Conference – IMC Leeds – Session related to Medicine, Health, Illnesses and disabilities.

About the IMC

The International Medieval Congress (IMC) provides an interdisciplinary forum for sharing ideas relating to all aspects of the Middle Ages.

Since its inception in 1994 the IMC has brought researchers from different countries, backgrounds, and disciplines together, providing opportunities for networking and professional development in an open and inclusive environment.

It is organised and administered by the Institute for Medieval Studies at the University of Leeds and takes place here on the main University campus.

As the largest academic conference of its kind in Europe, the IMC attracts more than 2,700 medievalists from all over the world. By providing spaces for networking and socialising, it seeks to foster a scholarly community. It also hosts a wide variety of concerts, exhibitions, and excursions, which are open to delegates and the public alike.

The next IMC will take place 6-9 July 2020.

See the full programme

Monday 6 July 2020

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Monday 6 July 2020: 11.15-12.45

Session 106
Title Body and Culture in Byzantium
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Organiser IMC Programming Committee
 
Moderator/Chair Shaun Tougher, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
 
Paper 106-a On the Borders of Disability: The Forgotten Children of Byzantium
(Language: English)
Oana Maria Cojocaru, Department of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, University of Umea
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Daily Life; Hagiography; Social History
Paper 106-b Ἅγια ὁδεύοντα: Relic Movement and Power Projection in Medieval Byzantium
(Language: English)
Christopher Sprecher, Institut für Geschichte, Universität Regensburg
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Ecclesiastical History; Hagiography; Religious Life
Paper 106-c Bordering on Fraud: How One Garment Confounds a Foundation Tenet of the ‘Middle Ages’
(Language: English)
Timothy Dawson, Independent Scholar, Tilbury
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Daily Life; Historiography – Modern Scholarship; Performance Arts – General
 
Abstract Paper -a:
Byzantine hagiographies and miracle collections provide a wealth of sources for studying disability, since they often include vivid descriptions of afflicted people. Yet children feature less often than adults, and the way they experienced their disability is always left aside. Previous scholarship has been content to focus on descriptions of adult disability, but it has thus become complicit in eliding the experience of a doubly marginal category in Byzantine society (disabled and children). My paper will discuss several such cases of disabled children, seeking to reconstruct the way gender, age, and social status may have influenced their lived experience.

Paper -b:
Much work has been done on the emergence of the cult of saints and the role of relics of various kinds: bones, clothing, and other possessions associated with specific saints and miraculous events. Though historical analyses of the appearance and prevalence of relics abound, and liturgical/theological reflections on the place of relics in Late Antique and medieval Christianity have been published, the ends to which church and state in medieval Byzantium and in neighbouring regions moved and deployed relics in pursuit of political power and urban prestige remains underdiscussed. This paper will briefly trace the history of relic movement via the emergence of feasts of relic translation and gifting, before examining instances from the 9th to 11th centuries in which the movement of relics via procession, gifting, or theft serves as a lens to shed light on relics’ role in conferring civic honour and projecting ecclesiastical and political power.

Paper -c:
The concept of there being a ‘Middle Ages’ is largely founded on one sequence of events that is represented as the 5th-century ‘Fall of the Roman Empire’. This idea, and its corrolary, that the entity ruled from Constantinople was somehow ‘not really Roman’, has come under increasingly vigourous challenge over the lest two decades in some circles, yet seems to retain a hold on Western Medievalists. The falseness of the dichotomy can be demonstrated in a literally material manner by one garment which was central to the ceremonial of the Roman Empire for more than one and a half millennia. Beginning in earlier Antiquity as the toga, it evolved and persisted in use right up to the Ottoman Conquest. The presentation wil involve dressing volunteers from the audience.

 

Session

107
Title Affected Bodies in the Age of Joan of Arc
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Sponsor Jean Gerson Society
 
Organiser Matthew Vanderpoel, Divinity School, University of Chicago
  Geneviève Young, Department of French, University of Cambridge
 
Moderator/Chair Blake Gutt, Department of Romance Languages & Literatures, University of Michigan
 
Paper 107-a The Genius of France: Joan of Arc and the Nation
(Language: English)
Geneviève Young, Department of French, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Language and Literature – French or Occitan; Philosophy
Paper 107-b Epistemologies, Bodily and Verbal, in the Trial of Joan of Arc
(Language: English)
Matthew Vanderpoel, Divinity School, University of Chicago
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Philosophy; Theology
Paper 107-c Marginal Faces in Late Medieval Manuscripts: Affect and the Unknowable
(Language: English)
Alice Hazard, Department of French, King’s College London
Index Terms: Language and Literature – French or Occitan; Manuscripts and Palaeography
 
Abstract How were bodies – often taken as a material given – enacted, affirmed, and verified in the later Middle Ages? In this same vein, how were bodies interrogated, challenged, and disavowed? In this panel, we question the ways in which bodies, as affected sites, become objects of force, emotionalized entities, or adopted performances. We ask how Joan of Arc’s (or others’) embodiment is framed, questioned, or mobilized, whether in her inquisitorial trial or in later scholarship. In probing the tensions that arise between the apparent given-ness of the body and its many contestations we aim to prompt new investigations of late medieval theorizations and epistemologies of the body, gender, and discernment.

 

Session 121
Title Medical Borders
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Organiser IMC Programming Committee
 
Moderator/Chair Iona McCleery, Institute for Medieval Studies / School of History, University of Leeds
 
Paper 121-a Of Monsters and Medicine: The Borders of Disease and the Monstrous
(Language: English)
Sonya Pihura, Department of History & Classical Studies, McGill University, Québec
Index Terms: Folk Studies; Medicine; Mentalities; Sermons and Preaching
Paper 121-b The Female Body, or Is It?
(Language: English)
Baylee Staufenbiel, School of Historical, Philosophical & Religious Studies, Arizona State University
Index Terms: Medicine; Science; Sexuality; Women’s Studies
Paper 121-c How to Join the Borders of the Wounds: Principles of Suturing and Healing Wounds in the Medieval Period, according to Henri de Mondeville (Cambridge, Peterhouse 118)
(Language: English)
Corinne Lamour, Centre d’Études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale (CESCM – UMR 7302), Université de Poitiers / Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Medicine
 
Abstract Paper -a:
In the Middle Ages, the sick occupied a liminal space, between health and death, between Earth and the afterlife. Likewise, monsters, whether elves, demons, or dragons, were perceived as liminal beings, existing in transitory spaces: bridges, marshlands, and borderlands. This paper focuses on Anglo-Saxon and medieval England, and the connection between monsters and disease. Using the Anglo-Saxon medical corpus, imported Latin texts, religious writings, and folklore, this paper displays the intertwined borders of the liminal sick and their liminal monsters, and discusses the ways in which monstrosity and disease were conflated and how these ideas affected treatment.

Paper -b:
Mondino de Liuzzi, known as ‘the Restorer of Anatomy’, revived the practice of anatomical dissection lost for approximately 1700 years. Since antiquity, the female body was a site of conquest wrapped up in complex constructions of sexual scientific medical discourse and social practices based on ancient medical texts. Societal norms bound bodies; yet bodies remained susceptible to external and internal, physical and invisible forces. Dissection played a role in breaching the physical boundaries of the body. Though anatomical dissection should have shed light on ancient medical misconceptions and inaccuracies, medieval dissection reinforced the errors put forth by ancient authors. 

Paper -c:
The skin, the border between outside and inside of the body, reflects the integrity of the body, and when wounded its treatment remained a crucial challenge in the Middle Ages. While the early authors advocated the suppuration of wounds as a necessary factor for wound healing, Henri de Mondeville (1260-1320), surgery’s master, was a forerunner by recommending an aseptic treatment of wounds without suppuration, and a first intention healing by suturing wounds when their borders could be joined. This first intention of healing a wound by joining the borders, when there is no tissue loss, remains the first option in modern care. Henri de Mondeville had a resolutely modern approach to surgery that transcends the boundaries of time.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Monday 6 July 2020: 14.15-15.45

Session 221
Title Medical Knowledge Crossing Boundaries, I: Reappropriating Medical Knowledge
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Sponsor Medica (The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages)
 
Organiser Anna Peterson, Independent Scholar, Valladolid
 
Moderator/Chair Anna Peterson, Independent Scholar, Valladolid
 
Paper 221-a Manuscript to Print to Manuscript: Remaking Medical Knowledge across Temporal, Linguistic, and Material Boundaries
(Language: English)
Lori Jones, Department of History, Carleton University, Ottawa
Index Terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine; Printing History
Paper 221-b From the Printing Press to the Quill: The Reuse of von Gersdorff’s Feldtbuch der Wundarzney in Manuscript Medical Collections
(Language: English)
Chiara Benati, Dipartimento di Lingue e Culture Moderne, Università degli Studi di Genova
Index Terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine; Printing History
Paper 221-c Stones, Saints, and Secrets: The Rebranding of Medieval Lapidary Knowledge for Early Modern Audiences
(Language: English)
Nichola Harris, Department of Social Science, History & Education, Ulster County Community College, State University of New York
Index Terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine; Printing History
 
Abstract This year Medica (the Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages) will be sponsoring two sessions and a round table related to the movement and transfer of medical knowledge between and across different types of boundaries: geographical, societal, professional, religious, linguistic, material, chronological, etc. These sessions seek to examine various issues related to itineraries of medical knowledge, intended and unintended audiences, and the early modern reuse of medical manuscripts. 

 

Session 248
Title It’s a Queer Time: Trespassing the Boundaries of Chrononormativity, II – Trans-Figurations
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Sponsor Institutt for lingvistiske, litterære og estetiske studier, Universitetet i Bergen
 
Organiser David Carrillo-Rangel, Institutt for lingvistiske, litterære og estetiske studier, Universitetet i Bergen
 
Moderator/Chair Michelle M. Sauer, Department of English, University of North Dakota
 
Paper 248-a Grendel’s Mother’s Queer Spaces in Time: A Trans and Intersec-[x]-tional Reading
(Language: English)
Teresa Pilgrim, School of Literature & Languages, University of Surrey
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature – Comparative; Language and Literature – Old English
Paper 248-b Mystical Pregnancy and Bodily Hybridity in the Later Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Mads Vedel Heilskov, Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Historiography – Medieval
Paper 248-c Beyond the Lines: Criseyde’s Transtemporal Melancholia
(Language: English)
Eduardo Correia, Department of English, King’s College London
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature – Comparative; Language and Literature – Middle English
 
Abstract Chrononormativity is a term coined by Elizabeth Freeman to define ‘the use of time to organize individual human bodies towards maximum productivity (…) through particular orchestrations of time. (…) Schedules, calendars, time zones’ (2010: 3). We see this at work in parcelling of history through periodization and localization in given spaces. These become boundaries and barriers to a more fluid understanding of the Middle Ages. If the Middle Ages is ‘age of the medium’ (Jørgensen, 2015:9), both in regards to materialities and historical witness, it might mean that the period is also a queer time, in it its fluidity as well as in the way historiography articulates present (mis)conceptions of the past. This second session explores trans-figuration and trans-temporalities as a way of making visible other ways of being and becoming.

 

Session 252
Title Playing the Middle Ages, II: Authority, Authenticity, and Accuracy
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Sponsor The Public Medievalist / Centre for Medieval & Renaissance Research, University of Winchester
 
Organiser Robert Houghton, Department of History, University of Winchester
 
Moderator/Chair Liam McLeod-Eccles, Department of History, University of Birmingham
 
Paper 252-a Potions and Poisson: Health and Healing in Medieval-Themed Role-Playing Video Games
(Language: English)
Raniel Carmona Ponteras, Independent Scholar, Philippines
Index Terms: Computing in Medieval Studies; Medicine; Medievalism and Antiquarianism; Science
Paper 252-b Hearing Problems: Sounding Medieval in Video Games
(Language: English)
Karen Cook, Hartt School, University of Hartford, Connecticut
Index Terms: Computing in Medieval Studies; Medievalism and Antiquarianism; Technology
 
Abstract Claims to historical authority, authenticity, and accuracy are central to the success of a diverse range of games set within the medieval period or which draw upon medieval elements. Grounding a medieval or fantasy game in a recognisably historical environment may promote player immersion and enjoyment. However, these appeals are often used to excuse the creation of exclusionary, misogynist, or racist spaces. Further, there is a strong argument to be made that accuracy can sometimes undermine play. These papers consider various approaches to historical authority, authenticity, and accuracy across different genres of game.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Monday 6 July 2020: 16.30-18.00

Session 321
Title Medical Knowledge Crossing Boundaries, II: The Movement and Transmission of Medical Knowledge
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 16.30-18.00
 
Sponsor Medica (The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages)
 
Organiser Anna Peterson, Independent Scholar, Valladolid
 
Moderator/Chair Lori Jones, Department of History, Carleton University, Ottawa
 
Paper 321-a Traveling Roots: Medical Substances and Expertise across Boundaries
(Language: English)
Nükhet Varlik, Department of History, University of South Carolina
Index Terms: Economics – Trade; Medicine
Paper 321-b Medicine on the Move: England and Europe in the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Peter M. Jones, King’s College, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Education; Medicine; Monasticism
Paper 321-c Medical Knowledge in Iceland: The Reception and Transmission of Medical Texts in the North
(Language: English)
Sarah Baccianti, School of Arts, English & Languages, Queen’s University Belfast
Index Terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine
 
Abstract This year Medica (the Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages) will be sponsoring two sessions and a round table related to the movement and transfer of medical knowledge between and across different types of boundaries: geographical, societal, professional, religious, linguistic, material, chronological, etc. These sessions seek to examine various issues related to itineraries of medical knowledge, intended and unintended audiences, and the early modern reuse of medical manuscripts. 

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Monday 6 July 2020: 19.00-20.00

Session 421
Title Medical Knowledge Crossing Boundaries: A Round Table Discussion
Date/Time Monday 6 July 2020: 19.00-20.00
 
Sponsor Medica (The Society for the Study of Healing in the Middle Ages)
 
Organiser Anna Peterson, Independent Scholar, Valladolid
 
Moderator/Chair Anna Peterson, Independent Scholar, Valladolid
 
Abstract This round table discussion will analyse and examine the transmission, reception, and reappropriation of medical knowledge not only throughout the medieval world, but also between the medieval and early modern period.

Participants include Sarah Baccianti (Queen’s University Belfast), Chiara Benati (Università degli Studi di Genova), Nichola Harris (State University of New York), Lori Jones (Carleton University, Ottawa), Peter Jones (University of Cambridge), and Nükhet Varlik (University of South Carolina).

 

Tuesday 7 July 2020

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Tuesday 7 July 2020: 09.00-10.30

Session 510
Title (Un)Bound Bodies: Consolidating and Fragmenting Borders, I
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 09.00-10.30
 
Organiser Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
 
Moderator/Chair Emma Zürcher, Department of History, University College London
 
Paper 510-a Meekness Embodied: The Boundaries between Meekness and the Self
(Language: English)
Merridee Bailey, Faculty of History, University of Oxford
Index Terms: Daily Life; Lay Piety; Mentalities; Religious Life
Paper 510-b Dis/Ability and Bodies in 14th-Century Canonisation Inquests
(Language: English)
Adelheid Russenberger, School of History, Queen Mary University of London
Index Terms: Daily Life; Lay Piety; Medicine; Social History
Paper 510-c The Liquid Body Politic
(Language: English)
Nicole Hochner, Department of Political Science, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Index Terms: Economics – General; Medicine; Music; Political Thought
 
Abstract This session explores how the porosity and diversity of medieval bodies were codified to define normative identities, morality, or selfhood. The papers draw together visual culture, archival materials, and political ideologies to emphasis the role of embodiment in social and cultural experiences. More specifically, the papers look at the embodiment of meekness in visual culture, the place of disabled bodies in canonisation inquests, and the liquid body politic in the work of Nicole Oresme.

 

Session 546
Title Minority and Marginalised Experiences
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 09.00-10.30
 
Sponsor Cerae: An Australasian Journal of Medieval & Early Modern Studies
 
Organiser Christina Cleary, Department of Irish & Celtic Languages, Trinity College Dublin
 
Moderator/Chair Christina Cleary, Department of Irish & Celtic Languages, Trinity College Dublin
 
Paper 546-a The Voices of the People, Bologna, 1299: A Contribution to the Problem of the Medieval Public Sphere
(Language: English)
Teresa Barucci, Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Daily Life; Historiography – Medieval; Language and Literature – Latin; Political Thought
Paper 546-b Gems and Jews: Appropriating Jewishness in Cynewulf’s Elene
(Language: English)
Thelma Trujillo, College of Arts & Sciences, Illinois State University
Index Terms: Daily Life; Historiography – Medieval; Language and Literature – Old English; Mentalities
Paper 546-c No Country for Old Men: ‘Elde’ in the ‘Merchant’s Tale’
(Language: English)
Maria Zygogianni, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Research (MEMO), Swansea University
Index Terms: Daily Life; Historiography – Medieval; Language and Literature – Old English; Mentalities
 
Abstract This session, organised by Cerae: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies, aims to contribute to the current movement in acknowledging systemic discrimination in Medieval Studies by drawing attention to the experiences of people who lived on the borders of society during the Middle Ages in Europe. Three speakers will investigate selections of texts from medieval English and Italian literature and discuss the depictions, experiences, agency, and voices of minority and marginalised groups. In doing so, the session will bring to the fore some of the most interesting and understudied aspects of medieval life in Europe.

 

Session 551
Title Dis/Ability in the Medieval North, I
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 09.00-10.30
 
Sponsor Disability before Disability, University of Iceland, Reykjavík / Icelandic Research Fund
 
Organiser Chris Crocker, Disability Before Disability Project, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
  Yoav Tirosh, Faculty of Icelandic & Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
 
Moderator/Chair Ninon Dubourg, Laboratoire Identités Cultures et Territoires (ICT), Université Diderot Paris 7
 
Paper 551-a Disability before Disability in the Medieval Icelandic Sagas: Methodological Considerations
(Language: English)
Chris Crocker, Disability Before Disability Project, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
Yoav Tirosh, Faculty of Icelandic & Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
Index Terms: Daily Life; Language and Literature – Scandinavian; Mentalities; Social History
Paper 551-b Dependency or Authority? Disability or Ability?: Care Givers and Receivers in Old English and Anglo-Latin Sources
(Language: English)
Marit Ronen, Independent Scholar, Upper Galilee
Index Terms: Daily Life; Language and Literature – Old English; Social History
Paper 551-c Hearing Loss in Medieval Iceland: The Palaeopathology of a Hidden Disability
(Language: English)
Cecilia Collins, Independent Scholar, Hamburg
Index Terms: Anthropology; Archaeology – General; Medicine
 
Abstract These sessions explore disability in the medieval North as a multi-factorial phenomenon. They make use of the concepts of ’embodied difference’ and/or ‘marked or atypical bodies’ as they do not imply pre-defined notions of disability. The body is seen as something that materialises and translates physical, psychic, and intellectual differences in ways that societies identify them as deviations from what is considered ‘normal’ and/or ‘able-bodied’ in specific cultural and/or social contexts. Within this framework, the papers deal with archaeological, literary, and historical evidence, and engage with methodological challenges involved in researching disability, and accordingly also ability, in the Middle Ages.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Tuesday 7 July 2020: 11.15-12.45

Session 605
Title Crossing Urban Legal Boundaries in Northern Europe, II: The Town and Beyond
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Organiser Edda Frankot, Fakultetet for Samfunnsvitenskap, Nord Universitet, Bodø
  Miriam Tveit, Fakultetet for Samfunnsvitenskap, Nord Universitet, Bodø
 
Moderator/Chair Miriam Tveit, Fakultetet for Samfunnsvitenskap, Nord Universitet, Bodø
 
Paper 605-a Public Health in Pre-Modern Norway?
(Language: English)
Erik Opsahl, Institutt for historiske studier, Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet, Trondheim
Index Terms: Economics – Urban; Law; Social History
Paper 605-b Scottish Towns and Their Hinterlands: A Symbiotic Relationship
(Language: English)
David Ditchburn, Department of History, Trinity College Dublin
Index Terms: Economics – Trade; Law
Paper 605-c English Towns and Their Suburbs: Questions of Boundaries
(Language: English)
Richard Holt, Institutt for arkeologi, historie, religionsvitenskap og teologi, Universitetet i Tromsø – Norges Arktiske Universitet
Index Terms: Economics – Urban; Law
 
Abstract The distinction between town and countryside was in some ways quite sharply drawn – for example with regard to law. But in other ways the distinction was much more blurred. This session aims to illuminate the complex physical, ideological, and metaphorical boundaries between a town and its surroundings. Opsahl asks what borders existed in Norway when it came to instituting preventative healthcare in town and countryside. Ditchburn examines especially the regulation of the economic relationship between Scottish towns and their hinterlands, which extended overseas too. Holt explores how the separate physical, tenurial, or sometimes legal identity of suburbs might have given rise to conflicts concerning jurisdiction between them and borough communities.

 

Session 610
Title (Un)Bound Bodies: Consolidating and Fragmenting Borders, II
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Organiser Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
 
Moderator/Chair Jack Ford, Department of History, University College London
 
Paper 610-a Boundless Possibilities: Seeing Eunuchs in Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS Gr. 510
(Language: English)
Lora Webb, Department of Art & Art History, Stanford University / Bibliotheca Hertziana, Max-Planck-Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Roma
Index Terms: Art History – General; Sexuality
Paper 610-b ‘Heart hair mouth nail hand skin blood’: Hearing the 13th-Century Body in George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Written on Skin
(Language: English)
George Haggett, Faculty of Music, University of Oxford
Index Terms: Music; Performance Arts – General
Paper 610-c Agrippina and Nero: When Parenthood Leads to Uterine Vivisection and Male Pregnancy
(Language: English)
Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
Index Terms: Art History – General; Sexuality
 
Abstract Ranging from 9th-century representations of eunuchs to 21st-century operatic staging of a 13th-century razo and late medieval illuminations of uterine vivisection and male pregnancy, this panel engages with the representation and enactment of bodily violence. It questions how such representations of fragmented and mutilated bodies are perceived for themselves or for their ontological status as representations. They enact something other than themselves, which fundamentally transforms them and the way they are seen.

 

Session 651
Title Dis/Ability in the Medieval North, II
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Sponsor Disability before Disability, University of Iceland, Reykjavík / Icelandic Research Fund
 
Organiser Chris Crocker, Disability Before Disability Project, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
  Yoav Tirosh, Faculty of Icelandic & Comparative Cultural Studies, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
 
Moderator/Chair Chris Crocker, Disability Before Disability Project, University of Iceland, Reykjavík
 
Paper 651-a Emotional Paralysis as a Specific Phenomenon of Old Norse Literature
(Language: English)
Marie Novotná, Fakulta humanitních studií, Univerzita Karlova, Praha
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Scandinavian; Medicine; Mentalities
Paper 651-b Travelled yet Troubled: When a Good King Goes Mad
(Language: English)
Judith Higman, Darwin College, University of Cambridge
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Scandinavian; Medicine; Mentalities; Social History
Paper 651-c ‘Svartir ok furðu ljótir’: Unusual Bodies in Geirmundar þáttr heljarskinns and Hálfs saga ok Hálfsrekka
(Language: English)
Katherine Marie Olley, St Hilda’s College, University Of Oxford
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Scandinavian; Mentalities; Social History; Women’s Studies
 
Abstract These sessions explore disability in the medieval North as a multi-factorial phenomenon. They make use of the concepts of ’embodied difference’ and/or ‘marked or atypical bodies’ as they do not imply pre-defined notions of disability. The body is seen as something that materialises and translates physical, psychic, and intellectual differences in ways that societies identify them as deviations from what is considered ‘normal’ and/or ‘able-bodied’ in specific cultural and/or social contexts. Within this framework, the papers deal with archaeological, literary and historical evidence, and engage with methodological challenges involved in researching disability, and accordingly also ability, in the Middle Ages.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Tuesday 7 July 2020: 14.15-15.45

Session 710
Title (Un)Bound Bodies: Consolidating and Fragmenting Borders, III
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Organiser Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
 
Moderator/Chair Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
 
Paper 710-a Castrating Ovid: Christine de Pisan and the Medieval Ovidian Body
(Language: English)
Rebecca Menmuir, Jesus College, University of Oxford
Index Terms: Language and Literature – French or Occitan; Sexuality
Paper 710-b My Body, My Choice?: Consent and Commodification of the Female Holy Body in 13th-Century Hagiography
(Language: English)
Lydia Marie Walker, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies , University of Toronto
Index Terms: Hagiography; Women’s Studies
Paper 710-c Enclosure and the Body, or, Delation, Punishment, and the Scopophilic Eye in Cligès, the ‘Berenger au lonc cul’, and ‘Castia gilos’
(Language: English)
Alani Hicks-Bartlett, Department of French Studies, Brown University
Index Terms: Language and Literature – French or Occitan; Women’s Studies
 
Abstract Bodily mutilation – real or imagined – represents a visceral example of the unbinding of the body. Papers in this session approach mutilation through the lens of castration, bodily relics, and torture. An examination of Christine de Pizan’s Le Livre de la Cité des Dames, Chrétien de Troyes’s Cligès and the hagiographies of Marie d’Oignies and Hadewijch reveal that the body, and particularly the female body, served as a contested space. As a locus for empowerment or disempowerment, the enforcement or self-infliction of disfigurement, these texts show how medieval bodies, and damage the wrought upon them, both strengthened and abused bodily identity.

 

Session 741
Title Monsters on the Margins: Perspectives on the Monstrous in Medieval Texts
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Organiser IMC Programming Committee
 
Moderator/Chair Marina Montesano, Dipartimento di Civiltà antiche e moderne, Università degli Studi di Messina
 
Paper 741-a Enslaved Giants: Ascopard’s Monstrosity and Mitigation in the Middle English Bevis of Hampton
(Language: English)
Charlotte Ross, Independent Scholar, Bristol
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Mentalities
Paper 741-b Dancers from Abroad: Gothic Marginal Illustrations Featuring ‘Others’
(Language: English)
Zofia Marianna Załęska, Institute of Art History, University of Warsaw
Index Terms: Art History – General; Daily Life; Manuscripts and Palaeography; Performance Arts – Dance
Paper 741-c The Persian Perspective: On The Book of Wonders Outside of the European Centre
(Language: English)
Lucia Simova, Independent Scholar, South Orange, New Jersey
Index Terms: Art History – General; Islamic and Arabic Studies; Manuscripts and Palaeography
 
Abstract Paper -a:
Modern criticism of giants in early Middle English literature is largely concerned with the exclusion of these monstrous figures as antitheses to mankind. The topic of this paper addresses an understudied area of this field: the ‘enslaved giant’, where these bodies of extreme otherness are placed firmly within the reassuring familiarity of human society. This study explores the role of Ascopard as an enslaved giant in the Middle English text of Bevis of Hampton, with reference to the Anglo-Norman source text. This paper argues that the Middle English text blurs the boundary between human and animal by reducing Ascopard’s monstrosity and mitigating his villainy, whilst still acting within the parameters of the plot.

Paper -b:
Dance, as an integral part of the life of a medieval man, was often depicted in the margins of gothic manuscripts. Alongside dancing villagers, churchmen, ladies and knights, we can spot people overgrew with fur with animal heads. Trying to understand illustrator’s intentions I will consider whether those creatures are actually wildmen, cynocephali, or other legendary monsters believed to live outside western world, or simply masked, carnivalesque people. If the dancers come from faraway land, how do they know the steps? If they are locals, why are they disguised? In this paper I will try to answer aforementioned questions putting it in a broad context of medieval dance.

Paper -c:
The world that exists at the periphery of the medieval mind has always been marred with creatures unknown and things not yet understood. If the center moves beyond the European confines, the borders appear to be broadened. Muhammad ibn Al-Qazwini is one of a myriad of scholars that were combining the knowledge of medieval European explorers and bestiary authors and of the changing world around him. This paper aims to grapple with what the periphery looked like from a Persian perspective, with an introduction to Al-Qazwini’s Book of Wonders.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Tuesday 7 July 2020: 16.30-18.00

Session 810
Title (Un)Bound Bodies: Consolidating and Fragmenting Borders, IV
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 16.30-18.00
 
Organiser Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
 
Moderator/Chair Agata Zielinska, Department of History, University College London
 
Paper 810-a Flesh Side: Sharing Bodies with New Haven, Beinecke Library, MS 84
(Language: English)
Kayla Lunt, Department of Art History, Indiana University, Bloomington
Index Terms: Art History – General; Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 810-b ‘Fair […] as any wezele’: A Study of the Unnatural Body in Medieval Literature
(Language: English)
Caitlin Mahaffy, Department of English, Indiana University, Bloomington
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Social History
Paper 810-c Living the Life of Man, Not the Mule: Reason and Self-Knowledge in Cistercian Texts on the Soul
(Language: English)
Jack Ford, Department of History, University College London
Index Terms: Monasticism; Social History
 
Abstract The distinction between man and animal, the human and non-human, was a fluid one in the Middle Ages. Within the sphere of morality – a distinctly human trait – the shadow of animality was always lurking the background. As the writings of 12th century Cistercians and the poetry of Chaucer attest, the sinful behaviour of man was labelled in reference to the animal, being characterised by unbridled, rather than restrained, desire. And the very animal-skin manuscripts on which this moral thought was written reveals that the power of animals, even after death, to be in dialogue with, and shape the interpretation of, a text.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Tuesday 7 July 2020: 19.00-20.00

Session 910
Title (Un)Bound Bodies: New Approaches – A Round Table Discussion
Date/Time Tuesday 7 July 2020: 19.00-20.00
 
Organiser Lauren Rozenberg, Department of History of Art, University College London
 
Moderator/Chair Jack Ford, Department of History, University College London
 
Abstract For decades, bodies have been a central framework for historical inquiries. No matter how much we try to distance ourselves from them, bodies remain at the centre and borders of scholarship. Medieval bodies were fluid and contradictory loci: bound and unbound, contained yet susceptible to a host of external physical and invisible forces. Bodily boundaries were paradoxically sharp, debated, and real, yet also fluid, permeable, and imaginary. This round table discussion seeks to investigate these ‘real’ and ‘imaginary’ borders of the body and to complicate and critique existing narratives of ‘bound bodies’. It aims to embrace innovative and interdisciplinary approaches that push back, and go beyond, established methodologies.

Participants include Elma Brenner (University College London), Joanne Edge (University of Manchester), Jacqueline Jung (Yale University), and Lauren Rozenberg (University College London).

 

Wednesday 8 July 2020

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Wednesday 8 July 2020: 11.15-12.45

Session 1101
Title Sessions in Honor of Stephen D. White, II: Medieval Legal Processes and Disputing
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Organiser Richard E. Barton, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Greensboro
  Tracey L. Billado, Department of History, Queens College, City University of New York
 
Moderator/Chair Hans Jacob Orning, Institutt for arkeologi, konservering og historie, Universitetet i Oslo
 
Paper 1101-a Disputes over Customs in Central Medieval France
(Language: English)
Tracey L. Billado, Department of History, Queens College, City University of New York
Index Terms: Charters and Diplomatics; Law
Paper 1101-b Visigothic Law and the Settlement of Disputes in Northern Iberia, c. 900-1100
(Language: English)
Daria Safronova, Department of Medieval History, Lomonosov Moscow State University
Index Terms: Charters and Diplomatics; Law
Paper 1101-c Pleading with Demons: Possession and Property in 14th-Century Brittany
(Language: English)
Jehangir Yezdi Malegam, History Department, Duke University
Index Terms: Hagiography; Law
 
Abstract The second of the sessions in honor of Stephen D. White demonstrates the importance of processual, case-study approaches to the study of disputes and law, approaches White pioneered in medieval history. Billado uses 11th-century disputes over customs, tithes, and parish revenues in ‘greater-Anjou’ to argue that medieval disputants knew how to process their conflicts. Safronova examines the role of Visigothic law in the settlement of disputes in central medieval León, highlighting the importance of unwritten legal rules and the relationship of such rules to other normative systems. Malegam discusses an inquest into the life and miracles of Ivo of Kermartin, using the source to demonstrate the emergence of certain public legal institutions in late medieval Brittany that transformed expectations of saintly advocacy.

 

Session 1118
Title Medieval Ecocriticisms, II: Crafting and Defining Nature
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Sponsor Medieval Ecocriticisms
 
Organiser Michael Bintley, Department of English & Humanities, Birkbeck, University of London
 
Moderator/Chair Michael J. Warren, Independent Scholar, Cranbrook
 
Paper 1118-a Concealing and Revealing ‘Craft’ in Exeter Book Poems and Riddles
(Language: English)
James Antonio Paz, School of Arts, Languages & Cultures, University of Manchester
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Old English; Technology
Paper 1118-b The Edge of the Woods: Species and Gender in Le Roman de Silence
(Language: English)
Aylin Malcolm, Department of English, University of Pennsylvania
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature – French or Occitan; Science
Paper 1118-c Disability and Environment in Old English Poetry
(Language: English)
Heide Estes, Department of English, Monmouth University, New Jersey
Index Terms: Daily Life; Language and Literature – Old English
 
Abstract These papers address human approaches to ordering and organising the world in the Middle Ages, investigating methods and modes of description through which humans endeavoured to define and categorise humans, non-human animals, and environment – or to question the unstable boundaries between them. Paz explores the interplay between divine ‘craft’ and acts of making and transformation by early medieval poets and other craftspeople; Malcolm considers interwoven hierarchies of gender and species in the 13th-century Roman de Silence as a means of interrogating contemporary classificatory schemes; and Estes discusses parallel approaches to disability and environment in early English poetry.

 

Session 1157
Title #DisMed 3: Disability and Accessibility in Higher Education – A Round Table Discussion
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Sponsor Medievalists with Disabilities
 
Organiser Alexandra R. A. Lee, Department of History, University College London
 
Moderator/Chair Elizabeth Biggs, History Department, University of the West of England, Bristol
 
Abstract Disability and accessibility are two key issues in Higher Education. While they do not solely affect the medieval community, it is important to bring such issues to the fore to improve access across the board. This round-table will address disability, mental (ill) heath, neurodiversity, and chronic illness, and participants will highlight issues as well as examples of good practice in various academic environments.

Participants include Alice Bennett (University of York), Hope Doherty (Durham University), Catherine Maguire (Queen Mary University of London), and Jude Seal (University of London).

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Wednesday 8 July 2020: 14.15-15.45

Session 1208
Title Growing Old in the Middle Ages: A Gendered Perspective, I – Social Practices
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Sponsor Anthropologie historique du long Moyen Âge (AHLOMA), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
 
Organiser Laura Cayrol-Bernardo, Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
 
Moderator/Chair Laura Cayrol-Bernardo, Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
 
Paper 1208-a Too Old to Work: The End of Working Life in Medieval Catalonia
(Language: English)
Mireia Comas-Via, Departament d’Història i Arqueologia, Universitat de Barcelona
Index Terms: Charters and Diplomatics; Daily Life; Gender Studies; Social History
Paper 1208-b Gender, Old Age, Disability, and Religiosity: The Intersectionality Invoked by Petitioners to Contravene Christian Prescriptions
(Language: English)
Ninon Dubourg, Laboratoire Identités Cultures et Territoires (ICT), Université Diderot Paris 7
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Religious Life; Social History
Paper 1208-c The ‘Suitable Age’: Elderly Nuns and Ageing in Iberian Female Monasteries, c. 12th-16th Centuries
(Language: English)
Araceli Rosillo-Luque, Arxiu-Biblioteca dels Franciscans de Catalunya, Barcelona
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Monasticism; Religious Life; Social History
 
Abstract Over the last few decades, studies on the biological, economic, social, psychological, and cultural aspects of old age have multiplied, due to current debate on ageing in western populations and its impact in our societies. However, despite the vast possibilities in social sciences to develop this topic of research, the subject still has not received the attention it deserves. This is particularly true when it comes to gender studies. This session aims to analyse different attitudes about ageing and old age in Medieval Western Europe, bearing in mind how these affected both men and women.

 

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Wednesday 8 July 2020: 16.30-18.00

 

Session 1305
Title Crusade and Authority in the Holy Land and in Europe
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 16.30-18.00
 
Organiser IMC Programming Committee
 
Moderator/Chair Helen J. Nicholson, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
 
Paper 1305-a The Third Time Was Not the Charm?: Philip Augustus, the Crusading Movement, and the Growth of Capetian Authority after the Third Crusade
(Language: English)
Darren Henry-Noel, Department of History, Queen’s University, Kingston
Index Terms: Administration; Crusades; Historiography – Modern Scholarship; Politics and Diplomacy
Paper 1305-b Terra sancta?: Questioning the Christian Character of the Latin East in the Wake of Territorial Loss
(Language: English)
Emma Zürcher, Department of History, University College London
Index Terms: Crusades; Geography and Settlement Studies; Social History
Paper 1305-c Illness as God’s Punishment and the Borders of Honor Imperii
(Language: English)
Monja Katja Schünemann, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität Berlin
Index Terms: Historiography – Medieval; Literacy and Orality; Medicine
 
Abstract Paper -a:
My paper argues that the crusading movement was a significant contributor to the social and political landscape of Capetian France, and suggests that Philip’s strong support and participation in the crusading movement proved crucial to the emergence of a centralized royal bureaucracy. In asserting the organic nature of crusading in the development of Capetian monarchical authority under Philip, this paper offers a focused reassessment of the intersection of crusading and Capetian monarchical interests that challenges the traditional paradigm of analysis that regards increased bureaucratization as evidence of secularization. Instead, it argues that the wider sociocultural milieu of crusading provided the necessary conditions for the success of Philip’s expansion of Capetian political authority through a firm association of the monarchy with crusading. My paper argues that the strengthening of this relationship lay at the heart of Philip’s ideological program, and that his reign engaged with the cultural and political impact of crusading to reframe the discourse of medieval sovereignty.

Paper -b:
My paper will examine whether 12th-century authors, commentating on defeats suffered in the Latin East, still considered territory to be Christian after it had been lost to the Muslim forces. Through analysis of contemporary source material, including papal bulls, letters sent to the West, chronicles, annals, and troubadours songs, I look at how ideas about the intrinsic ‘Christianness’ of the Holy Land, arising from its historical importance, compete with the reality of temporary ownership. Does enemy occupation eradicate the previously held sense of societal belonging to a place in favour of its total exclusion from Christendom?

Paper -c:
When an apparently sudden epidemic broke out in Barbarosssa’s army before Rome in 1167, this sensation occupied whole Europe. Voices were quickly heard blaming the emperor for the event. He had expelled pope Alexander II from Rome in order to appoint Paschalis III. Only the imperial court remained silent. Gottfried von Viterbo’s poem as a source has so far been neglected. In it, the author evokes five cosmological inner images based on Ad Herennium before the reader’s inner eye. These images are intended to prove that whoever died had been rejected by God from the border of honor imperii because of disobedience.

 

 

Session 1308
Title Growing Old in the Middle Ages: A Gendered Perspective, II – Representations
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 16.30-18.00
 
Sponsor Anthropologie historique du long Moyen Âge (AHLOMA), École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
 
Organiser Laura Cayrol-Bernardo, Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
 
Moderator/Chair Araceli Rosillo-Luque, Arxiu-Biblioteca dels Franciscans de Catalunya, Barcelona
 
Paper 1308-a Maledicta vetula: Deconstructing Women’s Old Age in the Medieval Western Mediterranean
(Language: English)
Laura Cayrol-Bernardo, Centre de Recherches Historiques, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), Paris
Index Terms: Art History – General; Gender Studies; Medicine; Mentalities
Paper 1308-b The Limits of the Stages of Life and Temporality in the Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Andrea von Hülsen-Esch, Institut für Kunstgeschichte, Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
Index Terms: Art History – General; Art History – Painting; Art History – Sculpture; Gender Studies
Paper 1308-c Ageing Bodies and Obscenity in Late Medieval French Poetry
(Language: English)
Camille Brouzes, Litt&Arts (UMR 5316), Université Grenoble Alpes
Index Terms: Gender Studies; Language and Literature – French or Occitan
 
Abstract Over the last few decades, studies on the biological, economic, social, psychological and cultural aspects of old age have multiplied, due to current debate on ageing in western populations and its impact in our societies. However, despite the vast possibilities in social sciences to develop this topic of research, the subject still has not received the attention it deserves. This is particularly true when it comes to gender studies. This session aims to analyse different attitudes about ageing and old age in medieval Western Europe, bearing in mind how these affected both men and women.

 

 

Session 1339
Title The Northern Way, II: (Arch)Bishops and the Anglo-Scottish Borders in the 14th Century
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 16.30-18.00
 
Sponsor University of York
 
Organiser Sarah Rees Jones, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
 
Moderator/Chair Gwilym Dodd, Department of History, University of Nottingham
 
Paper 1339-a Medical Knowledge and the (Arch)Bishop in the Later Medieval Archdiocese of York
(Language: English)
Katherine Harvey, Department of History, Classics & Archaeology, Birkbeck, University of London
Index Terms: Administration; Ecclesiastical History; Medicine; Religious Life
Paper 1339-b Who Got What in the Scramble for Patronage?
(Language: English)
Alison McHardy, Department of History, University of Nottingham
Index Terms: Administration; Ecclesiastical History; Politics and Diplomacy; Religious Life
Paper 1339-c Episcopal Authority and Urban Governance in the North of England in the 14th Century
(Language: English)
Sarah Rees Jones, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York
Index Terms: Administration; Ecclesiastical History; Local History; Social History
 
Abstract This session will explore the evidence provided by the registers of the Archbishops of York for the role of the archbishops as northern leaders and political actors in the North of England in the 14th century.

 

Session 1356
Title Signifying Bodies in 14th- and 15th-Century English Writing
Date/Time Wednesday 8 July 2020: 16.30-18.00
 
Organiser IMC Programming Committee
 
Moderator/Chair Carolyn B. Anderson, Department of English, University of Wyoming
 
Paper 1356-a The Legend of Margery Kempe: Reading Scarred Skin in The Book of Margery Kempe
(Language: English)
Emily Harless, Centre for Medieval & Early Modern Studies, University of Manchester
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Religious Life
Paper 1356-b The Invisible Knight: Perceptions of Disability in Sir Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur
(Language: English)
Linda Steele, Faculty of Arts & Social Sciences, Carleton University, Ottawa
Index Terms: Crusades; Language and Literature – Middle English; Medicine; Social History
Paper 1356-c Watery Wirrals and Liquified Knights: Exploring Elemental Ecologies in Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
(Language: English)
Sarah Breckenridge Wright, Department of English, Duquesne University, Pennsylvania
Index Terms: Language and Literature – Middle English; Science
 
Abstract Paper -a:
In the Book of Margery Kempe, the famed and controversial mystic Margery Kempe inflicts herself with scars – scratching on her chest and a bite on her hand – marking the borders of her body with signs that reveal the dangers of her pre-conversion life and that latent threat that may remain. In this paper, I will discuss theories of ‘reading skin’ and the various implications of reading Margery Kempe’s skin: her skin as legendary and the scarring as stigmata, with its various connotations that develop across the medieval period and in modern scholarship.

Paper -b:
Published in 1485, Thomas Malory’s Le Morte Darthur is a chivalric romance text reflecting late medieval attitudes and values, illuminating contemporary ideologies of social situations involving disability in the chivalric community. In Le Morte Darthur, Laura Finke observes that ‘violence provides the foundation for an elaborate structure of exchange which determines hierarchies among men; it functions as a form of what anthropologist Pierre Bourdieu refers to as symbolic capital.’ By examining the text, it is possible to ascertain medieval ideas and responses to disability through the character’s reaction to their own and other’s infirmities caused by violence. These attitudes, in turn, illustrate the development of societal views regarding disability, thereby pushing the boundaries of what societies consider ‘normal’.

Paper -c:
Sir Gawain and the Green Knight has received a great deal of ecocritical attention, yet studies have overlooked the elemental complexity of the poet’s world. Though Gawain travels through a forested Wirral, the poet associates this landscape more with water/air than earth. As Gawain navigates the forest, our eyes are directed to the sky when we are told of the ‘mony bryddez’ therein, and the forest floor is ‘misy and myre’: a wetland more pool/stream than detritus/duff (MED, mīre, n.[1], 2). My paper examines this elemental association, arguing that Gawain’s association with water/air distinguishes him from the Green Knight, who is associated with earth/fire. This separation begins metaphorically, but it is also literalized, most interestingly in Gawain’s humoral ecology. When Gawain cries, we are reminded of how humankind impacts the world by literally becoming the world through an exchange of fluids. Here the poet extends the familiar Green Knight/earth assemblage to Gawain/water; each character becomes a unique elemental body that challenges boundaries between human and more-than-human worlds, and realizes the imaginative potential of integrative ecologies.

Thursday 9 July 2020

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Thursday 9 July 2020: 09.00-10.30

Session 1511
Title On the Borders?: Recentring Eunuchs in Byzantium
Date/Time Thursday 9 July 2020: 09.00-10.30
 
Sponsor Cardiff Centre for Late Antique Religion & Culture
 
Organiser Shaun Tougher, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
 
Moderator/Chair Eve MacDonald, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
 
Paper 1511-a The Border between Eunuchs and Non-Eunuchs in the Novels of the Emperor Leo VI, 886-912
(Language: English)
Yuki Kontani, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Gender Studies; Law; Social History
Paper 1511-b The Place of the Ethiopian Eunuch in Byzantium
(Language: English)
Shaun Tougher, School of History, Archaeology & Religion, Cardiff University
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Gender Studies; Religious Life; Social History
Paper 1511-c Recentring Marginal Texts/Bodies/Perspectives in the Psalter of an Eunuch Abbot (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, MS Vat. gr. 342)
(Language: English)
Felix Szabo, Department of History, University of Chicago
Index Terms: Byzantine Studies; Gender Studies; Language and Literature – Greek; Religious Life
 
Abstract It is all too easy to consign eunuchs to the borders as beings of marginal social and gender identities. This session focuses on eunuchs in the Byzantine empire and recentres them within narratives of their lives. Yuki Kontani examines the legislation of Leo VI, considering issues of marriage and adoption. Shaun Tougher explores the significance for Byzantine eunuchs of the story of the Ethiopian Eunuch from the ‘Acts of the Apostles’. Felix Szabo focuses on a manuscript produced for a eunuch abbot, containing three epigrams by him. These reveal the lived experience of eunuch monasticism.

 

Session 1521
Title Meteorology, Miracles, and Medicine: Traversing the Borders of Magic in Medieval Europe
Date/Time Thursday 9 July 2020: 09.00-10.30
 
Sponsor Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
 
Organiser Rebecca A. C. Rist, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
 
Moderator/Chair Anne Mathers-Lawrence, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
 
Paper 1521-a ‘In the scholarly no man’s land?’: The Popularity of Late Medieval Weather Prognostics
(Language: English)
Janet Walls, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Index Terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine; Science
Paper 1521-b Charms, Amulets, and Ligatures: The Boundaries of Magic, Medicine, and Religion in the Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Victoria Page, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Index Terms: Medicine; Religious Life; Science
Paper 1521-c ‘And sche shall be delyveryd a-non with-owȝt perell’: Medicinal, Magical, and Miraculous Treatments for Childbirth in Late Medieval England
(Language: English)
Claire Collins, Graduate Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Reading
Index Terms: Medicine; Social History; Women’s Studies
 
Abstract This panel will explore the boundaries of magic in the Middle Ages and the inherent tensions between belief and science. The first paper will analyse the ways in which late medieval weather prognostic texts were defined and used in comparison to early medieval ones. The second paper will examine the connections, but also blurred boundaries, between miracles, medicine, and magic and examine what was considered a miracle or medical cure, and what magic or demonic. The final paper will discuss treatments for pregnant women in late medieval England which aided childbirth and often traversed the boundaries of our modern concepts of medicine, magic, and religion.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Thursday 9 July 2020: 11.15-12.45

Session 1621
Title Health Identities across and within Borders
Date/Time Thursday 9 July 2020: 11.15-12.45
 
Organiser Elma Brenner, Wellcome Collection, London
 
Moderator/Chair Wendy J. Turner, Department of History, Anthropology & Philosophy, Augusta University, Georgia
 
Paper 1621-a The Transmission of the Culture of Materia Medica around the Medieval Mediterranean
(Language: English)
Ayman Yasin Atat, Abteilung für Geschichte der Naturwissenschaften mit Schwerpunkt Pharmaziegeschichte, Technische Universität Braunschweig
Index Terms: Islamic and Arabic Studies; Medicine; Science
Paper 1621-b Crossing the Border: The Movement of Materia Medica in the Carolingian World
(Language: English)
Claire Burridge, Humanities Research Programme, British School at Rome
Index Terms: Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine; Science
Paper 1621-c Travel and Health: England and France in the Later Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Elma Brenner, Wellcome Collection, London
Index Terms: Daily Life; Medicine; Social History
 
Abstract This session explores the movement of medical practitioners, substances, and ideas across and within geographic borders over a broad time span. Both Burridge and Atat set medieval Europe in a global context. Burridge examines the evidence in early medieval recipe collections for the circulation of medicinal products from southeast Asia in Europe, while Atat considers the transmission of Arabic and Ottoman pharmaceutical knowledge in the Mediterranean region. Brenner and Rawcliffe’s paper focuses on travel and health in late medieval England and France, especially the careers of peripatetic medical practitioners. Adaptation, translation and shifting identities, as well as borders, are prominent themes in this session.

 

IMC 2020: sessions for timeslot Thursday 9 July 2020: 14.15-15.45

Session 1703
Title Disabled and Disabling Animals
Date/Time Thursday 9 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Sponsor M(edieval) A(nimal) D(ata-Network), Central European University, Budapest/Wien
 
Organiser Alice Choyke, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest/Wien
 
Moderator/Chair Gerhard Jaritz, Department of Medieval Studies, Central European University, Budapest/Wien
 
Paper 1703-a Disabled by Animal: Medieval Human-Animal Encounters Gone Wrong
(Language: English)
Irina Metzler, College of Arts & Humanities, Swansea University
Index Terms: Daily Life; Medicine
Paper 1703-b Horses, Hawks, and Other One-Legged Beasts: Injuries to Animals in Medieval Welsh Law
(Language: English)
Edgar Rops, Independent Scholar, Riga
Index Terms: Daily Life; Law
Paper 1703-c ‘You have no more feeling than a blind cart-horse!’: Caring for Impaired Horses in the Late Middle Ages
(Language: English)
Sunny Harrison, Institute for Medieval Studies, University of Leeds
Index Terms: Daily Life; Medicine
Paper 1703-d ‘Send Forth the Foot of the Cow’: Deliverance and Piety in a Medieval Portuguese Cult
(Language: English)
David Luís Aniceto Soares, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa
Index Terms: Daily Life; Lay Piety; Religious Life
 
Abstract Disability of animals can be connected with their physical inabilities that remove them from economic exploitation by humans. It can reflect notions of what disability means for humans, in metaphorical, symbolic, and normative ways. Finally, the practical aspects can certainly interact with the notional ones creating new categories of what it meant to be a disabled medieval animal. The session will explore any kind of injury, illness, attack, or general disablement of animals and the way human beings reacted to these problems, and also human disablements through animal encounters.

 

Session 1721
Title Bloodletting within the Borders of Media, Medicine, and Species
Date/Time Thursday 9 July 2020: 14.15-15.45
 
Organiser Elke Krotz, Institut für Germanistik, Universität Wien
 
Moderator/Chair Nicolas Huss, Deutsches Seminar, Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen
 
Paper 1721-a Single-Sheet Wall Calendar, Manuscript, or Printed Treatise: A Media History of Bloodletting Texts
(Language: English)
Elke Krotz, Institut für Germanistik, Universität Wien
Index Terms: Language and Literature – German; Language and Literature – Latin; Manuscripts and Palaeography; Medicine
Paper 1721-b ‘Hie solt du niht lazen’: A Universal Remedy at Its Limits
(Language: English)
Ylva Schwinghammer, Institut für Germanistik, Universität Graz
Index Terms: Language and Literature – German; Medicine
Paper 1721-c Transbordering: From Bloodletting to Transfusion
(Language: English)
Lisa Glänzer, Institut für Germanistik, Universität Graz
Index Terms: Medicine; Science
 
Abstract Bloodletting is considered as one of the most popular therapeutic methods of the Middle Ages and was recommended for prevention, diagnosis and treatment of various illnesses. This session explores some points of intersection between theory and practice, physicians and barber-surgeons and human and veterinary medicine.

Paper -a:
What do different media – single-sheet wall calendars, bloodletting treatises in manuscripts and informations given in account books – tell about physicians, barbers and patients? Why were single-sheet leaves inserted in manuscripts and vice versa manuscript pages used as a vademecum? How do printed and handwritten texts interdepend? (E. Krotz)

Paper -b:
The limits of contraindications: Instructions for bloodletting can be found in nearly every medieval medical text. However, a closer look reveals a number of indications to determine whether or not bloodletting is suitable, like vitality, temperament, age, symptoms, pregnancy, temperature, zodiac signs, date… If these rules are consequently followed, the actual practice runs within narrow bounds. (Y. Schwinghammer)

Paper -c:
Transbordering – from bloodletting to xenotransfusion: Bloodletting not only describes the healing process for the reduction or removal of harmful bodily fluids, but also represents a method for obtaining blood from vertebrates, culminating in the blood transfusion from animals to humans in the course of the 17th century. Blood was thus attributed a life-preserving or life-donating function. The idea that its transfer not only transforms strength and health, but also character traits, also raises questions about the role of the blood-donating animal. (L. Glänzer)

 

 

 


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