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

our FaceBook Page
our Facebook Group
our Twitter Feed (@rgme_mss)
our Bluesky nest @rgmesocial.bluesky.social)
our LinkedIn Group
our Blog on Manuscript Studies and its Contents List

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:

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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.

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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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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.

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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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2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Preparations

July 7, 2022 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Uncategorized

2023 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Preparations

58th ICMS (11–13 May 2023)

To occur in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
To be held either in person or online

(Note: Only, by special permission,
do some Sessions occur in ‘blended’ and verily ‘hybrid’ form)

Call for Papers

Proposals due by 15 September 2022

[Posted on 7 July 2022, with updates]

With the successful completion of our activities at the 2022 ICMS in May (see our 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program), we begin preparations for the 2023 ICMS.

First, we thank the organizers, sponsor and co-sponsor, presiders, speakers, respondents, and participants of those activities, which included four Sessions and an Open Business Meeting. Sessions co-sponsored with the Societas Magica marked Year 18 of our co-sponsorship with that organization; one Session was co-sponsored for the first time with the Ibero-Medieval Association of North America (IMANA).

Next, we assemble proposed Sessions to be sponsored or co-sponsored for next year’s Congress. With proposals to be submitted by 1 June 2022, we would expect to hear decisions from the Congress Committee in July for sessions approved for the general Call for Papers, with a deadline for submissions of proposals for papers, via the Congress website, by 15 September.

On 1 June, the proposals were successfully submitted. We waited, hopefully, for the acceptance of these proposals. Today we learn that they are. And so, we announce them and their plans.

They are these, both sponsored and co-sponsored.

For the Congress, the listings of Sessions site the Sponsor and then any Co-Sponsor, so that finding specific Sessions among the groups of offerings on the Congress website would progress through the name of the organization, grouped primarily by the Sponsor, then the Co-Sponsor.

For information about how to propose papers for these sessions, see below. First: the sessions we prepare. Then the instructions.

I. Session Co-Sponsored with the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

This session represents a new co-sponsorship with the Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies at the Congress. The proposal is designed to continue the series of RGME Sessions at the Congress on “Medieval Writing Materials”.

Front cover and ties of French notebook for ‘Recettes’ reusing a vellum bifolium from a medieval Latin Psalter. Photography © Mildred Budny

1. “Bound but not Gagged:
The Eloquence of Medieval Book Bindings”

Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Co-sponsor: Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

Organizer: William H. Campbell (University of Pittsburgh — Greensburg) and
Co-Organizer: Mildred Budny (Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)

Modality: Online

Medieval books communicate far more than the words on their pages. They were frequently subjected to damage and repair, to loss and addition, to division and recombination. Their bindings bear witness to the moments in their history that altered and shaped them, or — in the case of still older books recycled into binding material — destroyed them. This session is dedicated to everything about the codex that is not its text, to what J. A. Szirmai called The Archaeology of Medieval Bookbinding.

[Note: On the image shown here, see our blog:

A Reused Medieval Psalter Bifolium and its French Notebook.]

II. Sessions Co-Sponsored with the Societas Magica

Societas Magica logo

In Year 19 of our Sessions co-sponsored with the Societas Magica, we prepare for three Sessions.

2. “Ars magica sub philosophia”?
The Rise of Learned Magic in the Late Middle Ages

Sponsor: Societas Magica
Co-sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Contact: Vajra Regan (University of Toronto, Centre for Medieval Studies)
([email protected])

Modality: In person

The Late Middle Ages saw the rise of increasingly sophisticated and intellectual forms of magic. Inevitably, this prompted a number of important thinkers to situate certain types of magic under philosophy. This session aims to bring together papers from scholars in diverse disciplines so as to better understand the various cultural, intellectual, and institutional causes responsible for the construction of medieval learned magic.

3–4. “Moving Parts and Pedagogy, Parts I–II”

Sponsor: Societas Magica
Co-Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Organizer: David Porreca (University of Waterloo)

Modality: In person

Part I: Teaching Magic and Other Occult Arts

Poster for “Astrology and Magic” Congress Session (7 May 2013)

Magic, alchemy, geomancy, and other occult arts were never part of the official curriculum in any medieval university faculty. Moreover, magical treatises abound in claims of legitimacy in terms of belonging alongside other more overtly recognized sciences. Nevertheless, the abundance of surviving treatises, manuals, and commentaries suggests that there must have been some means outside the bounds of officially recognized institutions for these bodies of knowledge and practices to have been taught, learned, and transmitted, despite the negative light often cast upon them in ‘mainstream’ circles. This session aims to investigate the pedagogy of such arts and practices.

Part II: Teaching Astrology and other Liberal Arts

During the later Middle Ages, astrology began to play an ever more prominent role in university curricula. It was frequently merged with astronomy as one of the Seven Liberal Arts, and it became required knowledge for the practice of medicine. These developments created a need for new masters capable of rendering its intricacies intelligible to the next generation of doctors and other practitioners. This session aims to examine how the pedagogy of astrology functioned, and how the teaching of that discipline fits alongside the rest of the Liberal Arts curriculum.

III: Session Co-Sponsored with Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.)

This session would be the second (non-consecutive) year of co-sponsorship with this organization.

Poster for 'Classical Deities' Session co-cponsored with Pomona at the International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo 2019.

Pomona Session Kzoo 2019

5) “Words as Agents”

Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
Co-sponsor: Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P-OMoNA)

Organizer: Phillip Bernhardt-House
Co-Organizer: Mildred Budny

Modality: Online

The idea of words as agents of specific actions, changes of status, or as means via which changes occur in the wider world is inherent in many forms of literate and verbal communication, underlying human social phenomena as diverse as legal systems, religious community formation and practices, and the practice of magic, amongst others. Textual amulets, deeds, dedicatory inscriptions, and other written matter (even entire alphabets!) can convey notions of words’ agency.

This session explores a variety of these, reflected in specific examples from pre-modern periods and cultures, from the Iron Age to the Renaissance and across wide geographic ranges.

*****

Watch this space for developments in the progress of preparations for the 2023 Congress.

Presenting Submissions for Papers

You can submit your proposal for any one of these Sessions on the official Congress website through its submission portal. The deadline for proposals is before or by 15 September 2022. Then the choice of the program for each Session, with the Presenters and the Presider, will be submitted to the Congress Committee by 1 October 2022.

According to the Congress website (as of 20 July 2022):

A full list of all sessions of papers and roundtables (including their delivery modalities) can be viewed on our website (wmich.edu/medievalcongress/call)

You are welcome to correspond with potential session participants through other channels, but an official proposal can only be made and accepted through the Confex proposal portal (icms.confex.com/icms/2023/cfp.cgi)

This portal is also linked from our website. The deadline for submission is Thursday, Sept. 15.

2023 Congress Sessions

We hope for strong responses to the Call for Papers, in a suite of sessions co-sponsored by the Research Group, in accordance with our many years of participation in the Congress, both in person and online. That tradition is described in our ‘archive’ of Events and Congress Sessions.

Our tradition includes the publication of Abstracts, as their authors allow, for the Papers and Responses of Sessions sponsored and co-sponsored by the RGME.

Abstracts of Congress Papers

As they appear, you may find individual Abstracts by Name and/or by Year of Presentation in our Lists of

*****

Post Script:
The Stories that Bindings Can Tell

Verso of Leaf from the Dialogues of Gregory the Great, Book III, chapter 7. Photography by Mildred Budny

Reused Bifolium, Verso, turned Sideways, as the Cover for a missing volume of Euthymius on the Psalms. Photography Mildred Budny.

[Note: For information about this image, see our blog:

A Leaf from Gregory’s Dialogues reused to bind Euthymius.]

2022 Spring and Autumn Symposia

March 2, 2022 in International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Speaks (The Series), Uncategorized

Spring and Autumn Symposia 2022
2 April and 15 October

2020 Symposium "From Cover to Cover" Poster 2

2020 Symposium Poster 2

The Research Group prepares a pair of Symposia in 2022. In this way, we return to our series of Symposia (formerly held in person). The series underwent an interruption with the cancelled 2020 Spring Symposium. That Symposium was planned for subjects extending From Cover to Cover: Activities Dedicated to Manuscripts, Early Printed Materials & Beyond, From Collecting & Cataloguing to Deciphering & Beholding. It has its record in the illustrated Program Booklet, with Abstracts of the planned presentations and workshops. Its core and its promise inspire this renewal.

This year, each Symposium in the pair is designed as a one-day event, with sessions and workshops of about 1 and 1/2 hours, giving scope for discussion. The dates are set for Saturday 2 April and Saturday 15 October (The “Sweetest Day”). The Spring Symposium will be held online by Zoom. The Autumn Symposium would be held online, but, conditions permitting, it might be hybrid, that is, partly in person, as well as online.

These events, by request, flow in addition to — and partly from — our other activities during the year:

1) Continuing Episodes in the online series of The Research Group Speaks (2021–)

https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/the-research-group-speaks-the-series/

2) Our four sponsored and c0-sponsored Congress Sessions at the 57th International Congress on Medieval Studies (online) in May

https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/2022-international-congress-on-medieval-studies-program
(Abstracts of the Papers are included).

“Structures of Knowledge” (Spring)
and “Supports for Knowledge” (Autumn)

The interlinked pair of Spring and Autumn Symposia examine themes of Structured Knowledge.

Some proposed presentations at these Symposia offer refreshed materials which had been planned for the cancelled 2020 Spring Symposium.

See https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/2020-spring-symposium-save-the-date, with a published Program Booklet including illustrations and Abstracts.

Sessions under consideration include approaches to databases and library catalogs; specific case studies and projects; issues relating to reproductions and display, research and teaching, and more.

A Monk Reflects Upon the Text. Eugene, Oregon, University of Oregon, Knight Library, MS 027, folio 34v, detail. Latin Decretals of Pope Gregory IX. Rome, 1290, folio 34v.

For example:

“Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases, Continued (Parts II and III)”
— building upon our Roundtable in February on Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases, Part I.
“The Living Library”
“History and Uses of Paper”
“Hybrid Books, I and II”
“Manuscripts, Works of Art, Photography, and Facsimiles, I and II”
“Teaching with Manuscripts”
“Pattern in and on Books”
Etc.

Spring Symposium
(2 April 2022 online)

[Now see 2022 Spring Symposium on “Structures of Knowledge”]

Speakers and respondents for the Spring Symposium include Phillip Bernhardt-House, Linde M. Brocato, Mildred Budny, Katharine C. Chandler, Barbara Williams Ellertson, Howard German, Hannah Goeselt, Thomas E. Hill, Eric J. Johnson, Zoey Kambour, David Porreca, Jessica L. Savage, Ronald Smeltzer, and David W. Sorenson.

Presentations examine such subjects as:

“The Warburg Institute Library: Where Idiosyncracy Meets User-Friendliness”
“Psyche’s Library: Reading the Library as a Text Illuminated by the Cupid and Psyche Tapestries in the Frederick Thompson Memorial Library at Vassar College“
a collector’s view of a series of limited-edition fine-printed publications in mixed media on esoteric subjects, with accompanying amulets and related materials
medieval scribes’ and readers’ responses to the text in a copy of the Latin Decretals of Pope Gregory IX (University of Oregon, Knight Library, MS 027), formerly owned by the Abbey of San Bartolomeo di Azzano d’Asti
experiences in “Teaching Cataloging Today”, with an Update on the DACT (Digital Analysis of Chant Transmission) Fragments Campaign (https://dact-chant.ca/ ) and Controlled Vocabularies for the Fragmentarium (https://fragmentarium.ms/ ) and CANTUS Chant (https://cantus.uwaterloo.ca) databases.
Cover Page for Sorenson (2020 as Draft for Comment).

a discussion about the published “Draft for Feedback” from David W. Sorenson’s planned 2020 Spring Symposium paper on An Introduction to Indian Manuscripts for the NonSpecialist: Draft for Feedback, with updates

Suggestions for Reading and Browsing

Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases: A Handlist of Links.

David W. Sorenson, An Introduction to Indian Manuscripts for the NonSpecialist: Draft for Feedback (2020).

_____, Paper-Moulds and Paper Traditions: Draft for Comment (2020).

[Mildred Budny and David Sorenson,] Watermarks and the History of Paper (2020–).

Vassar College, Frederick Thompson Memorial Library, Entry, Ceiling and Gobelin Tapestry Series.

Autumn Symposium
(15 October online or hybrid)

Plans for the Autumn Symposium develop some of these themes, and add more.

See 2022 Autumn Symposium on Supports for Knowledge.

Watch this space.

And There Is More . . .

Workshops, Webinars, Interviews, etc.

Subjects for episodes for The Research Group Speaks include, by request, a workshop to follow up the episode on How to be Indiana Jones in the Catalog (December 2021), with a demonstration by Linde M. Brocato:

“How to be Tarzan in the Catalog” (with audience requests invited ahead of time).

A Pointer to the Text. Eugene, Oregon, University of Oregon, MS 027, Latin Decretals of Pope Gregory IX, folio 3r, detail: manicle with an extended forefinger and flounced cuff.

RGME at the 2022 ICMS

Note that the RGME activities (4 Sessions and our Open Business Meeting) at the Kalamazoo Congress (online in May 2022) will provide more ways to announce the Autumn Symposium and the series of “The Research Group Speaks”, to plan further activities, and to gather their audiences.

See https://manuscriptevidence.org/wpme/2022-international-congress-on-medieval-studies-program
(Abstracts of the Papers are included).

Pre-Congress Business Meeting

Like 2021, before the online Congress in May, the RGME will precede its Open Business Meeting online at the Congress with a Pre-Congress Business Meeting, likewise online. Thus it may gather participants from within Congress-goers and beyond, so as to prepare for the planning in the Congress Business Meeting, for example about which Sessions the RGME might wish to propose for its sponsorship and co-sponsorship at the 2023 Congress.

More details about events will follow. Watch this space.

Woodcut Illustration for the First Sunday of Advent in "Postilla" (Lyons, 1527). Photograph by Mildred Budny

Creation. Woodcut Illustration for the First Sunday of Advent (Postilla, 1527). Photograph Mildred Budny.

*****

Do you have suggestions for subjects? Please let us know.

Would you like to help with organizing the events, presenting contributions to them, preparing our publications, engaging in our research projects, and volunteering as interns?

Would you like to donate to our mission and activities, in funds and/or in kind? Suggestions about methods, causes, and purposes are described for Donations and Contributions.

Please leave your Comments below, Contact Us, and visit our FaceBook Page. We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

Tags: Catalogues & Metadata & Databases, Manuscript Photography, Pattern in and on Books, RGME Symposia, Structured Knowledge, Structures of Knowledge, Supports for Knowledge, Teaching with Manuscripts, The Living Library, Warburg Institute Library
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60th ICMS Thursday through Saturday, 8–10 May 2025 (with Sessions variously in Person, Online, or Hybrid)

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

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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)

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Methodologies

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

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

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

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

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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

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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

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Sessions and a Roundtable

“Alchemical Manuscripts, Printed Books, and Materials”

Poster 1

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2. “Retrospect and Prospect”

Poster 1

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

Poster 1

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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

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

To occur in a transitional ‘hybrid’ form
with Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions
To be held either in person or online

(Note: Only, by special permission,
do some Sessions occur in ‘blended’ and verily ‘hybrid’ form)

1. “Bound but not Gagged:
The Eloquence of Medieval Book Bindings”

2. “Ars magica sub philosophia”?
The Rise of Learned Magic in the Late Middle Ages

Post Script:
The Stories that Bindings Can Tell

Spring and Autumn Symposia 2022
2 April and 15 October

“Structures of Knowledge” (Spring)
and “Supports for Knowledge” (Autumn)

Spring Symposium
(2 April 2022 online)

Autumn Symposium
(15 October online or hybrid)