countries. This British Academy funded conference crosses conventional chronological, linguistic, geographical and disciplinary boundaries to explore the cultural history of relations between English and Dutch speakers, from the Norman Conquest through to the Reformation. Bringing together literary scholars and historians, it aims to join up evidence of literary exchange with new insights into the experiences of migration, conflict, political alliances, and trade that made this literary exchange possible. The conference will reinvigorate traditional approaches to literary influence by contextualising it in the historical conditions that brought speakers of Dutch and English into contact with each other and by taking into account the range of languages (Dutch, English, French, and Latin) in which their communications and literary production in manuscript and early print took shape over this period.

For full conference programme and to register, click here.

Call For Papers: Medieval Art, Modern Politics, Deadline: 15 December 2021

Historians of medieval art know that the buildings, objects, and images they study were often created for purposes that were overtly political. They have devoted less scholarly attention to a corollary: the political uses and misuses of medieval art after the Middle Ages. In some cases, the same objects and sites that accrued ideological meanings during the Middle Ages did so again, if differently, in modern times (better known examples include the Bayeux Embroidery, the Horses of San Marco, the Bamberg Rider, the insignia of the Holy Roman Empire, the Crown of St. Stephen, and Dome of the Rock).
This is a call for papers for a volume of essays that seeks to complicate our understanding of the afterlives of medieval art by concentrating on the politics of its reception. While the ideological instrumentalization of the Greco-Roman artistic legacy has been recounted many times and stories of the rediscovery of national antiquities in eighteenth-century Europe and the revival of Gothic art in the subsequent century are familiar, the use of the medieval legacy has tended to be framed as either an affair of taste or of intellectual and cultural histories. The way in which post-medieval regimes (whether monarchic, imperial, totalitarian, or progressive) or individuals have reframed specific medieval sites, artefacts, and iconographies still await detailed examination.
We invite papers that unpack instances of the uses and misuses of medieval art in various post-medieval contexts and directed towards different political goals. We encourage submissions that represent the full geographic and temporal scope of the medieval period. Possible questions to be addressed include: What messages were extracted from “Gothic” and “barbarian” antiquities that differed from the discourses retrojected into ancient or early modern art? How were medieval visual creations literally and figuratively repositioned to serve modern political ends? What were the impulses—aesthetic and ideological—that explain why modern regimes have found it useful, even necessary, to reinvest in the visual legacy of the Middle Ages?

Volume editors: Brigitte Buettner and William Diebold
Deadline for submitting proposals (500-word abstract and a CV): December 15, 2021
Anticipated submission of final texts: End of 2022

Please direct all inquiries and submissions to Brigitte Buettner (bbuettne@smith.edu) and William Diebold (wdiebold@reed.edu). We will notify authors of the status of their proposal by January 15, 2022. We anticipate c. 8000-word essays and peer review. We are also planning a workshop-type gathering to comment on the papers before publication.

New Publication: Marian Devotion in the Late Middle Ages. Image and Performance, Edited By Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky, and Gerhard Jaritz

By the late Middle Ages, manifestations of Marian devotion had become multifaceted and
covered all aspects of religious, private and personal life. Mary becomes a universal presence
that accompanies the faithful on pilgrimage, in dreams, as holy visions, and as pictorial
representations in church space and domestic interiors. The first part of the volume traces the
development of Marian iconography in sculpture, panel paintings, and objects, such as seals,
with particular emphasis on Italy, Slovenia and the Hungarian Kingdom. The second section
traces the use of Marian devotion in relation to space, be that a country or territory, a monastery
or church or personal space, and explores the use of space in shaping new liturgical practices,
new Marian feasts and performances, and the bodily performance of ritual objects.

Table of Contents
Chapter 1. Throne of Gold and Dress of Stars: On the Meaning of Polychromy in High Medieval
Marian Sculpture, Elisabeth Sobieczky
Chapter 2. Seeing God in the Image of Mary: Cross Readings of the Medievaal Benedictine
Convent Seal, Mija Oter Gorenčič
Chapter 3. Devotion, Gold, and the Virgin: Visualizing Mary in Three Fourteenth-Century
Tuscan Panels in the National Gallery of Denmark, Marina Vidas
Chapter 4. Diagrammatic Devotion and the Defensorium Mariae in the Funerary Chapel of
Hărman Parish Church, Mihnea A. Mihail
Chapter 5. Veil and Signature: Giambono’s Madonna Barberini, Sabine Engel
Chapter 6. Salve regina in late medieval Dominican communities, Kristin Hoefner
Chapter 7. Developments in Servite Marian Spirituality and the Use of Saint Filippo Benizi in
Promoting Servite Miraculous Madonnas, Alana O’Brien
Chapter 8. Mary, Michael, and the Devil. An Eschatological-Iconographic Perspective on the
Liturgical Drama of Philippe de Mézières, Andrea-Bianka Znorovszky
Chapter 9. “Mulier amicta sole”: Transformations of a devotional image between the 15th and
the 16th centuries, Ferenc Veress
Chapter 10. Mobile Shrine and Magical Bodies: Modern Afterlives of Medieval Shrine
Madonnas, Juliet Simpson

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Grants: Mary Jaharis Center Grants 2022–2023, deadline: February 1, 2022

The Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture is pleased to announce its 2022–2023 grant competition. 

*** NEW *** Mary Jaharis Center Co-Funding Grants promote Byzantine studies in North America. These grants provide co-funding to organize scholarly gatherings (e.g., workshops, seminars, small conferences) in North America that advance scholarship in Byzantine studies broadly conceived. We are particularly interested in supporting convenings that build diverse professional networks that cross the boundaries of traditional academic disciplines, propose creative approaches to fundamental topics in Byzantine studies, or explore new areas of research or methodologies.

Mary Jaharis Center Dissertation Grants are awarded to advanced graduate students working on Ph.D. dissertations in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. These grants are meant to help defray the costs of research-related expenses, e.g., travel, photography/digital images, microfilm.

Mary Jaharis Center Publication Grants support book-length publications or major articles in the field of Byzantine studies broadly conceived. Grants are aimed at early career academics. Preference will be given to postdocs and assistant professors, though applications from non-tenure track faculty and associate and full professors will be considered. We encourage the submission of first-book projects.

Mary Jaharis Center Project Grants support discrete and highly focused professional projects aimed at the conservation, preservation, and documentation of Byzantine archaeological sites and monuments dated from 300 CE to 1500 CE primarily in Greece and Turkey. Projects may be small stand-alone projects or discrete components of larger projects. Eligible projects might include archeological investigation, excavation, or survey; documentation, recovery, and analysis of at risk materials (e.g., architecture, mosaics, paintings in situ); and preservation (i.e., preventive measures, e.g., shelters, fences, walkways, water management) or conservation (i.e., physical hands-on treatments) of sites, buildings, or objects.

The application deadline for all grants is February 1, 2022. For further information, please visit the Mary Jaharis Center website.

Contact Brandie Ratliff (mjcbac@hchc.edu), Director, Mary Jaharis Center, with any questions.

New Publication: “Medieval Europe in Motion 3. The Circulation of Jurists, Legal Manuscripts and Artistic, Cultural and Legal Practices in Medieval Europe (13th-15th centuries)”. Introduction by M.J. Branco; Conclusions by M. Ascheri, Palermo, Officina di Studi Medievali, 2021

The knowledge of movement is of crucial importance in carrying out cultural and intellectual processes: it is not only a physical action but also a factor of communication and exchange which facilitates dialogue and interaction between different territories and cultures. The main objective of the essays in this volume is to analyse the phenomena of mobility and circulation of people, ideas and objects related to the study and practice of the Law, whether we are addressing the intellectual elites, the texts and manuscripts (illuminated or not), their artistic models, or the circulation of the Law itself, and to study ideas connected to the practice of Law and its role in the Medieval West in general. This volume focuses on the most Southern territories (Iberian Peninsula, Southern France and Italy) of the Medieval West, and the circulation of people and ideas and objects connected to the practice of Law during the 13th to15th centuries: such is the privileged sphere of the debate in this volume. This book aims at debating and analysing the ways in which the phenomena of mobility interacted with processes of codification and teaching of the Law, while they also influenced its visual representation in the manuscripts’ illuminations.
This publication is also a part of the research work conducted by the IUS ILLUMINATUM research team (https://iusilluminata.fcsh.unl.pt), an international scientific team, directed by Maria Alessandra Bilotta, researcher in the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities of Lisbon and member of the Institute for Medieval Studies (IEM) at the same University. The IUS ILLUMINATUM research team is composed of medieval art historians belonging to different European academic institutions, all specializing in illuminated legal manuscripts. The research team intends to carry on a comparative study of the artistic, cultural and social currents revealed by the production and the circulation of illuminated legal manuscripts in medieval Europe. Each of the team members proposes to investigate these phenomena through the study of specific types of legal manuscripts, within a definite region of Europe. The team has its headquarters at the Institute for Medieval Studies (IEM) in the NOVA School of Social Sciences and Humanities of Lisbon, while the members retain their own academic affiliations.

CONTENTS:
Maria Alessandra BILOTIA — Acknowledgements
Maria Joao BRANCO — Introduction – Medieval Europe in Motion, a motto for a Research Institute and its researchers
1. Social, Economic, and Cultural Contexts of the Practice of Law
Maura MORDlNl — Quelques fragments des livres juridiques et leurs aspects culturels : le cas d’Arezzo
Attilio STELLA — Rethinking Law and Custom. Iacobus de Ardizone (d. 1254) in a Local and European Context
Maria DO ROSARIO BARBOSA MORUJAO — Objets et modeles en circulation dans l’Occident medieval. Quelques exemples de sceaux de clercs portugais
Marta Luigina MANGINI — «Per obedientiam scripsi». Religione e professione nei percorsi di alcuni notai in Italia (secoli XII-XV)
Anna Beatriz ESSER DOS SANTOS — Imagining and Rethinking Women: Female Normativity in the City of Ladies and the Book of the Three Virtues by Christine de Pizan
Pippa SALONIUS — The Medieval World of Wearable Art: Frames, Lineage, Nature and the Law .
Francisco Jose DIAZ MARCILLA — La practica del Derecho en la literatura medieval castellana: rejlejos socioculturales
2. Peoples, ldeas, Works and the Practice of Law in Medieval Europe (13th-15th c.)
Marjolaine LEMEILLAT — Livres de droit et Tres ancienne Coutume en Bretagne a la fin du Moyen Age (XIII-XV siecle)
Jorge JIMENEZ LOPEZ — Libri canonum et libri legum en el Patrimonio Librario del Colegio Mayor de san Bartolonze de la Universidad de Salamanca (1433-1440)
Youness M’HIR EL KOUBAA — Las 25 consultas jur(dicas (masa’il) de al Mawwaq (m.1492): correspondencia granadina enviada a Tunez en el ultimo tercio del s. XV
Alice TAVARES — Lus fuerus extensus purtugueses: unafuente del derechu municipal portugues. Algunas propuestas para su estudio .
Armando NORTE — I here bequeath … Clerics donating law books on their deathbed. Manuscript transmission during the Portuguese Middle Ages
3. Productions of Legal Manuscript (Illlumination, Paleography, Codicology)
Robert Grass — Illuminated Law Manuscripts at Durham Cathedral and Their Completion: 1140 1300
Andrea lMPROTA — Manoscritti miniati di argon1ento giuridico a Napoli in eta angioina (secc. XIII-XV)
Gianluca DEL MONACO — Tra chiose dantesche e libri di legge:nuove considerazioni sulla Commedia riccardiana-braidense
Joanna FROŃSKA — Itineraires des libri legales, entre Avignon et Chartres. Autour de l’lnfortiat de l’ancienne bibliotheque capitulaire de Chartres
Paolo DI SIMONE — Manoscritti giuridici negli Abruzzi (XIII-XV secolo)
Andrea BARTOCCI — Due canonisti abruzzesi del Quattrocento: Antonio d’Atri e Pietro Consueti
Marfa Teresa CHICOTE POMPANIN, Angel FUENTES 0RTIZ — Illuminating aristocracy. Decorated documents of mayorazgo in Medieval Castile
4. Circulation of Legat Manuscripts and Books in the Context of Juridical Culture
Arkadiusz ADAMCZUK — Le manuscrit Liber lecturae Ioannis de Platea super institutionibus Iustiniani de la Bibliotheque Henryk Wilhelm Rosenberg de Gdańsk : breves remarques sur l’enluminure dufontispice
Martina HACKE — Messagers de l’Universite de Paris et circulation des livres juridiques imprimes (fin XVe-debut XVIe siecle): l’exenzple de Jean Cabiller
Giovanna MURANO — Il Decretum in Europa nel secolo XII
Jose DOMINGUES — O acolhimento do Ius comnzune enz Portugal
Sophie CASSAONES-BROUQUEST — Le marche du livre a Toulnuse. Un exemple des circulations juridiques et intellectuelles et culturelles en Europe a la fin du Moyen Age
Paul MIRONNEAU — Voyager par la glose: l’Italie et l’influence de Jean d’Andre et Pierre Bohier dans Les ecrits d’Aymeric de Peyrac (vers 1340-1400)
Maria Alessandra BILOTTA — Da Bologna al Midi della Francia: il Decreto di Graziano ms. 67 della Bibliotheque du Carre d’Art di Nimes
Mario ASCHERI — Conclusions. Alle radici dell’Europa

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Hybrid Joint Seminar: ‘Cities of the Living and the Dead: Sultanic and Royal Burial in Late Medieval Cairo and Paris Compared’, Caitlin John, and ‘Trade of Devotional Objects in Later Medieval London: Evidence from the City Customs Accounts, c. 1380-1530’, Eliot Benbow, Thursday 18 November 2021, 5:30PM – 7:30PM (GMT)

This year, most of our seminars will be held in a hybrid format, with an in-person audience and a zoom room online. The seminar will take place in UCL’s Cruciform LT2. Anyone who wishes to attend in person is welcome to, but you must register online. The online form will ask you to specify whether you will attend in person or online. Those attending online will receive the zoom link via email. If you have registered but lost the zoom link, feel free to email me for a reminder before the seminar. We ask all those attending in person to wear a face-covering, in line with UCL general policy.

Cities of the Living and the Dead: Sultanic and Royal Burial in Late Medieval Cairo and Paris Compared

This paper looks at the burial of kings and sultans in and around the late medieval cities of Paris and Cairo from a comparative perspective. The topographies of royal and sultanic burial and how these changed over time are explored. Sultans and kings’ burial locations were all intimately connected to the urban space, despite some being more geographically central than others. Both sultans and kings were buried in highly exclusive locations. Yet, more than just reflecting the social hierarchy of the city, royal and sultanic burial played an active role in reinforcing this. Dynasty and individual ambition were expressed in the burial spaces and architecture of both kings and sultans, although to differing extents, relating to the distinctions between these two forms of rule.  

And 

Trade of Devotional Objects in Later Medieval London: Evidence from the City Customs Accounts,  c. 1380-1530

The medieval customs accounts of the City of London form an important, and hitherto underutilized source for the study of material culture, trade, and daily life in later medieval England. Many of these accounts, detailing taxes paid on imports and exports to and from London, have been recently edited and published for the first time by Stuart Jenks and the Hanseatic History Association. They reveal interesting patterns concerning the trade, and of particular interest for this paper, the importing of devotional objects. Particularly frequent examples are cargoes which include paternosters or bedes, otherwise known as rosaries. These prayer beads were imported in large quantities and in a wide range of materials. The studying of these accounts further provide insights about the people importing these objects, how they might have been made and sold, as well as where they were coming from. This paper will seek to show the accounts provide important further evidence of the range of devotional goods available for purchase across a wide range of late medieval English society. Furthermore, it will argue that the accounts deserve further attention as sources for material culture, and particularly, less expensive, everyday goods, which are often considered to lack the vital documentary evidence to contextualize their regular archaeological survival.  

Please register online here.

Please note that there is a limited capacity on campus. If you have not selected an ‘in-person ticket’ please do not go to UCL, but join online. You are requested to wear masks at UCL.

Online/In Person Lecture: The Gothic Sculpted Portal: Technical Aspects, Dr. Iliana Kasarska, American University of Paris, 18 November 2021

For those of you who are based in Paris, you are welcome to come to a lecture by Dr. Iliana Kasarska on The Gothic Sculpted Portal: Technical Aspects. It will take place at the American University of Paris at 6 rue du Colonel Combes (75007) on Thurs. Nov. 18 at 6pm in room C-104. There is a maximum of 25 people in the room, Covid oblige. If you are planning on coming in person, please contact annadrussakoff@gmail.com. asap and come with a photo ID. Also indicate if you would like to join in for dinner afterwards.

If you’d like to hear the talk remotely, follow this link to the Microsoft Teams Meet-up.

Call for Papers: l’art à l’heure archéologique, Histoire de l’art issue no. 90, Deadline: 15 January 2022

The archaeological approach inspires today as much the art historians as the artists. The
patient reconstitution of the past that archaeologists make from fragmentary remains whose
context is meticulously analyzed opens new ways to the analysis of works but also to the
artistic creation. Beyond the mere “taste for ruins,” it is indeed the principles and methods of
archaeology that nourish the reflection on art. This issue of Histoire de l’art proposes to
explore different aspects of the dialogue between art and archaeology, in a resolutely broad
perspective. It also invites us to question the complex relationships, both on the academic
and scientific levels, between the two sister disciplines of art history and archaeology. This
call for papers is thus addressed to young researchers in art history, archaeology, history,
or anthropology interested in the avenues of research outlined below, regardless of their
preferred period.


Restitution
By taking an interest in the sometimes modest vestiges of a more or less distant past,
archaeologists draw attention to objects that a quick eye would judge to be hopeless, so
much so that their degradation makes them enigmatic. Their serialization and
archaeometric analyses allow the reconstruction of whole sections of the past and give an
unexpected value to collections or monuments that were once neglected. This type of
investigation has breathed new life into art history—the pioneering work of Jean Marcadé
comes to mind—and inspires artists to this day, as the exhibitions “The Way of the Shovel”
at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago in 2013 and “Anarchéologie” at the Centre
Pompidou in Paris in 2017 have shown. The ability of archaeologists to render a vanished
world is also a powerful engine for the imagination, and artists have seized upon the
computerized visualization tools created for archaeology.
Contextualization
Archaeology is also a field discipline, attentive to the spatial inscription of the vestiges and
to their relationship to the environment. Collaboration with archaeologists pushes art
historians to leave the museums and to place the works in their architectural or natural
context, as Jane Fejfer did for example for the Roman portraits. This interest in the site, its
evolution and then its destruction has also given rise to numerous collaborations between
archaeologists and artists, such as the pioneering work of Anne and Patrick Poirier, the
collaborative process of “reappearing” the Northwest Palace of Nimrud by Michael
Rakowitz, or the sound technologies employed by Forensic Architecture or Umashankar
and the Earchaeologists.

Interpretation
A human science, archaeology is a critical discipline, which proposes an interpretation of
the past from new elements, drawn from oblivion by the excavation. If this capacity of
archaeology to write history has sometimes been instrumentalized, it often brings on the
contrary a denial to warped readings of the past. Works of art, archaeological objects in
their own right, contribute to this re-examination and allow us to refine our historical
knowledge, as John Ma’s work on honorary statuary shows. Artists have also seized upon
this capacity of the remains to carry a new analytical discourse, revealing political, social
and even environmental issues. The actions of removal (Yuji Agematsu), excavation
(Simon Callery), relocation (Danh Vo) and museification (Mark Dion, Ali Cherri, Rayyane
Tabet) are all ways for artists to question narratives and reveal the polysemy of the
discourse linked to an artifact.


The issue will be coordinated by Guillaume Biard (Aix-Marseille Université), Jean-Baptiste
Delorme (Centre National des Arts Plastiques), and Arianna Esposito (Université de
Bourgogne).


The journal is edited by Dominique de Font-Réaulx (Musée du Louvre).
Synopses (in French or English), including a presentation of the problematized subject
(1 page), a brief bibliography on the subject and a biography of the author (500 characters),
should be emailed as a single PDF file to revueredachistoiredelart@gmail.com by
January 15, 2022. The editorial board will review the submitted proposals. Selected
projects will be published in articles due May 1, 2022.

Podcast Episode: Les Enluminures, Time, Daylight, and a November Calendar

Les Enluminures have released the 32nd episode of their podcast, available online via this link.

Short winter days are now upon us. Usually we don’t consider the actual day to be shortened, however. There may be less daylight, but the measure of the day does not change throughout the year. Why is this? The transition between seasons often makes us more aware of time and the absurd ways we choose to apportion time during the day. Why do we structure our days around dates and increments instead of around feasts and labor? How were days and hours understood in the medieval period? Was time measured differently during the Middle Ages in comparison to contemporary, “equal” time standards? Find out today, and explore the illumination of a fabulous November calendar page from The Hours of Le Goux de La Berchère. 

Online Lecture: East of Byzantium: Eternal ‘Silk Road’? The Rise of Sogdiana during the 3rd–4th Centuries A.D., Sören Stark, Institute for the Study of the Ancient World, New York University, Monday 15 November, 12:00-1:30 pm (EST)

The last three decades ‘Silk Road’ studies have seen an unprecedented boom. As one of the consequences of this boom, Sogdiana and its traders were brought into the view of the broader academic and non-academic audience. Unfortunately (as is often the case with popular labels attached to research) the ‘Silk Road’ label has a tendency to take a somewhat timeless quality, thus turning Sogdiana into an eternal hub of transcontinental trade routes, supposedly flourishing since the dawn of history. But is this really the case? And if not, how can we explain the rise of Sogdiana as one of Eurasia’s economic power houses during Late Antiquity? In my lecture, I will attempt to approach this question with the help of both written sources as well as archaeological data. With regard to the latter, I will in particular draw from the results of archaeological fieldwork conducted since 2011 by the Uzbek-American Expedition in Bukhara in present-day Uzbekistan.

Sören Stark Associate Professor for Central Asian Archaeology at the Institute for the Study of the Ancient World at New York University. He received his PhD in 2005 from Martin-Luther-Universität Halle-Wittenberg. Professor Stark has close to two decades of experience in archaeological fieldwork in Western Central Asia. His current research interests are, among others, on Hellenistic and Late Antique/Early Medieval Sogdiana and the archaeology and history of nomadic groups close to oasis territories in Western Central Asia. His publications include a monograph on the archaeology of the 6th-8th century Türks in Inner and Central Asia, an exhibition catalogue on Early Iron Age kurgans from Kazakhstan, and numerous articles and book chapters on the history and archaeology of Sogdiana between the Hellenistic and the Islamic periods. He has been co-editor of the Journal of Inner Asian Art and Archaeology (at Brepols) and is currently co-editor of Brill’s Handbook of Oriental Studies, Section 8: Uralic & Central Asian Studies (HO8).

This lecture will take place live on Zoom, followed by a question and answer period. Please register to receive the Zoom link. An email with the relevant Zoom information will be sent 1–2 hours ahead of the lecture. Registration closes at 9:00 AM (EST) on November 15, 2021.

Click here to register.

EAST OF BYZANTIUM is a partnership between the Arthur H. Dadian and Ara Oztemel Chair of Armenian Art at Tufts University and the Mary Jaharis Center for Byzantine Art and Culture at Hellenic College Holy Cross in Brookline, MA. It explores the cultures of the eastern frontier of the Byzantine Empire in the late antique and medieval periods.