Archive of Plenary Lectures

Clothing the Angelic Life: The Desert Fathers on the Necessity of Clothing for Monks, Angels, and Adam

Thelma Thomas

New York University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Sex Magic and You: Experimental Ritual, Mythical Innovation, and the Study of Medieval Religion

Marla Segol

University of Buffalo

Sponsored by Medieval Institute Publications and De Gruyter

An Ordinary Ship and Its Stories of Early Globalism

Geraldine Heng

University of Texas at Austin

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Threatening That He Would Break Her Bones: Compulsion in Late Medieval Marriage

Ruth Mazo Karras

Trinity College Dublin

Sponsored by Medieval Institute Publications and De Gruyter

Marco Polo and the Diversity of the Global Middle Ages

Sharon Kinoshita

University of California, Santa Cruz

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The Black Queen of Sheba: A Global History of an African Idea

Wendy Laura Belcher

Princeton University

Sponsored by Medieval Institute Publications and De Gruyter

The 55th International Congress on Medieval Studies was canceled due to the pandemic and no plenary lectures were given.

Icons of Sound and the Exultet Liturgy of Southern Italy

Bissera V. Pentcheva

Stanford University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Mastering Humiliation in Medieval Literature

Bonnie Wheeler

Southern Methodist University

Sponsored by the University of Pennsylvania Press

"Salvation is Medicine": The Medieval Production and Gendered Erasures of Therapeutic Knowledge

Sara Ritchey

University of Tennessee, Knoxville

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Saint Louis’s Other Converts

William Chester Jordan

Princeton University

Sponsored by Cornell University Press

Artifacts of the Infidel: Medieval and Modern Interpretations of the Sacred Law of Islam

Leor Halevi

Vanderbilt University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The Donkey and the Boat: Rethinking Mediterranean Economic Expansion in the Eleventh Century

Chris Wickham

University of Oxford

How We Read J. J. R. Tolkien Reading Grendel's Mother

Jane Chance

Rice University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Religion and the End of the Roman West

Ian Wood

University of Leeds

Modern Toleration through a Medieval Lens: A "Judgmental" View

Cary J. Nederman

Texas A&M University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The Notion of the Middle Ages: Our Middle Ages, Ourselves

Richard Utz

Georgia Institute of Technology

The Libel of the Lamb: Violence and Medieval Metaphor

Susan L. Einbinder, University of Connecticut

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

What They Read, What They Saw, What They Heard: Composers and Sacred Music in Late Medieval Culture

Anne Walters Robertson, University of Chicago

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Poseidon's Oar: Horizons of the Medieval Mediterranean

Peregrine Horden, Royal Holloway, University of London

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Augustinian Intention and Medieval Aesthetic

Mary Carruthers, New York University

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Conceptualizing Literary History: Europe, 1348-1418

David Wallace, University of Pennsylvania

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The Heroic Age of Gothic: Invention and Its Contexts, 1200-1400

Paul Binski, University of Cambridge

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Outremer: Byzantine Art in a World of Multiple Christianities

Annemarie Weyl Carr, Southern Methodist University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Gerald of Wales and the Ethnographic Imagination

Robert Bartlett, University of St. Andrews

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Why Were Latin Qur'ans Produced in Christian Spain but Never Read There? Reflections on Spanish-Christian Culture during the Long Twelfth Century

Thomas E. Burman, University of Tennessee-Knoxville

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The "Clerical Proletariat" and the Rise of English: A New Look at Fourteenth-Century Book Production

Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, University of Notre Dame

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Fictions of Conduct in Medieval France

Roberta L. Krueger, Hamilton College

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Michael of Rhodes: A Venetian Seafarer and His Book

Alan M. Stahl, Princeton University

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Seeing, Reading and Interpreting the Apocalypse in Complex Medieval Manuscripts

Richard K. Emmerson, Florida State University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Are Bestiaries Really Psalters, and Vice Versa?

Christopher de Hamel, University of Cambridge

Sponsored by the Richard Rawlinson Center and Boydell & Brewer

When Did the Near East Become Muslim? Patterns of Christian Decline in Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia, 634-1340

R. Stephen Humphreys, University of California, Santa Barbara

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Dante’s Gift: Reflections on the Divine Comedy

Christopher Kleinhenz, University of Wisconsin-Madison

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

Madeline H. Caviness, Tufts University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Historical Fictions in Medieval Castile

Alan D. Deyermond, Queen Mary and Westfield College, University of London

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer and the Ibero-Medieval Association of North America

Mastering Authority and Authorizing Mastery in the Long Twelfth Century

Jan M. Ziolkowski, Harvard University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The Medieval Textual "I"

A. C. Spearing, University of Virginia 

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Making History: Actions and Agents within the Liturgical Framework of Time

Margot Fassler, Yale University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Margin and Center: The Book of Hours and the Late Medieval Culture of Prayer

Eamon Duffy, Magdalene College, University of Cambridge

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

The Specter of Judaism in the Age of Mass Conversion: Spain 1391-1492

David Nirenberg, Johns Hopkins University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The French of England: A Question of Cultural Traffic?

Jocelyn Wogan-Browne, Fordham University 

Sponsored by Boydell & Brewer

Relics, Swords and the Stories They Tell in the Chanson de Roland

Eugene Vance, University of Washington

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Competing Conversations in the Generation of 1400: Townspeople, Inquisitors, Societies of the Devout and Women Writers

John Van Engen, University of Notre Dame

Mural Paintings and Manuscripts as Evidence for the Papal "Rapprochement" with Byzantium in the Ninth Century

John Osborne, University of Victoria

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Reading the Heroes and Saints of Early Medieval Latin Literature

Danuta Shanzer, Cornell University

The End of Christian Art

Karl F. Morrison, Rutgers University

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Tensions, Ambiguities, and the Pressures of History: Constructing the Cultural Biography of Joseph the Carpenter

Pamela Sheingorn, Baruch College and Graduate Center, CUNY

On the Performance of Medieval Music

Christopher Page, University of Cambridge

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The Making of Maid Marian

Stephen Knight, Cardiff University

From Roman Tax Exemptions to Medieval Holy Places: Landmarks in the History of Immunities

Barbara H. Rosenwein, Loyola University, Chicago

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Oculus Paleographicus

Rev. Leonard E. Boyle, Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana

Gothic Ivory Carvings and the Limits of Connoisseurship

Paul Williamson, Victoria and Albert Museum

Sponsored by the International Center of Medieval Art

Alchemy and the Use of Vernacular Language in the Late Middle Ages

Michela Pereira, Univeristà degli Studi di Siena

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

The Study of Pope Gregory VII

H. E. J. Cowdrey, University of Oxford

Where East is West: Art and Its Viewers on Venetian Crete

Robin Cormac, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

When Did the Middle Ages End? Perspectives of an Intellectual Historian

Marcia Colish, Oberlin College

"Scivias": Reading without Learning, Learning without Reading

Michael Clanchy, Institute of Historical Research, University of London

Sponsored by the Medieval Academy of America

Thomas Becket: The Construction and Deconstruction of a Saint from the Middle Ages to the Reformation

Phyllis B. Roberts, Graduate School and University Center, CUNY

From the Ancient to the Medieval City: Continuity and Change in the Early Middle Ages (with Special Attention to Tours)

Nancy Gauthier, Université de Tours

Tobit’s Nights: A Scriptural (Fish)bone of Contention about Ethical Individualism

Alain Boureau, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

Medieval Transition from Latin to Romance before 1300

Roger Wright, University of Liverpool

Quis Teutonicos constituit judices nationum? Or, the Trouble with Heinrich

Horst Fuhrmann, Monumenta Germaniae Historica

Latinate Jewish Wills in Medieval Spain

Robert I. Burns, S.J., University of California, Los Angeles

Witchcraft and Sainthood: Anthropological Problems and Structural Comparison

Gabor Klaniczay, University of Budapest

The Oral Text of "The Wanderer"

J. B. Bessinger, Jr., New York University

The Insular Tradition: An Overview

Rosemary Cramp, Durham, England

Frederick Barbarossa as "Lord of the World"

Robert E. Benson, University of California, Los Angeles

In Search of the Real Bernard

Jean Leclercq, Abbaye Saint-Maurice, Clervaux

Norman Art of Sicily and Its Dynastic Patronage

Beat Brenk, Universität Basel

Sutton Hoo: The Pros and Cons

Sir David Wilson, British Museum

Learning in the Middle Ages

John Contreni, Purdue University

The Theology of the Resurrection and Bodily Miracles in the Thirteenth Century

Caroline Walker Bynum, Getty Center

Sermons for the People: The Anglo-Saxon Contribution

James Cross, University of Liverpool

Why and How to Write the Biography of a Medieval Character: Saint Louis?

Jacques LeGoff, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales

Society and the Body: The Social Meaning of Asceticism in Late Antiquity

Peter Brown, Princeton University

The Carolingian Age: Reflections on Its Place in the History of the Middle Ages

Richard Sullivan, Michigan State University

Signs and Ceremonies in Medieval Monasticism

Giles Constable, Harvard University

Looking at William Caxton: The Historian's Eye and the Bibliographer's Eye

Paul Needham, Pierpont Morgan Library

Representation of Time in the Late Middle Ages

John Leyerle, University of Toronto

The Legacy of John Wyclif

Anne Hudson, University of Oxford

King Arthur as a Medium for Political Action

Karl-Heinz Goeller,Universität Regensburg

Crisis of Faith in the Twelfth Century

Karl Bosl, Bayerische Akademie der Wissenschaften

Address at the Public Session of the Fellows of the Medieval Academy of America

Laurence K. Shook, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

The Crusades from the Point of View of Byzantium

Sir Steven Runciman, Dumfriesshire, Scotland

Roots and Essence of Colonialism: Medieval Attitudes to Alien Culture and Society

Joshua Prawer, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

The Miracles of St. Benedict

Benedicta Ward, University of Oxford

Albert the Great and Medieval Culture

James Weisheipl, O.P., Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

How Original was Joachim of Fiore's Theology of History?

Marjorie Reeves, University of Oxford

Nova et Vetera: On the Improvement of Our Methods

Leopold Genicot, Université de Louvain

Reform and Revolution in Sixteenth-Century Germany: Perspectives of Research and Discussion

Günter Volger, Alexander Humboldt Universität

Rhetoric and Philosophy in the Renaissance

Paul Oskar Kristeller, Columbia University

The Rhetoric of Damnation: The Poetics of Dante's Inferno

John Freccero, Yale University

The Idea of Man in the Middle Ages

Gordon Leff, University of York

Interaction of Social and Religious Changes in Germany, 1400-1600

Heiko A. Oberman, Universität Tübingen

The Familia as a Basic Structure of Medieval Society

Karl Bosl, Universität München

Image and Text in the Early Middle Ages: Some Problems in Interpretation

Paul J. Meyvaert, Mediaeval Academy of America

The Social Context of Medieval Love Language in Religious, Courtly, and Popular Literature

Jean Leclercq, Clervaux, Rome, and Western Michigan University

Children in Medieval Art

Ilene H. Forsyth, University of Michigan

Bernard of Clairvaux and the Language of Love

Jean Leclercq, Clervaux, Rome, and Western Michigan University

It Seems There Is No God, 1256/1274

Edward A. Synan, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

Saint Bonaventure: Some Aspects of His Life and Doctrine

Theodore Crowley, OFM, Queen’s University, Belfast

The Notion of the "Middle Ages" and the Future of Medieval Research

Karl Ferdinand Werner, Institut historique allemand, Paris

Modern Psychology and Medieval Studies

Jean Leclercq, Clervaux and Rome

The Plowman and the Tree: Labor and Grace in the Fourteenth Century

John Leyerle, Centre for Medieval Studies, University of Toronto

What Is the Most Significant Feature of Medieval Rhetoric?

Panel discussion, chaired by James J. Murphy, University of California, Davis

The Reformation of the Twelfth Century

Giles Constable, Harvard University

Visual Exegesis in Medieval Art

Harry Bober, Institute of Fine Arts, New York University

Gerald the Welshman

Urban Tigner Holmes, University of North Carolina

The Nature and Value of Medieval Studies

Laurence K. Shook, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies

The Notion of the Middle Ages

Laurence K. Shook, Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies