Medieval History
Congratulations to Levi Roach, a PhD student in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, and a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has just been elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, beginning in October 2011. Levi proposes to work on the following project for duration of his Fellowship:
- Recent Asnc News ...
Congratulations to Dr Levi Roach and Dr Helen Foxhall Forbes (both of whom studied ASNC at undergraduate and postgraduate level), who have both been appointed to lectureships in Medieval History at the University of Exeter. Indeed, further congratulations...
- Varia
At the 2011 E. C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture on Thursday 1st December, we were delighted to launch our latest Quiggin Pamphlet, based on last year's lecture. Professor Liam Breatnach, of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, is the author of the...
- Recent Discoveries For Anglo-saxon England
ELB writes: Important new research by ASNC Department members Prof. Simon Keynes and Dr Rosalind Love is highlighted in Cambridge University's Research Horizons newsletter this month. As Research Horizons puts it: Recent headlines might give the impression...
- Who Was The Mysterious Ælfgyva In The Bayeux Tapestry?
A new theory has been put forward on a mysterious scene in the Bayeux Tapestry that appears to show some sort of sexual scandal that involved a woman named Ælfgyva. Joanna Laynesmith, a medieval historian from the University of Reading offers two possibilities...
- Cfp: Æthelred Ii And Cnut The Great: Millennial Conference To Commemorate The Siege Of London In 1016
London a thousand years ago: a lively port, the centre of trade, cross-roadsfor armies going north and south, seat of political government and dispute, all against the backdrop of a war between Æthelred II and Cnut with its culmination...
Medieval History
ASNC awarded Junior Research Fellowship
Congratulations to Levi Roach, a PhD student in the Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, and a member of Trinity College, Cambridge, who has just been elected to a Junior Research Fellowship at St John's College, Cambridge, beginning in October 2011. Levi proposes to work on the following project for duration of his Fellowship:
Over the next three years I will embark on an exciting new research project, provisionally entitled ?Apocalypse and Atonement around the Year 1000: Æthelred ?the Unready?? and Otto III in Comparison?. My intention is to investigate how discourses of penance and apocalypticism influenced kingship and politics at court in England and Germany in the 990s and early 1000s. Specifically, the study will focus on how the rulers of these two kingdoms, Æthelred II (better known to posterity as ?the Unready?) and Otto III reacted to contemporary apocalyptic and eschatological fears. It has long been noted that a degree of millennial anxiety is visible in this period, and it has likewise long been appreciated that discourses of penance and repentance played an important role at Æthelred?s and Otto?s courts. My intention, however, is to look at the intersection between these two, which has yet to receive detailed commentary. The aim will be to investigate both how fears of the Last Judgement may have helped fuel concerns about penance and atonement, and how on the other hand such apocalyptic anxieties themselves may have been in part a product of contemporary concerns about sin and repentance. It is my contention that these concerns about apocalypse and atonement came together in a unique fashion in the 990s, in part?though certainly not only?in response to the approaching millennium. It is, therefore, no accident that both Æthelred and Otto are known to have performed penance, and equally no accident that in both cases this seems to have taken place in the later 990s.[1]
[1] That Otto III performed penance is well established and S. Hamilton, ?Otto III?s Penance: a Case Study of Unity and Diversity in the Eleventh-Century Church?, Studies in Church History 32 (1996), 83?94, surveys the evidence admirably. The evidence for Æthelred?s penance is more circumstantial, but compelling nonetheless. It has yet to receive detailed treatment in print, but will be discussed at length in two forthcoming studies: C. Cubitt, ?The Politics of Remorse: Penance and Royal Piety in the Reign of Æthelred the Unready?, Historical Research (forthcoming); and L. Roach, ?Public Rites and Public Wrongs: Ritual Aspects of Diplomas in Tenth- and Eleventh-Century England?, Early Medieval Europe 19 (forthcoming 2011). I am grateful to Dr. Cubitt for making her paper available to me in advance of publication. For the time being, see also her insightful remarks in ?Ælfric?s Lay Patrons?, in A companion to Ælfric, ed. M. Swan and H. Magennis (Leiden, 2009), pp. 165?92, at 171?5.
- Recent Asnc News ...
Congratulations to Dr Levi Roach and Dr Helen Foxhall Forbes (both of whom studied ASNC at undergraduate and postgraduate level), who have both been appointed to lectureships in Medieval History at the University of Exeter. Indeed, further congratulations...
- Varia
At the 2011 E. C. Quiggin Memorial Lecture on Thursday 1st December, we were delighted to launch our latest Quiggin Pamphlet, based on last year's lecture. Professor Liam Breatnach, of the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, is the author of the...
- Recent Discoveries For Anglo-saxon England
ELB writes: Important new research by ASNC Department members Prof. Simon Keynes and Dr Rosalind Love is highlighted in Cambridge University's Research Horizons newsletter this month. As Research Horizons puts it: Recent headlines might give the impression...
- Who Was The Mysterious Ælfgyva In The Bayeux Tapestry?
A new theory has been put forward on a mysterious scene in the Bayeux Tapestry that appears to show some sort of sexual scandal that involved a woman named Ælfgyva. Joanna Laynesmith, a medieval historian from the University of Reading offers two possibilities...
- Cfp: Æthelred Ii And Cnut The Great: Millennial Conference To Commemorate The Siege Of London In 1016
London a thousand years ago: a lively port, the centre of trade, cross-roadsfor armies going north and south, seat of political government and dispute, all against the backdrop of a war between Æthelred II and Cnut with its culmination...