A “Beatus Manuscripts” Project

May 10, 2025 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies

“The Methodology of Credulity:
Assessing the Manuscript Witnesses
to Beatus of Líebana, On the Apocalypse“

Reflections on
A Project Proposal

[Posted on 9 May 2025, with updates]

In honor of the session sponsored by the RGME at the 2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies and proposed and co-organized by our Associate Vajra Regan, I reflect with hindsight on the proposal years ago for a collaborative research project about the surviving “Manuscript Witnesses” to the influential medieval Latin Commentary on the Apocalypse by Beatus of Líebana (circa 730 – circa 735).

Proposed with a distinguished colleague circa 1999, that ambitious collaborative project did not come to fruition, so I turned to other ones claiming attention. For years its subject (rather than project) lay in the background, waiting, for a return to attention, amidst other projects and activities of the Research Group on Manuscript [and Other] Evidence (RGME) which advanced as this organization has continued on its path.

The 2025 RGME Session
on Beatus Manuscripts

The RGME Session on 10 May 2025 at the ICMS presents its focus thus:

“Rending the Veil:
The Rupture of Image and Text
in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries”

Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS Vitrina 14-2, fol. 287r. Facundus Beatus. Image via Biblioteca Digital Hispánica via https://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000051522.

The title and approach were proposed by Vajra Regan, who deserves credit for the inspired approach to the genre. Responses to the Call for Papers for this session focused on specific aspects or case studies. Their approaches are reported in our Home Page for our events at the 2025 Congress and in the Abstracts for the presentations in the Program of the Session. See:

We give thanks to the co-organizers and contributors to this session and to the helpers behind the scenes for its preparations and accomplishment. We admire the participants’ choices of subjects for their presentations, which focus respectively on a specific manuscript as case-study or on different manuscripts’ approaches to a specific illustration across the corpus of Beatus Manuscripts.

The Once-Upon-A-Time
Project Proposal on Beatus Manuscripts

It is this multi-tiered exploratory experience — with manuscripts containing Beatus’ Commentary on the Book of the Apocalypse in the New Testament and the Book of Daniel in the Old Testament, with studies about these manuscripts, their group, and their context, and with a developing awareness of a wealth of manuscript witnesses across time as my own research and that of the RGME — that leads me now to offer reflections with hindsight about an eager preparatory exploration of the manuscripts and their power as witnesses which generated a proposal for a major project.

The proposal envisioned an extended, several-year, multi-disciplinary study of the manuscripts themselves (where permitted), along with an international symposium to gather a range of relevant perspectives and approaches to them and their context, both individually and collectively as a genre attesting to the transmission and sometimes creative transformation of a compelling text which often traveled with resonant, sometimes disturbing, often challenging, images.

The details and aims for the plan are set out in the six-page proposal. Using Adobe Garamond for its font (in keeping with our preferred font before RGME Bembino, it has a title page and five pages of text outlining the “Project Proposal,” set out in sections:

The Material
The Nature of the Problem
The Scope and Aims of the Project
The Collaborative Process
The Stage of Development of the Project
Institutional Resources to be Consulted and Travel Plans
Results

With its strengths and weaknesses, the proposal can be viewed here.

It makes a statement about our reflective views on the subject of Beatus Manuscripts as a body of evidence, their challenges for research and comprehension, and possible approaches bringing a combination of perspectives and expertise in the pursuit of further knowledge about their potential as witnesses. In a way, it represents a statement of intention about a long-term project bringing together many fiends, centers, fields of expertise, and dedication.

Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS Vitrina 14-2, fol. 6v. Facundus Beatus. Image via Biblioteca Digital Hispánica via https://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000051522.

Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS Vitrina 14-2, fol. 7r. Facundus Beatus. Image via Biblioteca Digital Hispánica via https://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000051522.

AfterLife and Renewal

The proposal was not accepted, so its text has been set aside. It was said, whether accurate or not, by my collaborator that a reason, or the reason, for the rejection had to do with the choice of reviewer (an obvious choice), who had long expressed disagreement with my collaborator’s approach to the manuscripts, of which he had made a long-term study bringing a series of volumes on them as individuals and as a whole body of material.

The issues between those two scholars were not my concern. Both individuals (now dead) were RGME Associates; both contributed to various RGME Symposia in their own time and on different occasions.

With hindsight, I observe that it may well have been fortunate that the project did not go forward. Aside from the complex logistics across countries and disciplines outlined in the proposal, which may have proved unwieldy or intractable, there emerged other, more fundamental concerns. Unexpected arduous difficulties imposed in working with the same collaborator at her request to move her library from one state to another in 2002–2003, leading to months of ill health for me, taught that the responsibilities for such a project as the one which we proposed several years earlier would have placed most of the work upon me unaided. Meanwhile, I can be glad that the discussions and planning which led to the proposal brought me into contact more closely with the subject of the Beatus Manuscripts and its witnesses.

The occasion of the RGME’s Session on Apocalypse Commentaries in 2025 brings it forward as a record of our long-term interest in and commitment to the study of the manuscript witnesses. The renewal brings the chance to look afresh at the manuscripts, their scripts, their images, and their histories, especially as the arrival of digitization and online facsimiles for many of the witnesses has granted the ability to observe, compare, contrast, and learn ever more from their pages.

Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, MS Vitrina 14-2, fol. 6r. Facundus Beatus. Image via Biblioteca Digital Hispánica via https://bdh-rd.bne.es/viewer.vm?id=0000051522.

A Treasured Memory

The process of planning a collaborative project involved learning from each other about our different, but overlapping, approaches to the study of manuscripts and their contexts from fields ranging from history and art history, through codicology, palaeography, and book history, to textual and linguistic studies and the transmission of text, scripts, and illustrations from exemplar to exemplar, place to place, and time to time. The quest was exhilarating.

Especially worthwhile was the opportunity which I could arrange, with the approval of the then-Curator at the Pierpont Morgan Library in New York City, William Voelkle (now a RGME Associate), to see two Beatus manuscripts side by side. We traveled to New York for the day from Princeton, New Jersey, for this purpose. In the old Reading Room, as he turned the pages, we two collaborators could examine the two books at the same time, observing, conversing, and consulting with each other, all three of us. In decades of examining manuscripts at close hand, this experience remains one of the most memorable.

Thus we had the privilege of looking together at the Morgan Beatus (M. 644) of circa 940–945 and Las Huelgas Beatus (M. 429) dated by colophon to September 1220. I had seen one and other before, in the flesh, as part of my decades’ long study of manuscripts, but looking at both of them together, and with a colleague as well, represented a step forward for our collaborative work. Before digitization, long before online digital facsimiles of manuscripts, this opportunity was a rare treat.

While we were engaged with this opportunity, standing over the manuscripts and talking softly (but excitedly), another reader in the room walked by, exclaimed with delight, and asked if she might look over our shoulders as well. Welcoming her, we described something about the manuscripts, their significance, and our plans to study their group in greater depth. Her interest as a newcomer, happy that she had chanced upon and been welcomed into the exceptional encounter with the manuscripts, in our company, remains a happy part of the memory.

I rejoice that the occasion of the 2025 RGME Session on Beatus Manuscripts, with their complex interworking and/or interplay between text and images, brings to the fore my long-standing interest in their characteristics. Preparing for the session, I can return to the books about them which helped to inform and guide the proposal of yesteryear. These books include a bilingual Latin–Spanish edition of the complete works of Beatus lent by my collaborator and the majesterial multi-volume set on The Illustrated Beatus by the expert who had (it would seem) reviewed and declined our proposal. Over the years since the work to complete the proposal for submission, I have consulted each of these works for various reasons, but now they come out together to join in the renewal of exploration about Beatus Manuscripts, with more to discover.

For example, with this digital image of an opening of the Morgan Beatus, MS M. 644, as an example, we might imagine the living process of beholding the opened book directly, while the pages might (with permission) be turned to reveal another and another, at a given moment in time and space.

Beatus, Saint, Presbyter of Liebana, -798. Commentary on the Apocalypse (MS M.644). Spain, San Salvador de Tabara, ca. 945. fol. 222v. MS M.644.

Tags: Beatus Manuscripts, Facundus Beatus, Las Huelgas Beatus, Manuscript studies, Medieval manuscripts, Morgan Beatus
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2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

April 16, 2025 in Conference, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Program of RGME Activities

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

[Posted on 16 January 2025, with updates]

With the shaping of the Program as a whole for the 2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we announce the Program for the Activities sponsored and co-sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence. They comprise sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions of Papers; and our Annual Open Business Meeting at the Congress.

For information about the 2025 Congress overall, see its website.

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1. Scipio and Guillaume de Loris Lying in Their Beds Dreaming. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Building upon our successful activities at the 2024 ICMS (see our 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report), we prepared for the 2025 ICMS. First we proposed a set of sessions, sponsored and co-sponsored. Then, when they had been accepted by the Congress Committee, we issued the Call for Papers (CFP) for our proposed Sessions. The strength and number of the responses by the due date (15 September 2024) led us to seek, in some cases, two sessions in place of the one which we had proposed.

Now that the Congress Program itself has been scheduled, we can present the Program of our activities, both sponsored and co-sponsored.

We give thanks to our organizers, co-organizers, presenters, respondents, advisors, and the Congress.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Almandal, Apocalypse Commentaries, Authorship, Beatus Manuscripts, Beatus of Saint-Sever, Divination, Dream Books, Grimoires, History of Magic, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Lapidario, Ludic Marginalia, Magic, Mail Delivery Networks, Manuscript studies, Old English Psychomacnia, Papal Prophecies, Petites Heures de Jean de Berry, Picatrix, Postal History, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Psychomachia, René d'Anjou, Sanas Cormaic, Societas Magica, Solomonic Magic, Women in Manuscripts
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2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

July 14, 2024 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Societas Magica

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Call for Papers

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

[Posted on 14 July 2024]

Building upon the successful completion of our activities at the 2024 ICMS (see our 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report), we announce the Call for Papers (CFP) for next year’s Congress. For the CFP for all Sessions for the 2025 Congress, see its Confex Portal.

Here, first comes general information for your consideration, then we present our curated offerings of Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions for your choice of proposals. Links for each Session show the direct lines to the Congress’s Confex System for your proposals for specific Sessions.

Process and Timetable for Proposals

For information about the Congress, see its official website. There you can also find information and instructions about submitting your proposals. See especially Submissions. Your proposals for papers are due by 15 September 2024.

After the close of the Call For Papers, we will select the accepted papers and design the Programs for the Sessions, with the Papers placed in order and Presiders assigned. Some Sessions may also have Respondents. Notifying you of the decisions about your proposals will come before the deadline for us to submit the Programs for our Sessions to the Congress Committee is 15 October 2024.

Then What?

Next, normally by the turn of the year toward the year of the Congress, on our website we publish the selected Programs for our Sessions and announce our other Activities, while we await the promulgation of the official Schedule for the 2025 Congress. The Abstracts for the Papers accompany our announced Programs. Then, with the publication of the Congress Program (or its traditional preliminary ‘Sneak Peek’), we can add the times and venues for our Sessions. As the 2025 Congress approaches, new, unfolding, and revised information will guide announcements and updates on our website and social media.

RGME @ 2025 ICMS

For 2025, we prepare:

four Sessions, sponsored and co-sponsored
a customary Open Business Meeting at the Congress
and perhaps a Reception.

Four Sessions are our own (Item I). Our co-sponsors for ICMS Sessions in 2025 are:

Societas Magica (with two co-sponsored Sessions)
Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)
Postal History at Kalamazoo

Among our co-sponsorships for the Congress over the years, 2025 marks Year 21 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica, Year 4 with P.O.M.o.N.A., and Year 2 with Postal History at Kalamazoo.

The Session co-sponsored with Postal History at Kalamazoo continues the tradition of our long-term series of RGME Sessions at the ICMS on “Medieval Writing Materials”, which began in 2014. (See, for example, our Congress Activities and 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program.)

Our 2025 Sessions

The RGME announces its proposed Sessions for the 2024 Congress and invites your proposals for papers.

Proposals should be made through the Congress’s Confex System. Here we provide session-specific links for each session. The deadline for your proposals is by 15 September 2024.

The Sessions are designed variously as in-person, online, and hybrid. In the case of an In-Person Session, Congress directions state that “only people who plan to attend the Congress in person next May should submit proposals to it. If there is sufficient interest in this topic to support a corresponding virtual session, please fill out the webform to request an additional session.”

The official call for papers will be posted on the Congress website in early July, with links to submit proposals through the Confex system.

RGME Logo in Color.

I. Sessions Sponsored by the RGME

1. “Deviant Images: Text/Image Relationships in Medieval Manuscripts” (ID: 5977)

In-Person Session

Organizer: Cortney Anne Berg (CUNY Graduate Center)

Aim

This panel provides a space to examine the ways that images and texts work together (or against each other) in medieval manuscripts. Scholars who study manuscripts often treat the images and the texts as separate phenomena without considering how a medieval reader would have interacted with the holistic object. Many studies of manuscripts treat the images as mere illustrations of the text, and this panel invites all scholars of manuscripts to explore the ways in which images work or do not work with the accompanying text.

Very rarely do images and texts provide the same information, and very rarely are images just illustrations to the text they accompany. Therefore, how can contemporary viewers understand the relationship between medieval images and the texts they accompany?

This panel invites papers that explore medieval manuscripts and how their images deviate from or conform to the text. We encourage inquiries that describe the important intersections between text and image, and attempt to reconstruct the relationship between the two, particularly as these relationships may or may not map to lived conditions. We also encourage inquiries that reveal interesting information about manuscript culture writ large. Although this panel seeks papers that deal directly with images not just as aids to the text or reading, any methodological approach from literature, anthropology, history, religious studies, art history, or any other discipline that can make interesting connections between text and image would be a welcome addition to this panel.

Keywords: Manuscript studies, art history, literature, medieval manuscripts, medieval studies

Proposals

Link to submit your proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:

https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=5977

London, British Library, Add. MS 62925, fol. 83r detail. Rutland Psalter in Latin, circa 1260, England (London?). Image via https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2013/05/marginali-yeah-the-fantastical-creatures-of-the-rutland-psalter.html

2. “Rending the Veil:
The Rupture of Image and Text
in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries” (ID: 6459)

In-Person Session

Organizers:
Mildred Budny (RGME)
Zoey Kambour (CUNY Graduate Center and RGME Intern Executive Assistant)
Vajra Regan (Centre for Mediaeval Studies, University of Toronto)

Aim

This session explores the various discontinuities between images and texts in illustrated Apocalypse commentaries from the Middle Ages. These differences can manifest in several ways. For instance, an illustration might align more closely with the commentary rather than the biblical text. Additionally, variations can arise from established, highly localized traditions or contemporary innovations. Investigating these differences, whether within a single manuscript or across a complete cycle of illustrations, provides valuable insights into the institutional, political, and intellectual contexts of the manuscript’s production.

Methodologies

This session seeks to explore illustrated Apocalypse commentaries from the Middle Ages through an interdisciplinary lens; therefore, we are open to the methodologies of diverse disciplines including, but not limited to, art history/iconography, manuscript studies, religious studies, and digital humanities. By embracing a wide array of perspectives and analytical frameworks, we hope to foster a holistic understanding of medieval apocalyptic imagery and its multifaceted interpretations.

Keywords: Apocalypse, Beatus, Material Culture, Art History, Literature, Medieval, Manuscript Studies, Religious Studies, Digital Humanities, Manuscript Production

Proposals

Link to submit your proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:
https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6459

New York, Morgan Library and Museum, MS M.644, fol. 222v-223r. Beatus, Saint, Presbyter of Liebana, -798. Commentary on the Apocalypse (MS M.644). Spain, San Salvador de Tábara, ca. 945. Image via https://www.themorgan.org/manuscript/110807.

3. “Women and Manuscripts:
Questions of Authorship” (ID 6310)

Hybrid Session

Co-Organizers:
Jaclyn A. Reed (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)
Mildred Budny (RGME)

Aim

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits. Français 835, fol. 1r, detail. Frontispiece illustration of the scribal author for collection of texts by Christine de Pizan. Image via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449047c/f9.item.

Women as authors of manuscripts do not always receive adequate attention or study. This past year, the Research Group on Manuscript [and Other] Evidence held an informal, virtual discussion session as part of its “Research Group Speaks” series (Episode 15) focusing on research of manuscripts or texts authored by women and found that the reception and interest were very high both among those wanting to participate and those wanting to attend. Building upon this momentum, we propose further explorations in a panel for the 2025 Congress.

This session will examine women’s relationships with and representations in manuscripts and other evidence, especially those that they personally authored or created. Authorship has sometimes been limited in scope to literary or narrative texts, which can leave out the types of manuscripts that women were more likely to produce such as commonplace books or other collections of receipts, medical treatments, or a variety of other household notations. We welcome methodological approaches that consider manuscripts or other evidence authored by women including, but not limited to, philology, manuscript studies, material culture, and history of the book.

Keywords: History of the book, Manuscript Studies, Material Culture, Representations of Women, Women’s Authorship, Women’s Literature

Proposals

For this Hybrid Session, we solicit participants who plan to attend the Congress in person, as well as participants who plan to attend virtually.

Link to submit your proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:
https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6310

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits. Français 835, fol. 1r. Opening of collection of texts by Christine de Pizan. Image via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8449047c/f9.item.

II. Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME

4. Moving the Mail: Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices in the Medieval World (ID: 6312)

In-person Session

Co-sponsored with Postal History at Kalamazoo

Organizer: David W. Sorenson (Allan Berman, Numismatist)

Aim

In a world in which communication was necessarily through the written word, getting it from sender to recipient could be a complicated process. While important correspondence could be sent quickly, ordinary letters might be less speedy, and while royal letters might be sent by an efficient official system, ordinary letters between, say, merchants or clergy, might be much less so. This session is intended as a means of examining the ways in which mail moved, whether in Europe or elsewhere.

Keywords: couriers, letters, correspondence, mail, post office, postal, medieval studies

Proposals

Link to submit proposals directly to this session by 15 September 2024:

https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6312

A courier stands before a figure receiving a letter, with a landscape in the background.

Private Collection, Courier delivering letter. German translation of Petrarch (1559).

Societas Magica logo

5. “Grimoires of the Greater West (2): Multicultural Solomonic Magic:
The Case of the Almandal” (ID 6392)

In-person Session

Co-sponsored with the Societas Magica

Organizers:
Vajra Regan (Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto)
>[email protected]
Gal Sofer (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Matthew Melvin-Koushki (University of South Carolina)

Aim

The Almandal and Almadel of Solomon were among the most influential books of ritual magic in the late Middle Ages. These texts survive in multiple versions that intersect with different cultures and knowledge disciplines. The Almandal was adapted into Latin, most likely in the twelfth century, from one or more lost Arabic exemplars. The fragmentary state of the oldest extant version raises several questions. The text seems to present a work of ritual magic, but certain elements point to an astral magic component. The composite nature of the text has prompted researchers to inquire about the form of the archetype, the role of the Christian translator/editor, and whether the “Almandal” as we know it ever existed in Arabic.

The Almadel first emerged in the fifteenth century and represents a significant Christian revision of the earlier Almandal. Scholars have shown considerable interest in the Almadel for at least two reasons: first, it accrued a complex angelic cosmology that appears to have its origins in the Jewish tradition of the Liber Razielis (The Book of the Angel Raziel or The Book of the Mysteries); second, it exhibits a new, spiritual orientation, absent in the Almandal, thus providing a unique window into the early formation of what many now refer to as “Christian Theurgy.”

To date, scholarly attention has focused predominately on the Latin Almadel and its various vernacular translations (English, German, Italian). This imbalance may be attributed partly to gaps in the manuscript tradition that have isolated the Almandal and obscured its connection with the Almadel. However, over the last fifteen years, the discovery of several Latin and Hebrew manuscripts has helped to clarify the early tradition of the Almandal/Almadel while at the same time complicating previous assumptions about its origins.

This session seeks to reevaluate the history of the Almandal/Almadel in light of these and other discoveries. We invite papers on topics including, but not limited to:

The history of the text
Its Christian and Jewish reception
Connections to traditions such as the Liber Razielis, the Ars notoria, and Berengar Ganell’s Summa sacre magice
The role of these texts in the universities and their adoption and use by lay readers

We welcome papers that explore these themes and contribute to a deeper understanding of the Almandal and Almadel and their place in the history of ritual magic and religious practice.

Keywords: Manuscript Studies, Almandal, Magic, Societas Magica, History of the Book, Multicultural, Solomon, History of Magic

Proposals

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words by 15 September 2024. All paper proposals must be submitted via the official Confex proposal portal.

Link: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6392

Halle (Saale), Universitäts- und Landesbibliothek Sachsen-Anhalt, 14 B 36, fol. 243r: Image image of the almadel or “table of spirits”. Astro-magical texts on paper, circa 1400. Image C.C. BY 4.0, via http://dx.doi.org/10.25673/33754.

6. “Sendalphon, Send Me a Dream:
Dream Books, Spells, Divination, Incubation, and Interpretation” (ID #6171)

Online Session

Co-sponsored with the Societas Magica
and
Polytheist-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)

Organizers:
Phillip Bernhardt-House (Independent Scholar)
Claire Fanger (Department of Religion, Rice University)

Aim

From ancient Mesopotamian cultures, dreams are associated with divine encounters and intervention, particularly with foretelling future events directly or symbolically. Dream interpretation literature is rife with these understandings. Magical operations eliciting divinatory dreams are widely encountered. Particular sacred locations specializing in cultivating divinatory sleep for healing and other purposes, known as “dream incubation,” offered interpreters to assist those who sought such dreams. This session will explore many examples of dreams in/as divination, the outcome of spells, and through particular practices of incubation, as well as their interpretations and practices related to them in manuscript and other sources of various periods.

Keywords: Dreams, Dream Interpretation, Spells, Divination, Manuscript Studies, Magic, Societas Magica, Dream Incubation

Proposals

Please send abstracts of no more than 300 words by 15 September 2024. All paper proposals must be submitted via the official Confex proposal portal.

Link: https://icms.confex.com/icms/2025/paper/papers/index.cgi?sessionid=6171

Cambridge, Massachusetts, Harvard University, Houghton Library, MS Typ 7. Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius, Commentum Macrobii Ambrosii in somnium Scipionis. Dated 1469 Feb. 7. Image Public Domain via https://houghtonlib.tumblr.com/post/146944005911/macrobius-ambrosius-aurelius-theodosius-comentum.

Note on the Image
Commentarii in Somnium Scipionis (Commentary on The Dream of Scipio), by Macrobius Ambrosius Theodosius (fl. c. AD 400) for a portion of De Re Republica by Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC – 43 BC).

Image Public Domain via https://houghtonlib.tumblr.com/post/146944005911/macrobius-ambrosius-aurelius-theodosius-comentum.

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Note on the Image

Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1.

Scipio and Guillaume de Lorris Lying in their Beds Dreaming

More information: SEE HERE.

*****

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Los Angeles, Getty Center, Ms. Ludwig XV 7 (83.MR.177), fol. 1. Scipio and Guillaume de Loris Lying in Their Beds Dreaming. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: Almadel, Almandel, Apocalypse, Art History, Beatus, Correspondence, Couriers, Digital Humanities, Divination, Dream Incubation, dream interpretation, Dreams, Grimoires, History of Magic, History of the Book, Letters, Literature, Magic, Mail, Manuscript Production, Manuscript studies, Material Culture, Medieval manuscripts, Medieval Studies, Multicultural, Post Office, Postal, Religious Studies, Representations of Women, Solomon, Women's Authorship, Women's Literature
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2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

May 15, 2024 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Anniversary, Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, ICMS, Illustrated Handlist, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

In a Nutshell:
Mission Accomplished!

With Thanks to our Participants,
Co-Sponsors, Audience, and Friends

[Posted on 14 May 2024]

Western Michigan University, Valley III from the side. Photograph: David W. Sorenson.

After the successful completion of all our activities at the 59th Annual 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we report our accomplishments and give updates about changes to the Program which we announced (with updates as appropriate) for its items. See the full ICMS Program issued by its organizing Committee:

2024 Congress Program, with Corrigenda.

The Journey

Already from our first preparations toward the 2024 Congress,

starting with the 2023 Congress and our Open Business Meeting there to invite proposals,
moving on to our proposals for Sessions for 2024 submitted to the Congress Committee by 1 June 2023,
progressing with the approved Call for Papers for the 2024 ICMS,
reaching the firm conclusion of that Call on 15 September 2024, and
selecting the Program for our Sessions according to responses to that Call and related developments,

we have made revisions and provided updates for our plan.

They gave rise to our announcement for our own (and co-sponsored) Program (including the details of Sessions, their speakers, titles of papers, order of presentation, and so on; as well as ancillary events such as the Anniversary Reception), its updates throughout the months from October to May and the start of the Congress. Now we follow up with the Report.

The proposals received not only yielded Programs for which the order of Papers and the follow-up invitation to Presiders and Panelists, but also encouraged us to combine resources within the Research Group, with our frequent co-sponsor, the Societas Magica, and with others. Thus we collaboratively created a strong program of activities for the 2024 Congress.

Along the way, between

the submission of our selected Program to the Congress Committee by 15 October 2023,
its acceptance,
the assignment of dates, times, and venues for the individual activities for the 2024 Congress Program as officially published (with a series of Corrigenda, not affecting us, as the date of the Congress approached), and
the start of the Congress itself on Thursday 9 May 2024, with events variously in online and/or in-person formats,

our own 2024 Congress Program has had a few minor revisions, as people and technological arrangements permitted.

These changes did not interfere with the overall success of our activities. Our 2024 Congress Program reported various changes up to the Congress; this Report describes those effected at or around the Congress.

Access Included

As in 2023, the RGME responded to the partly ‘hybrid’ conditions of the Congress by providing its Zoom Meetings for two scheduled solely ‘In Person’ Sessions, as well as for our In-Person catered lunchtime Open Business Meeting, and by reserving an onsite Remote Participation Room on campus for those participants for a scheduled ‘Virtual’ Session who were present at the Congress to be able to gather to sign on to the online Session hosted by the Congress Confex Portal. The RGME managed all these extra Zoom provisions and reservations, as part of its contribution to sponsoring or co-sponsoring Sessions at the ICMS over the years.

It can be worth noting that those donations — at the cost of the RGME, are made possible by donations to enable its Zoom Subscription, by our own provisions for technical backup, and principally by the many pro-bono donations by its Director as overall organizer and co-ordinator of the RGME activities at the Congress and elsewhere — are not covered within the costs to produce the Congress, which registration fees by attendees online and in-person work to subsidize. The extra efforts by the RGME to provide features or facilities for the contributors, participants, and attendees of its activities at the Congress, whether online or onsite, correspond with our approach to our activities of many kinds.

In this spirit, the RGME has consistently stepped up to the plate in response to changes in the facilities for the ICMS before and after the start of the Covid-19 pandemic, when the Congress was successively

1) cancelled outright (2020),
2) rescheduled in online format only (2021), and
3) re-introduced in a partly in-person, partly virtual, ‘hybrid’ format (2022, 2o23, 2024, and more).

Throughout these developments, responding to their changing requirements, the RGME has continued to seek, insofar as possible with our own limited resources, to provide access to our sponsored and co-sponsored Congress activities to as wide an audience as possible, including those with disablilities, health issues, and difficulties in finding resources to travel and cover expenses to attend the Congress in person.

These ‘extras’ which we provide stand alongside the RGME tradition for many years of promoting our authors and the contributions of their work to our Congress Programs (see our Congress Activities) by the series of RGME promotional notices for the year’s Congress (with updates):

on our official Website (You are Here),
on our Social Media (listed Below),
in the Posters for each of our Congress activities, and
in the Congress Abstracts which we publish for the Authors’ presentations.

The Posters normally are displayed in printed form at the Congress — where permitted, such as on cork boards in the different buildings and in the rooms where our events take place — and on the RGME website, with printed copies also sent to presenters as souvenirs to display in their offices or studies and to give to their mothers. For example for the 2015 Congress:

Derek Shank stands beside the RGME Poster Display for the 2025 ICMS. Photography by Mildred Budny.

The Abstracts appear in their own individual webpages — which can 1) extend for a longer span than the assigned limit (100 words) for the submission of a proposal for a Congress Paper; 2) add notes, links, and bibliography; and 3) include images — as publications in their own right.

Moreover, we take care to index all the Authors’ Abstracts for a given Congress to grant wider access both:

Alphabetically by Author’s Surname and
Chronologically by Year of Author’s Presentation.

The Arrival

After the Journey to arrive, there remained some bumps in the road at the destination. The RGME Director was unable to travel for health reasons, and so had to attend online.

Program

One person on the Program for one Session decided not to attend. Technical issues with one Speaker’s PowerPoint Presentation and its Zoom projection interrupted a short span of the flow of slides in an expertly crafted presentation in another Session, but this interruption could smoothly be kept to a brief minimum through co-ordination prepared ahead of time between the Speaker and the RGME Zoom Host, together with the Session Organizer. The prepared co-ordination ahead of time for hybrid access dropped the ball between one scheduled in-person Session and the RGME-hosted Zoom online facility, required, it turned out, not as an extra, but as an essential, so as to enable the Presider and two of the Speakers unable to travel to the Congress to participate in the Session.

Audience Participation

At the last minute, an audience member generously offered to lend his computer so that the Organizer / Second Speaker could connect the Zoom Meeting for the Session and the In-Person Room. We give thanks to collegiality and generous resourcefulness.

Posters

Another surprise came for the RGME Posters for our Congress Activities when the eve of the Congress arrived and participants came on site. We suddenly discovered that the 2024 Congress prohibited the display of posters anywhere in a printed form, apart from selected tables requiring horizontal piles, rather than enabling vertical display for which our Posters are designed.

This change meant that the extra efforts by our Trustee and Co-Organizer David Porreca in the days before the Congress to produced printed Posters for display and distribution there — while our Director could not travel to the Congress to bring them as usual — were thwarted. Henceforth, we will plan accordingly and distribute our Posters outside the Congress walls, both in digital and printed formats.

By fortunate choice, without knowing about the Congress’s redirections, the Director had posted the newly-designed Posters in a Web Gallery of their own on our website just a couple of days before the Congress, in a new departure for our tradition of sponsorship and co-sponsorship. Customarily, she would post them in the RGME webpost for the year’s Congress shortly after it had been accomplished, as part of its Report. (See 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report.)

Now, see the special Pop-Up Exhibition!

RGME Pop-Up Poster Exhibition for the 2024 ICMS

2024 ICMS Alchemical Session Poster 2

The Program as Accomplished

Our Program comprised:

three Co-sponsored Sessions
our Open Business Meeting and
a co-sponsored Anniversary Reception.

In stages, first (in November 2023) we announced the Sessions, and reported the sequence of papers for them. Next (January 2024), with information from the ICMS, we could report their assigned times, days, and locations on campus in cases of the in-person events, along with our other activities at the Congress. Then we began to publish the abstracts for them; that process is now completed. Soon we will complete the Indexes for them.

For the In-Person Sessions and the Open Business Meeting, the RGME provided an online option for Congress Registrants through our Zoom Subscription and our Eventbrite Registration Portal:

Eventbrite: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

Like last year (see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report), the RGME offered Registration (without charge) for Online access through our Zoom Subscription to some of our In-Person events this year. Likewise we offered registration for our two In-Person events to help us to learn how many to expect to attend for our planning and the catering for our Open Business Meeting and Co-Sponsored Reception.

For one Online Session, a remote-participation conference room was reserved so that participants and attendees on campus for the Congress might gather to join the online format while in company.

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

In 2024, the RGME celebrates its Anniversary Year to mark 25 years as a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton, New Jersey, and 25 years as an international scholarly society founded out of a major research project at Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge.

For our Anniversary Year, the theme is “Bridges”.

“Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

Ada Bridge pylon, Belgrade, Serbia. Photograph Petar Milošević (1 August 2021). Image via Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

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Tags: Abstracts of Congress Papers, Bridges, Early Printed Books, History of Alchemy, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Manuscript studies, P.-O.M.o.N.A., Postal History at Kalamazoo, RGME Anniversary, RGME Anniversary Reception, RGME Business Meeting, RGME Posters, Societas Magica
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RGME Pop-UP Poster Exhibition for the 2024 ICMS

May 4, 2024 in Bembino, Business Meeting, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, Exhibition, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Reception

RGME Posters on Display
for the
2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)

9–11 May in hybrid format

[Posted on 3 May 2024]

Our Pop-Up Poster Display for the 2024 ICMS

As the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies approaches (9–11 May in partly hybrid format), we unveil our Posters for all our events at this Congress. Our Congress activities form part of our Anniversary Year, celebrating 25 years as a nonprofit educational corporation and 35 years as an international scholarly society. For this year, our Theme is Bridges. Besides considering the nature of bridges, both natural and man-made, and exploring their challenges and opportunities, we take the liberty of creating some new ones — as with this Pop-Up Poster Session or Exhibition for the 2024 Congress.

Natural Owachomo Bridge, Natural Bridges Natural Monument, San Juan County, Utah. Image via Laban712 on en, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

This Virtual Exhibition marks a new development for our evolving tradition of Posters for our different Events, comprising Conference Sessions, Symposia, Colloquia, Seminars, Workshops, Receptions, and more. Here, by bringing the set of Posters into an exhibition of their own, we offer a bridge between our webpost for the Congress; our printed Posters for the in-person event and for souvenirs afterward; and for download in digital form from our website.

Our website Home Page for our 2024 ICMS Activities describes each of these events in turn, with descriptions about their scope and aims, instructions for directions to them, and information about the programs of the individual sessions, also with the speakers’ abstracts for their presentations.

The directions include options to register for online access to scheduled in-person events — some Sessions and our Open Business Meeting — through our RGME Eventbrite Collection (at no charge), so as to provide a fully hybrid approach to the Congress. Similarly, for a scheduled online Session, we have arranged for an in-person approach by reserving a room on campus for in-person attendees of the Congress.

See:

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

In a Nutshell

Now, the Posters present, in a nutshell, information about each session of papers or meeting, including updated details which did not emerge in time for the published Congress Program, but which our 2024 RGME @ ICMS HomePage has been able to report through revisions as the news reached us.

The RGME tradition for its sessions and other events at the ICMS has been to prepare Posters announcing, promoting, and celebrating the people participating in creating them; providing evocative illustrations encapsulating or, as it were, commenting upon them; and given concise information about the event and its logistics of time, place, and modes of arrival.

Over the years, the RGME Director, Mildred Budny (also Editor-in-Chief of Publications), has prepared the Posters for our ICMS activities (as for other Events), with the inspiration of images generously provided by our Associates and others, notably including David W. Sorenson, and with the help of the RGME Font and Layout Designer, using the RGME copyright digital font Bembino and RGME principles for our Publications, set out according to our Style Manifesto and our specifications for Designing Academic Posters.

Usually, the Director would bring the Posters to the ICMS for unveiling at the Congress, in printed copies displayed in various places (as a group upon general poster boards or individually at the door or on the wall of the session or meeting itself.

2014 ICMS

Adelaide Bennett stands beside the RGME Posters on display for the 2014 ICMS. Photography by Mildred Budny.

2015 ICMS

Derek Shank stands beside the RGME Poster Display for the 2025 ICMS. Photography by Mildred Budny.

Fit to Print, Free to Keep

Each year, we bring printed copies to display on walls, doors, and boards, where permitted, and also to give to speakers, contributors, and others wishing souvenirs. We offer them also in digital form, to be downloaded free of charge on our website. The links for these downloads are indicated in the HomePage for the event (or in other locations on our website).

Online Exhibition

Until now, our habit has been to place the Posters, once they are ready, within the HomePage for the event. Thus usually occurs at a late stage in the preparations for the year’s Congress, once the final details have settled into place and most of our other tasks of preparation have taken precedence.

This year, in order to allow the Posters to stand alongside each other to tell their stories in unison, we present a curated Gallery or Pop-Up Poster Exhibition for your enjoyment.

The Posters tell in a nutshell the information you might need and wish to know about the event itself, how and where to find it, who is featured in its presentation, and what feature image or images might evoke its essence.

The information includes updated information which the Congress Program does not have, as some logistics evolved after the publication of the Congress Program, and as some details do not have a place in its structure.

Two-By-Two as Pairs or Diptychs

Paris, Louvre Museum, Ivory consular diptych of Areobindus, Byzantium, 506 AD. Image Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.s

Note that, in recent years, we design the posters for individual Sessions as Pairs, to be viewed as Diptychs, in matching sets similar to the facing pages of an opened book.

In a given Pair, one Poster displays the names of the people responsible for the Session or Roundtable. The other exhibits a feature image or two.

While they share identifying elements, each poster in the pair reports information unique to it, so that the two posters provide more information than can one alone. Together they report a concise comprehensive indication of the ensemble which the event represents, encompassing people, a place, a time, and a focus for consideration.

Meetings

Anniversary Reception

2024 Anniversary Reception at the ICMS: Poster.

Open Business Meeting

2024 RGME Business Meeting Poster

Sessions and a Roundtable

“Alchemical Manuscripts, Printed Books, and Materials”

Poster 1

2024 ICMS Alchemical Session Poster 1

Poster 2

2024 ICMS Alchemical Session Poster 2

2. “Retrospect and Prospect”

Poster 1

2024 ICMS “Retrospect and Prospects” Session: Poster 1

Poster 2

2024 ICMS “Retrospect and Prospects” Session: Poster 2

3. “Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices:
Mail in the Medieval World”

Poster 1

2024 ICMS Postal Session: Poster 1

Poster 2

2024 ICMS Postal Session: Poster 2

*****

Suggestion Box

Do you like this Pop-Up Exhibition? Would you like to see more of them?

Please Contact Us or visit

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Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give. Given our low overheads, your donations have direct impact on our work and the furtherance of our mission. For our Section 501(c)(3) nonprofit educational organization, your donations may be tax-deductible to the fullest extent permitted by law. Thank you for your support!

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: 2024 ICMS, 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies, Anniversary Reception, Bembino, Bembino Digital Font, Business Meeting, Designing Academic Posters, POMONA, Pop-Up Exhibition, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Poster Exhibition, RGME Posters, RGME Publications, Societas Magica, Style Manifesto
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2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

November 24, 2023 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Announcements, Business Meeting, Conference Announcement, ICMS, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Reception, Societas Magica

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

To be held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

[Posted on 23 November 2023, with updates]

Ravenna, Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, Mosaic. Artwork in the public domain; photograph provided by The Yorck Project / Wikimedia Commons (GFDL).

After the successful completion of our Call for Papers for the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we announce the Program for our activities, with:

three Co-sponsored Sessions
our Open Business Meeting and
a co-sponsored Anniversary Reception.

In stages, first (in November 2023) we announced the Sessions. Next (4 January 2024), with information from the ICMS, we could report their assigned times, days, and locations on campus in cases of the in-person events, along with our other activities at the Congress.

Now we can report the sequence of papers for the sessions; we also begin to publish the abstracts for them.

Note that for the In-Person Sessions and the Open Business Meeting, the RGME provides an online option for Congress Registrants through our Zoom Subscription and our Eventbrite Registration Portal. See below and

Eventbrite: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Congress Information

2024 Congress Program for the full ICMS

Registration (required) for the Congress has opened in February:

Registration via ICMS website

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

Like last year (see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report), the RGME offers Registration (without charge) for Online access through our Zoom Subscription to some of our In-Person events this year. Likewise we offer registration for two of our In-Person events to help us to learn how many to expect to attend for our planning and the catering:

Open Business Meeting (In Person)
and
Co-Sponsored Reception (In Person)

For an Online Session, a remote-participation conference room has been reserved so that participants and attendees on campus for the Congress might gather to join the online format while in company.

(For information, see below.)

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

For our Anniversary Year, the theme is “Bridges”.

“Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

Ada Bridge pylon, Belgrade, Serbia. Photograph Petar Milošević (1 August 2021). Image via Wikimedia Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license.

RGME Sessions (1–3) at the 2024 ICMS

For the 59th International Congress on Medieval Studies in 2024, with responses to our Call for Papers, the RGME co-sponsors these three Sessions. Two of three are scheduled to take place in person, with the other online.

Arrangements have been made so that all three can be accessed both in person (whether as scheduled in the Congress Program or as arranged by especially reserving a room on campus) and online (whether as scheduled or as arranged for a Zoom Meeting hosted by the RGME). Thus their access can constitute a truly hybrid approach to the conference.

We begin (2 May) to post the Abstracts of the Papers for the Sessions.

Locations on Campus

For the locations on campus, see these campus maps:

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Alchemical Books, Curtains, Early Printed Books, Hermes Trismegistus, Hieronmus Brunschwig, History of Magic, Manuscript studies, Medieval History, Medieval Studiies, Merchant Letters, Postal Couriers, Postal History, Postal History at Kalamazoo, RGME Anniversary Reception, RGME Open Business Meeting, Societas Magica
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2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

October 23, 2023 in Events, ICMS, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies, POMONA, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

58th ICMS (11–13 May 2023)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
an Open Business Meeting
and Co-Sponsored Reception

[Posted on 22 October 2023]

After the successful completion of our activities at the 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS), we offer a Report about them. For their programs and the abstracts of their presentations, see 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program.

Note that Abstracts for Papers published on our website appear in the Indexes of the Abstracts for Papers, listed both by Alphabetical order of Author’s Surname and by Year.

Logistics

2023 ICMS: Pedagogy II viewed online. Michael Allman presents. Photography by Mildred Budny.

This year’s Congress presented more logistical challenges than ever before, in our experience of attending the annual ICMS. They were due to the complex and incompletely or perplexingly described conditions for holding the Congress in a nominal ‘hybrid’ format, with few fully hybrid events and the necessity for organizers mostly to choose either in-person or online formats — or to provide the alternative through their own resources.

In that way, for example, once the rules were clarified (within only a fortnight of the Congress), the RGME was able resourcefully to provide (through its own Zoom subscription) for online access to events assigned as in-person and to arrange (sometimes with payment) for a room to be made available for registrants on site at the Congress to gather for participating in sessions assigned as online. We thank the Congress staff for enabling those arrangements once we learned that they might be permitted.

Our activities comprised five co-sponsored scholarly Sessions, our annual Open Business Meeting at the Congress, and a co-sponsored Reception.

The extra arrangements for in-person facilities for the online sessions and online access for in-person sessions were designed also for the convenience of participants for our events on the first day of the Congress, which had a consecutive series of Morning Session / Lunchtime Business Meeting / two Afternoon Sessions / Reception. With the Morning Session in a nearby building, the other events that day, by design, took place on one building.

Co-Sponsorship

Societas Magica: 2 Sessions and the Reception
Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies (SIMS): 2 Sessions
Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.): 1 Session
Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University: Reception

This year marked Year 19 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica; the second (non-consecutive) year of co-sponsorship with POMONA, the third of co-sponsorship with the Index of Medieval Art, and the first year of co-sponsorship with SIMS.

As always, we thank the host, organizers, co-sponsors, presiders, speakers, respondents, advisers, and participants for our activities at the Congress, along with the Congress staff and support staff.

The Sequence of Events

Day 1 of the Congress (Thursday 11 May) had a full set of events. They opened with the Morning Session, led to the RGME Open Business Meeting (with lunch provided), followed with a pair of Afternoon Sessions, and rounded out with the co-hosted Reception.

Day 3 (Saturday 13 May) had a pair of Afternoon Sessions.

The shortness of the notice and the complexity of the RGME’s extra preparations for an ad-hoc fully hybrid format imposed further problems in communicating updated information which, in the rush of last-minute preparations and conflicting information, meant that not all participants received the relevant information in time. Notably this affected the extra online arrangements for the in-person sessions on Saturday afternoon, so that the first one did not have an on-site log-in for the online component.

Informal “Evening Sessions”. Outside the Program, a set of traditional informal gatherings offered the occasion to revive the in-person tradition of meetings in an ad-hoc ‘Board Room’ where board games, brought to the table for the occasion, formed a focus of activity and conversation. As usual, they included some elements of RGME planning. This year, they included an ad-hoc hybrid component for participation at a distance as well.

Our Report of all our activities at the 2023 Congress relates their accomplishment, celebrates the presentations, praises the work of organization, notes a few changes in the program and accessibility for the sessions, displays the full set of posters for our events, and illustrates some memorable moments.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Albert the Great, Binding Archaeology, Binding Spines and Fastenings, Board Games, Board Room, Corpus Christi College Cambridge MS 286, Datini Collection, Ephesia Grammata, Gospels of Saint Augustine of Canterbury, Gutenberg Biblt, History of Bindings, History of Pedagogy, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studiesieval Studies, Islamic Bookbindings, Manuscript studies, Open Business Meeting, Otto Ege Fragments, Reception, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, Societas Magica, William Fulke, Words as Agents
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“Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

August 9, 2023 in Conference, International Congress on Medieval Studies, International Medieval Congress, Uncategorized

“Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’
For 25 Years and More”

Our Theme of “Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

with the

Call for Papers for
an Inaugural RGME-Sponsored Session
at the 2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds
(1–4 July 2024 in hybrid format)

Blogpost composed by Michael Allman Conrad, with Mildred Budny and Ann Pascoe–van Zyl

[Posted on 9 August 2023]

In 2024 the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) will celebrate its 25th Anniversary as a Nonprofit Educational Corporation based in the United States and its 35th Anniversary as an International Scholarly Organization founded in England. Among its 2024 Anniversary Celebrations (Events such as Symposia, Episodes of our online series “The Research Group Speaks”, and more), the RGME prepares a set of Conference Sessions by “Setting Sails for A Double Gig in the USA and the United Kingdom”.

A Tale of Two Congresses

First, we revisit the annual International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Kalamazoo in May. As customary for many years, we plan for RGME-sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions there. For these plans, see our 2024 Call for Papers for these Sessions. Also, for the first time, we prepare to sponsor a Session at the International Medieval Congress (IMS) at Leeds in July.

For 2024, the former conference will be held, somewhat confusingly, partly online and partly in-person (with individual Sessions either the one of the other). In contrast, the latter is fully hybrid, with in-person and online participation together. For the thematic subject of “Crisis” chosen for the 2024 Leeds Congress, we bring our own 2024 Anniversary Theme of “Bridges”.

Paris , Musée Carnavalet, Projet pour le Pont Neuf, by an anonymous artist, circa 1577. Image via Wikimedia via Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

Note on the image: The Pont Neuf (“New Bridge”) was the first Parisian bridge to have no houses; it is the oldest standing bridge to survive in Paris. The painting in the Musée Carnavalet shown above depicts the design approved in 1578 by King Henry III (1551–1589), who laid the first stone on 31 May 1578. The bridge as completed in 1606 had a simpler design, partly in response to constraints and challenges — crises amidst the French Wars of Religion — during this time in the king’s reign leading, for example, to his assassination. The bridge provided both a thoroughfare for horses and conveyances, and pavements for pedestrians. See Le Pont_Neuf. See also below.

For information on how to submit your Proposal for a Paper for our Inaugural Session, see below.

Building (and Rebuilding) Bridges

Whenever we speak of bridges as structures or constructions over physical objects by land or sea — rather than, say, a card game, a trick-taking game, some prosthesis for teeth, or the pilothouse of a ship — we speak of connections and obstacles. Can we even think of bridges without also thinking of dangers, of collapse, of falling down, of burning?

No bridge is needed where connection is simple and guaranteed, where creeks can be passed easily, where communication flows unhindered. It is only when underlying currents become perilous, when we are to transverse to unknown shores that may challenge our bare existence that we yearn for a bridge to provide us safe passage. In such cases, we might even wonder on occasion if the passage and its direction (let alone its progress) constitutes ‘coming’ or ‘going’. With such potential, depending upon how and from whence the traveller approaches a passageway not necessarily unidirectional, the viewpoints for a given bridge might resemble the dual perspectives of the antique Roman god Janus , presider over doorways, gates, thresholds, passages, beginnings and endings, war and peace.

Vatican City, Vatican Museums, Museo Chiaramonti, section XIV, no.17. Janus-type Double Herm. Marble, Roman copy after a Greek original. Image via Wikimedia via Creative Commons 3.0 Unported.

And so, a bridge turns out to be a very ambivalent endeavor (as indeed all crossings and bifurcations are), living in the fuzzy realm between stability and destabilization, between safety and risk. With bridges, we might enter dangerous worlds otherwise inaccessible to us (sometimes for the better), so that the mere existence of bridges as gateways to these spaces can appear dangerous in itself, whilst they create an opening, and thus, opportunities in its original Latin sense as opportunus.

Knowing this far too well, we are required to cultivate trust in a bridge’s supports to safely guide us to the other side, but also to return if things turn out harmful. In such conditions we might, if circumstances and structures warrant, call upon the facilities and resourcefulness of a draw-bridge or pontoon bridge, and be prepared for the potential (and sometimes uneasily apparent) insecurity of suspension bridges.

Bear in mind the double-meaning of support here: bridges stand on supports and lend us support. They stabilize passages to cross what otherwise would be uncrossable – and thereby “ease your mind”, as Simon & Garfunkel sang in Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970); see the lyrics. Nor need we overlook the implication of the symbol of the Cross as the signature of Christ.

That said, shouldn’t all researchers thus be bridge-makers? Since what else is the prototype of a researcher than a person who, driven by endless curiosity, feels a strong inner desire of wanting to pass over to those unexplored realms on the other side?

It is this ambiguous nature of an in-between, of an entity standing in two worlds at once while creating an own space that belongs to none of them fully that make bridges such interesting transitional spaces. Yes, more than that: the bridge is the Urbild, the archetype of what transition and transitional spaces mean avant la lettre. This condition, by the way, is no less true for the double-identity of the messenger, a figure that embodies both bridge and bridge-maker to create meaningful connections between senders and receivers, between material and immaterial worlds, between heaven and the earth. And how could we forget that the Roman chief High Priest was known as the pontifex maximus, the great bridge-builder, a title later related to the Pope in Rome?[1]

Already in antiquity, the ambivalent figure of Hermes[2] as Olympic Messenger encapsulated the ambiguity of all bridges, as he is the protector not only of human heralds, travelers, merchants, and orators, but also of thieves, pointing out how much all hermeneutics convey risky endeavors, since all acts of interpretations may fail, or even be the cause of dangers of their own.

As a model of transition par excellence, bridges also remind us negatively of its connective nature, especially whenever we cross the Rubicon or burn down bridges, and thereby pass the point of no return — a very current fear in respect to Climate Change and Anthropocene. Either way, Hermes makes us aware of the close proximity of commuting and communicating.

“Study on a Medieval Bridge” at Amares, Braga District, Portugal. Image by Pedro Nuno Caetano (2019) via Wikimedia Commons via Creative Commons 2.0 Generic.

Bridges Then and Now

For its next Anniversary Year, the Research Group for Manuscript Evidence has chosen the Theme of Bridges as its guiding symbol. In fact, it has been the mission of the RGME to build bridges since its first beginning — between disciplines, methods and media, and scholars from different countries, even continents, all driven by their passion for manuscripts and their historical significance, as well as their context among written texts as such and within the course (or coursing) of history.

For its anniversary, the RGME takes this mission one step further, by crossing the great sea in an attempt to bridge the academic cultures of the New World and Old World — in what could be described as a reversal of the Mayflower’s itinerary, from the Americas back to the British Isles, and back again. Let’s hope for calm waters and steady weather! (And is it too far-fetched to remind us that both Cambridge and Oxford are names that allude to bridge-like passages? Isn’t education always a bridge, a rite of passage?)

CFP for a RGME Session at the 2024 ICMS
(1–4 July 2024 in hybrid format)

In this spirit, we prepare sponsored Sessions, as usual, for the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Kalamazoo in May. See our Call for Papers for the 2024 ICMS.

Also, for the first time, we prepare an Inaugural Sponsored Session for the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds in July 2024. The chosen Thematic Focus for the Leeds Congress is “Crisis”.

The Co-Organisers for our Leeds Session are

Ann Pascoe–van Zyl (Trinity College Dublin)
and
Michael Allman Conrad
(Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and Universität St. Gallen)

Bridges and “Troubled Waters”

Under our guiding concept of “bridges,” the RGME invites papers for a Session at Leeds on all kinds of bridges and bridge-related topics. Be it more literally, as physical architectures and landmarks, such as historically significant specimens, or be it more abstractly, as architectural devices of the mind that enable us to make unexpected and unpredicted connections between marginal, off-field, divergent media, methods, and subjects that are usually not made or ignored.

In addition, we ask how bridges answer to different forms of crises, especially, but not only, with regard to communication, travel, social, cultural or political relations, or of the natural environment. In turn, we are also interested in papers that discuss how the establishment and maintenance of bridges may prevent crises or, contrarily, cause new unforeseen forms of crisis.

In summary, we welcome all bold bridge-makers willing to traverse pathways that others have not dared to take. In such ways, we might also respond to the opportunities and challenges which the captain and officers on the bridge of a ship can observe directly, better to steer a course in the passage.

Paris , Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, MS Lat 10525, fol. 3v, detail. Noah’s Ark. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447877n.

Note on the image: Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, MS Lat 10525, folio 3v. Psalter of Saint Louis, Paris circa 1270. See Psautier de Saint Louis: Latin 10525. On the genre, see, for example, Noah’s Ark; and Noah’s Arkhive.

*****

Proposals Invited for Papers
for our 2024 Session at Leeds
— Due by 31 August 2023

We invite abstracts of 200–300 words. Your proposals should be made to the Session Co-Organisers to the address below by 31 August 2023. Following this Call for Papers, the RGME Session will be selected and submitted to the Congress by 30 September 2023. We will inform you of the selection by this time.

The Congress at Leeds will be held in person, with provisions for online participation. In this way, we hope that you might be able to attend onsite or at a distance, depending upon your travel arrangements. Please indicate in your Proposal if you you would prefer to present your paper or session in-person or virtually.

Congress Website
https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc-2024/
Proposal Criteria
https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/proposals/criteria/

Deadline for Paper Proposals: Due by 31 August 2023

We look forward to your contributions.

For information about this RGME Session, and to make your Proposal, please contact the Co-organisers:

Ann Pascoe-van Zyl and Michael Allman Conrad
for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

[email protected]

*****

Footnotes

[1] Originally, this might have been meant literally: the position of bridge-builder was an important one in Rome, where the major bridges were over the Tiber. Considered a deity, only authorities with sacral functions could be allowed to “disturb” the river with mechanical additions. The title of “pontifex” for the Pontiff in Rome was already around for centuries, but did not become a regular title of honor for Popes before the 15th century, which is probably linked to the Fall of Constantinople in 1453 and the death of the last East Roman Emperor.

Fun fact: Pope Benedict XVI adopted @pontifex as his Twitter handle, which has been maintained by his successor Pope Francis.

Prague, National Gallery, Kinský Palace, NM-H10 4742. Marble relief of triplicate Hekate. Image via Creative Commons Attribution Share-Alike 3.0 Unported.

[2] There is something strange to be observed when we look at antiquity in this regard. The areas of expertise and responsibility for Greek and Roman Gods with respect to bridges is not clear-cut.

In fact, Janus seems to be the more suitable candidate if we want to know what God was actually related to bridges, as he generally was the God of motion, of pathways, doors and gates, of beginnings and endings, devoted to spatial and temporal transitions.

However, if we think about the mitigation, communication between different realms, dominions, and areas, this job would be that of Hermes as mitigator and messenger.

But, thirdly, there’s also Hecate, as the dark Goddess of crossings, of magic and witchery. Sometimes represented as triple-formed, her associations include crossroads, entrance-ways, night, light, sorcery, witchcraft, necromancy, graves, and protection from witchcraft. These powers extended her realms of transitions to stretch beyond the worlds of the living.

The lines seem to be a bit blurred here, and it seems to depend on what aspect of bridges interests us exactly to know which God to tend to: the dark aspects of all crossings (as mixing things that should be kept separate), the mitigation and moderation in communicative acts (Hermes), or transition and ambivalence in general?

We invite you to join the conversation.

*****

Munich, Staatliche Antikensammlungen, Nikoxenos Painter, Attic red-figure belly-amphora, ca. 500 BC, Side B, detail of Council of the Gods on Mount Olympus: Hermes with his mother Maia. Image via Wikimedia via Creative Commons.

Note on the image: See Council of the Gods.

*****

2015 Poster for the Session on 'Ideal Kingship' co-sponsored by the Research Group on Mauscript Evidence and the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Florida, set in RGME Bembino, with a photograph of Le Pont Neuf in Paris by Ilya V. Sverdlov, reproduced by permission.

RGME Poster for 2015 Session on “Ideal Kingship”.

Note on Le Pont Neuf
(see image above)

The ornate sculptural masks (mascarons) on the sides of Le Pont_Neuf in Paris inspired the series of posters for our Sessions at the 2015 ICMS at Kalamazoo. See:

2015 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report.

For the photographs in the posters, we thank Ilya V. Sverdlov.

The 381 original and individual Renaissance mascarons were replaced in the complete rebuilding of the bridge in 1851–1854 with copies by 19th-century sculptors. At the time, some of the 16th-century originals — attributed to the French Renaissance sculptor Germain Pilon (1525–1590) — were placed in the Musée Carnavalet (six originals and eight molds of others) and the Musée de Cluny – Musée national du Moyen Âge (eight originals); the latter were transferred later to the French National Museum of the Renaissance in the Château d’Écouen.

The masks are said to “represent the heads of forest and field divinities from ancient mythology, as well as satyrs and sylvains.” (Le Pont_Neuf.) With elaborate beards, enlarged ears, and animated and often threatening expressions, the faces of the mascarons stand constant watch both upstream and downstream on “The New Bridge”. It is as if — from their stable supports on the stone structure — they pose both troubled and troubling outlooks for the waters below, as well as toward all passengers upon or beside them.

In two spans, that construction links opposite sides of the River Seine with the western (downstream) end “of the Île de la Cité, the island in the middle of the river that was, between 250 and 225 BC, the birthplace of Paris, then known as Lutetia and, during the medieval period, the heart of the city.” (Le Pont_Neuf.)

Le Pont Neuf, 5 Corbel Heads All in a Row. Photography by Ilya V. Sverdlov. Reproduced by permission.

*****

We look forward to your contributions. We invite Proposals for Papers in our Inaugural Sponsored Session on “Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’ ” at the 2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds.

Please be sure to submit your Proposal by 31 August 2023 to the address above.

*****

Please leave your Comments or questions here, Contact Us, or visit

our FaceBook Page
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

Donations and contributions, in funds or in kind, are welcome and easy to give. See Contributions and Donations.

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Bridges, Council of the Gods, Crises, Hecate, Hermes, History of Bridges, International Congress for Medieval Studies, International Medieval Congress, Janus, Le Pont Neuf, Le Pont Neuf Paris, Medieval Studies, Noah's Ark, RGME Anniversary Year
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2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds: Call for Papers

August 9, 2023 in Announcements, Call for Papers, Conference Announcement, International Congress on Medieval Studies, International Medieval Congress, Leeds, Uncategorized

RGME Call For Papers
for the 2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds
(1–4 July 2024 in hybrid format)

“Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’
For 25 Years and More”

An Inaugural RGME-Sponsored Session at Leeds

[Posted on 9 August 2023]

Paris, Musée Carnavalet, Projet pour le Pont Neuf, circa 1577. Image via Wikimedia via Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported.

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence prepares an Inaugural Sponsored Session at the International Medieval Congress (IMC), University of Leeds, United Kingdom, to be held in hybrid format from 1st – 4th July, 2024. This Session comprises our first Sponsored Session at the Congress.

The Congress subject for 2024 is “Crisis”. The RGME Theme for its Anniversary Year of 2024 is “Bridges”.

For the 2024 ICMS at Leeds we propose to examine subjects pertaining to the challenges and opportunities of “Building Bridges Over Troubled Waters”. We invite your proposals for Papers for this Session.

Our 2024 Anniversary Year: “Bridges”

In 2024 the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) celebrates its 25th Anniversary as a Nonprofit Educational Corporation based in the United States and its 35th Anniversary as an International Scholarly Organization founded in England.

To mark our anniversary year, we prepare sponsored Sessions, as usual, for the International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS) at Kalamazoo in May. See our Call for Papers for the 2024 ICMS.

Also, for the first time, we prepare an Inaugural RGME-sponsored Session for the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds in July 2024.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, MS Lat 10525, fol, 3v, detail. Noah’s Ark. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447877n.

The 2024 Leeds Congress: “Crises”

The chosen “Thematic Focus” for the Leeds Congress in 2024 is “Crisis”.

Bridges and “Troubled Waters”

Under our guiding concept of “Bridges” for 2024 (see Bridges for our 2024 Anniversary Year), the RGME invites papers for a Session at Leeds on all kinds of bridges and bridge-related topics. Be it more literally, as physical architectures and landmarks, such as historically significant specimens, be it more abstractly, as architectural devices of the mind that enable us to make unexpected and unpredicted connections between marginal, off-field, divergent media, methods, and subjects that are usually not made or ignored.

In addition, we ask how bridges answer to different forms of crises, especially, but not only, with regard to communication, travel, social, cultural or political relations, or of the natural environment. In turn, we are also interested in papers that discuss how the establishment and maintenance of bridges may prevent crises or, contrarily, cause new unforeseen forms of crisis.

How to Submit your Proposal
for a Paper for our 2024 Session at Leeds
— Due by 31 August 2023

“Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’ ”

Session Co-Organisers:

Ann Pascoe-van Zyl (Trinity College Dublin)
and
Michael Allman Conrad (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence and Universität St. Gallen)

We invite abstracts of 200–300 words. Your proposals for papers should be made directly to the organisers by 31 August 2023.

We seek papers on a wide range of subjects pertaining to Bridges and to Crises.

Our own experience with RGME activities over the years, in promoting the possibilities of “Building Bridges” between disciplines, centres, and individuals, provides a keen interest in these issues and potential solutions. See, for example, our

From your Proposals due by the end of August, the RGME Session will be selected and submitted to the Congress at Leeds by 30 September 2023. We will inform you of our selection by that time.

Congress information

Congress Website
https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/imc-2024/
Proposal Criteria
https://www.imc.leeds.ac.uk/proposals/criteria/

The Congress will be held in person, with provisions for online participation. In this way, we hope that you might be able to attend onsite or at a distance, depending upon your travel arrangements.

Deadline for Paper Proposals: Due by 31 August 2023

Please send your Proposal of 200–300 words for your Paper to the organisers at their address below. Might you please note your preferred mode for presenting your paper — in person or virtually.

Address to send your Proposals: [email protected]

For information about this RGME Inaugural Session at the IMC, please contact the Session Co-organisers at their address.

We look forward to your contributions.

*****

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des manuscrits, MS Lat 10525, fol, 3v, detail. Noah’s Ark. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8447877n.

*****

Tags: Bridges, Crises, International Medieval Congress, Medieval Studies, Noah's Ark
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2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

July 8, 2023 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)
To occur in ‘hybrid’ form
(with some Sessions in Person, some Online)

[Posted on 7 July 2023, with updates]

Façade of the Celsus library , in Ephesus, near Selçuk, west Turkey. Photograph (1910): Benh LIEU SONG, via Creative Commons.

Building upon the successful completion of our activities at the 2023 ICMS (see our 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program and 2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report), we announce the Call for Proposals (CFP) for next year’s Congress, which will take place in a modified hybrid format from Thursday to Saturday 9–11 May 2024.

For information about the Congress, see its website. There you can also find information and instructions about submitting your proposals. See especially Submissions. Your proposals for papers are due by 15 September 2023.

After the close of the CFP, we will select the accepted papers and design the programs for the Sessions. Notifying you of the decisions about your proposals will come before the deadline for us to submit the Programs for our Sessions to the Congress Committee is 15 October 2023.

Next, normally by the turn of the year toward the year of the Congress, we publish the selected Programs for our Sessions and announce our other Activities, while we await the promulgation of the official Schedule for the 2023 Congress as a whole. Accompanying our announced Programs are the Abstracts for the Papers. Then, with the publication of the Congress Program (or its traditional ‘Sneak Peek’), we can add the times and venues for our Sessions. As the 2024 Congress approaches, new information can guide announcements and updates on our website and social media.

For 2024, with some Sessions on line and some in person in a transitional ICMS, we prepare:

four Sessions, sponsored and co-sponsored
a customary Open Business Meeting at the Congress
and perhaps a Reception.

In 2024, the RGME celebrates an Anniversary Year, for which the chosen Theme is “Bridges”.

One Session is our own (Item I). With one session each, our co-sponsors for ICMS Sessions in 2024 are:

Societas Magica
Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)
Postal History at Kalamazoo

This year marks Year 20 of our co-sponsorship with the Societas Magica, Year 3 of co-sponsorship with P.O.M.o.N.A., and the first year of co-sponsorship with the newly founded Postal History at Kalamazoo.

Both our own RGME Session (Item I here) and the Session co-sponsored with Postal History at Kalamazoo (Item IV) are designed to continue the tradition of our long-term series of RGME Sessions at the ICMS on “Medieval Writing Materials”, which began in 2014. (See, for example, our Congress Activities and 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program.)

The Organizers and Co-Organizer of the two Sessions this year include all three founders of that series. It was proposed to the RGME Director Mildred Budny in 2013 by Eleanor A. Congdon and David W. Sorenson.

Here we announce the subjects of the Sessions and invite your Proposals for Presentations.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Blood in Books, Book History, Classical & Medieval Studies, Datini Archives, Fugger Archives, History of Commerce, History of Correspondence, History of Curtains, History of Magic, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Medici Archives, Medieval Sources for Pre-Christian Practices, Paston Letters, Postal History, Powers of Blood
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“The Methodology of Credulity: Assessing the Manuscript Witnesses to Beatus of Líebana, On the Apocalypse“

Reflections on A Project Proposal

The 2025 RGME Session on Beatus Manuscripts

“Rending the Veil: The Rupture of Image and Text in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries”

The Once-Upon-A-Time Project Proposal on Beatus Manuscripts

The Material The Nature of the Problem The Scope and Aims of the Project The Collaborative Process The Stage of Development of the Project Institutional Resources to be Consulted and Travel Plans Results

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2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Program of RGME Activities

60th ICMS Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025 (with Sessions variously in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

2025 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

60th ICMS Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025 (with Sessions variously in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

Process and Timetable for Proposals

Then What?

RGME @ 2025 ICMS

Our 2025 Sessions

I. Sessions Sponsored by the RGME

1. “Deviant Images: Text/Image Relationships in Medieval Manuscripts” (ID: 5977)

In-Person Session

Aim

Proposals

2. “Rending the Veil: The Rupture of Image and Text in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries” (ID: 6459)

In-Person Session

Aim

Methodologies

Proposals

3. “Women and Manuscripts: Questions of Authorship” (ID 6310)

Hybrid Session

Aim

Proposals

II. Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME

4. Moving the Mail: Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices in the Medieval World (ID: 6312)

In-person Session

Aim

5. “Grimoires of the Greater West (2): Multicultural Solomonic Magic: The Case of the Almandal” (ID 6392)

In-person Session

Aim

6. “Sendalphon, Send Me a Dream: Dream Books, Spells, Divination, Incubation, and Interpretation” (ID #6171)

Online Session

Aim

Questions? Suggestions?

2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions, an Open Business Meeting, and Co-Sponsored Reception

In a Nutshell: Mission Accomplished!

With Thanks to our Participants, Co-Sponsors, Audience, and Friends

The Journey

Access Included

The Arrival

Program

Audience Participation

Posters

The Program as Accomplished

‘Hybrid’ Facilities

At ICMS for the RGME Anniversary Year

RGME Posters on Display for the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)

9–11 May in hybrid format

Our Pop-Up Poster Display for the 2024 ICMS

In a Nutshell

2014 ICMS

2015 ICMS

Fit to Print, Free to Keep

Online Exhibition

Two-By-Two as Pairs or Diptychs

Meetings

Anniversary Reception

Open Business Meeting

Sessions and a Roundtable

“Alchemical Manuscripts, Printed Books, and Materials”

Poster 1

Poster 2

2. “Retrospect and Prospect”

Poster 1

Poster 2

3. “Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices: Mail in the Medieval World”

Poster 1

Poster 2

Suggestion Box

“The Methodology of Credulity:
Assessing the Manuscript Witnesses
to Beatus of Líebana, On the Apocalypse“

Reflections on
A Project Proposal

The 2025 RGME Session
on Beatus Manuscripts

“Rending the Veil:
The Rupture of Image and Text
in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries”

The Once-Upon-A-Time
Project Proposal on Beatus Manuscripts

The Material
The Nature of the Problem
The Scope and Aims of the Project
The Collaborative Process
The Stage of Development of the Project
Institutional Resources to be Consulted and Travel Plans
Results

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Program of RGME Activities

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

2025 International Congress
on Medieval Studies:
Call for Papers

60th ICMS
Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025
(with Sessions variously
in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

2. “Rending the Veil:
The Rupture of Image and Text
in Medieval Apocalypse Commentaries” (ID: 6459)

3. “Women and Manuscripts:
Questions of Authorship” (ID 6310)

5. “Grimoires of the Greater West (2): Multicultural Solomonic Magic:
The Case of the Almandal” (ID 6392)

6. “Sendalphon, Send Me a Dream:
Dream Books, Spells, Divination, Incubation, and Interpretation” (ID #6171)

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

In a Nutshell:
Mission Accomplished!

With Thanks to our Participants,
Co-Sponsors, Audience, and Friends

RGME Posters on Display
for the
2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS)

3. “Letters, Couriers, and Post Offices:
Mail in the Medieval World”

To be held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with RGME Co-Sponsored Sessions,
an Open Business Meeting,
and Co-Sponsored Reception

Held in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
an Open Business Meeting
and Co-Sponsored Reception

“Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’
For 25 Years and More”

Call for Papers for
an Inaugural RGME-Sponsored Session
at the 2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds
(1–4 July 2024 in hybrid format)

CFP for a RGME Session at the 2024 ICMS
(1–4 July 2024 in hybrid format)

Proposals Invited for Papers
for our 2024 Session at Leeds
— Due by 31 August 2023

Note on Le Pont Neuf
(see image above)

RGME Call For Papers
for the 2024 International Medieval Congress at Leeds
(1–4 July 2024 in hybrid format)

“Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’
For 25 Years and More”

How to Submit your Proposal
for a Paper for our 2024 Session at Leeds
— Due by 31 August 2023

59th ICMS (9–11 May 2024)
To occur in ‘hybrid’ form
(with some Sessions in Person, some Online)