CFP: Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas

This is a final reminder that the deadline for the submission of paper proposals for the Spring Meeting of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas is 31st January. The meeting takes place on 19th March. Further information can be found here.

Chadwick Memorial Lecture 2011

The next public lecture in ASNC will be the 2011 H. M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture, on Thursday 17th March, at 5pm, in room GR.06/07, English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge.

Professor Wendy Davies (University College London) will speak on: 'Water mills and cattle standards: probing the economic comparison between Ireland and Spain in the early middle ages'.

Hector Munro Chadwick (1870-1947) was second Elrington and Bosworth Professor of Anglo-Saxon in the University of Cambridge (1912-41). Through the immense range of his scholarly publications, and through the vigorous enthusiasm which he brought to all aspects of Anglo-Saxon studies -- philological and literary, historical and archaeological -- he helped to define the field and give it the interdisciplinary orientation which characterises it still. The Department of ASNC, which owes its existence and its own interdisciplinary outlook to H.M. Chadwick, has wished to commemorate his enduring contribution to Anglo-Saxon studies by establishing an annual series of lectures in his name.

The H.M. Chadwick Memorial Lecture, established in 1990, is delivered by a scholar who is invited to Cambridge for the occasion, on a subjected calculated to be of interest to the whole Department.

Everyone welcome.

ASNC awarded Junior Research Fellowship

Congratulations to Levi Roach, a PhD student in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, and a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has just been elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, beginning in October 2011. Levi proposes to work on the following project for duration of his Fellowship:

Over the next three years I will embark on an exciting new research project, provisionally entitled ‘Apocalypse and Atonement around the Year 1000: Æthelred “the Unready”’ and Otto III in Comparison’. My intention is to investigate how discourses of penance and apocalypticism influenced kingship and politics at court in England and Germany in the 990s and early 1000s. Specifically, the study will focus on how the rulers of these two kingdoms, Æthelred II (better known to posterity as ‘the Unready’) and Otto III reacted to contemporary apocalyptic and eschatological fears. It has long been noted that a degree of millennial anxiety is visible in this period, and it has likewise long been appreciated that discourses of penance and repentance played an important role at Æthelred’s and Otto’s courts. My intention, however, is to look at the intersection between these two, which has yet to receive detailed commentary. The aim will be to investigate both how fears of the Last Judgement may have helped fuel concerns about penance and atonement, and how on the other hand such apocalyptic anxieties themselves may have been in part a product of contemporary concerns about sin and repentance. It is my contention that these concerns about apocalypse and atonement came together in a unique fashion in the 990s, in part—though certainly not only—in response to the approaching millennium. It is, therefore, no accident that both Æthelred and Otto are known to have performed penance, and equally no accident that in both cases this seems to have taken place in the later 990s.[1]

[1] That Otto III performed penance is well established and S. Hamilton, ‘Otto III’s Penance: a Case Study of Unity and Diversity in the Eleventh-Century Church’, Studies in Church History 32 (1996), 83–94, surveys the evidence admirably. The evidence for Æthelred’s penance is more circumstantial, but compelling nonetheless. It has yet to receive detailed treatment in print, but will be discussed at length in two forthcoming studies: C. Cubitt, ‘The Politics of Remorse: Penance and Royal Piety in the Reign of Æthelred the Unready’, Historical Research (forthcoming); and L. Roach, ‘Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England’, Early Medieval Europe 19 (forthcoming 2011). I am grateful to Dr. Cubitt for making her paper available to me in advance of publication. For the time being, see also her insightful remarks in ‘Ælfric’s Lay Patrons’, in A companion to Ælfric, ed. M. Swan and H. Magennis (Leiden, 2009), pp. 165–92, at 171–5.

Sutton Trust Summer School in ASNC

Dr Elizabeth Boyle writes:

In 2011 the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic will once again be running a Summer School in association with the Sutton Trust. This year the Summer School will take place from 22nd - 26th August. More details can be found via the University's Summer School pages, and in the film below, which features participants from last year's Summer School in ASNC:

Medieval Furness: Texts and Contexts

Dr Fiona Edmonds writes:

I am writing to tell you about the AHRC-funded project ‘Hagiography at the Frontiers: Jocelin of Furness and Insular Politics’ and the associated conference ‘Medieval Furness: Texts and Contexts’, which will take place on 8^th July, 2011. I am the Co-investigator on the project; the other participants are Dr Clare Downham, University of Liverpool (Principal Investigator) and Dr Ingrid Sperber (Research Associate). The project will run for two years, from July 2010 until July 2012.

The aims of the project are threefold: to bring forth editions and translations of two texts (Jocelin’s Lives of Patrick and Helena); to conduct research into the cultural context in which Jocelin was working; and to further knowledge of Jocelin’s work amongst the general public, particularly in Cumbria and North Lancashire. The writings of Jocelin of Furness have not attracted a great deal of scholarship, although there has been a resurgence of interest in his work recently, as witnessed by Dr Helen Birkett’s book The Saints’ Lives of Jocelin of Furness (Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer, 2010). The study of Jocelin’s work has been made more difficult by the absence of satisfactory published editions of certain texts, notably the Life of St Patrick. Jocelin’s writings are, however, of great interest to scholars of twelfth-century Britain and Ireland. 

Furness Abbey (image from Wikimedia commons)

One of the most interesting features of Jocelin’s work is his interest in the Celtic world: Jocelin not only wrote a Life of Patrick, but also a Life of Kentigern (a North British saint and the patron of Glasgow) and a Life of St Helena, whose Brittonic origins were stressed by Jocelin. Jocelin also composed a Life of St Waltheof (d. 1159), who was abbot of Melrose in the Scottish Borders, a leading monastic reformer in northern England and a stepson of the Scottish king David I. It is interesting to ponder the extent to which the location of Furness Abbey (pictured) facilitated Jocelin’s connections with, and interest in, the Celtic world. The Furness peninsula lay at the outer edge of the Anglo-Norman realm and Furness fell under Scottish rule for a time. The inhabitants of Furness were culturally and linguistically diverse and the location of the peninsula – protruding into the Irish Sea – facilitated contact with Ireland and the Isle of Man. My role in the project is to investigate the cultural and linguistic history of medieval Furness and to study Furness’s network of daughter houses, many of which were located in Ireland and Man.

The project’s main themes will be explored in our day conference ‘Medieval Furness: Texts and Contexts’. The conference will take place at the Abbey House hotel, Barrow-in-Furness; the programme is copied below. The conference is supported by the University of Liverpool and the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse, and Celtic, University of Cambridge. Please contact Dr Fiona Edmonds to obtain further information and a booking form.

Programme:

9.00 Registration

9.30 Opening remarks: Keith Stringer (Lancaster University)

9.45 Janet Burton (University of Wales, Trinity Saint David)

Furness, Savigny and the Cistercian World

10.15 Hugh Doherty (University of Oxford)

The twelfth-century benefactors and enemies of Furness Abbey

10.45 Tea/Coffee

11.15  John Reuben Davies (University of Glasgow)

The Life of St Waldef, abbot of Melrose

11.45 Marie-Therese Flanagan (Queen’s University, Belfast)

The Life of St Patrick, patron saint of Ireland

12.15 Seán Duffy (Trinity College Dublin)

Ulster, Dublin and the Irish Sea Region in the age of Jocelin

12.45 Lunch

2.00 Helen Birkett (Edinburgh University)

Jocelin and the literary legacy of Furness Abbey

2. 30 Jason Wood (Heritage Consultancy Services)

Furness Abbey: art, literature and tourism

3.00 Closing Remarks: Richard Sharpe (University of Oxford)

3.30 Visit to Furness Abbey

6pm Conference dinner 

Dr Mark Blackburn on Radio 4 tomorrow

Dr Rory Naismith writes:

On Tuesday 6th December, Dr Mark Blackburn, keeper of coins and medals at the Fitzwilliam Museum and reader in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, was interviewed for Radio 4's programme iPM. His discussion on coins, medals and how they reveal our history can be heard tomorrow (Saturday 11th December) at 5.30pm, and will be available on the BBC's iplayer facility thereafter.

Digital Resource for Palaeography

Congratulations to Affiliated Lecturer in ASNC, Dr Peter Stokes, who teaches Palaeography in the department, and who has just been awarded a prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council for a project to develop a 'Digital Resource for Palaeography', based at the Centre for Computing in the Humanities, at King's College London. The details of the project can be found here.

CFP: Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas

The next Spring Meeting of the Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas will be held on Saturday 19 March 2011 at the University of Cambridge. The Leslie Seiffert Lecture will be delivered by Professor Emeritus Richard Hudson of University College London.
 
Papers are invited on any topic within the History of Linguistics, and will typically be of 20 minutes’ duration with 10 minutes for discussion. All proposals, including title and abstract (maximum 250 words) should be sent either electronically or by post to the address below by 31 January 2011. Notification of acceptance of proposals will be made by 18 February 2011.

Booking forms will be available on the Henry Sweet Society website (http://www.henrysweet.org) from early January, and must be returned by

9 March 2011.

For abstract submissions and further information please contact:

Dr Deborah Hayden

Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic,

University of Cambridge

9 West Road,

Cambridge CB3 9DP, UK

dah58@cam.ac.uk

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The Henry Sweet Society for the History of Linguistic Ideas was founded in February 1984. Its aims are to promote and encourage the study of the history of all branches of linguistic thought, theoretical and applied, and including non-European traditions. Its fields of interest include the history both of the major subject areas of linguistics and also of more specialised topics, such as writing systems, literacy, rhetoric, and the application of linguistic ideas within professional and technical fields. It also publishes the biannual journal, Language and History.

2010 Quiggin Memorial Lecture

This is a reminder that the 2010 E. C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture will take place today at 5pm in Room GR.06/07, English Faculty Building, 9 West Road, Cambridge.

Prof Liam Breatnach, School of Celtic Studies, Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, will speak on: 'The early Irish law text senchas már and the question of its date'.

All welcome.

Author, authority and books in Benevento

Dr Rosalind Love writes:

Ten days ago I stepped off the crazy whirl of Cambridge term-time to attend the 6^th Congress of the International Medieval Latin Committee, at Naples and Benevento (10-13 November). After inaugural speeches at the University of Suor Orsola Benincasa in Naples, two coach-loads of medieval latinists embarked for Benevento, causing total gridlock, a cacophony of car-horns and colourful Neapolitan execration. At the rather quieter city of Benevento we witnessed a remarkable event: the coming-home of the first item to be repatriated under the Holocaust (Return of Cultural Objects) Act 2009. In 1943 the Allies bombarded Benevento, flattening most of it, including the Cathedral and the Metropolitan Chapter Library. The manuscripts were taken to safety in a hand-cart, but in the confusion one went missing and ended up for sale in Naples, where it was bought in 1944 by an English officer, Captain Ash. The book, a 12^th-century illuminated missal in characteristic Beneventan script, and was bought at auction in 1947 for the then British Museum and catalogued as MS Egerton 3511. Later, although Benevento had proved its original ownership, requests for the missal’s return foundered on legislation preventing the British Library from ‘alienating’ any of its holdings, and even when the Spoliation Advisory Panel, set up to examine the loss of artefacts during the Nazi era, judged in 2005 that the book should go back to Benevento on loan, the BL’s rules about the safe-keeping of its manuscripts prevented it. A British journalist, Martin Bailey (of The Art Newspaper), and then more recently a lawyer, Jeremy Scott, took up the case, which was ultimately swung by the 2009 Act. Jeremy Scott finally handed the missal (which had travelled inside a box inside officially-sealed wrappings inside a padlocked case – after all that, thankfully a satisfyingly fat codex!) over to Monsignor Andrea Mugione, the Archbishop of Benevento (in the picture below, with Dr Mario Iadanza, Director of the Office of Culture in the Archdiocese), in the presence of us medieval latinists, the great and good of Benevento, and a hoard of paparazzi. It was rather a moving moment, not least because the handing-back took place within minutes of the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month.

After that excitement, it was down to business for the 200 of us attending the Congress, whose theme was ‘Auctor et auctoritas’. I was there to represent a research project with which I’ve been involved since 2007, ‘Boethius in Early Medieval Europe. Commentary on The Consolation of Philosophy from the 9th to the 11th centuries’, funded for five years by the Leverhulme Trust and headed by Professor Malcolm Godden, of the University of Oxford, with Dr Rohini Jayatilaka as full-time researcher (see the project website). Written in about 525 as the exiled Boethius awaited execution, the Consolation is a remarkable work which is thought to have been ‘rediscovered’ in the late 8th century by Alcuin, and then steadily gained in popularity, prompting translations into Old English and Old High German, for example. Lady Philosophy’s effort to console her ‘pupil’ meant confronting BIG questions of universal interest: why evil people often seem to prosper, why bad things happen to good people, what true happiness is, how humans can have free will under the gaze of an omniscient God with a divine plan.