The figure of Matthew Parker (1504-75), which should be prominent in the history of the early years of Elizabeth I, represents a remarkable gap in our understanding of the sixteenth century. His political and ecclesiastical career has been neglected by the historians of the past fifty years; his institutional and intellectual patronage have been studied without reference generally to the broader world in which he moved; his remarkable salvage of the manuscript remains of Anglo-Saxon England is known to specialists but not to those working in cognate fields; his efforts to recreate the history of the English Church have been studied without systematic reference to the continental and English models that he imitated. This conference aims to bring those with an interest in Parker together for the first time, to encourage work bridging existing fields of Parkerian study and setting aspects of his career into their full context, and, as a result, to present for the first time a new and coherent picture of a major figure in mid-sixteenth-century English (and Continental) intellectual and religious life, bringing into particular focus Parker’s role in collaborative scholarship and the retrieval of the past.
The conference is co-hosted by Corpus Christi College (of which Parker became Master in 1544), which will allow study sessions to take place in the Parker Library and to be accompanied by a rolling exhibition of books and manuscripts from Parker’s collections (changing as appropriate for each paper). Confirmed speakers include Alexandra Walsham, David Crankshaw, Alexandra Gillespie, Jeffrey Todd Knight, Paul Nelles, Elizabeth Evenden, Lori Anne Ferrell, Brian Cummings, James Carley, and Arnold Hunt.
