CeSMA — 4.0 — March, 2011

CeSMA: Centre for the Study of the Middle Ages

In September 2010 I attended a sympo-

sium on the patronage of the magnifi-

cent late fifteenth-century church of the

Holy Trinity at Long Melford in Suffolk.

My paper – delivered from the pulpit! –

announced newly ‘discovered’ English

and Latin inscriptions in John Clopton’s

chantry chapel, including a verse by the

local poet-monk John Lydgate (c. 1370-

1449/50). Other papers during the day

discussed the unique collection of early

Tudor stained glass portraits of the Clop-

tons and their associates, and tombs and

monumental brasses covering the period

1410-1630.

This recent Lydgate ‘discovery’ is one of

the 4500 vernacular inscriptions in a

database under development in the Eng-

lish Department. Taking inscriptional

texts to mean those employed in distinc-

tively non-manuscript forms – whether

painted, carved, incised, molded, woven

or scratched -- the project is creating a

corpus for the entire later medieval pe-

riod in England. Already recovered are

texts English, French, Cornish, Welsh,

Hebrew and Dutch. With public texts

used so extensively in English society, to

express personal and communal beliefs,

allegiances and aspirations, we have a

wealth of inscribed objects and buildings.

The corpus covers all manner of vernacu-

lar inscriptions, from simple lines of com-

memoration for blacksmiths and parish

clerks to aristocratic and royal epitaphs,

devotional texts in glass and wall paint-

ings in parish churches, texts in hospitals

and guildhalls, in Jewish ritual bath-

houses, and on civic structures such as

city walls and bridges. Also, graffiti, texts

found in royal residences and domestic

houses, and words inscribed on personal

items including clothes, jewelry, badges,

weapons, drinking vessels, and seals and

seal matrices. The earliest of these post-

Conquest examples dates from the late

eleventh century (in runes and in Roman

letters) and the project has taken the

death of Mary I as a natural end point.

With the Protestant settlement public

textuality in all forms -- in ecclesiastical,

civic and domestic settings -- is radically

altered.

The primary concern of the project is to

record surviving vernacular inscriptions

and where possible to supply antiquarian

readings for fragmentary or destroyed

texts. Antiquaries’ collections are a major

resource and the project makes full use

of their transcriptions and descriptions,

especially those made for the great

county histories of the seventeenth and

eighteenth centuries.

This diverse body of texts hardly figures

in contemporary academic discourses.

Corpora for medieval inscriptions in

French and German-speaking lands are

well advanced and are under develop-

ment for pre-Conquest Britain but there

has been no systematic attempt to col-

lect inscriptions made between 1066 and

the Protestant Reformations. And as

many sectors of English society were

bi- or multilingual during this period this

constitutes a remarkable body of mate-

rial. As well as providing a resource for

scholars working in a range of disciplines,

the corpus will generate new modes of

literary and linguistic analysis that will

help shape the emergent interest in the

materiality of medieval texts, in the

interrelations of Latin and the vernacular

languages, and in text-image relations. If

you’re interested to learn more, drop me

a line – or perhaps just carve a message

on my office door!

Vernacular Inscriptions from Later Medieval England:

A Developing Corpus - by David Griffith

Yarnton (Oxon). Bird quarries with English texts

from a Reynard the fox narrative, c.1485-1500

Long Melford, Clopton. Chantry chapel, with

squint and inscription from John Lydgate's poem

'A Balade at the Reverence of Our Lady', c. 1487-94.

Haddiscoe. Slab to Barbele, wife of Peter, son of

Peter the Dykegraaf (master of the dykes, d. 1525),

text in Dutch.

CeSMA — 4.0 — March, 2011

www.CeSMA.bham.ac.uk Facebook : ‘Birmingham Medievalists’

University of Birmingham medievalists contemplate the mystery of the

‘hare and hound’ corbel at Kilpeck Church.

CeSMA Outing to Kilpeck & Deerhurst

- by Cory Hazlehurst

Also near the church was Kilpeck Castle,

originally built around 1090 by William Fitz

Norman, who was given the manor of Kil-

peck from William the Conqueror. Only a

small amount of ruins survive, but there

were great views from both the castle and

the church.

Our group then moved from Kilpeck to Deer-

hurst, and visited two other churches in

close proximity to each other. One, Odda’s

Chapel, is one of the oldest surviving Anglo-

Saxon churches. It was built by Earl Odda in

1056, after the death of his brother Aelfric.

Inside the original masonry survives, and

there is a replica of a stone plaque with

Odda’s dedicatory inscription on it.

The Kilpeck ‘hare and hound’ responds

with stony silence to the mystery of

Birmingham medievalists.

On 8th

June Cesma had its annual summer

trip. Over a dozen members of staff and

postgraduate students braved the blustery

weather and made the journey to Hereford-

shire to look at three medieval churches.

The first visited was Kilpeck Church, which

was built around 1140. We were given a

short and informative tour of the church,

and its wonderful stone carvings, by Dr John

Hunt of the IAA, who has done a large

amount of research into the stone sculpture

and architecture of Kilpeck.

Our final call was at Deerhurst parish

church, which has been in existence in the

ninth century. Of some interest to Anglo-

Saxonists might be the fact that Alphege,

who became Archbishop of Canterbury and

was martyred by the Danes in 1012, began

his ecclesiastical career there. They also host

the Deerhurst lecture series, where Birming-

ham academics such as Steven Bassett have

spoken. There are some marvelous sculp-

tures and other artwork there, and it was a

wonderful end to our sightseeing. After a

convivial pub meal, we returned to Birming-

ham.

If anyone has any ideas of where CeSMA

should go for next year’s summer trip please

e-mail Christina Possel:

c.u.possel@bham.ac.uk.

CeSMA Management Team

Chris Callow

- History and Cultures

Christina Possel

- History and Cultures

William Purkis

- History and Cultures

Emily Rozier

- EMREM & PG Representative

Gareth Sears

- Archaeology and Antiquity

Philippa Semper

- English

Aengus Ward

- Hispanic Studies

John Warrick

- Drama and Theatre Arts

Simon Yarrow

- History and Cultures

Join the CeSMA mailing list for CFPs,

lecture announcements, and more.

Send your e-mail address to:

cesma@contacts.bham.ac.uk

CeSMA works to facilitate conversations

and collaboration across Schools and

disciplines between all members of the

University engaged in the study or

research of the Middle Ages, broadly

defined.

CeSMA — 4.0 — March, 2011

The EMREM Postgraduate Forum Annual Symposium

‘The Monstrous, the Marginal and the Misunderstood’

Friday 18th

March 2011

CeSMA Postgraduate Networking Event

- by Emily Rozier

Introducing EMREM … !

The EMREM Forum is designed to

facilitate discussion amongst post-

graduate students who are interested

in the Early Medieval-Medieval-

Renaissance-Reformation-Early Mod-

ern period. The Forum aims to gener-

ate an informal atmosphere in which

postgraduates (and staff!) can share

their research and participate in in-

terdisciplinary and cross-period de-

bate. We welcome members from all

institutions and disciplines.

Past Events:

The Forum was created in 2009 and

has held a variety of activities since

its inception. Discussion meetings

have focused on such cross-period

topics as periodisation, gender and

the afterlife. It has also arranged a

staff paper, two postgraduate paper

sessions and a film session (complete

with popcorn) dealing with modern

representations of the EMREM peri-

ods. The Forum also presented a

roundtable discussion at the Hilton

Shepherd Symposium 2010. We took

two panels to the Leeds International

Medieval Congress, where we held a

very successful networking event.

This gave us an opportunity to meet

around fifty of our fellow postgradu-

ate students from other institutions.

In the summer term we made a short

film to promote the research projects

of five EMREM members, which was

planned, written, sourced, shot and

edited in two days! We also organised

a summer excursion to Charlecote

Park, a sixteenth-century country

house in Warwickshire.

Future events:

This year, in addition to discussion

meetings, student papers and a guest

lecture, we plan to hold several work-

shops on some important aspects of a

postgraduate career: attending con-

ferences, surviving your viva, getting

published and presenting your re-

search through New Media. We are

taking up the mantle of the Hilton

Shepherd Centre and will be holding

the first EMREM Symposium in the

Spring, as well as taking a panel to the

Kalamazoo International Congress on

Medieval Studies, in collaboration

with CeSMA. There will also be an-

other summer trip to look forward to!

If you would like to get involved,

please email the EMREM Committee

at emremforum@googlemail.com, or

join us on facebook (search for

‘EMREM Forum’).

CeSMA hosted a networking event for

current postgraduate students and

staff at the University of Birmingham

in the penultimate week of the Winter

Term 2010. The event was an oppor-

tunity for attendees to network over a

glass of wine and a mince pie. There

were various activities taking place,

including a research poster showcase

in which postgraduates

were able to advertise

their work. The posters

ranged from the hand-

drawn to the computer

generated (like that pic-

tured at left for Michael

Rush’s research) and they

all spurred much discus-

sion. An element of com-

petition was added to

proceedings through the

inclusion of ‘networking

bingo’ in which participants had to find

people who had experienced each of

the scenarios on the card. These in-

cluded ‘has marked an essay that cited

Wikipedia’ and ‘is going to the ICMS

Kalamazoo 2011’. Academics and stu-

dents alike entered into the spirit of the

game and the speed networking was a

great success.

CeSMA, the GHIL and New Approaches to Medieval Religious Cultures

- by William Purkis

sory experience of medieval pilgrimage,

and the application of GIS as a tool for

studying the historical development of

saints’ cults. The workshop provided a

valuable opportunity for members of

CeSMA to engage with scholars and

students from across western Europe,

and it is anticipated that Birmingham

will host a follow-up event at some

point in the future. Full details of the

workshop’s programme have been ar-

chived at:

http://www.ghil.ac.uk/events_and_conferences/

conferences_and_workshops/conferences_2010.html

On 16 December 2010 CeSMA co-

hosted an international and interdisci-

plinary workshop on ‘New Approaches

to Medieval Religious Cultures: Con-

cepts, Perceptions and Practices of Piety

and Charity’ with colleagues from the

German Historical Institute London. The

workshop’s participants included speak-

ers from the UK, Ireland, Germany and

Spain, and the event was attended by

both staff and students from Birming-

ham as well as a wider audience of aca-

demics and postgraduates from other

UK universities. The emphasis of the

workshop was on methodologies and

the formulation of research questions

and problems, and those who were pre-

sent were fortunate to hear a range of

excellent papers from both established

scholars and doctoral candidates, cover-

ing such diverse subjects as the use of

relics to create sacred space, the sen-