2022 Congress Activities
Sponsored or Co-Sponsored by the RGME

at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies
Online
Monday, May 9 – Saturday, May 14, 2022

Private Collection, Le Parc Abbey, Theological Volume, Part B: Detail of Vellum Leaf. Photography Mildred Budny.

Posted on 22 November 2021, with updates

Following the close of the 2022 Congress Preparations: Call for Papers, then the selection of proposals and arrangement of sequence of papers within the sessions, for the submission of their programs to the Congress Committee, we announce the Programs for our Sessions at the 2022 ICMS online in May 2021. As in previous years, we plan to hold a Business Meeting at the Congress.

All activities are to take place online, like 2021. See our 2021 Congress Report.

When appropriate, we can report the assignment of the scheduling of Sessions within the Congress Program overall, and then publish the Abstracts of the Papers and Responses, as the authors might be willing. The Congress Program will become available in due course, and registration for the online Congress might commence.

2022 Sessions Sponsored and Co-Sponsored

For the 2022 Congress we plan four Sessions.

Societas Magica logo

Two are co-sponsored. One is co-sponsored with the Societas Magica, in Year 18 of our organizations’ co-sponsorship of Sessions at the Congress. One is co-sponsored with the Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA), in Year 1 of a new tradition. (See our Co-Sponsored Sessions.)

One Session resumes a series of Sessions sponsored by the RGME at the Congress over several years: “Medieval Writing Materials”.

1–2. Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Private Collection, Turkish Binding Fragment with Balance Watermark.

1. Medieval Writing Materials:
Processes, Products, and Case-Studies

Contact: Mildred Budny
director@manuscriptevidence.org

Organized by Mildred Budny

Seeking to explore new and cumulative research on medieval writing materials and their impact, we propose to examine multiple modes for producing books, documents, and texts in other forms, such as wax, wood, metal, or stone. Case-studies might consider, for example,

• the transmission of paper across geographical regions and cultures
  — whether as material structures (watermarks sometimes included) or as products (books, correspondence, and more)
• the deployment of multi-media in assembling various products (bindings, reused fragments, seals, etc.)
• the roles of the technology and praxis of manuscripts in shaping the initial production of incunables, on both paper and vellum.

Vellum faces Paper in the Le Parc Abbey copy of Peter the Venerable. Photography Mildred Budny.

Presider

Derek Shank

Presenters

1.1. Elena Shadrina

“The Case of the Missing Papyri: Document Survival and the Transition to Parchment in Medieval Venice”

1.2. Eleanor Congdon

“Venetian Merchants’ Preference for Italian Paper While Working Abroad during the Fifteenth Century”

1.3. David Sorenson

“Turkish Imitations of Italian Paper in the Later Fifteenth Century”

Respondant

1.4. Linde M. Brocato

“The Roles of the Technology and Praxis of Manuscripts
for Producing Incunables, on Paper and Vellum”

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2. Pressing Politics:
Interactions between Authors and Printers
in the Fifteenth and Sixteenth Centuries

Contact: Mildred Budny
director@manuscriptevidence.org

Organized by David Porreca and Linde M. Brocato

The symbiotic relationship between authors and printers was as fraught in the early days of printing as it is today. Indeed, the level of care that authors invested in their works was not always matched by diligence on the part of those charged with the physical layout of the text and is mechanical reproduction. Yet for every example of such tensions and the errors at their source (e.g., Marsilio Ficino), there is another of extremely productive collaboration on both sides (e.g., Desiderius Erasmus and Aldus Manutius). This session proposes to examine the full range of these interactions, including layout and illustrations.

Colored Illustration of Marsilio Ficino Teaching, in M. Ficinus, “Medicinarius: Das Buch der Gesundheit” (Strasbourg : J. Grueninger, 1509). Image via Wikimedia Commons; source https://catalogue.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/cb41910792s.

Societas Magica logo

Presider

Mildred Budny

Presenters

2.1. Linde M. Brocato

“When Politics Press Publishing: Hernán Núñez and Vernacular Publishing (1499–1555)”

2.2. Michael Allman Conrad

“Juan Joffre’s Libro del juego delas suertes”:
The strange appearance of a popular divinatory game in the age of the Spanish Inquisition”

[NB: with a change in wording, from “occurrence” to “appearance”, from the title as it will appear in the Congress Program]

Respondant

2.3. David Porreca

“Marsilio Ficino, Printers, and Human Error: The Origins of Good Standards”

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3. Co-Sponsored with the Societas Magica

3. The Iconography of Medieval Magic:
Texts and Images
[Co-sponsored with Societas Magica]

The Newberry Library, Vault Case MS 5017, Book of Magical Charms, Image 17. Instructions “To Speak with Spirits”, with seals.

Contact: Vajra Regan
vajra.regan@mail.utoronto.ca

Organized by Vajra Regan

Medieval magical texts describe innumerable images, many of which occur in medieval art. Illustrations in media, from engraved gems and manuscript illuminations to monumental sculpture, testify to the wide diffusion of magical motifs. For example, Michael Camille has shown that the images in a book of ritual magic (the Ars Notaria) appear in a fourteenth-century cassone panel, while archaeologists have confirmed that the jasper ring of Archbishop Hubert Walter (died 1205) depicts the figure of Chnoubis.

This session will gather papers from diverse disciplines, so as better to understand the relationship between images and texts in the rich transmission of magical iconography in the Middle Ages.

© The British Library Board. Additional MS 15505, folio 22r. Italian, early 16th century. Circular diagram with coloured drawings of nine magical seals, as a textual amulet with charms against diseases, made for a man named Francesco, in a mixture of Christian iconography, seals, and the ‘Sator Arepo’ formula.

Presider

Presenters

Grzegorz First

“The Iconography of Medieval Magic: Texts and Images”

Thérèse Saint Paul

“Magic, Death and the Feminine in The Lay of the Mantle”

Jacquelyn Tuerk-Stonberg

“Magic and Byzantine Art”

Respondant

Phillip Bernhardt-House

“Seal, Sword, Snake: The Glamour of Words and Things in the Middle Ages.”

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4. Co-Sponsored with the Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA)

Alter(n)ative Alphabets in the Iberian Middle Ages
[Co-sponsored with IMANA]

Contact: Donald W. Wood

Organized by Donald W. Wood

This panel encourages the study of marginalized or non-canonical linguistic and textual objects. This aim aligns with the missions of both IMANA and the RGME to increase cross-disciplinary analysis of Iberian cultural production, representing a multiplicity of voices, material evidence, innovative methodologies, and diverse cross-disciplinary perspectives. The texts examined can engage with minority or niche hybrid-linguistic structures pertaining to Medieval Iberia’s minority religious and cultural entities, congruent with our concerted and collective desire to weave a richer tapestry of racial, cultural, religious, and ethnic inclusion.

This panel will explore uses of niche or alternative alphabets in the Iberian Middle Ages, conceived broadly as the period spanning the 8^th through 17^th centuries. Within this framework, the term ‘Iberian’ may also extend to Iberian-controlled territories outside of the Iberian Peninsula. Papers may address Judeo-Spanish, Haketia, Judeo-Arabic, Mozarabic, Aljamiado, or other linguistic blendings that have yet to be explored in scholarly fashion. Possible themes may include the implications of an alphabetic choice for the resulting textual object — manuscripts, glosses, inscriptions, epigraphs, and other forms of written expression — or examples of alterity beyond the text to achieve a particular end.

“Poem of Yuçuf”, in a 14th-century aljamiado manuscript. Image via Wikimedia Commons

Presider

Donald Wood

Presenters

Adam Mahler

“Tracing Shem Tov:  Los proverbios moreles and the Poetics of the ajamiado text”

Veronica Menaldi

Talismanic Protectin through Magical Multi-lingual Use in Morisco Spells”

Daniela Corini Chiru

“Aribisms in Bilingual Morisco Manuscripts:  Reflections of an Islamic Hiero-Sprachbund”

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Coda
“Medieval Writing Materials”: A Series Resumed in 2022

A look back at the series, as shown in their Posters, of our Congress Sessions on “Medieval Writing Materials” (2012–2014) — now resumed for 2022.  The review includes Sessions related to the subject in 2016 and 2020>2021 (cancelled or postponed from one year to the next)

2012

Medieval Writing Materials:  Manufacture, Use & Trade

2012 Congress Poster

2013

Medieval Writing Materials:  Texts, Transmission, and the Manifestation of Authority

2014

Medieval Writing Materials:  Surfaces, Fixtures & Enclosures

2014 Congress Medieval Writing Materials Poster

2016 [Related to the Series]

Parchment or Paper?  Choosing the Writing Medium in the Era Before Printing

2016 Congress Poster

2020 [Related to the Series]

Planned but Postponed to 2021 (See Next)

2021 [Related to the Series]

Seal the Real (1–2): Documentary Records, Seals & Authentications

Private Collection. Sealed Document from Grenoble dated 22 February 1345 (Old Style), with wax seal.

Coming soon, with the Series Resumed: 2022 (See above)

Medieval Writing Materials:  Processes, Products, and Case-Studies

Private Collection, MS 1, folio 130 recto, bottom right: hair side detail.

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2022 Congress Business Meeting

We plan to hold our customary Annual Business Meeting at the Congress. All are welcome.

Its booking as been requested for Wednesday, 11 May at 3 pm (EDT), so as to accord with the different time-zones of attendees.

The Agenda and companion Report for our 2021 Business Meeting are available:

• 2021 Congress Business Meeting Agenda
• 2021 Congress Business Meeting Report

An Agenda and Report for the 2022 Business Meeting will be presented.

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We invite you to attend our activities at the 2022 Congress online.  Other activities planned for 2022 include more episodes in our online series at which The Research Group Speaks.  The series began in 2021, before events might resume in person or partly in person.

Lisbon, Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga: The mid 15th-century Saint Vincent Panels, attributed to Nuno Gonçalves. Image (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3a/Nuno_Gon%C3%A7alves._Paineis_de_S%C3%A3o_Vicente_de_Fora.jpg) via Creative Commons.

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When the time is right, we will post the Abstracts for their Papers and Responses. When they are released for the 2022 Congress as a whole, we can reveal the scheduling assignments for the Sessions.

For suggestions and questions, please Contact Us, place your Comments here, or visit our FaceBook Page.

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