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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.\u00a0 Accordingly, we aim to hold both customary and extra-special events, both at the Congress and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
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<\/a>. 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.<\/p>\n In June 2018, we learned that most \u2014 not all \u2014 of our Session Proposals (due on 1 June 2018) for the 2019 Congress were accepted by the Congress Committee, so that we progressed to their Call for Papers<\/a>. We regret the rejections for proposed Sessions which, for example, promoted initiatives by Graduate Students and by Independent Scholars, and which we wished to support.\u00a0 However, we worked with what was granted.\u00a0 With the strong responses to that Call (due on 15 September), we selected the Programs for the Sessions, the details of which we submitted to the Committee for review (due on 1 October).\u00a0 Now we announce the Programs for our Sessions, as well as our other Events planned for the Congress.<\/p>\n Also, like the 2015\u20132018 Congresses, we plan for<\/p>\n As usual, we aim to publish the Program for the accepted Papers, as their Authors permit. Abstracts for previous Congresses appear in our Congress Abstracts<\/a>, conveniently Indexed both by Year<\/a> and by Author<\/a>.<\/p>\n Glimpses of our co-sponsored Receptions<\/a> at the Congress appear in the souvenirs of our <\/a>Celebrations<\/a> and in the Reports for the individual Congresses (<\/a>2016<\/a>, <\/a>2015<\/a>, and <\/a>2014 Anniversary<\/a>).<\/a><\/p>\n 2017 Business Meeting Agenda<\/p><\/div>\n The Agendas<\/strong> for our Open Business Meetings<\/a> are available for your inspection:<\/p>\n These 1-page statements serve as concise Reports for our Activities, Plans, and Desiderata.<\/p>\n While we’re here: Interesting, isn’t it, that these Agendas have rapidly become one of our Most-Downloaded Offerings? Some of them now stand among the Top 5 Most Popular Downloads on our site.<\/p>\n The most popular downloads still remain our copyright and FREE multilingual digital font Bembino<\/a>, and some Booklets from our Symposia and Colloquia. So far, those “best sellers” \u2014 they are FREE \u2014 include:<\/p>\n These publications, like most of our <\/a>Publications<\/a>, are FREE, but we welcome donations, both in funds and in kind, for our nonprofit mission, with the option of tax-deduction for your <\/a>Donations<\/a>.<\/a><\/p>\n We look forward to your contributions.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n And now, here is the plan for 2019 at the International Congress on Medieval Studies. We announce the accepted Sessions, describe their aims and scope, and provide information for sending your questions and your proposals for papers to the Session Organizers. Herewith our Call for Papers for the 2019 Congress.<\/p>\n While our organization’s abiding mission is to consider the material evidence of written records “as carriers of text, archaeological artefacts, works of art, layers of history, and monuments of culture” (as declared in our Mission Statement<\/a>), we must wonder what happens when lacunae<\/a><\/em> \u2014 whether from scribal intentions, accidental omissions, temporal vicissitude, or other means \u2014 alter or limit the topography opened by a manuscript.<\/p>\n Opening Title and Opening Words of Luke. Despoiled Large-format Romanesque Bible made in Italy. Budny Handlist 1.<\/p><\/div>\n For example, how have previous receivers and transmitters negotiated these lacunae? How do editors amend, elide, or underscore them? How do scholars interpret the gaps and silences occasioned by them? This session may explore some options and present telling case-studies.<\/p>\n Co-organized by Justin Hastings<\/strong> and Derek Shank<\/strong><\/p>\n A variety of magical texts in Celtic contexts include animals or animal imagery in their spells. The creatures range from snakes, beetles, and worms, to dogs, wolves, deer, pigs, and birds \u2014 and many other creatures besides. The texts range from individual Irish incantations and collections, as found in the St. Gall Incantations, the Reichenau Primer<\/a>, the Stowe manuscript, and in the Leabhar Breacc<\/a>, amongst many others.<\/p>\n \u00a9 The British Library Board. Harley MS 1023, folio 64 verso. Part-page framed illustration in ink of the Eagle Symbol of Saint John the Evangelist.<\/p><\/div>\n Some mantic operations, like the imbas forosnai<\/em> ritual detailed in the early 10th-century Sanas Cormaic<\/a><\/em>, include the use of pig-, cat-, and dog-meat in their formulae, whilst the tarbfheis<\/em> described in some literary texts required the slaughtering of a bull. Charms designed to repel rats and other vermin were also employed, including their use into more modern periods. The medieval literate record also contains many occurrences of animals in relation to the magical actions of characters, whether human or divine, or of \u201cmagical animals\u201d of various sorts appearing as messengers, omens, or agents and characters in their own right. Whether animals or animal parts are used as components or metaphors, sacrifices or spoken formulae, narrative elements or desired outcomes, Celtic texts have ubiquitous instances of animal imagery and involvement.<\/p>\n Papers in this session may relate to theoretical approaches toward the material of animal imagery, thematic explorations of different types of usage of animals, or attempts to survey, catalogue, and analyze the nature of particular animal appearances in these texts and operations, as well as anything else which may relate to the broad topic of animals and Celtic magical texts.<\/p>\n Organized by Phillip A. Bernhardt-House<\/strong><\/p>\n Although texts of ritual magic circulated widely during the later Middle Ages, the opprobrium they attracted both elevated the risks for their owner-users, and limited the physical lifespan of the codices themselves when they caught the attention of Church authorities. Consequently, texts of ritual magic often survive not as independently circulating treatises, but rather as subsections of more innocuous-seeming treatises on other topics such as natural philosophy or medicine. This session aims to bring to light and discuss this particular sub-category of magical treatises, their transmission histories, and the intertextualities between them and their textual \u201chosts\u201d.<\/p>\n Organized by Vajra Regan<\/strong><\/p>\n Nicolas Fouch\u00e9, “Pomona” (circa 1700). Budapest, Museum of Fine Arts. Via Wikipedia Commons.<\/p><\/div>\n After the suppression of polytheistic religious activities in the fourth century CE, some sites and images \u2014 and certainly citations in literature \u2014 of the classical Greek and Roman (and occasionally other Mediterranean) deities had a \u201csecond life\u201d in places like Italy, Spain, Greece, and North Africa. However, even if imported and syncretistic cultus to these deities existed in more northern climes (including the former Roman provinces of Germania, Gaul, and Britain), the various Latin and vernacular literatures of the Germanic, French, British, and Irish peoples of medieval and later periods gave some of these deities a \u201cthird life,\u201d and often one rich in interpretive possibilities for the learned authors who discussed them.<\/p>\n Whether the authors derived their knowledge of these deities from various classical, biblical, or patristic sources, the influence specifically of Isidore of Seville\u2019s Etymologiae<\/a><\/em>, or their own re-interpretation of originally local practices, this tendency gave rise to such intriguing instances as<\/p>\n Papers in this session will explore these themes and thereby work to contextualize these reinterpretations historically, politically, and theologically, as well as via other vectors of analysis. They also seek to catalogue and to increase the visibility of these phenomena.<\/p>\n Organized by Phillip A. Bernhardt-House<\/strong><\/p>\n *****<\/p>\n Please Contact Us<\/a> with your questions and suggestions. For our nonprofit educational mission, with tax-exempt status, donations in funds and in kind (expertise, materials, time) are welcome<\/a>.<\/p>\n *****<\/p>\nWho, What, Why Not<\/strong><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>As in recent years, we co-sponsor Sessions with the Societas Magica<\/a> (2 Sessions). It will be the 14th year of this co-sponsorship. It will be the first year of co-sponsorship with the newly-founded organization Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America<\/strong> (POMONA).<\/p>\n\n
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Background and Foreground<\/h3>\n
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Sessions for the 2019 Congress<\/h2>\n
<\/a>I. Sponsored by the Research Group on Manuscript Evidence<\/h3>\n1. In the Absence of Manuscript Evidence:
\nConsidering Lacunae in Manuscript Studies<\/h4>\nThe Aim<\/h5>\n
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<\/a>II. Co-Sponsored with the Societas Magica<\/a><\/h3>\n
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<\/a>2 Sessions<\/p>\n2. Animals in Celtic Magical Texts<\/h3>\n
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<\/a>3. Embedded in the Mainstream: Ritual Magic Incorporated in ‘Legitimate’ Texts<\/h3>\n
III. Co-Sponsored with the Polytheism-Oriented Medievalists of North America (P.-O.M.o.N.A.<\/strong>)<\/h3>\n
4. Classical Deities in Medieval Northern European Contexts<\/h3>\n
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