The Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies offers post-doctoral Fellowships to be used for research at the Institute in the medieval field of the holder’s choice. Mellon Fellows will also participate in the interdisciplinary Research Seminars.

The Mellon Fellowships are intended for young medievalists of exceptional promise who have completed their doctoral work, ordinarily within the previous five years, including those who are starting on their professional academic careers at approximately the Assistant Professor level. Fellowships are valued at approximately $40,000 (CDN).

Applications for the academic year 2017–2018 should be e-mailed in word document or preferably in PDF format to the Institute Secretary at barbara.north@utoronto.ca. Reference letters may also be e-mailed directly by the referee to the Institute Secretary.

Completed applications, as well as all supporting documentation, must be received no later than 1 February 2017. The awarding institution must send official confirmation that the PhD has been examined and approved to the postal address below. All documentation must be received by the application deadline.
Application forms and further details may be obtained from the web site at:
http://www.pims.ca/academics/post-doctoral-mellon-fellowship

On the 22^nd of September, as Cambridge’s new intake of Medieval MPhil students, we were offered the opportunity to attend a symposium marking the retirement of Professor Richard Beadle.

Part of the ‘Writing Britain’ conference series, the theme for the day was ‘Textual and Related Studies,’ after a course of the same name initiated by Professor Beadle. The event was split between the Faculty of English and the University Library. Papers were given by twelve speakers, but of course the event drew wide attendance from the scholarly community, with about fifty colleagues and friends of Professor Beadle in attendance.

Subjects ranged from ‘The pragmatics of punctuation: three Anglophone letters from Wales’ (Jeremy Smith) to ‘Producing an English Bible c.1400’ (Anne Hudson.) Many of the presentations touched directly on Professor Beadle’s own work, while one was even given by a former student of his, Nicholas Perkins. For a full list of the speakers and their papers, see below.

Individual reflections:
Fran D’Argenio: As a new member of the medieval academic community, I was excited and pleasantly overwhelmed by the breadth of scope within the symposium. Jeremy Smith’s paper in particular was amusing and interesting as he examined three somewhat acrimonious letters for their punctuation, as well as Meg Twycross’ that gave a warm and funny insight into the academic process.

Katherine Dixon: Aside from the remarkable quality of the papers presented at Professor Beadle’s symposium, the most memorable part of the day for me was by far the tangible excitement it created among the newly arrived MPhil students. Surrounded by generations of Richard’s colleagues and students one couldn’t help feeling wholly validated in their choice to enter into the wise, generous and engaging medieval academic community.

Laurie Atkinson: Now some weeks into the eponymous ‘Textual and Related Studies’ course, I have come to more fully appreciate the great treasury of manuscript material to which Richard has introduced so many through his teaching and scholarship. The gratitude of students and colleagues for his many contributions to the field was expressed though the scholarly enthusiasm, and genuine personal warmth so evident throughout the symposium. It was an atmosphere extremely welcoming to the master and the as-yet-uninitiated alike, and an introduction to a community to which I sincerely hope to contribute in the future.

Hannah Lucas: All of the new MPhil students were so grateful to be welcomed to the academic community with the invitation to such an event. To hear of the development of Professor Beadle’s Textual and Related Studies course, which remains integral to the postgraduate experience, was a wonderful opportunity. The symposium presented wide-ranging scholarship that stretched even into the 20^th century, in the case of Anne Hudson’s illuminating talk, and reiterated the multifarious and far-reaching nature of the field of medieval studies.

Anni Henriksen: The symposium, a day of academic celebration among colleagues, advisors and students, mentors and mentees, was first and foremost a celebration amongst friends. Having arrived in Cambridge only days prior to the event, some of us were yet to learn the full magnitude of Professor Beadle’s exceptional career. However, after five hours in the company of Professor Beadle himself and many of his remarkable colleagues present that day, we had gained a clear sense not only of his immense generosity in teaching and collegiality in research, but also the breadth of his knowledge and contribution to the many fields of study within medieval literature and manuscript studies.

Speakers:
Helen Cooper: ‘Conventions of Staging’
Ian Doyle: CUL MS Dd.1.17
Ralph Hanna: ‘Cambridge, St. John’s College, MS E.12’
Anne Hudson: ‘Producing an English Bible c.1400’
Pamela King: ‘Everyman, the Old Vic, and World War I’
Peter Murray Jones: ‘Bradshaviana’
Derek Pearsall: ‘The Words of the York Plays’
Nicholas Perkins: ‘CUL MS Add. 3037: Norwich, Sibton, Naworth, Brent Eleigh, Cambridge’
Ad Putter: ‘Gonville and Caius MS 54/31: Norfolk, Medieval Letters and Palaeography’
Jeremy Smith: ‘The Pragmatics of Punctuation: three Anglophone Letters from Wales’
Meg Twycross: ‘Work in Progress: or, “Why am I doing this?”’
Patrick Zutshi: ‘The Private Correspondence of the Avignon popes’

From Carreg y Nant to Cartagena: Networking the Shropshire March in Fouke le Fitz Waryn.

Institute of English Studies, School of Advanced Study, University of London
Medieval Manuscripts Seminar Programme 2016/7

11 October 2016

Andrew Dunning, British Library
Manuscript Collaboration between Malmesbury and Cirencester Abbeys

From the 1130s to the 1240s, a continual exchange in manuscripts supported the communities of the Benedictine abbey in Malmesbury and the Augustinian abbey in Cirencester. Robert of Cricklade, a canon at Cirencester, wrote of his admiration of William of Malmesbury and his efforts to have copies of several of his works made for the abbey library. Also at Cirencester, Walter de Melida, a scribe and textual critic, used Malmesbury manuscripts for copies of John of Salisbury’s/Policraticus/ and Alan of Tewkesbury’s collection of the letters of Thomas Becket. After the death of Cirencester’s most famous author, Alexander Neckam, in 1217, the prior of Malmesbury provided Walter with a statement of his admiration for Alexander’s /Corrogationes Promethei/, likely supporting an effort to assemble Alexander’s complete works. In the 1240s, Alexander’s nephew, Geoffrey Brito, compiled a miscellany of his uncle’s works, /Sol meldunensis/, dedicating it to Geoffrey, abbot of Malmesbury, with an invitation for further contributions. The manuscript appears to have been passed between the two abbeys, with new features added along the way.

22 November 2016

Mary Wellesley, British Library
Graphical Reverence and Script Hierarchy in the manuscript of the N-town Plays

The paper examines the macaronic text of the Magnificat from the ‘Visit to Elizabeth’ pageant in London, British Library, Cotton MS Vespasian D. VIII  — the sole surviving copy of the Middle English play cycle, The N-town Plays. It explores what the scribe’s use of a script hierarchy has to tell us about performance and reading, and the interplay between liturgy and drama.

31 January 2017

Ainoa Correa Castro, Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellow, King’s College London
The scribes of the Silos Apocalypse (London, British Library, Add. MS. 11695) and the scriptorium of Silos in the late eleventh century

In the late eleventh century Fortunio, abbot of the newly restored Benedictine community of Silos, near Burgos, commissioned the time- and cost-consuming task of replicating for the monastery one of the most significant best-sellers of the peninsular Middle Ages: a Beatus. In doing so, he was continuing a long-lasting Iberian, Mozarabic, tradition originating in the late eighth century. In this seminar the Silos Apocalypse will be examined with the purpose of unveiling who were the scribes who intervened in its copying, what can be known about their professional connections, what was their cultural context, and how this codex fits within the written production of Silos in the late eleventh and early twelfth centuries.

7 February 2017

Arianna D’Ottone Rambach, Associate Professor of Arabic Language and Literature, Palaeography, Codicology and Numismatics – Sapienza, University of Rome
Arabic Palaeography: Mediterranean contacts and influences 

Bilingual and digraphic manuscript-witnesses, papyri, manuscripts and gems, in Greek and Arabic, and Latin and Arabic, offer the opportunity to explore cultural interactions between Mediterranean written practices, and connections between book cultures. A recently discovered, and unique document in Arabic, written in Latin letters, will be also presented and put in context from both the historical and linguistic points of view.

14 March 2017

David Rundle, University of Oxford
English Humanist Script in England: the first ten years

In the last half century, the outline of the early development in Florence of humanist bookhand, littera antiqua, has been amassed in detail. Central to this was the work of A. C. de la Mare, who also reconstructed the history of that script in England. This paper revisits that topic and reveals the identity of the first known humanist scribe at work in England. The intention, however, is not simply to add to the sum of knowledge about humanism’s reception beyond the European mainland but also to question the established narratives about its spread from its Italian centre to the periphery.

28 March 2017

Ralph Hanna III (Emeritus Fellow, Keble College, Oxford)
Cambridge, University Library, MS. Dd.1.17

**

Venue: Dr Seng T Lee Centre for Manuscript and Book Studies,
Senate House Library, University of London,
Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

All meetings at 5.30 p.m., Tuesdays, followed by a wine reception.
Organiser: Julia Crick, King’s College London.