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Podcast on the Albigensian Crusade
Have you ever come across mysterious references to medieval heretics and their violent repression and wished to know more? Have you ever wondered about those signs welcoming you to the pays cathare as you travel through the south of France?
If so, you may be interested in my recent conversation with Dr Sophie Ambler of Lancaster University for the Centre for War and Diplomacy. Dr Ambler and I discussed the Albigensian Crusade (1208–1229) that was called to exterminate heresy from the Midi and why an armed campaign under the sign of the cross was believed an appropriate remedy to the perceived problems of the region. We also talked about my work on Simon of Montfort, the captain of the first phase of the crusade and until his death before the walls of Toulouse in 1218.
A defining moment in Simon’s assumption of princely power in the region was the promulgation in 1212 of the Statutes of Pamiers, a set of customs for the reform of the Midi. Dr Ambler and I question whether this really was a simple exercise in northern French colonialism, as the Statutes have often been understood, or if it reflected a deeper commitment to good government. What does the combination of violence, persecution, justice, and reform tell us about the way authority and order were imagined in the Middle Ages?
I hope this podcast episode may challenge some of our assumptions around these issues generally and the Albigensian Crusade in particular; do let us know what you think in the comments!
Gregory Lippiatt, Lecturer in Medieval History
Congratulations, Prof. David Bates! Distinguished Alumnus Wins Prestigious Prize
David Bates, who received his PhD from the University of Exeter in 1970, has been awarded the prestigious Prix Syndicat national des Antiquaires du Livre d’Art 2020 for the book La Tapisserie de Bayeux published in 2019 and co-authored with the art historian Xavier Barral i Altet.
The book gained the prize against competition from twenty-three other books from all historical periods. In September 2018, the two authors were invited to submit a proposal for the book by the authorities in Bayeux responsible for the Tapestry to Citadelles & Mazenod who are widely regarded as the leading Art History publisher in France. The authors wrote independently within their fields of expertise, sometimes disagreeing, notably on the subjects of the date and commissioning of the Tapestry. The result is a lavishly illustrated volume containing the two authors’ commentaries accompanied by a magnificent half-size leporello reproduction of the Tapestry (i.e. a pull-out version folded concertina-style). However, such high-end production values come at a cost: the book is priced at €690.00 – making it more suited to institutional than personal budgets! Fortunately, a cheaper version of the commentaries is also available: it costs €29.00 and includes illustrations but not, alas, the leporello reproduction.
The book has a strong connection to David’s doctoral studies in Exeter. David’s PhD, completed under the supervision of Professor Frank Barlow, was a biography of Bishop Odo of Bayeux, the man widely regarded as being in some way ultimately responsible for commissioning the Tapestry. Since then, the Tapestry has been ever-present in David’s professional life, even though this is his first direct publication on the topic. The book required him to revisit subjects that interested him enormously when he worked on his thesis, namely, the nature of Odo’s wide-ranging intellectual patronage and his relations with the Kent churches, notably the abbey of St Augustine’s, Canterbury, the monastery where David and many others believe that the Tapestry was made.
David found writing the book on such a famous subject challenging, particularly given the huge literature published on the Tapestry and the broader issues of artistic creativity, historical accuracy, and authorial motivation. But it also revived memories of the excitement of doing the PhD, of the many people with whom David made contact when writing it, and of the many avenues opened up by studying Odo. Looking back on those times, David also remembers the help given to him by one of Frank Barlow’s earlier research students, Graham Duncombe, who studied the society of post-Conquest Kent, worked for the Victoria History of the Counties of England, and was tragically killed along with other members of the VCH staff in a car accident on the M2. It was Graham who also made many of the introductions that shaped David’s later career during his first prolonged period of work at the Institute of Historical Research, of which David was Director from 2003 to 2008.
The Centre for Medieval Studies sends it heartfelt congratulations to David and thanks him for sharing this good news with us – particularly welcome in these difficult times!
‘Learning French in Medieval England’: Introducing an Exciting New Project!
Vestez vos dras, biau douz enfaunz,
Chaucez vos brais, soulers, et gaunz.
[…]
De une corroie vous ceintez —
Ne di pas ‘vous enceintez‘,
Car femme est par home enceinte
Et de une ceinture est ele ceinte.
Put on your clothes, my sweet child: don your breeches, shoes, and gloves. Lock up your belt-buckle — but do not say ‘knock up’, for a woman is knocked up by a man, but is locked up within a belt.
This somewhat risqué passage of French verse, written by Walter de Bibbesworth in mid-thirteenth-century England, would no doubt have provoked a few giggles among its audience. Its humour is difficult to capture in translation, but is clear even to those of us whose French is more than than a little rusty: punning on the near-homophonic Middle French verbs ceinter (‘to do up a belt’) and enceinter (‘to impregnate’), the author offers a cautionary tale in how even the smallest of phonetic alterations can have a major (and often-unintended) impact on the meaning of a phrase.
The passage in question is from the longest of three medieval French texts attributed to Bibbesworth: the Tretiz. The Tretiz is an unusual text in many ways, presenting itself as a rhyming vocabulary that offers one-stop-shop for all your advanced French vocabulary needs, from brewing beer to describing one’s own body. Walter de Bibbesworth promises at the outset that he will not teach ‘le fraunczois qe cheascun siet dire’ (‘the French that everyone knows’), but instead claims that his text was written ‘pur gentyls home ou pur fyz de gentyls home enfourmer de langgage’ (‘to teach nobles or their sons language’). Despite this rather unexciting opening statement it soon becomes clear — partly through Bibbesworth’s aforementioned obsession with homophones and wordplay — that the Tretiz is no ordinary phrasebook or dictionary. Instead, the reader is treated to a 1,000-line rambling tour of all manner of scenarios, ranging from a detailed list of the noises made by assorted wild animals to an odd little anecdote about a dwarf whose attempts to fish in the river Seine are constantly frustrated by inclement weather.
Despite these strange digressions — or, perhaps, because of them — the Tretiz has become something of a touchstone for scholars working on language use in medieval Britain. Over the years, it (along with its remarkably varied tradition of Middle English glosses) has been referenced in research on subjects as varied as lexicography, social history, and language change, often with respect to both English and French. Much of this valuable work has, however, been limited by an incomplete editorial tradition: the latest critical edition of the Tretiz, produced by William Rothwell in 2009, offers a superb insight into the text’s glosses but is limited in scope to two of the text’s 17 witnesses. With previously-unknown manuscripts of the Tretiz emerging as recently as 2011, it has become clear that, as Rothwell himself noted as early as 1990, ‘The whole corpus of Bibbesworth manuscripts needs to be made available eventually in a full critical edition for use in lexicographical work on the development of both English and French.’
It is therefore very exciting to announce that, over the next 15 months, the work of producing the first complete edition of the Tretiz will be carried out in the Centre for Medieval Studies here at Exeter! Dr. Thomas Hinton (Senior Lecturer in French) has received funding from the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council Leadership Fellows scheme to develop a digital critical edition of all 17 known manuscripts of this challenging and fascinating text. I’m writing this blog post as the second member of the project team: for the next 15 months, I’ll be working alongside Dr. Hinton as the project’s Postdoctoral Research Associate. Dr. Hinton and I will be collaborating with the University’s own Digital Humanities team to ensure that our edition becomes a vital resource for researchers from various disciplines, as well as one that makes full use of the flexibility and connectivity offered by the standards of the Text Encoding Initiative.
However, our project also has a broader aim: to raise awareness of the importance, both historically and in the present day, of multilingualism and language-learning. While much of our research as medievalists is built on the ability to read more than one language, there is a growing concern that language uptake in UK secondary schools is in decline, with students increasingly denied the opportunities to explore other languages and cultures. A medieval rhymed vocabulary might seem an unlikely solution to this very modern problem, but we’re keen to stress that, as the Tretiz itself shows, Britain has never been monolingual, and that understanding the complex connections between languages can only make our work — and, indeed, our lives — better.
We’re looking forward to providing several updates on this blog over the coming months as our work on the Tretiz starts to take shape. In the meantime, we warmly invite anyone with an interest in the project to follow us on Twitter, where we’ll be sharing shorter snippets from our investigations — and, once a week, some very special #TretizTuesday excitement!
Edward Mills
Research Associate, Learning French in Medieval England project
News in the Middle Ages: Read all about it!
As my colleagues at Exeter know, I have spent the past few years looking at the concept of news in the Middle Ages. I’ve been considering what the idea of ‘news’ meant in the medieval world, what sources remain for news, and what studies of news in the Middle Ages might tell us about news in other historical periods. And I think they could tell us quite a lot…
This is because the modern concept of news has become intertwined with the idea of modernity, of what makes the modern world distinctive. News is seen as a crucial component of modern democratic societies, a reflection of modern communications technology, and has even been used to discuss the modern experience of time. Early modern scholars are very conscious of the close relationship between news and modernity. As a result, they emphasise the foundational role played by early modern news in the creation of newspapers and the modern news market. In these arguments, medieval news is seen as something different and “other”. It is a foil for teleological narratives of news, progress, and modernity. But the problem is that we don’t know that much about news in the Middle Ages… So how can we be sure that it was different? And what if medieval news was less different than assumed? How might that affect our understanding of news and its relationship to the modern world and modernity? There is a problematic gap in the scholarship here. Further research is needed.
Despite the prominence of news as a topic for modern and early modern scholars, little work has been done on news in the Middle Ages. Various scholars have touched on this area, but few have thought about it in depth. This means that some of the most basic questions haven’t really been answered, including, for example, what does medieval news look like? After all, this is a period before the emergence of traditional news media such as newspapers. Getting to grips with the basics as well as thinking about the more sophisticated aspects of this topic has proved hugely stimulating. It’s rare to find such an obvious and interesting topic for which there is still so much work to do!
And, hot of the press this month, my article ‘News in the Middle Ages: News, Communications, and the Launch of the Third Crusade in 1187-88’ presents my initial thoughts on the topic. In this piece, I discuss why historians have been slow to tackle medieval news and how we can identify news in our medieval sources. I also explore how news was transmitted through a case study relating to the Third Crusade. I track the dissemination of three related news stories in 1187 and 1188: the defeat of Christian forces by Saladin at Hattin, the subsequent fall of Jerusalem, and the launch of the Third Crusade by Pope Gregory VIII. As a case study, this turned out to be both more complicated and more revealing than expected – but you’ll have to read the article to find out more!
However, there is still much more to say on news in the Middle Ages – and I have more work in the pipeline. Over the coming year I hope to complete two further articles on this topic. One will focus on the manuscript context of our extant news sources from 1187 and 1188, and draws on research funded by the British Academy Neil Ker Fund. Here I will grapple with the problem that none of our original news sources survive – all we have are copies. My article will investigate when, where, and how this material was copied, and what the act of copying tells us about the relationship between news and history in the Middle Ages. The second article will discuss the relationship between news and the medieval experience of time. This responds to arguments made in early modern scholarship about news and the emergence of a ‘modern’ sense of the present. As you might imagine, I am somewhat critical of this view…
In fact, there is so much to do that I have roped in a group of other scholars to help me explore this topic. From 2019 to 2021, I am leading a collaborative project on ‘News and News Cultures in the Middle Ages’, supported by a Small Research Grant from the Leverhulme Trust. This project brings together a variety of established and early career researchers with interests in communication, information networks, public opinion, and – of course – news. We are working together to produce a volume summarising what medieval news is, how it was disseminated, and how it functioned in society. It is intended to lay the foundations for future studies on news in the Middle Ages and to be the go-to work for scholars from other periods and disciplines. Hopefully, it will make this topic front page news!
Helen Birkett
Noblesse oblige? II: Call for Papers
University of Exeter, 30 April-1 May 2019
The traditional—and still popular—image of the ‘feudal’ political order of the Middle Ages is one of anarchic knights and overmighty barons pursuing selfish ends to the detriment of peace and justice. Our teleological narrative thus explains the emergence of the modern state by the rise of centralised monarchies which abolished private conflict and introduced ‘commonweal’. The medieval aristocracy, in this telling, is a negative force, a symptom of the collapse of the Roman imperium and an impediment to human flourishing.
However, recent work has questioned this characterisation of the baron’s role in government, as well as the benevolence of centralised governments themselves. Is the vilification of medieval lords not another case of history written by the victors? ‘Noblesse oblige? II’ intends to build on the foundation laid last year by hosting a further discussion and reevaluation of baronial government in the Middle Ages, focussing particularly on the ways in which nobles created, practised, and participated in government throughout Europe.
The two-day conference will be held at the University of Exeter on the 30th of April and 1st of May 2020. Papers of twenty minutes in length are welcome from both emerging and established scholars of baronial political culture, with special reference to questions surrounding their role in government. Examples within this theme might include the political nature of a baro, connexions between the governmental and religious reform at the aristocratic level, images of good governance in vernacular texts, noble opposition to tyranny or cooperation with royal initiatives, or the place of aristocratic women in government. We aim to incorporate a broad chronological range of papers, and especially invite explorations of change over time. We also welcome points of comparison with aristocratic political culture from outside Europe or Christendom.
Please submit abstracts of no more than 300 words to the conference organisers, Dr Gregory Lippiatt and Mr Sebastian Rider-Bezerra, at , along with the applicant’s name, affiliation (including independent scholar), and a 150-word biography. We hope to have bursaries available to assist postgraduate, unwaged, and international participants. We eagerly look forward to receiving and reading all submissions.
The deadline for submissions is 20 December 2019.
Dr Gregory Lippiatt
Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and
Lecturer in Medieval History
750th Anniversary at Westminster Abbey
This week marks the 750th anniversary of the last translation of the relics of Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey, in 1269, to the new shrine created at the direction of Henry III.
The new shrine was the centrepiece of the scheme for the elaboration and beautification of the abbey church in which King Henry had invested for more than twenty-five years.
The ceremony, conducted on the liturgical feast of the translation, 13 October, drew only modest attention in contemporary annals, although the compiler of the Flores historiarum reported the immediate cure of two supplicants at the shrine, Benedict, a clerk of Winchester, and John, an Irish layman, suffering from diabolical possession.
On 15 October 2019, the Dean & Chapter of Westminster led a commemorative service in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen.
Artefacts of the Abbey’s medieval history, an early witness to the Confessor’s foundation charter, and the magnificent illuminated Missal of the fourteenth-century abbot, Nicholas Litlyngton (1362-1386) were processed through the nave to the chancel steps for display at the High Altar. The Queen presented roses to be placed before the shrine of St Edward.
Timed to coincide with the 750th anniversary a new history of Westminster Abbey, Westminster Abbey: A Church in HIstory, has been published by Yale University Press in association with the Paul Mellon Centre.
The book explores the origins of the monastic church, its early post-Conquest history, its Plantagenet preeminence and its successive reinventions, before the Reformation as the lynchpin of a network of Tudor chantries, subsequently its brief term as a post-Reformation cathedral, reaching right up to its contemporary role as a church for the nation and the Commonwealth. James Clark, in Exeter’s Department of History, has co-authored the chapters on the high and later Middle Ages with Paul Binski (Cambridge). The book is edited by Sir David Cannadine.
James Clark
Movement and Mobility in the Medieval Mediterranean (6th-15th centuries): Society for the Medieval Mediterranean 6th Biennial Conference in Memory of Simon Barton
Alun Williams reports on the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean conference, held in the Institut d’Estudis Catalans (IEC), Barcelona.
The 2019 Conference of the Society for the Medieval Mediterranean took place in the historic centre of Barcelona between 8 and 11 July in the beautiful and (mostly) neo-classical surroundings of the Casa de Convalescència, a seventeenth-century building close to the Rambla. Our friend and colleague Simon Barton had been an early enthusiast for this venue, and we were all excited that the conference would be held, for the first time, on the shores of the Mediterranean itself. Following Simon’s sad and untimely death in December 2017, the executive committee of the SMM resolved to dedicate the conference to his memory and legacy. Simon had served as society president from 2013 until his death and had been an innovative and inclusive choice, initiating society book and article prizes and student bursaries; there was, therefore, a great determination to make the event a fitting and warm celebration as well as one that reflected the debt to Simon and his work for the society.
Thirty-two panels presented papers over four days, each with the overall focus chosen by the Scientific and Organising Committee. Because the society has always welcomed contributions from History, Archaeology, Religious Studies, Art, Literature and other disciplines that comprise Medieval Studies, conference papers reflected the complexity and diversity that has characterised the medieval Mediterranean. Furthermore, many papers discussed areas where earlier ideas had received comparatively recent attention: the mobility of Muslim minorities in Iberia and Jessica Tearney-Pearce’s fascinating paper entitled “Turning the Sea into a Church: Maritime Devotion in the Medieval Mediterranean”. Despite this inevitable range in scope and discipline, the conference was coherent and stimulating. It attracted scholars from Europe, the U.S. and the Middle East, with numbers from southern and south-eastern Europe up sharply on previous conferences.
Two excellent keynote addresses were delivered by Petra Sijpesteijn (Leiden) and Amy Remensynder (Brown University). Petra has long served as a member of the editorial board on al-Masāq – the society’s house journal – and her paper was entitled “Global Networks: Mobility and Exchange in the Mediterranean (600-1000)”. This set the tone for the conference, concentrating as it did on the period following the founding and early centuries of Muslim dominance in the Mediterranean. It was chiefly concerned with the ways in which trade, the movement of people, and cultural exchange proved to be more enduring and determining influences on mobility and intellectual integration than political or religious divergence and conflict. Amy Remensynder, who knew Simon well and has an established link with Exeter, gave the second keynote speech on “The Restless Mediterranean, a Sea in Motion”. In places, it was a lyrical, almost poetic presentation, the restless sea itself and its relentless motion providing a kind of metaphor for human movement, travel and mobility in the Mediterranean Basin and its hinterland. The sea was, furthermore, part of that mobility, providing not just a backdrop but a powerful, pervasive and determining element within it.
Perhaps the most poignant moment in the conference came at the end when a special session in honour of Simon Barton, chaired by his former student Antonella Liuzzo Scorpo (Lincoln), was convened specifically to remind delegates of Simon’s work – as well as to highlight further areas of research. The session, “New Directions in Medieval Iberian Studies: Simon Barton’s Scholastic Legacy” comprised papers from a former colleague, Therese Martin (IH-CCHS, CSIC-Madrid) and two of Simon’s PhD students, Teresa Witcombe and Teresa Tinsley. Therese Martin spoke on “Once and Future Queen: Urraca Redux (1109/2019)”; Teresa Witcombe’s subject was “’Reconquista’ and Crusade in Thirteenth-Century Burgos”; and Teresa Tinsley’s paper was entitled “Reframing the ‘Reconquista’: Hernando de Baeza’s Slant on the Conquest of Granada.” As well as presenting papers of exceptional insight and originality, each speaker acknowledged, sometimes with considerable emotion, her debt to Simon’s careful, diligent and inspirational guidance. The session prompted a wide range of questions from the audience and was, certainly from the perspective of those of us who knew Simon, the highlight of the conference and a fitting denouement.
I have now retired as society secretary after twelve years in post and was awarded with an honorary fellowship at the conference. This was a wholly unexpected honour for which I record my deep gratitude. We now look forward to the society’s 2021 conference, also to be held in the Mediterranean, at Rethymno on the island of Crete – and at which I hope to play a full part.
Alun Williams
Announcing a New Project: Warhorse: The Archaeology of a Military Revolution?
We’re happy to announce that the new Warhorse project in Archaeology, led by Prof. Oliver Creighton, now has a website and blog up and running.
‘Warhorse: the Archaeology of a Military Revolution?’ is a three-year project funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council. For the project the team of archaeologists and historians will be conducting the first ever integrated and systematic study of that most characteristic beast of the Middle Ages — the warhorse. As well as being a famed weapon of war, the medieval horse was an unmistakable symbol of elite social status closely bound up with the development of knighthood, chivalry and aristocratic culture. Crucially, in developing a new archaeological approach to the subject, the project hopes to add something different and distinctive to our understanding of horses but also, by extension, to speak to some of these other intriguing and much-debated topics.
For the first post on the project blog, see here. Please do have a look and follow it over what should be an exciting few years.
Oliver Creighton, Archaeology
Two Exeter books shortlisted for 2019 Current Archaeology Awards
We’re pleased to announce that two books with medieval themes written by Exeter academics have been shortlisted for the 2019 Current Archaeology Awards, in the ‘Book of the Year’ category – see here. Nick Holder (Honorary Research Fellow, History, and English Heritage) has The Friaries of Medieval London, a survey of these important religious houses; Professor Stephen Rippon (Archaeology) has Kingdom, Civitas and County, an examination of the longue durée of British landscape. Do have a look at the eight nominations and perhaps vote for one of the two Exeter books, or for one of the other excellent books on the shortlist. Voting closes on 11 February 2019 so don’t delay!
Nick Holder writes about his book: “As a crossover historian-archaeologist I set out to write a book about the lost religious landscape of medieval London. On the face of it the subject wasn’t very promising: there are very few documents surviving from the friaries’ archives and there’s barely a friary wall surviving above ground in London. But with some patient searching in traditional archives such as The National Archives at Kew, and in newer institutions such as the London Archaeological Archive of the Museum of London, I was able to piece together a substantial body of evidence about what the friaries looked like and how the friars used their London bases. I also asked four colleagues to help me out in the areas where they had particular expertise: Ian Betts (floor tiles), Jens Röhrkasten (spiritual life), Mark Samuel (architectural fragments) and Christian Steer (burials). We try to move beyond the ‘local history’ of London and consider wider themes such as the way that the mendicant orders seem to reinvent themselves as more traditional monastic orders after the shock of the Second Council of Lyon in 1274, which, in effect, closed down several small religious groups.”
Stephen Rippon writes about his nomination: “Too much research is constrained by traditional periodization, and this inhibits our understanding of the past. In Kingdom, Civitas, and County I have therefore taken one topic – the development of territorial organisation within the landscape – and mapped this across three periods that have traditionally been studied quite separately: the Iron Age, Roman, and early medieval periods. I hope that I show far greater continuities within the landscape than have been previously identified, which mean that our countryside of today has roots that go back several millennia.”
Best of luck to both!
Fifteenth Century Conference 2019: Calling Academics and PhD Students with 15th-Century Interests
Exeter will be hosting the Fifteenth Century Conference this September, an annual conference for anyone with interests in the Fifteenth Century. This has come about mainly because of the hard work of PhD student Des Atkinson, assisted by me, James Clark, Eddie Jones and our Hon Research Fellow Jonathan Hughes. The theme will be ‘England and Mainland Europe in the Fifteenth Century’, which we’re interpreting very broadly to include a range of topics and disciplines. I’ve posted the call for papers below. If you have fifteenth-century interest please consider sending in an abstract, and please also draw other people’s attention to it.
Catherine Rider, Director, Centre for Medieval Studies
Call For Papers: Fifteenth Century Conference, University of Exeter, 5th-7th September, 2019
England and mainland Europe in the fifteenth century
Poggio Bracciolini, the Tuscan Papal Secretary, after meeting Henry Beaufort at the Council of Constance, followed the bishop of Winchester to England to serve as his Latin secretary between 1419 and February 1423. Poggio was critical of the English climate and the preoccupation of English bishops with politics at the expense of learning, and during this period he offered the following assessment of this country in a letter to the Florentine humanist Niccolo de Niccoli:
‘I began travelling with my lord; but there was no great pleasure in the travelling, since I could find no books. Monasteries here are very rich but of new foundation; they have been built no more than four hundred years ago. If older ones survive they have no secular books, but are full of the most recent works of the doctors of the church and especially the ecclesiastics. I also saw carefully compiled inventories in which there was nothing of worth of humanist studies. And nothing interesting indeed.’
Poggio Bracciolini, Lettere, vol. I, ed. H. Harth (Firenze, Olschki, 1984), translated in A. Petrina, Cultural Politics in Fifteenth-Century England: The Case of Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester (2004), p. 62.
Poggio’s dismissal of English intellectual culture points to a wide range of interactions between fifteenth-century England and its neighbours in continental Europe, and it raises many questions that have interested scholars in recent years. What was the nature of interaction between England and continental Europe? What kinds of exchange (political, economic, cultural) took place, when, and how? What was the role of courts, cities, and the Church, as well as individuals, in this process? How was England perceived elsewhere in Europe, and how did the English perceive Europe and the wider world in their turn? How did cultural and intellectual exchange with continental Europe interact with the growing body of vernacular writing, in many genres, being produced in England, and with local and national senses of identity?
At a time when this country’s relationship with Europe is once again uncertain it seems appropriate to use Poggio’s comments to host a conference that considers this same question during another period of doubt and transition. This conference aims to address, however broadly, the different ways in which the late medieval kingdom of England could be considered in religious, political, social, economic and cultural terms as either a part of Europe, or apart from Europe – a nation with a separate identity.
This year’s Fifteenth Century Conference will be hosted by the University of Exeter, which is home to a community of late medievalists across several disciplines. We welcome papers from scholars at all career stages from PhD students to established academics, on any theme connected to this subject, from any discipline working on the fifteenth century. This may include, but is not limited to, papers on local, national and European identities and myths; cultural exchange; the transmission of knowledge (including vernacular culture); political, social and intellectual networks; trade; the Church; heresy; social unrest; travel and perceptions of the wider world.
Please submit abstracts of up to 200 words, and a short biography, to Professor Catherine Rider (Director, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Exeter) at c.r.rider@exeter.ac.uk by 28th February 2019.
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