This research and public history event will take place at Worksop Priory, Nottinghamshire on Saturday 31 August and 1 September 2024. It is organised by the Music in the Shadows project at the University of Nottingham, supported by a grant from the AHRC.

All welcome, no registration required

PROVISIONAL PROGRAMME:

Saturday 31 August 2024, 10am-5pm
Public history talks, open rehearsal, family activities

Sunday 1 September 2024, 5am-7am
Medieval night liturgy for the Feast of St Cuthbert

For more information email worksop.discovery.day@gmail.com or visit https://tinyurl.com/nightoffice

Institute of Historical Research, History of Liturgy Seminar
Study Day: New Directions in the History of Liturgy

Saturday 18 May, 10am-5pm

Bloomsbury Room, G35, Ground Floor, 
Senate House, Malet Street, London WC1E 7HU

9.45am Arrival

10am 
NARRATIVES IN AND OF THE MEDIEVAL OFFICE I  
Chair: Henry Parkes (University of Nottingham)

• Teresa Webber (University of Cambridge), ‘Narrative and the Annual Cycle of Biblical Reading in the Night Office’
• Margot Fassler (University of Notre Dame), ‘The Timescape of the Purification Office in Twelfth and Thirteenth-Century Paris’
• Fraser McNair (University of Nottingham), ‘Improvisation and the Holy in the Central Medieval Night Office’

11.30am Refreshments

12pm
LIGHTNING TALKS I  
Chair: Helen Gittos (University of Oxford)

• Vedran Sulovsky (University of Cambridge), ‘Using the Liturgy to Understand Hohenstaufen-Era Aachen’
• Anastasia Shmytova (Princeton University), ‘Khabuvy, anenaiki: Towards an Understanding of the Use and Reception of Nonsensical Syllables in Russian Orthodox Chant’
• Emma Olson (University of Cambridge), ‘The Power of Prayer in Albigensian Crusade and Reconquista Narratives’
• Thomas Phillips (University of Bristol), ‘Norman Influence and Anglo-Saxon Remnants in Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 4: The Office of St. Alban’
• Giulio Minniti (University of Oslo), ‘“Gallican” Chant in the Margins of Non-Musical Manuscripts’
• Cassandra Fenton (University of Bristol), ‘Cambridge, Corpus Christi College MS 163: Informing Approaches to Music and Liturgy in English Pontificals’

1.15pm Lunch

2.15pm
NARRATIVES IN AND OF THE MEDIEVAL OFFICE II 
Chair: Teresa Webber (University of Cambridge)

• Susan Rankin (University of Cambridge), ‘Carolingian Revision of Roman Liturgy: The Office for St Stephen’
• Jesse Billett (Trinity College in the University of Toronto), ‘Micro-storytelling through Nocturns Responsories in the Ordines Associated with William of Volpiano’
• Helen Gittos (University of Oxford), ‘Poet, Rebel, Priest: The Ludlow Scribe and Liturgy in French in the Fourteenth Century’

3.45pm Break

4.00pm 
LIGHTNING TALKS II AND CLOSING DISCUSSION
Chair: Sarah Hamilton (University of Exeter)

• Michael Carter (English Heritage), ‘Interpreting Monastic Remains for 21st-Century Audiences: The Role of the Liturgy’
• Helena Phillips-Robins (University of Cambridge), ‘Liturgy and Experience in the Letters of Clare of Assisi (1234-1253)’
• Rose Walker (Courtauld Institute of Art), ‘Relics Between Al-Andalus and the Christian Kingdoms: Purifying the Act’

5pm Close

Drinks to follow

Registration: https://www.history.ac.uk/events/new-directions-history-liturgy

CALL FOR PAPERS: New Directions in the History of Liturgy (Deadline: 22 March 2024)

Senate House, London, Saturday 18 May, 10am-5pm    

* * *

Proposals are sought for 5-minute lightning presentations (max. 3 powerpoint slides) on new research in the history of liturgy, as part of a study day organised by the IHR’s History of Liturgy seminar. The organisers are keen to hear from scholars from across the disciplines whose research engages with histories of communal religious worship, whether by means of its texts, spaces, rituals, meanings, or material traces.

Although the seminar’s primary focus is on liturgical traditions of medieval and early modern Western Europe, we warmly encourage proposals from researchers who engage with other chronologies, geographies or religious traditions, and/or the interfaces between them. Individuals at a late-doctoral or early career stage are particularly encouraged to apply.

The study day will also feature themed sessions on the topic of ‘Narratives in and of the Medieval Office’, hosted in collaboration with the AHRC-funded project ‘Music in the Shadows: Staging Medieval Night Worship, 800-1300’ (University of Nottingham), and an open panel discussion on new directions in the field.

Confirmed speakers include Margot Fassler (Notre Dame and Yale), Jesse Billett (Toronto) and Susan Rankin (Cambridge).

* * *

All are welcome. Registration is free of charge, but pre-booking is required via https://www.history.ac.uk/seminars/history-liturgy (booking will open in April). Refreshments will be provided. Attendees are responsible for funding their own transport and accommodation costs.

Abstracts(150-200 words) and a brief biography(50 words), should be addressed to historyofliturgystudyday@gmail.com by Friday 22 March 2024.

Organising committee: Henry Parkes (Nottingham), Sarah Hamilton (Exeter), Helen Gittos (Oxford), Erik Niblaeus (Cambridge), Tessa Webber (Cambridge), Fraser McNair (Nottingham).

* * *

The History of Liturgy seminar acknowledges the support of the Institute of Historical Research and the Henry Bradshaw Society.

Meetings with asterisks will take place on Zoom. All other meetings will be in a hybrid form, combining in-person participation (Room N304, Senate House, London) and online streaming for those who cannot attend. To register participation: www.history.ac.uk/seminars/history-liturgy.

All welcome.

* * *

*Tuesday 10 October 2023, 17.30 – Nicholas Watson (Harvard University): Vernacular Theology Before the English Reformation: Work in Progress [ONLINE ONLY]

Monday 6 November 2023, 17.30 – Paweł Nowakowski (University of Warsaw) and Helen Gittos (University of Oxford): The Archaeology of Liturgy: Objects and Inscriptions

*Monday 22 January 2024, 17.30 – Roundtable: The Liturgy of Saints’ Cults: The Perspective from Iberia, with speakers Emma Hornby (University of Bristol), Kati Ihnat (University of Nijmegen), Melanie Shaffer (University of Nijmegen), and Cathrien Hoijinck (University of Nijmegen) [ONLINE ONLY]

Monday 18 March 2024, 17.30 – Roundtable: The Liturgical Dimension of the Cult of Saints in their Local Contexts, with speakers James Miller (University of Oxford), Sumner Braund (University of Oxford), and Matthias Bryson (University of Cambridge)

* * *

Convenors: Helen Gittos, Sarah Hamilton, Erik Niblaeus, Henry Parkes, Teresa Webber

Meetings with asterisks will take place on Zoom. All other meetings will be in a hybrid form, combining in-person participation (Room N304, Senate House, London) and online streaming for those who cannot attend. To register participation: www.history.ac.uk/seminars/history-liturgy

All welcome.

* * *

*Monday 3 October 2022, 17.30 – Bissera V. Pentcheva (Stanford): Medieval Formalism: The Corona-Crown in the Chants and Images of Ste. Foy at Conques [ONLINE ONLY]

Monday 7 November 2022, 17.30 – Arthur Westwell (Regensburg): A ‘compiling mania’? Unravelling the mixed sacramentaries made at Saint-Amand during the Viking invasions

Monday 20 February 2023, 17.30 – Julia Crick (KCL): Rethinking the Vitellius “Giso” Sacramentary: new scribal identifications

*Monday 20 March 2023, 17.30 – Roundtable, with speakers to include Andrew Ferrara (Durham), John Harper (Bangor): The lost, late medieval, greater and lesser chapels of the Bishop of Durham at Auckland Castle: archaeological and liturgical re-imaginings [ONLINE ONLY]

Monday 22 May 2023, 17.30 (originally scheduled for Monday 8 May) – Andrew Spicer (Oxford Brookes): Consecration, Sacred Space and the Reformation

Monday 5 June 2023, 17.30 – Nigel Ramsay (UCL): a presentation on English medieval bishops and their books and libraries

* * *

Convenors: Helen Gittos, Sarah Hamilton, John Harper, Henry Parkes, Teresa Webber

All meetings take place online. To register participation: www.history.ac.uk/seminars/history-liturgy

All welcome.

* * *

Monday 1 November 2021, 17.15 – Katherine Emery (King’s College, London): The Cult of Thomas Becket and the Building of Canterbury Cathedral

Monday 6 December 2021, 17.15 – John Jenkins (University of York): The Shrine of St Thomas Becket and the Liturgy of Canterbury Cathedral in the 15th Century

Monday 17 January 2022, 17.15 – Iris Shagrir (The Open University of Israel): Signs of Victory: The Earliest Civic Liturgical Celebration of the Conquest of Jerusalem

Monday 14 March 2022, 17.15 – Alex Shinn (Bangor University): Local Manifestations of Liturgical Reform c.1530-1650: The Newly-Founded St John’s College, Cambridge

Monday 9 May 2022, 17.15 – Elisabeth Hollender (Goethe University, Frankfurt): Local Liturgical Traditions and their Importance: The Case of Medieval Jewish Cologne

Monday 6 June 2022, 17.15 – Roundtable: Martyrologies, with Christine Rauer (St Andrews), Kate Falardeau (Cambridge), Katerina Novokhatko (TU Dresden) and Sara Charles (UCL)

* * *

Convenors: Helen Gittos, Sarah Hamilton, John Harper, Henry Parkes, Eyal Poleg, Teresa Webber

All meetings take place online. To register participation: www.history.ac.uk/seminars/history-liturgy

All welcome.

* * *

Monday 5 October 2020, 18.30 – Katie Bugyis (University of Notre Dame): The Manuscript Remains of the Abbess-Saints of Barking Abbey

Monday 16 November 2020, 17.15 – Laura Light (Les Enluminures): Evidence for the Liturgical Use of Thirteenth-Century Bibles (joint session with the European History 1150-1550 seminar)

Monday 15 February 2021, 17.15 – Katy Cubitt (University of East Anglia): Liturgy and Law in 10th- and 11th-Century England; Episcopal Power and the Uses of Public Penance

Monday 8 March 2021, 17.15 – Michael Penman (University of Stirling): Architecture and Liturgy in Dunfermline Abbey

Monday 29 March 2021, 17.15 – Andrew Jotischky (Royal Holloway): Living in the Holy City: Greek Orthodox Jerusalem under Crusader Rule

Monday 24 May 2021, 17.15 – Roundtable: The Early Liturgy of Salisbury Cathedral, chaired by John Harper (Bangor University)

Monday 14 June 2021, 17.15 – David Jasper and Jeremy Smith (University of Glasgow): The Re-Inventing of the Lay Folks’ Mass Book: The Victorian Afterlife of a Middle English Poem

* * *

Convenors: Helen Gittos, Sarah Hamilton, John Harper, Henry Parkes, Eyal Poleg, Teresa Webber