Recollections for the 2024 RGME Anniversary, Part 1: Giles Constable

May 20, 2024 in Anniversary, Manuscript Studies, Research Group Episodes for The Research Group Speaks, RGME Recollections

2024 RGME Anniversary Recollections

Part 1

Giles Constable

[Posted on 20 May 2024]

During this 2024 Anniversary Year for the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME), with our year’s theme of Bridges, we gather recollections and tributes for people who have contributed to our formation, history, progress, legacy, and the pursuit of our mission across the years. This year, we celebrate

  • 25 years as a nonprofit educational organization incorporated in Princeton, New Jersey, and
  • 35 years as an international scholarly organization founded as part of a major research project on “Anglo-Saxon and Related Manuscripts” at The Parker Library of Corpus Christi College in the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom.

As part of our anniversary celebrations, the RGME prepares an Episode in our online series “The Research Group Speaks” to consider

To register:

We begin a series of Anniversary Reflections in our blog on Manuscript Studies by focusing upon a RGME Associate, Honorary Trustee, Mentor, and Friend whose advice and encouragement loomed larger than life in the course of our organization and its journey across time. Mildred Budny contributes this set of reflections, illustrated with some photographs.

Anniversary Reflections, Part 1:
Giles Constable, Honorary Trustee and Mentor

With admiration, I describe some recollections of Giles Constable (1 June 1929 — 17 January 2021), our long-time Associate, Honorary Trustee, colleague, mentor, and friend.

Giles Reading at the Window in his Office at the IAS. Spring 2014. Photography Mildred Budny.

Giles Reading at the Window in his Office at the IAS. Spring 2014. Photography Mildred Budny.

Achievements

Giles’s achievements are many. Institutions to which he belonged, and to which he contributed, record the structure and components of his scholarly and administrative activities. For example, in these accounts:

With the A. B. (1950) and Ph. D. (1957) from Harvard University, Giles taught at the University of Iowa (1955 to 1958) and at Harvard (1958 to 1984), for which he served as Director of the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library in Washington, D. C.  At the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey, he was Medieval History Professor in the School of Historical Studies (1985 to 2003) and then Professor Emeritus until his death.

His participation in the life of his family, as brother, husband, in-law, father, and grandfather belongs among his merits.  He enriched the lives of many colleagues, students, and friends by words, advice, encouragement, and example.

Some of his former students are Research Group Trustees and Associates, and their descriptions of him over the years have been moving and inspiring.

Here we begin to gather some of these recollections.  Their gathering began with our report of Giles’s passing on the day itself, in a posting on our Research Group Facebook Page.

Colleague, Mentor, and Friend

Some photographs from our RGME Archive record moments in our collaboration.  Above, we see Giles still at work, reading, in his post-retirement office at the Institute for Advanced Study.  The photograph made its debut in public on our Facebook Page, on 17 January 2021.

About that photograph, our Associate Karl F. Morrison observed:

Thank you very much for capturing this image of Giles, no doubt in the act of reading something for somebody else.  It reminded me that, for Giles, the center always held, and his gifts of mind and heart for encouraging companions on the way were the same as the definition of infinity:  the center was everywhere and the borders nowhere.

We offer some other images, from other occasions.

As Honorary Trustee of the Research Group

Regularly, Giles hosted annual meetings of the Princeton Trustees of the RGME, after the first such meeting hosted by James Marrow, Honorary Trustee.

Giles Constable and James Marrow at the Meeting of the Honorary Trustees of the Research Group on 13 December 2013. Photography Mildred Budny.

Giles Constable and James Marrow at the Meeting of the Honorary Trustees of the Research Group on 13 December 2013. Photography Mildred Budny.

These meetings gathered Trustees and Honorary Trustees resident in Princeton, including Giles, James, Mildred Budny, and Adelaide Bennett.

Giles Constable and Adelaide Bennett at the 2016 RGME Symposium. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

Giles Constable and Adelaide Bennett at the 2016 RGME Symposium. Photograph by Mildred Budny.

As Contributor to our Symposia, Colloquia, Seminars, and Workshops

At the 2002 British Museum Colloquium

Coffee Break at our 2002 British Museum Colloquium. Our Director, Dáibhí Ó Cróinin, and Giles Constable. Photograph by our Associate, Geoffrey R. Russom.

Coffee Break at our 2002 British Museum Colloquium. Our Director, Dáibhí Ó Cróinin, and Giles Constable. Photograph by our Associate, Geoffrey R. Russom.

At the 2002 ‘Investiture’ of our Associate, James P. Heidere

The 'Investiture' of our Research Group Associate, James P. Heidere, by Roger Reynolds and Giles Constable.

The ‘Investiture’ of our Research Group Associate, James P. Heidere, by Roger Reynolds and Giles Constable.

See also, among others, the 2014 Seminar on Manuscripts and Photography.

As Mentor, Colleague, and Friend

In his IAS office, with Alison Beach (2014)

Giles Constable with Alison Beach at his office in Spring 2014. Photography Mildred Budny.

Giles Constable with Alison Beach at his office in Spring 2014. Photography Mildred Budny.

About this photograph, Alison — who had been Postdoctoral Research Assistant to Professor Giles Constable during the period 1998—2000 — commented:

[The photograph shows me] With Giles at the Institute for Advanced Study consulting about the translation of the Chronicle of Petershausen in 2014. Giles encouraged Sam [Sutherland], Shannon [Li], and me to push on with and publish the translation.  What a privilege it was. . . . he seemed immortal to me.

Mildred Budny, author of this post, offered remarks about Giles’s mentorship for her and the RGME over years after the RGME moved its principal base to Princeton and became incorporated as a nonprofit educational organization, in her contribution to a Roundtable co-sponsored by the RGME at the 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies. (See 2024 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Report.)

More recollections will form part of the program for Episode 17 of “The Research Group Speaks” on 21 September 2024. Please let us know if you wish to participate.

To register:

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In Giles’s Honor

A fund for the Research Group has been established to honor Giles Constable: The Constable Fund. See

Do you have recollections, souvenirs, and photographs of Giles Constable that you would like to share?

Please, if you wish,

We look forward to hearing from you.

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