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      • Manuscript Studies: Contents List
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      • Abstracts of Congress Papers
        • Abstracts of Papers Listed by Author
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  • About
    • Mission
    • Who We Are
      • Officers, Associates & Volunteers
      • RGME Committees
      • Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
    • Policies & Statements
      • RGME Privacy Policy Statement
      • RGME Intellectual Property Statement & Agreements
    • People
      • Mildred Budny — Her Page
      • Adelaide Bennett Hagens
    • Activities
      • Events
      • Congress Activities
        • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
          • Panels at the M-MLA Convention (from 2016)
        • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • History
      • Seals, Matrices & Documents
      • Genealogies & Archives
    • Contact Us
  • Bembino
    • Multi-Lingual Bembino
  • Congress
    • Sponsored Conference Sessions (1993‒)
    • Co-sponsored Conference Sessions (2006‒)
    • Abstracts of Congress Papers
      • Abstracts Listed by Author
      • Abstracts Listed by Year
    • Kalamazoo Archive
    • Panels at the M-MLA Convention (2016-2019)
      • Abstracts of Papers for the M-MLA Convention
      • Panels at the M-MLA Convention (from 2016)
  • Events
    • RGME Activities for 2024 and 2025
      • 2023 Activities and 2024 Planned Activities
    • Seminars, Workshops, Colloquia & Symposia (1989–)
      • Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Symposia on ‘The Transmission of the Bible’
      • The New Series (2001-)
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Program: The Roads Taken
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration
        • 2019 Anniversary Symposium Registration Open
      • RGME Symposia: The Various Series
      • The Research Group Speaks: The Series
      • Meetings of the Friends of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
      • RGME Online Events
    • Abstracts of Papers for Events
      • Abstracts of Papers for Seminars on ‘The Evidence of Manuscripts’
      • Abstracts of Papers for Symposia, Workshops & Colloquia
    • Receptions & Parties
    • Business Meetings
    • Photographic Exhibitions & Master Classes
    • Events Archive
  • ShelfLife
    • Journal Description
    • ShelfMarks: The RGME-Newsletter
    • Publications
      • “Insular, Anglo-Saxon, and Early Anglo-Norman Manuscript Art at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge” (1997)
        • Mildred Budny, ‘Catalogue’
        • The Illustrated Catalogue (1997)
      • The Illustrated Handlist
      • Semi-Official Counterfeiting in France 1380-1422
      • No Snap Decisions: Challenges of Manuscript Photography
    • History and Design of Our Website
  • Galleries
    • Watermarks & the History of Paper
    • Galleries: Contents List
    • Scripts on Parade
    • Texts on Parade
      • Latin Documents & Cartularies
      • New Testament Leaves in Old Armenian
    • Posters on Display
    • Layout Designs
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    • RGME Donor Promise
    • 2023 End-of-Year Fundraiser for our 2024 Anniversary Year
    • 2019 Anniversary Appeal
    • Orders
  • Links
    • Catalogs, Metadata, and Databases: A Handlist of Links
    • Handlist of Resources for Manuscript Studies and Fragmentology
    • Manuscripts & Rare Books
    • Maps, Plans & Drawings
    • Seals, Seal-Matrices & Documents

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2026 International Congress on Medieval Studies: Call for Papers

July 2, 2025 in Announcements, Bāḥra ḥassāb: Knowledge Transmission in Ethiopia and Eritrea From Antiquity to Modern Times, Call for Papers, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Koller-Collins Center for English Studies, POMONA, Postal History at Kalamazoo, Princeton Bibliophiles and Book-Collectors, Rossell Hope Robbins Library at the University of Waterloo, Societas Magica

Call for Papers

Sessions Co-Sponsored by the RGME
at the
61st International Congress on Medieval Studies
May 14–16, 2026

(Sessions variously online, in-person, and hybrid)

Proposals due by 15 September 2025

[Posted on 1 July 2025, with updates]

Sounding the Call

View from Fetzer Lounge at the 2017 Congress. Photography © Mildred Budny.

View from Fetzer Lounge at the 2017 Congress. Photography © Mildred Budny.

We announce the Call for Papers for the Sessions (Panels of Papers) co-sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence at the 2026 International Congress on Medieval Studies (ICMS). We describe the sessions one by one below, with direct links for you to submit proposals for each of our sessions.

The general Call for Papers appears on the Congress website.

  • Call for Papers

To find our Sessions there, search under Sponsoring Organization

  • Sponsor List

Search for the RGME (or our Co-Sponsor for the given session). In the Sponsors’ list, you will find our sessions as a group:

  • Sponsor: Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Please submit your proposals for papers through the Congress Confex system through its Call for Papers, as described there. The deadline is 15 September 2025.

The participation by the RGME at the Annual ICMS over the years is chronicled in our blog.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Bāḥra ḥassāb at the University of Hamburg, Divination, Grimoires, History of Alchemy, History of Magic, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Material Culture, Medieval Studies, Medieval Writing Materials, Pedagogy, Postal History, Rossell Hope Robbins Library, Solomonic Magic
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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.

Logo of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (colour version)

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).

Logo of the Societas Magica, reproduced by permission

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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Attend our next Events if your timetable allows. Our next Events:

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  • 2024 Autumn Symposium “At the Helm” (Friday–Saturday 25–26 October 2024 online)
  • Episode 18. “Women as Makers of Books” (Saturday 14 December 2024 online)

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Remember to send your Proposals for Papers for RGME Sessions at the 2025 ICMS by 15 September 2024.  See the instructions above.

We look forward to hearing from you and welcoming you to our events.

*****

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 Medieval Congress at Leeds: Program

November 24, 2023 in Conference, Conference Announcement, International Medieval Congress, Uncategorized

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

An Inaugural RGME-Sponsored Session at Leeds

Thirty-First International Medieval Congress
University of Leeds
(1–4 July 2024 in hybrid format)

[Posted on 23 November 2023, with updates]

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

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

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

In December, we learned that the proposed Session has been accepted. Here we describe the plan.

Also, now that the Congress schedule has been posted — see IMC 2024 Programme — we announce details of our Inaugural Session, scheduled for the first day of the Congress (1 July).

The Plan

The Congress subject for 2024 is “Crisis”.

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

For the 2024 ICMS at Leeds we examine subjects pertaining to the challenges and opportunities of “Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’ ”.  Responses to our Call for Proposals for this Session yielded a strong program with varied subjects from multiple perspectives far and near across time and place.

This Session joins our events celebrating the Anniversary Year for the RGME.

  • 2023 and 2024 Activities
  • 2024 Anniversary Appeal

Our 2024 Anniversary Year: “Bridges”

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

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

Also, for the first time, we prepare an Inaugural RGME-sponsored Session for the International Medieval Congress (IMC) at Leeds in July 2024. Our dedicated Co-Organizers for this new ‘venture’ as an Inaugural Session on our Anniversary bring a rich range of perspectives and interests sprouting from distant lands, different subjects, multiple waterways or paths of communication, and varied cultural endeavours, from poetry to correspondence, and voyagers’ routes using and forming bridges both tangibly and intangibly.

Our Co-Organizers hail from different traditions and upbringings, varied geographical locations (more than one, different continents included), and multi-lingual perspectives.  Meet the Co-Organizers, whom we earnestly thank for skillfully shaping this event:

  • Ann Pascoe van Zyl
  • Dr. Michael Allman Conrad and Curriculum Vitae.

With awareness of distances which may be involved, we contemplate a view toward the waters, with thanks to our Co-Organizer for the photograph and permission to include it here as an evocative emblem from sometimes-distant shores.

Cape Point, Cape of Good Hope. Photograph © 12.2022 Ann Pascoe van Zyl.

The 2024 Leeds Congress:  “Crises”

The chosen “Thematic Focus” for the Leeds Congress in 2024 is “Crisis”.  It stands the tradition of varied Themes for the Leeds Congress since its foundation.  The Congress website describes many ways in which this theme might be viewed and explored.

Bridges and “Troubled Waters”

Given the Theme for the 2024 Congress at Leeds and our Theme for our 2024 Anniversary Year, it seemed natural to contemplate processes which, when called for, might create a Bridge Over Troubled Water in some form or other.  Repeating the results — in one or other form, as required or possible — might amount to a habit.

That thought reminded us of some practices and habits of the RGME over the years.  And so, the title for the session came into existence, and could form a rallying call or sorts for the plan of its approach.

Call it a ‘bridge’ in response to the call for the 2024 Congress to consider the natures of ‘crisis’ of various kinds, medieval and more, as a focus subject for discussion.

With bridges both literal and metaphorical in mind, we thought of the Ark as a response or safe haven.  Some medieval images of Noah’s Ark, its inhabitants, and its provident storage of provisions, come to mind.  For example, in an illustration enclosed within an ornamental architectural frame, itself set ‘at sea’ or afloat within a broad outer frame of the expansive margins of the manuscript leaf:

Illustration of Noah's Ark within a rectangular frame. The house-shaped ark has window-like openings for animals and birds. At the center, Noah as an aged and bearded man reaches up to receive a flying bird.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin MS 10525, folio 3v. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148./btv1b8447877n.r=psautier+dit+de+saint+louis.langFR.

Note on the Image

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, Latin MS 10525, folio 3v.

“Psalter of Saint Louis”, formerly owned by Louis IX (1214-1270), King of France.
Image Public Domain via gallica.bnf.fr (Scan View 20).

Building Bridges: The Plan for the Session

The Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (RGME) came into existence in 1989 from a major Research Project at the Parker Library of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.  It moved to the USA in 1994 and became a nonprofit educational corporation based in Princeton in 1999.

Under our guiding concept of Bridges for our 2024 Anniversary Year, the RGME offers a Session on bridges and bridge-related topics, specifically as relating to crises. We consider ‘bridges’ both literally, as physical architectures and landmarks (such as historically significant specimens), and abstractly, as architectural devices of the mind that enable us to make unexpected, unpredicted, and sometimes serendipitous connections between marginal, off-field, divergent media, methods, and subjects sometimes ignored in such contexts.

Moreover, we examine how bridges answer to different forms of crises, especially, but not only, with regard to communication, travel, social, cultural or political relations, and the natural environment. In turn, we also consider how establishing and maintaining bridges may prevent crises or, contrarily, cause new unforeseen forms of crisis.

Our session welcomes all bold bridge-makers willing to traverse pathways that others might have not dared to take.  Our subjects are:

1) Old English Psalms as a metaphorical bridge between crisis in the locus horribilis to peace in the locus amoenus,

2) Mercantile Venetian responses to blockages to trade-routes,

3) Dangers of bridges, especially Devil’s Bridges and Robber’s Bridge, as pilgrims’ routes, with digital visualizations and reference to contemporary discourse on safety,

4) a Response to these cases, along with a zreflection on the RGME’s tradition of building bridges through ‘crises’ in its passage across time to its anniversary with a session at the IMC.

Thus, we respond to opportunities and challenges which the captain and officers on the bridge of a ship might observe directly, better to steer a course forward.

We invite you to join us on the voyage.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Departément des Manuscrits, Latin MS 10525, folio 3v. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148.

*****

With the publication of the IMC 2024 Programme, we announce the Programme of our Inaugural Session.

“Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’ ”
Sponsor:
Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Session 129 (page 71 in the IMC 2024 Programme)

Organisers:
Ann Pascoe-van Zyl, School of English, Trinity College Dublin
and
Michael Allman Conrad, Kontextstudium, Universität St Gallen

Moderator:
N. Kıvılcım Yavuz, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of History,
University of Leeds

Respondent: David Porreca, Department of Classics, University of Waterloo, Ontario

Presentations:

129-a: Ann Pascoe-van Zyl, School of English, Trinity College Dublin

“The Imagery of the Old English Psalms of the Paris Psalter:  A
Metaphorical Bridge from Crisis in the locus horribilis to Peace
in the locus amoenus”
(Language: English)

Abstract

129-b: Eleanor Congdon, Department of History, Youngstown State University,
Ohio
“Resourcefulness in Action: The Use of the Port of Ibiza in Place
of Mainland Ports by Venetian Ships between 1400-1403″
(Language: English)

Abstract

129-c: Michael Allman Conrad, Kontextstudium, Universität St Gallen
“Diabolic, Dangerous, and Daring: Bridges as Ambiguous
Symbols of Medieval Risk Perception”
(Language: English)

Abstract

Update (20 August 2024): Michael has kindly provided a list of selected bibliography on the subject.  We offer it for download:

  • “Literature on “Devil’s Bridges” compiled by Michael A. Conrad.

Response:

“129-d“: David Porreca, Department of Classics, University of Waterloo, Ontario

A glimpse of the Bilingual Latin and Old English Paris Psalter:

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Département des Manuscrits, MS Latin 8824, folio 1r, midsection with illustration. Image Public Domain via https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/btv1b8451636f/f11.item#.

*****

Posters for our Session

RGME @ 2024 IMC at Leeds: Poster 2 set in RGME Bembino, with border.

RGME @ 2024 IMC at Leeds: Poster 1, set in RGME Bembino.

The Posters (in A4 format) can be downloaded.

  • Posters 1–2
  • Poster 1
  • Poster 2 with image of Noah’s Ark Afloat

“The RGME: Who We Are”

For this Congress, we provide a brief introduction to the RGME, with some links, in thanks for our Inaugural Session.  The two-page flyer can be downloaded in two versions for our international audience. Honouring our host, the International Medieval Congress at the University of Leeds, we prepare the pdf in both quarto and A4 formats.

1. Who We Are (A4 format)

2. Who We Are (Quarto format)

*****

See how this Session stands among RGME activities both recent and planned:

  • 2023 and 2024 Activities
Valli_di_Lanzo, Lanzo Torinese, Ponte del Diavolo. Photograph by Emiliana Borruto (24 February 2012). Image via Wikimedia Commons via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

Valli_di_Lanzo, Lanzo Torinese, Ponte del Diavolo. Photograph by Emiliana Borruto (24 February 2012). Image via Wikimedia Commons via Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.

*****

Questions or Suggestions?

Please leave your comments or questions below, 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

We invite you to join:

  • Friends of the RGME.

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!

  • Contributions and Donations

We invite you to consider favorably

  • our 2024 Anniversary Appeal.

We look forward to hearing from you and seeing you at our events.

*****

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

*****

Tags: "Bridge Over Troubled Water", Anglo-Saxon Paris Psalter, Bibliothèque nationale de France Ms Latin 8834, Bridges, Building Bridges, Crisis, Devil's Bridges, History of Bridges, International Medieval Congress, locus amoenus, Medieval Studies, Mercantile Venetian Trade Routes, Noah's Ark, Port of Ibiza, RGME Anniversary, Robber's Bridge
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“Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

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

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

Our Theme of “Bridges” for our 2024 Anniversary Year

with the

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

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

[Posted on 9 August 2023]

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

A Tale of Two Congresses

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

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

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

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

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

Building (and Rebuilding) Bridges

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bridges Then and Now

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

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

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

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

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

The Co-Organisers for our Leeds Session are

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

Bridges and “Troubled Waters”

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

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

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

Deadline for Paper Proposals:  Due by 31 August 2023

We look forward to your contributions.

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

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

[email protected]

*****

Footnotes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

We invite you to join the conversation.

*****

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

Note on the image:  See Council of the Gods.

*****

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

RGME Poster for 2015 Session on “Ideal Kingship”.

Note on Le Pont Neuf
(see image above)

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

  • 2015 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report.

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

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

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

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

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

*****

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

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

*****

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

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

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

We look forward to hearing from you.

*****

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

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

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

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

An Inaugural RGME-Sponsored Session at Leeds

[Posted on 9 August 2023]

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

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

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

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

Our 2024 Anniversary Year: “Bridges”

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

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

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

 

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

The 2024 Leeds Congress:  “Crises”

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

Bridges and “Troubled Waters”

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

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

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

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

“Building Bridges ‘Over Troubled Waters’ ”

Session Co-Organisers:

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

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

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

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

  • Events,
  • Congress Activities, and
  • Publications.

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

Congress information

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

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

Deadline for Paper Proposals:  Due by 31 August 2023

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

Address to send your Proposals:  [email protected]

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

We look forward to your contributions.

*****

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

*****

Tags: Bridges, Crises, International Medieval Congress, Medieval Studies, Noah's Ark
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2022 Congress Preparations

July 16, 2021 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Ibero-Medieval Association of North America, IMANA, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Societas Magica

Call for Papers (CFP) for Sessions
Sponsored or Co-Sponsored by the RGME

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

CFP Deadline:  15 September 2021
[Deadline for Session Programs:  1 October 2021]

Le Parc Abbey, Theological Volume, Part B: Detail of Vellum Leaf.

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

[Update on 22 September 2021:
Following the close of the CFP on 15 September, we can welcome the received proposals for papers, observe their strength and range, and prepare the programs for each session.  With the selection of proposed papers accomplished, it comes time to arrange their sequence within the given Sessions, assign the Presiders for them, and submit the programs to the Congress Committee by 1 October 2021.

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

Update on 1 October 2021:
At the close of the deadline for submission of the programs to the Congress, we report that each of our Sessions has three or four Papers; three sessions also have Responses; and we plan to hold a Business Meeting at the Congress, as in previous years.  All these activities are to take place online.]

[Posted on 15 July 2021]

After accomplishing the 2021 ICMS Online, with 5 Sponsored and Co-Sponsored Sessions, plus our Open Business Meeting, we produced the 2021 Congress Report, as we turned to preparations for the 2022 Congress.  We proposed Sessions, and received answers in stages.

Through the Confex system for the 2022 International Congress on Medieval Studies, we have learned that all but one of our proposed sessions have been accepted.

One of the accepted sessions resumes a series (“Medieval Writing Materials”) which a rejection for the 2015 Congress disrupted.  That rejection interfered with the momentum of our series of sessions on the subject at the 2011–2016 Congresses.  (See Sponsored Sessions.)  The interval between then and now is a long time to wait.  We had to turn to other subjects, as the momentum for their own action not only gathered to produce the proposals to sponsor or co-sponsor them, but also found favor by the Congress Committee, so that it could become possible to move to the phase of the Call for Papers for them. With the Pre-Congress Business Meeting in May 2021, as we prepared for this year’s Congress, we aimed to resume that series, as well as to explore other sessions as their subjects and proponents might direct.

So, we can resume the series on Medieval Writing Materials for 2022.  But a new rejection of another subject for the Congress leads us to reconsider our approach to its current momentum.  This time, learning from experience, we could choose what to do, but elsewhere, before long, with the subject not accepted this time around, rather than waiting for some other year — or decade — at the Congress.

And so, now, we announce the Call for Papers for the 2022 Congress.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Ars Notaria, History of Alphabets, History of Magic, History of Paper, History of Paper Manufacture, History of Watermarks, Manuscript studies, Medieval Studies, Medieval Writing Materials
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Keeping Up: Updates for Spring 2020

April 4, 2020 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Announcements, Bembino, Business Meeting, Conference, Conference Announcement, ICMS, Index of Medieval Art, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Manuscript Studies, Princeton University, Societas Magica

Keeping Up:

Updates for Spring 2020

Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS W.782, folio 15r. Van Alphen Hours. Dutch Book of Hours made for a female patron in the mid 15th century. Opening page of the Hours of the Virgin: "Here du salste opdoen mine lippen". Image via Creative Commons. At the bottom of the bordered page, an elegantly dressed woman sits before a shiny bowl- or mirror-like object, in order, perhaps, to perform skrying or to lure a unicorn.

Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS W.782, folio 15r. Van Alphen Hours. Scrying, Perchance? Image via Creative Commons.

This Spring, the cancellation of 2 of our major events planned for this year, and intended to take place in mid-March and mid-May, produces perforce a redirection of energies and activities.  Call it “Regrouping”.

We report updates.

1.  Our 2020 Spring Symposium:  “From Cover to Cover”

Planned for 13–14 March at Princeton University
But Cancelled or Postponed

As preparations were proceeding apace, the event was cancelled by Princeton University — along with other events — on 9 March, in response to growing concerns for the spread of COVID-19 on a global scale.  Although at short notice, it was possible swiftly to cancel reservations for the venue, catering, and other services before participants had begun their journeys.

What We Planned

  • 2020 Spring Symposium: Save the Date
2020 Symposium "From Cover to Cover" Poster 2

2020 Symposium Poster 2

We aimed to consider, “From Cover to Cover”, activities dedicated to manuscripts, early printed materials, and beyond, from collecting and cataloguing to deciphering and beholding.  We prepared to gather specialists, teachers, students, and others engaged or interested in activities such as “Collecting, Curating, Conserving, Cataloguing, Deciphering, Reading, Reconsidering, Editing, Teaching, Displaying, Accessing, Beholding, and More”.

The focus was designed to center primarily upon medieval and early modern materials, both Western and non-Western.  The presentations would include reports of discoveries, work-in-progress, cumulative research, and collaborative projects by specialists from multiple centers, including independent scholars and younger scholars.

Included were workshops over original materials in manuscript and early print, a demonstration of materials and processes for medieval scripts, discussions about databases devoted to manuscripts and rare books, and sessions addressing multiple activities approaching medieval, early modern, and other textual resources.  Subjects would span a wide range geographically and chronologically, and take care to attend to the material and bibiographical evidence.

What We Can Do

There are requests for rescheduling the Symposium, or parts thereof, when conditions might permit.

Meanwhile, we can publish the Symposium Booklet.  At the time of cancellation, it had come close to completion for printing and distributing at the event and then afterward, as is our custom.  For example:

  • 2019 Anniversary Symposium on “The Roads Taken”
  • 2016 Symposium on ‘Words & Deeds”
  • 2014 Symposium on “Recollections of the Past”
  • 2013 Symposium on “Identity & Authenticity”

For all these and our other Booklets (see our Publications), the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence is the nonprofit publisher and distributor.  The design and layout conform with our Style Manifesto and employ our own digital font Bembino .

Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Anonymous, Still Life of an Illuminated Book, German School, 15th century. Oil on Wood. Opened book with fanned pages. Image via Wikimedia, Public Domain.

Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Anonymous, Still Life of an Illuminated Book, German School, 15th century. Image via Wikimedia, Public Domain.

The new 44-page Symposium Booklet contains the 2020 Symposium Program, Abstracts of the Papers and Masterclasses, and a set of accompanying Illustrations (some published for the first time).  The Booklet includes corrections and revisions offered by several of the authors as we completed the layout and editing, after the cancellation of the event.

It is the longest so far of all our Symposium Booklets. The 2019 Booklet for “The Roads Taken” has 28 pages, and the 2016 Booklet for “Words & Deeds” has 24 pages.  Only the Booklet for our multi-lingual digital font Bembino is longer, at 56 pages, including all the font tables for the different styles and languages. That Booklet and the font itself (now in Version 1.6) are freely available for download and use (commercial use included).  Here:  Bembino .

Our illustrated 2020 Spring Symposium Booklet is likewise freely available for download. As with other cases, for your convenience, we make it available in 2 versions, which may suit different printing arrangements, as wished.  The versions are:

  • printable in consecutive quarto-sized pages (8 1/2″ × 11″)
    2020 Spring Symposium Booklet as Consecutive Pages
  • printable as double sheets (11″ × 17″) which can be folded into the booklet, nesting the bifolia within each other
    — a design which does not require staples for closure and perusal
    2020 Spring Symposium as a Foldable Booklet

We thank our hosts, sponsors, contributors, owners and donors of images, editor, copy-editor, and layout designer. The publication is our gift to all who aimed to participate in the event and to follow its ‘ripples’ after the accomplishment of the Symposium. We offer it as a ‘souvenir’ of what our contributors, and the spirit of generous participation, intended for the event.

While we may explore plans to reschedule the event, or its parts, in some way or ways, the Booklet stands as a place-holder, and as a vivid glimpse of what could be and, indeed, can be. The gathering energy and enthusiasm for the event, as the weeks and days advanced toward it, remain a testimony to the constructive collective spirit which inspired it.

2020 Symposium "From Cover to Cover" Poster 1

2020 Symposium Poster 1

_____

With these observations, I am reminded of the Motto which I chose, years ago, for the 2-volume Illustrated Catalogue, co-published by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence.

For Books are not absolutely dead things,
but doe contain a potencie of life in them
to be active as that soule was whose progeny they are;
nay, they do preserve as in a violl the purest efficacie and extraction
of the living intellect that bred them.

John Milton, Aeropagitica (1644)

Perhaps same as it ever was.

_____

Cover Page for Sorenson (2020 Spring Symposium Paper as Draft for Comment), with an array of illustrations and the title "Introduction to Indian Manuscripts"

Cover Page for Sorenson (2020 Spring Symposium Paper as Draft for Comment)

P. S.  Already one of our speakers, David W. Sorenson, has provided a draft version of his intended Symposium Paper for feedback. It expands the Abstract which appears in the 2020 Spring Symposium Booklet.

The paper provides “A Quick Introduction to Indian Manuscripts for the Non-Specialist”, with examples and illustrations.

With permission, we offer here his pdf.

Please contact us with your questions or suggestions.  (Contact details below.)

*****

2.  Our Activities at the 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies

Planned for 7–10 May at Kalamazoo
But Cancelled or Postponed

On 17 March, this year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies in May was cancelled, and with it all the activities which we were to sponsor and co-sponsor there, including Sessions and other meetings.  The Congress organizers declared that “We invite the organizers of sponsored . . . sessions approved for the 2020 Congress to re-propose them for the 2021 congress.  If proposed, they will be approved automatically”.

Unlike some organizations, who have declared this intention to re-present for the 2121 Congress, we do not know automatically if such a course would be appropriate for us, or for each and every one of our sessions.  Time will tell.

2019 Anniversary Reception Invitation. set in RGME digital font Bembino.

2019 Anniversary Reception Invitation.

Poster for our Session co-sponsored with the Societas Magica on "Celtic Magic Texts", organized by Phillip A. Bernhardt-House and sponsored by both the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence amd the Societas Magica at the 2018 International Congress on Medieval Studies. Poster set in RGME Bembino.

2018 Poster

The cancellation came in time before all reservations for the journey had been set into place.  Because our customary year-long preparations for the Congress had not reached the last weeks of its approach, we had not yet prepared the customary Posters for our Sessions or the Invitations to the Reception and Business Meeting, nor had the Agenda for that Meeting yet been drawn up.  Posters for previous Congresses show the standards.

However, we did in place have a series of posts on our website (You Are Here) announcing the plans for our 2020 Congress Activities, in stages with updates:

  • the Call for Papers for our approved Sessions, with descriptions of their aims and with selected Images (poster-worthy when the time would come) to exemplify their subjects and scope
  • the 2020 Congress Program, with the authors and titles of the selected Papers for each Session — including a permitted extra Session, given the strength of the responses to the Call, for our proposed Session “Seal the Real”
  • the 2020 Congress Program Announced, with the times and rooms assigned by the Congress Committee for our Program Activities, and with some of the Abstracts for the Papers.

In keeping with custom, we had begun, one by one (starting with the New Year), to post the Abstracts, as a foretaste for the presentations and discussions to come.

The cancellation of the Congress brought these stages to a halt, for a while, during which time we turned to other tasks — including the on-going follow-up from the cancellation or postponement of our Spring Symposium, and the completion of its Booklet.

Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS W.782, folio 15r. Van Alphen Hours. Dutch Book of Hours made for a female patron in the mid 15th century. Opening page of the Hours of the Virgin: "Here du salste opdoen mine lippen". Image via Creative Commons. At the bottom of the bordered page, an elegantly dressed woman sits before a shiny bowl- or mirror-like object, in order, perhaps, to perform skrying or to lure a unicorn.

Baltimore, The Walters Art Museum, MS W.782, folio 15r. Van Alphen Hours. mage via Creative Commons.

What We Planned

  • 2020 International Congress on Medieval Studies Program Announced

We prepared for 5 Sessions with Papers, an Open Business Meeting, and a Reception.

These resemble the numbers and sorts of our activities in recent years at the Annual Congress.  For example:

  • 2019 Congress
  • 2018 Congress
  • 2017 Congress
  • 2016 Congress
  • 2015 Congress

This year’s plans also involved our 2 co-sponsors in recent years for Sessions and/or Receptions.

A.  Sessions

We prepared for 5 Sessions this year.

3 Sessions Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

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

organized by Mildred Budny

Part I.  Signed & Sealed
Part II.  × Marks the Spot

3. Prologues in Medieval Texts of Magic, Astrology, and Prophecy

organized by Vajra Regan

Logo of the Societas Magica, reproduced by permission

Logo of the Societas Magica

2 Sessions Co-Sponsored with the Societas Magica
in the 16th year of this collaboration

4–5. Revealing the Unknown

organized by Sanne de Laat and László Sándor Chardonnens

Part I.  Scryers and Scrying in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period
Part II.   Sortilège, Bibliomancy, and Divination

B.  2020 Open Business Meeting of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

1-Page Agendas customarily provided at the time.  This year we send it out already.  (See below.)

C.  Reception co-sponsored with the Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University
in the 3rd year of this collaboration

_____

P. S.  Part of Mildred Budny’s on-going research on the subject of seals and signatures, which would have figured in her Response to Session II of our “Seals” Sessions, now appears on our blog, Manuscript Studies, presenting Preston Take 2.  (See the Contents List for the blog, as more discoveries await publication.)

_____

P. P. S.  It is not lost on us that some of our planned Sessions for 2020 were to consider aspects of the history of divinatory skills across time and place.  But when we collectively chose these, as well as other subjects, last year for our sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions this year, it was not easy to guess then that this year’s Sessions would not take place, after all, at their appointed time and place.

Adèle Kindt (1804–1884), The Fortune Teller (circa 1835). Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Image via Wikimedia Commons. A young lady, brightly lit and beautifully dressed, looks outward as an older woman, beneath a dark hood, holds a set of cards and stares at them with intent.

Adèle Kindt (1804–1884), The Fortune Teller (circa 1835). Antwerp, Koninklijk Museum voor Schone Kunsten. Image via Wikimedia Commons.

What We Can Do

A.  Abstracts for the 2020 Congress Papers

Detail of opened book with schematic text. Photography © Mildred BudnyOur custom is to post on our website the Abstracts for the Papers of our Sessions at the Congress.  (See our Abstracts for Congress Papers.)  This year is no different.

In the winter of 2019–2020, we had begun to post the 2020 Abstracts, one by one, as is our custom.  They are linked to our announced Program: 2020 Congress Program Announced. The Abstracts function as a foretaste of the ‘Menu’ of the Sessions, and can provide a record of their subjects, aims, and scope of the presentations.

Already in earlier years (as with the 2016 Congress and the 2014 Congress), as a sign of appreciation, we chose to adopt the tradition of posting Abstracts even when a contributor was unable to travel to the Congress and to present the paper in person.  The publication of such Abstracts states that, although proposed, accepted, and scheduled within the Session and Congress Program, the paper was not, in the event, presented.

Before March 2020, only once before, in more than 30 years of activities in many centers in the United States and elsewhere (see our Events and Congress Activities), has the Research Group had to cancel an event itself.  That case was only 1 Session among 7 sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies in May 2013.

This year, after the cancellation of both our 2020 Spring Symposium (see above) and the 2020 Congress, we first turned to completing the Symposium Booklet, and then to completing the posting of the 2020 Abstracts.

Those tasks are now accomplished.  For these Congress Abstracts, see

  • 2020 Congress Program Announced and Abstracts of Congress Papers Listed by Year.

For the Symposium Booklet, see

  • 2020 Spring Symposium: Save the Date

Thus we honor the intentions of our participants and their readiness to contribute to our events.

Next, we might turn to contemplating further activities, and perhaps rescheduling some of these ones.

[Update:  In the summer and autumn of 2020, we advance with planning to hold the same Sessions, albeit with a few changes, at the 2021 Congress.  See the 2021 Congress Program in Progress.]

B.  Agenda for the 2020 Business Meeting

Meeting to be rescheduled:  Time and Place to be Determined

The Annual Agendas for our Open Business Meetings, customarily held at the International Congress on Medieval Studies, remain available for consultation.

  • 2019 Agenda
  • 2018 Agenda
  • 2017 Agenda
  • 2016 Agenda
  • 2015 Agenda

These 1-page statements serve as concise Reports for our Activities, Plans, and Desiderata.  After the Meetings, the Abstracts are available for download on our website.  Some of them remain among the most popular downloads here.

Normally, the Agenda is presented at the Meeting.  This year, we send it out ahead of time.  It incorporates the updates of Spring 2020 and their constructive measures.

  • 2020 Agenda

It is not yet clear when this year’s Meeting, which had to be postponed, will take place.  Under present circumstances, we may contemplate a virtual meeting, say via online conferencing in some form.

Please let us know if you wish to participate in the Meeting.  We invite your comments, questions, and suggestions.  (See below.)

C. More

We thank all our contributors to the 2020 events.  The continuing momentum for such activities is a tribute to you all.

Please Contact Us with your questions and suggestions, for example to items on our  2020 Agenda.

For updates, please visit this site, our News & Views, and our Facebook Page .

For our nonprofit educational mission, with tax-exempt status, your donations in funds and/or in kind (expertise, materials, time) are welcome. Join us!

Tags: 'Manuscript Studies' Blog, 2020 Congress, 2020 Symposium, Bembino, Bembino Digital Font, Business Meeting, Early Printing, History of Documents, Manuscript studies, Medieval Studies, Seals and Signatures, Style Manifesto
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2020 Spring Symposium: Save the Date

February 15, 2020 in Announcements, Conference, Conference Announcement, Events, Index of Medieval Art, Princeton University, Reception, Uncategorized

New York, Grolier Club, \*434.14\Aug\1470\Folio. Flavius Josephus, De antiquitate Judiaca and De bello Judaico, translated by Rufinus Aquileinensis, printed in Augsburg on paper by Johannn Schüsseler in 2 Parts, dated respectively 28 June 1470 and 23 August 1470, and bound together with a manuscript copy dated 1462 of Eusebius Caesariensis, Historia ecclesiastica.

New York, Grolier Club, *434.14Aug1470Folio.

“From Cover to Cover”

Activities Devoted to Manuscripts, Early Printed Books & Beyond
From Collecting & Cataloguing to Deciphering & Beholding

2020  Spring Symposium
of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Princeton University
Friday & Saturday 13–14 March 2020

 

Update 5 April 2020

The Symposium Booklet, with illustrations and Abstracts of Papers, is now published and available for download.
See Keeping Up: Updates for Spring 2020.

The Abstract of one paper in the 2020 Symposium Booklet has been expanded to a Draft Paper, available for Feedback:

  • “A Quick Introduction to Indian Manuscripts for the Non-Specialist”, with examples and illustrations,
    downloadable here.

Update 9 March 2020

This event is now cancelled, as Princeton University and other institutions respond to current health concerns, and take precautions regarding travel and meetings of various kinds in person.
The Symposium might be rescheduled, conditions permitting.  

Meanwhile, the Research Group aims to complete the Symposium Booklet and distribute it to contributors, registrants, and others, as a souvenir of our speakers’ good intentions.  Already, as a sign of appreciation, we have adopted the custom of posting on our website the abstracts of contributors who become unable to attend to present in person (as with the 2018 Congress, among others).

This time, under wider — even global — circumstances affecting the ensemble as a whole, we wish to show appreciation for the remarkable enthusiasm and dedication for the collaborative event demonstrated by our hosts, sponsors, speakers, moderators, and others.  This knowledge is something to remember with satisfaction, gratitude, and praise.

The publication could, perhaps, give a token to show for our shared efforts, and to demonstrate something of the spirit of dedication and focus which prepared to assemble for the event itself.

This aim might help to ease some of the disappointment over cancellation, while the cancellation itself might ease some uncertainties about travel at present.

P. S.  Only once before, in more than 30 years of activities in many centers in the United States and elsewhere (see our Events and Congress Activities}, has the Research Group had to cancel an event.  It, however, was only 1 Session among 7 sponsored and co-sponsored Sessions at the 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies in May 2013, when the Session organizer and 2 presenters were unable to travel to the Congress.  We honored their intentions to contribute by continuing to record their abstracts and the statement of purpose of the Session on this  website.

Similar solidarity pertains to our record of this intended 2020 Spring Symposium.  A summary of this Update appears in its own post.

Here we preserve the description of the event in the updated version just before the decision to cancel this Symposium, among many gatherings at Princeton University and elsewhere at the beginning of the week in which the Symposium was planned to take place.

*****

What We Planned

Saint Andrew. Oil on Canvas. Artus Wollfort (1581–1641). Private Collection, Public Domain. Via Wikipedia Commons.

Saint Andrew. Oil on Canvas. Artus Wollfort (1581–1641). Private Collection, Public Domain. Via Wikipedia Commons.

We announce the next Symposium of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, to be held at Princeton University on Friday afternoon and Saturday, 13–14 March 2020. This event follows from, and builds upon, our earlier events, including our 2019 Anniversary Symposium, also held at Princeton University.

Our subject this time: “From Cover to Cover”.   Some say, “That Covers It”.  (We might well agree.)

Such activities include Collecting, Curating, Conserving, Cataloguing, Deciphering, Editing, Reading, Teaching, Translating, Displaying, Accessing, Beholding, Reconsidering, and More.  Cover to Cover.

Naturally, these activities need not necessarily occur in that order, and often they appear in combination.

In addition we consider activities dedicated to manuscripts, early printed books, and beyond, in terms (as is our custom) of both media and chronology.  As often, we consider medieval manuscripts and early printed books from Western Europe, but also— as usual — we examine materials from other cultures, languages, and time-frames.

This recognition of the processes (necessarily integrated) infuses the collection of presentations and conversations which our Symposium aims to gather.  In a nutshell:  Food for Thought, Refreshments included.

For which ability, we have Sponsors, Hosts, Trustees, Associates, Contributors, and Volunteers heartily to thank.

Sponsors

Research Group on Manuscript Evidence

Department of Art & Archaeology, Princeton University

The Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University

Program in Medieval Studies, Princeton University

James Marrow and Emily Rose

Barbara A. Shailor

Celia Chazelle

The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies

The Bibliographical Society of America

Vassar College

On the Road

Poster 1 for 2019 Anniversary Symposium, with symposium information with images of manuscript and early printed pages..

Poster 1 for 2019 Symposium

Poster 2 for 219 Anniversary Symposium, with symposium information and 2 images of cropped initials, from 12th-century Latin manuscripts, from the Princeton University Art Museum.

Poster 2 for 2019 Symposium

Following upon, and building upon, the success of our Anniversary Symposium last year, we prepare the 2020 Spring Symposium.  Its date is now set, as is the Schedule.  (See below.)

For our 2019 Anniversary Symposium, see its Report and its freely downloadable 2019 Anniversary Symposium Booklet.  Like the Booklet, the 2 Posters (seen here) illustrate examples of manuscripts (Western and non-Western) showcased in the Symposium, its papers, and its workshops.

All these publications, as customary, are set in our very own copyright multilingual font Bembino , and designed and laid out according with our Style Manifesto.  This font is freely available through our website, for your use – whether individual, nonprofit, or commercial.

Both the font, and its descriptive Booklet, are downloadable here .  We have also prepared a booklet showing its abilities in setting multiple languages, both Western and non-Western.  See Multi-Lingual Bembino . Plus our Style Manifesto .

Cover Story

Now we turn to our 2020 Spring Symposium.  Please register (details below).

Poster 1 for the 2022 Spring Symposium.

Gladly we list the Sponsors, Speakers, and Moderators.

Speakers and Moderators (in alphabetical order)

Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 101, folio 1v. Opening of Boethius's translation of Aristotle's "Peri erimenias" within a collection of secular and classical texts, France, possibly at the Abbey of Fleury (Saint-Benoît-sur-Loire), 9th–11th centuries. Photograph courtesy OPenn.

Philadelphia, University of Pennsylvania Libraries, Lawrence J. Schoenberg Collection, MS LJS 101, folio 1v. Photograph courtesy OPenn.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 190, folio 1r. Opening page of the Commentarii notarum tironiarum, with an enlarged initial decorated with interlace and foliate ornament. Image via gallica.bnf.fr.

Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS latin 190, folio 1r. Photograph via gallica.bnf.fr.

Christine E. Bachman (Art History Department, University of Delaware and Graduate Student Fellow 2019–2020, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania)

Mildred Budny (Director, Research Group on Manuscript Evidence, Princeton)

Raymond Clemens (Curator, Early Books and Manuscripts, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven)

Meghan Constantinou (Librarian, The Grolier Club, New York, New York)

Barbara Williams Ellertson (Books as Symbols in Renaissance Art and Research Group on Manuscript Evidence)

Lynley Anne Herbert (Curator of Manuscripts and Rare Books, The Walters Art Museum, Baltimore, Maryland)

Carson Koepke (Program in Medieval Studies, Yale University)

Laura Light (Director and Senior Specialist, Text Manuscripts, Les Enluminures)

John T. McQuillen (Associate Curator, Printed Books & Bindings, The Morgan Library & Museum, New York, New York)

Bernard Maisner (Bernard Maisner and Bernard Maisner, Master Calligrapher)

New York, Morgan Library & Museum, PML 7, folio P2r. Blockbook of Apocalypsis Sancti Johannis, printed in Germany circa 1468. Revelation 15:1, with hand-colored illustration.

New York, Morgan Library & Museum, PML 7, folio P2r. Blockbook of Apocalypsis Sancti Johannis, printed in Germany circa 1468. Revelation 15:1, with hand-colored illustration.

Sabrina Minuzzi (Researcher in Early Modern History, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice)

Ronald D. Patkus (Associate Director of the Libraries for Special Collections and Vassar Head of Special Collections, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York)

Pamela Patton (Director, Index of Medieval Art at Princeton University)

Lynn Ransom (Curator of Programs, The Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania Libraries)

Helmut Reimitz (Professor of History and Director, Program in Medieval Studies, Princeton University)

Jessica L. Savage (Art History Specialist, Index of Medieval Art)

Barbara A. Shailor (Department of Classics, Yale University, and President, Bibliographical Society of America)

       David W. Sorenson (Independent, Quincy, Massachusetts)

Kelly Tuttle (Project Cataloger, Manuscripts of the Muslim World, University of Pennsylvania Libraries)

Eric White (Curator of Rare Books and Acting Curator of Manuscripts, Special Collections, Firestone Library, Princeton University)

Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, William H. Scheide Library, 53.8. Latin Bible in double columns of 49 lines, printed in Strasbourg by Johann Mentelin, not after 1460 CE.

Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections, William H. Scheide Library, 53.8. Latin Bible (printed in Strasbourg by Johann Mentelin, not after 1460 CE.) Photograph courtesy Princeton University Library, Rare Books and Special Collections.

The Aim

In a nutshell.

2020 Spring Symposium Announcement, describing the scope of the event, listing the Sponsors, and citing the link to the registration form.

2020 Spring Symposium Announcement, describing the scope of the event, listing the Sponsors, and citing the link to the registration form.

The Plan

Day 1

Friday 13 March: Classes, Workshops, Discussion, and a Reception

1) 12:00–1:00, 12:00–1:30, or 12:00–2:00pm (By Invitation)
Seminar Room of the Index of Medieval Art

“Comparing Notes about Databases:  Past, Present & Futures”
An Informal Discussion

2–3) 1:00–2:45 pm or 3:00–4:45 pm
Classes on Site at Firestone Library (Registration Required and Space Limited)

For registration for these classes and the symposium, see below.

“Material Evidence: A Workshop with 15th-Century Manuscripts and Incunabules”

Classes given (twice) by Eric White, Curator of Rare Books, Princeton University Library, in the Large Classroom of Floor C (Rare Books and Special Collections) at Firestone Library

Please gather in the Lobby at the entrance to Firestone Library, for special escorted access to Floor C, where there are lockable lockers (free) for your coats and cases, before entry to Special Collections.

2) Class 1:  Meet at 1:00 for 1:15–2:45 pm

3) Class 2 (repeated):  Meet at 3:00 for 3:15–4:45 pm

or

4) Session 3:00–5:00 pm
106 McCormick Hall

“Materials, Processes & Products:  A Workshop”

This workshop offers presentations by Bernard Maisner on “The Materials and Methods of Medieval & Renaissance Manuscript Gold-Illumination Techniques” and by David W. Sorenson on “An Introduction to Indian Manuscripts for the Non-Specialist”, along with curated displays of original materials in private collections and demonstrations of results from their close study.

5) Reception

5:00–7:00 pm
Lobby outside 106 McCormick Hall

Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Anonymous, Still Life, German school of the XVI century, circa 1510, oil on wood, 70.2 × 65 cm. Opened book with fanned leaves showing pages of text and music set out in double columns and adorned with decorated initials and illustrations. Image via Wikimedia, public domain.

Florence, Galleria degli Uffizi, Anonymous, Still Life of an Illuminated Book, German school of the XVI century, circa 1510. Opened book with fanned leaves. Image via Wikimedia, public domain.

Day 2

Saturday 14 March:  Sessions, Refreshments, and Reception

106 McCormick Hall and its Lobby

6) 10:00 am – 5:30 pm

Sessions, Coffee Breaks, Lunch, and Discussion

7) Reception (5:30–7:00 pm)

2020 Symposium "From Cover to Cover" Poster 2

2020 Symposium Poster 2

*****

The Schedule

The Schedule is available here.

*****

Registration

Please register for the Symposium.  We offer the Registration form as a downloadable pdf .

*****

Maps and Directions

Here.

*****

Please Contact us with questions and suggestions.

Watch this space and visit our FaceBook Page for updates.

Floral Motif as Lower Border in a Book of Hours. Photography Mildred Budny.

We invite you to donate to our nonprofit educational mission. Donations may be tax-deductible. We welcome donations in funds and in kind: Contributions and Donations .

Please join us at the symposium, open to all.  You can register here .

*****

Tags: Early Printing, manuscript fragments, Manuscript Illumination, Manuscript studies, Medieval Manuscript Fragments, Medieval Studies, Medieval Writing Materials, Spring Symposium
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2019 International Congress on Medieval Studies Report

September 14, 2019 in Abstracts of Conference Papers, Anniversary, Announcements, Bembino, Business Meeting, Conference, Events, International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, POMONA, Reception, Reports, Societas Magica, Uncategorized

Report:  Events Sponsored and Co-Sponsored
by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence
at the 54th International Congress on Medieval Studies
9–12 May 2019

[Published on 2 June 2019. With the achievement of our Activities at the 2019 Congress, we offer this Report (Abstracts of Papers Included), while we advance with preparations for the 2020 Congress. For updates, as they evolve, please watch this space and our Facebook Page.]

Central Rock Garden at WMU International Congress on Medieval Studies at Kalamazoo May 2019. Photograph Mildred Budny.

Central Rock Garden. Photograph Mildred Budny.

In 2019, the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence celebrates its 20th year as a nonprofit educational corporation and its 30th year as an international scholarly organization. Accordingly, we hold both customary and extra-special events, both at the Congress and elsewhere. For example, shortly before the 2019 Congress, we

We have a tradition of celebrating landmark Anniversaries, both for our organization, with organizations which which we share anniversaries, and for other events. As described, for example, in our 2014 Anniversary Reflections. For 2019, our events aim to represent, to explore, to promote, to celebrate, and to advance aspects of our shared range of interests, fields of study, subject matter, and collaboration between younger and established scholars, teachers, and others, in multiple centers.

Now we Report the successful accomplishment of our Activities at the 2019 Congress.

Who, What, Why Not

Logo of the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence (colour version)As in recent years, we co-sponsored Sessions with the Societas Magica (2 Sessions). It is the 14th year of this co-sponsorship, and the first year of co-sponsorship with the newly-founded organization Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.O.N.A).

Also, like the 2015–2018 Congresses, we held

  • an Open Business Meeting, with a convenient downloadable 2019 Agenda, and
  • a co-sponsored Reception.

As usual, we publish the Program for the accepted Papers, as their Authors permit. Abstracts for previous Congresses appear in our Congress Abstracts, conveniently Indexed both by Year and by Author.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Animals in Celtic Magical Texts, Beinecke Takamiya MS 23, Business Meeting, Celtic Magical Texts, Classical Deities, Classical Deities in Medieval Northern European Contexts, Dionysus, Ecstasy Defense, Grettisfærsla, Hêliand, History of Magic, Lapidaries, Mary Moody Emerson, Medieval manuscripts, Medieval Studies, P.-O.M.o.N.A., Reception, Societas Magica
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Workshop on Medieval Manuscripts (October 1991)

August 26, 2016 in Manuscript Studies, Seminars on Manuscript Evidence, Uncategorized

“The Production, Make-Up and Handling
of Medieval Manuscripts:
A Workshop”

5 October 1991

MS Production & Handling Workshop Invitation 5 Oct 1991 with border

5 October 1991 Prospectus

Invitation Cover Letter for Research Group Workshop on 'The Production, Make-Up and Handling of Medieval Manuscripts' on 5 October 1991 at the Parker Library

Cover Letter for 5 October 1991

Accompanying the Series of Seminars on the Evidence of Manuscripts
The Parker Library, Corpus Christi College, Cambridge
Invitation in pdf in 3 pages with Cover Letter, Prospectus, and RSVP Form.

The previous Seminar in the series considered
“Technical Literature and its Form and Layout in Early Medieval Manuscripts”
(Parker Library, July 1991).

[First published on 26 August 2016]

Issued on Research Group letterhead, the 1-page description of the workshop (the “Prospectus”) accompanying the 1-page Invitation Letter, dated 14 September 1991, describes the plan.  The Invitation Letter lays the ground work.

Read the rest of this entry →

Tags: Alexander R. Rumble, Binding History, Douglas Cockerell, History of Bookbinding, Medieval Bindings, Medieval manuscripts, Medieval Studies, Nicholas Hadgraft, Parker Library, Roger Powell, Sandy Cockerell, Sewing Structures for Bookbinding
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