#MEMSFest2020

MEDIEVAL AND EARLY MODERN

STUDIES SUMMER FESTIVAL

12 - 13 June 2020

Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies

University of Kent, Canterbury

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Welcome!Hello, and welcome to the University of Kent for the 2020 MEMS Summer Festival, hosted by the University of Kent’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. We are delighted to welcome both new and returning attendees to the festival, which promises to be full of stimulating papers all from the comfort of our homes. Should you have any questions or need assistance during the festival, please do not hesitate to speak to a member of the organising committee.

This is the University of Kent’s sixth annual MEMS Summer Festival. This two-day event celebrates Medieval and Early Modern history, with speakers’ topics ranging from 400 to 1800 CE. These topics include politics, religion, economics, art, drama, literature, and material culture, from countries spanning the globe. MEMS Fest is an informal space where postgraduate students, early career researchers, and academics can share their ideas in a friendly community. Undergraduate students in their final year of study are also welcome at the conference to listen to papers and to network with other academics in their field of research.

MEMS Fest Goes Virtual MEMS Festival 2020 will be hosted via the Microsoft Teams platform. Please see this page on our website for advice about using this software. To attend a panel, please click the blue hyperlink on the panel’s title on the festival schedule.

We will run over the technical instructions at the beginning of each day, and we will be available to answer questions throughout. Please do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions or issues.

Social MediaWe encourage you to connect with us and your fellow Festival-goers online during and beyond this year’s MEMS Festival. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook, and our website, and use the Festival’s hashtag (#MEMSFest2020) to continue the conversation. Some attendees may wish to live-tweet the paper sessions - if you would prefer not to have your paper tweeted, please speak to your panel chair. Please note that the early modern drama workshop will inform a doctoral research project and

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Supported by

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participants will be asked to review a video/audio consent form and complete a questionnaire at the end of the session.

Thank YouA special thanks is owed to Pietro Mocchi, Róisín Astell, Cassandra Harrington, Anna Hegland, Daniella Gonzalez and Katie Toussaint-Jackson from the MEMS Centre for chairing panels, to Claire Taylor and Jacqueline Basquil for their guidance and help throughout, and to Tim Jenkins and James Cordery for their assistance in taking the MEMS Festival into the virtual realm. We would also like to thank the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, the School of History, the School of English at the University of Kent, and the Consortium for the Humanities of the Arts South-East England for their support of this event. Finally, a sincere thank you to all our speakers who have worked tirelessly to finish their papers and present them today.

2020 MEMS Fest Committee

Sam McCarthySam McCarthy is a CHASE-funded PhD candidate at the University of Kent’s Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. Her research explores the relationship between discussions of the Sacrament of Penance and medieval theories of memory in the religious literature of the Late Middle Ages.

Michael Powell-DaviesMichael is a PhD candidate in the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent. Attached to the AHRC-funded Middling Culture project, his research currently focusses on self-writing and place-making practices and investigates the lives of the middling sort in early modern maritime Stepney.

Hetty TaylorHetty Taylor is a VCRS-funded doctoral candidate within the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent. Her research focuses on the charms and experimenta of late medieval manuscripts and how they relate to the social attitudes and anxieties of the period.

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Fay BraybrookeFay is currently studying for a doctorate funded by the VCRS in the Centre for Medieval Studies at University of Kent. Interested in medieval monasticism and hagiography, she is currently exploring the early memory of the English Benedictine Reform movement and the concept of monastic reform in tenth century Europe.

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Festival Schedule

Friday 12 th June Time Stream 1 Stream 29:30am Welcome and Opening Remarks 10am – 12pm Cultural Encounter and

CorrespondenceChaired by Pietro Mocchi

Emotion and Embodiment

Chaired by Róisín AstellBenjamin Sharkey: Christian Conversion Among the Turkic Nomads of Central Asia: The Sixth to Eleventh Century

Francesca Saward-Read: Audience Culpability in Early Modern Drama

Kirsteen MacKenzie: Interception, intimidation and brinkmanship: Anglo-French Diplomacy under Cromwell

Anna-Nadine Pike: “Spekyngly silent”: Moments of Irrationality in The Cloud of Unknowing

Gabriele Bonomelli: Political and Economic Dominum in Fourteenth Century England: Some Assessments on the Use and Impact of a Terminology of Power from a Fictitious Letter of 1307

Lydia McCutcheon: Familial Relationships in the Miracle Collections for St Thomas Becket and the ‘Miracle Windows’ of Canterbury Cathedral

Nat Cutter: Grateful Fresh Advice and Random Dark Relations: Maghrebi News and Experiences in British Expatriate Letters, 1660 – 1710

Jordan Cook: Embodying the “Earthly” in Early Netherlandish Painting

12pm – 1pm Break for Lunch1pm – 3pm Workshop: Emotion and Embodiment

in ‘Tis Pity She’s a WhorePatronage, Community, and Civic ParticipationChaired by Cassandra Harrington

WORKSHOPAnna Hegland: Exploring gendered expressions of emotion on the early modern stage, using extracts from John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore.

Eilish Gregory: We Bless the Queen, and we Invoke the Saint’: Literary Dedications to Catherine of Braganza, Queen Dowager of England, 1685-1689Chris Hopkins: One Day in Canterbury: The Story of an Anglo-Saxon CharterNoah Smith: Bakers, Fishmongers, and Militant Brotherhoods: Reassessing the Guild Iconography of the Leugemeete Chapel in Ghent circa 1334Ella Ditri: Women and Landed Society in Conquest England

3pm – 3:30pm Coffee Break3:30pm – 5:30pm

Intellectual Networks and Early Modern Knowledge Communities

Literary Tradition and Criticism

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Chaired by Anna Hegland Chaired by Michael Powell-DaviesMichael Harrigan: Understanding Early Modern Colonial Ecology

Grace Murray: Thomas Tusser’s “Mnemonic Jingles”: Reading and Remembering the Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandry

Emma Hill: John Flamsteed (1646-1719): Astronomer or Astrologer

Faith Acker: Beer, Sex and Life After Death in Early Modern Epitaphs

Pelayo Fernández García: Challenges of the Social Network Analysis in History: The Case of the Marquis of Santa Cruz de Marcenado

Andrew Levie: The Thematic Transformation of Translation Imperii: From its original conception in Virgil to its variations within the Middle English Romances of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo

Emily Rowe: Whetstones of Wit: Iron Wits and Cutting Words in Early Modern English Prose

Mitchell Perry: How to be King: The Educational Instructions of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King James VI and I of Scotland and England

Saturday 13th June

Time Stream 1 Stream 29:30am Welcome10am – 12pm Stories from the National Archives

Chaired by Daniella GonzalezVisual Culture and MaterialityChaired by Katie Toussaint-Jackson

Paul Dryburgh: More than just chips and gravy? The ‘Northern Way’: Archbishops of York and the English State in the Fourteenth Century

Jack Wilcox: The Mystery of the Tree of Jesse Tomb Slab in Lincoln Cathedral

Ada Mascio: The Archivist’s Tale: Extreme Cataloguing at The National Archives

Philippa Sissis: Humanist Aesthetics of Script: The Humanistic Miniscule of Poggio Bracciolini

Daniel Gosling: Building a Bear Garden: Deeds and Disputes Surrounding Southwark’s Bear Garden in the Early Seventeenth Century

Samantha Brown: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Material Features in the Manuscripts of an Early Modern Arabist

12pm – 12:30pm

Closing remarks

FINISH

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Speakers and Their Papers

Faith AckerFaith Acker spent the first two thirds of the 2019-2020 academic year as a fellow at the Folger Shakespeare and Beinecke libraries researching epitaphs on early modern servants and tradesmen, and is looking forward to taking up a fellowship at the Bodleian Library to continue this work as soon as the library reopens. Her monograph First Readers of Shakespeare's Sonnets 1590-1790 is forthcoming from Routledge this fall, and a brief article on Owen, a seventeenth-century butler of Christ Church and the subject of three different epitaphs, is forthcoming in Renaissance Papers.

Beer, Sex, and Life after Death in Early Modern Epitaphs

A largely overlooked subset of early modern English epitaphs can be categorized—as the compiler of two seventeenth-century poetical miscellanies labeled a section of his commonplace book—as “Merry and Satirical.” These witty, heavily rhetorical verses contrasted dramatically with the “Laudatory” epitaphs usually written about prominent figures such as King James; Prince Henry; John Donne; and other political, religious, and even local figures. The rhetoric used in these two genres of epitaphs varies dramatically. While both genres showcase the writers’ rhetorical skills, laudatory epitaphs typically celebrate the virtue and positive character traits of the deceased, while the authors of many satirical epitaphs reduce their subjects to providers of liquor (or food), objects of sexual interest (or skill), or characters in mock interactions with Death or the Devil. Consequently, these satirical epitaphs not only prioritize their authors’ wit above their subjects’ lives, but further marginalize the lives and contributions of valuable early modern individuals, including both specific and generic servants and local tradesmen. The repetition of certain jests and tropes across multiple epitaphs reinforced a series of racist, sexist, and classist stereotypes grounded in puns and classical rhetoric. This paper will use epitaphs marginalizing Oxfordshire maidservant Anne Greene and two butlers from Christ Church College, Oxford (John Dawson and the mononymous Owen) to demonstrate several early modern poets’ use of the satirical epitaph for self-promotion through socially relevant satire.

Gabriele BonomelliGabriele Bonomelli obtained his masters in Medieval History at the University of Pisa in 2017 with a thesis in medieval philology, a critical edition of an unknown fictitious epistle from 1314. He is currently doing a PhD at the University of Bologna, under the supervision of Prof. Isabella Lazzarini and in cotutelle with the University of Kent, with the supervision of Prof. Barbara Bombi. His research focuses on the use of fictitious epistles as propagandistic pamphlets in the late Middle Ages (1307-1434), especially during the conciliar period: he aims at understanding, from a historical and philological perspective, how these documents were used in different occasions to attack and discredit political enemies. In September 2019 he has been awarded a DAAD Scholarship (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst) which allowed him to spend the winter semester at the Bergische Universität Wuppertal doing manuscript research in various German institutions for his PhD project.

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Political and Economic Dominum in Fourteenth-Century England: Some Assessments on the Use and Impact of a Terminology of Power from a Fictitious Letter of 1307

By the end of Edward I’s reign, the grievances for the growing interferences of the Apostolic See in the affairs of the English Church increased and led to official protests that were presented at the Parliament of Carlisle (1307), in which the king considerably limited the papal power of tax collection in England.

An almost unknown document was delivered during this Parliament: a fictitious letter «quasi coelitus emissa» whose author, «Petrus, filius Cassiodori» (himself fictitious), laments the papal interferences by denouncing the heavy taxation and the appropriation of the English Church’s properties along with the pope’s continuous attempts to subjugate the whole world to his «dominium» through his fiscal oppression. Our author’s complaint is moving on both an economic and political level: Christ abdicated his temporal dominium, therefore the pontiff should not possess any property or temporal jurisdiction.

This paper focuses on a section of our PhD project, which assesses the use of fictitious letters as means of propaganda in the late Middle Ages. The paper will analyse the context in which this epistle was delivered and the relevance of its content for the English and European history. It will then consider the use and evolution of the term dominium in its economic and political sense during the fourteenth century: this is a main concept in those thinkers who question the boundaries of absolute power, but also in the clash between the Franciscan spiritual friars and pope John XXII and, by the end of the century, dominium will be at the core of John Wyclif’s ecclesiology.

Samantha BrownSamantha Brown gained a BA in Arabic and Islamic Studies from SOAS then spent eight years researching and producing documentaries before embarking on an MA in Early Modern Studies at UCL. Her dissertation focused on the materiality and afterlives of the manuscripts of William Bedwell (1563-1632), the first Englishman since the Crusades to dedicate his life to the study of Arabic. She is hoping to return to UCL in September to begin a PhD that will build on this research.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly: Material Features in the Manuscripts of an Early Modern Arabist.

A growing body of research has arisen in recent decades exploring the materiality of early modern texts, with the printed book, marginalia and manuscript letters receiving the bulk of scholarly attention. Less effort has been made to understand and interpret the material features of manuscript works, despite the fact that many of the same principles can be applied.

Focusing on the dispersed corpus of William Bedwell (1561-1632) this paper will demonstrate the value of material features in attributing authorship, considering scholarly intent, and understanding how manuscripts were used by their creators and subsequent owners. A little-known clergyman and scholar, Bedwell’s work encompassed mathematics, history, and theology, but his manuscripts relating to the Arabic language survive in the most abundance. Found scattered across multiple archives, the corpus contains a wide variety of documents, from barely legible working drafts to attractive decorative fair copies. While Bedwell’s small number of printed works

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and correspondence with prominent contemporaries have been the focus of previous scholarship, his manuscripts have so far remained understudied.

Through analysis of Bedwell’s choice of handwriting, use of coloured inks, mise-en-page, and decorative ornamentation I have been able to expand his corpus, trace his aesthetic influences, and identify patterns of gift-giving and scholarly collaboration. Ultimately this paper will argue that while ‘unpublished’ manuscript texts are valuable in themselves, the clues offered by their materiality can be far more revealing than previously considered.

Jordan CookJordan Cook is in the third year of her PhD, studying History of Art with The National Gallery, London, and the University of York. A University of Kent alumnus, Jordan studied for her BA in English Literature between 2012-2015 in Canterbury. Her current doctoral research focuses on Early Netherlandish Painting, particularly the varying settings in which artists placed their subjects. The paper she is presenting for MEMS formed the basis for a journal article that is currently undergoing peer-review.

Embodying the “Earthly” in Early Netherlandish Painting

A major area of scholarship regarding the settings of Early Netherlandish painting has been contemplating whether artists’ naturalistic settings were, in actuality, meant to be seen as celestial allegory. This is especially true in regard to naturalistic settings where a donor is shown occupying the same space a sacred figure. Erwin Panofsky believed that Jan van Eyck laid out such scenes as this ‘in a superterrestrial environment’. He suggested that, in order to evoke a sense of the heavenly in these spaces and distinguish them apart from normal lived-experience, Van Eyck incorporated architectural elements that would elevate the setting.

However, significantly less attention has been paid to ways in which artists grounded the space for an earthly setting. So, instead of looking at sumptuous elements that serve to elevate a setting to a celestial realm, this paper redirects focus onto certain aspects that may serve to embody the earthly realm. Specifically, the paper will discuss examples of weathering or decay present in the settings of Early Netherlandish paintings. These include cracks or chips in stonework; cobwebs in corners; rust marks on shutters; and other such imperfections that can be colloquially described as “wear and tear”. These are factors that may indicate that the setting embodies the earthly, rather than a visionary and/or celestial space. Specific paintings to be discussed include Jan van Eyck’s Arnolfini Portrait; Rogier van der Weyden’s Seven Sacraments and Dieric Bouts’s Altarpiece of the Holy Sacrament and Triptych of the Life of the Virgin.

Nat CutterNat Cutter is a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne, researching the experiences of British expatriates in the Maghreb, 1660-1710, and their influence on British-Maghrebi diplomatic, economic and cultural relations. He is interested in cross-cultural engagement, social networking, media representations, diplomacy, millennialism, evangelicalism and piracy. Nat has published on

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the image of the Maghreb in British periodical news, and on social life and community among expatriates in Ottoman Tunis and Tripoli. In 2019 he presented as part of the Greg Dening Memorial Lecture at the University of Melbourne.

Grateful Fresh Advices and Random Dark Relations: Maghrebi News and Experiences in British Expatriate Letters, 1660-1710

Unlike many other forms of popular literature in early modern Britain, which characteristically presented a monolithic, prejudiced and terrifying image of the Maghreb, periodical news publications provided to a vast and diverse group of readers a broad, detailed body of information on Maghrebi political and military affairs, naval warfare, diplomacy and trade, as well as ethnic, political and religious diversity. This information, vital for the promotion of English trade and political goals in a multipolar Mediterranean but also often packed with exotic, thrilling stories of bloody battles, religious disputes and sordid political intrigue, was devoured by professional and popular audiences alike. Drawing on various sources, news writers in London near-universally presented their information as verbatim correspondence, complete with primary geographical origin, date, and often a longer chain of transmission. However, this ostensible faithfulness should not be taken at face value. Following in the footsteps of John-Paul Ghobrial in The Whispers of Cities, this article seeks to understand Mediterranean ‘information flows’ about the Maghreb. Examining hundreds of newspaper articles, British consular reports, and a vast unstudied correspondence from the English consulate in Tunis, this paper will examine the manner in which Maghrebi experiences and news were mediated between the Maghreb and British readers, and the asymmetrical information and cultural ideas that resulted. How did expatriates gather, process and transmit their experiences and information? What information was sent to friends but withheld from superiors? How did news editors and Secretaries of State seek to control the economic, political and cultural messages their publications presented to a news-hungry populace? How were these accounts perceived when printed? Examining these questions will further illuminate the value of British newspapers as political, economic and cultural accounts of the Maghreb, as well as expose the influence of British expatriates in shaping public discourse.

Ella DitriElla Ditri completed her undergraduate degree in History at St Peter’s College, Oxford. Her undergraduate thesis, which forms the basis of the paper she is giving at MEMS, was titled ‘Women and Landed Society in Conquest England’, and for it she was jointly awarded the T.W. Mason Award by her college. Ella is currently reading for an MSt in Medieval History at Hertford College, Oxford, researching women and the ‘marriage market’ in twelfth-century England. Her interests are women, gender and identity in eleventh and twelfth-century England.

Women and Landed Society in Conquest England

Given how much scholarly attention has been devoted to the Norman Conquest, remarkably little has been written about its impact on women. Doris and Frank Stenton (1956 and 1943) developed the idea of an Anglo-Saxon ‘Golden Age’ for women, a period of ‘rough and ready’ equality which they argue was abruptly ended by the Conquest. Forty years later, Stafford (1989, 1994) criticised this idea of a pre-Conquest ‘Golden Age’, pointed to the limited amount of land pre-Conquest women had held, and made the case for continuity in women’s position across the Conquest period. The

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digitization of Domesday as part of the Prosopography of Anglo-Saxon England (PASE) Project, directed by Stephen Baxter, Simon Keynes and Jinty Nelson, provides an excellent opportunity to re-evaluate the Norman Conquest’s impact on women’s landholding, lordship and position within society. It is possible to compare women’s landholding between 1066-86 with unprecedented ease and accuracy, and assess how the Conquest affected all women rather than a few select examples. Doing so, it becomes abundantly clear that the Conquest caused a marked deterioration in women’s position. Although women’s landholdings had been relatively limited in 1066, they had decreased even further by 1086: there was a 56% decrease in the amount of landed wealth women held and a 81% decrease in the number of female landowners. This paper will explore the nature of, and propose an explanation for, this decrease in women’s landholding, evaluate the Conquest’s impact on female lordship and reflect on the Conquest’s long-term repercussions for women.

Paul DryburghPaul Dryburgh is an archivist and historian at The National Archives (UK) who specialises in government and society in the British Isles in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. He is also an Honorary Fellow of MEMS. Paul’s current research interests include ecclesiastical records, medieval Ireland, and the materiality of collections, particularly seals. He also has a keen interest in the training of linguistic and palaeographic skills needed to access medieval records.

He is currently Co-Investigator on an Arts and Humanities Research Council funded project, ‘The Northern Way’, which aims to explore and reveal the role of the Archbishops of York from 1304-1405. Paul is also Co-Investigator of the Medieval Exchequer ‘Gold Seam’ on the Beyond 2022: Ireland’s Virtual Record Treasury project, funded by the Irish Government. Paul is Joint General Editor of the Pipe Roll Society, Honorary Secretary of the Lincoln Record Society, and President of the Mortimer History Society. He is also a member of the AHRC peer review college.

More Than Just Chips and Gravy? The ‘Northern Way’: Archbishops of York and the English State in the Fourteenth Century

The first paper from “Stories from The National Archives”, a trio of papers showcasing some of the varied record collections at The National Archives and the different ways in which these records can be used for research. The paper introduces the AHRC-funded ‘The Northern Way’ project, for which Paul Dryburgh is co-investigator. This paper explores the riches of the records for documenting church, society, national politics, and local history in the fourteenth century, the impact of war, famine, and disease, and give a taster of the new access possibilities to these difficult medieval records.

Pelayo Fernández GarcíaAfter his degree in History at the University of Oviedo, Pelayo Fernández García obtained two masters in Sociocultural History from the Universities of Oviedo and Versailles, and has been professionally linked to the University of Oviedo conducting scientific data management and researching the possibilities of digital lending, and to the Junta General of the Principality of Asturias editing and transcribing historical records. He is centred mainly on early modern history, and

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touched topics such as cultural and family studies through the study of correspondence, but especially military history.

He won the National Award of the Ministry of Defense 2014 for his research "The military reflections of the Marquis of Santa Cruz de Marcenado and its influence beyond national borders", and then the 2017 Army Award for "The I Count of Toreno: Logistics and War Economy in the Crisis of the Hispanic Monarchy”, both published as monographies. He also has participated in more than a dozen scientific congresses and international meetings, published his work in numerous collective works, and made several doctoral stays in France (Versailles) and one in the United Kingdom (Reading). He is currently doing his PhD between the Universities of Versailles and Oviedo, with a Severo Ochoa predoctoral fellow for research and teaching.

Challenges of the Social Network Analysis in History - The Case of the Marquis of Santa Cruz de Marcenado

Although mainly forgotten outside of Spain in the centuries after his death, Álvaro Navia Osorio y Vigil (1684-1732), third marquis of Santa Cruz de Marcenado, has been recently defended as one of the most important military writers of the eighteenth century. His most renowned word, the Military Reflections, was translated from the original Spanish to five more languages (French, English, Italian, German and Polish) during the eighteenth century, and its physical presence or theoretical influence has been registered in virtually everywhere in the European continent.

He fought several military campaigns in favor of the Bourbon cause during the War of the Spanish Succession, acted temporarily as military governor of Sardinia, and then as diplomat in Turin and France (during the Congress of Soissons and its aftermath), before being sent to the north of Africa, and killed in action defending the city of Oran.

The study of his social network, due to the complexities of his life, should be a privileged point of view from multiple contexts, at an international level. However, very little has been written about them. The present paper aims to exemplify the different problems found for the study of historical social networks through this case of study.

Eilish GregoryDr Eilish Gregory is Postdoctoral Research Associate of the Royal Historical Society and a Sessional Lecturer in History at the University of Reading. She has a BA (Hons) in History and an MA (distinction) in Medieval and Early Modern Studies, both from the University of Kent, and she completed a PhD in History at University College London in 2017. Since finishing her PhD, she has been awarded library fellowships at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington D.C., Durham University, Marsh’s Library in Dublin, and is due to take up a library fellowship at the University of Aberdeen when the lockdown is over. She has a forthcoming article in Seventeenth Century Journal on the Catholic writer John Austin and his publications during in 1650s England and has a chapter on Catherine of Braganza and her English Catholic household in Restoration England in Forgotten Queens in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: Political Agency, Myth-Making and Patronage , edited by Estelle Paranque and Valerie Schutte (2018). Her monograph Catholics during the English Revolution, 1642-1660: Politics, Sequestration and Loyalty, which is developed from her PhD research, will be published later this year with Boydell and Brewer Press.

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‘We Bless the Queen, and we Invoke the Saint’: Literary Dedications to Catherine of Braganza, Queen Dowager of England, 1685-1689

As Queen consort of early modern England, Catherine of Braganza has been overshadowed in the historiography by her colourful and controversial counterparts, including her mother-in-law Henrietta Maria, and King Charles II’s mistresses. Yet, Catherine was able to set her mark by bestowing patronage, and during the 1660s and 1670s, she supported her English Catholic household by appointing them to important roles. Catherine stayed in England for several years after Charles’s death as Queen Dowager, a period which saw Catholicism briefly tolerated under King James II before anti-Catholic penal laws were reinstated under King William III and Queen Mary II. Despite her Catholicism; as Queen Dowager, Catherine’s benefaction was still highly sought after as she was the subject of several literary and religious dedications during her dowagership.

This paper will scrutinise the printed works that were dedicated to Catherine of Braganza as Queen Dowager from the death of Charles II in 1685 until 1689. It will consider the reception of Catherine in printed texts that were dedicated to her to gauge how she was perceived by the public in the aftermath of her husband’s death. Secondly, the paper will examine the sermons that were preached before Catherine of Braganza which were printed and published for wide circulation. The paper will therefore offer a new interpretation in Catherine’s importance as a royal figure in late seventeenth century England, and how she was treated by the public.

Dan GoslingDr Dan Gosling is the Early Modern Legal Records Specialist at The National Archives. He completed his PhD at the University of Leeds in 2016, studying the use of the Statute of Praemunire across the later medieval and early modern periods. His recent publications include an analysis of Edward IV’s Charter of Ecclesiastical Liberties, and he has a forthcoming article on the Court of Star Chamber and its Records. He is co-supervising a PhD looking at Jacobean piracy, due to begin in October 2020, for which applications are now open [until 21 June].

Building a Bear Garden: Deeds and Disputes Surrounding Southwark’s Bear Garden in the Early Seventeenth Century

The third and final paper in “Stories from The National Archives”, a trio of papers showcasing some of the varied record collections at The National Archives and the different ways in which these records can be used for research. This paper by Daniel Gosling, describes how the discovery of a bear schedule attached to an Elizabethan deed was the beginning of a research rabbit hole that eventually sprawled across over a dozen record series. He explains how, using the online catalogue and original manuscript finding aids held at The National Archives, one can trace a single dispute across these different records.

Michael HarriganMichael Harrigan is Lecturer in French at the University of Kent. His primary research interests lie in early European encounters with the Americas and Asia. He is the author of Veiled Encounters (2008) and Frontiers of Servitude: Slavery in Narratives of the Early French Atlantic (2018). His new book,

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Life and Death in the Plantations: the Letters of Jean Mongin and Claude Bréban will be published by the Modern Humanities Research Association in 2020.

Understanding Early Modern Colonial Ecology

The early modern colonial initiatives to the Caribbean inspired numerous interrogations concerning what would now be thought of as the ecology of the Americas. Traditional authorities such as Pliny remained influential, but early modern European commentators confronted ancient forms of classifying ‘nature’ with the radical novelty of the flora and fauna of the New World. In the often-fraught circumstances of the earliest settlements, Europeans might seek out intermediaries from Amerindian populations and attempt to integrate indigenous production techniques and consumption patterns. With the development of plantation environments, the question of knowledge about resources took on new urgency with fears about the access of slaves to resources and even poisonous herbs. This paper explores how the environments of the Caribbean colonies were understood in the rich literature from the late sixteenth to mid-eighteenth centuries, from epistolary exchanges between missionaries to printed natural histories, and in graphic depictions of the Caribbean ecology (such as those of the influential engraver Sébastien Le Clerc). Moving from an exploration of the European epistemological strategies used by the earliest commentators to understand nature, to the new meanings attached to Creole environments, this paper then explores the implications of cultivation in the unstable ecological and social landscapes of the Caribbean colonies. In settlements also characterized by disease, oppression, and the danger of revolt, it further questions the implications of these tensions on constructions of environment, ultimately asking if sustainability and a colonial future could be imagined in these conditions.

Anna HeglandAnna Hegland is a VCRS-funded doctoral candidate and Assistant Lecturer in the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent. Her research centres on violent language in early modern tragedies, and explores the intersections of rhetoric and performance in sixteenth and seventeenth century English drama.

Embodying Emotion in ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore

This virtual workshop will explore gendered expressions of emotion as enacted on the early modern stage. Using extracts from John Ford’s ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore, participants will consider dramatic representations of emotion by male and female characters in seventeenth-century theatrical work. The workshop will make use of multiple forms of media, as we interrogate filmed performance clips, discuss printed extracts, and situate this text on the body — that is, study the language of this play as embodied by actors during performance.

Participants will be asked to “think like actors/directors” and be attentive to the performance possibilities which arise in the dialogue of these scenes. No acting experience is necessary: the workshop will be primarily text-based, imaginative work, as we collaboratively imagine how the printed work might translate to the stage.

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Emma HillEmma Hill is a CDP PhD candidate researching public engagement with the Royal Observatory, Greenwich and with the first Astronomer Royal John Flamsteed (1646-1719) from its foundation in 1675 to c.1740 at the University of Kent in in collaboration with Royal Museums Greenwich.

John Flamsteed (1646-1719): Astronomer or Astrologer?

When the Royal Observatory was established in 1675 by way of Royal Warrant, John Flamsteed (1646-1719) was appointed by Charles II as “our astronomical observator” so that he might “rectify[ing] the tables of the motions of the heavens, and the places of the fixed stars”. Flamsteed later adopted the title of Astronomer Royal and this post remains a senior position in the Royal Household to this day. But what exactly did it mean to be an astronomer in the seventeenth century? Today there is a distinct separation between the sciences of astronomy and astrology, however at the time of Flamsteed’s appointment these two practices remained indistinguishable to many. There is much evidence to suggest that the public’s understanding of the role of the ‘Astronomer Royal’ was seemingly interchangeable between that of astronomer and astrologer. Resultantly, Flamsteed dedicated time throughout his career attempting to flout claims that he was an astrologer, claims which persisted even after his death in 1719. In this paper I will present a brief discussion of the status of astrology and astronomy in the late seventeenth century, in order to provide context for an examination of a range of contemporary sources that highlight the public perception of Flamsteed as both astronomer and astrologer, and the impact that this had on his reputation as Astronomer Royal.

Chris HopkinsChris did his first degree in English Literature at the University of Sheffield, before returning to Higher Education after a break to do an MA at the University of Kent Medieval and Early Modern Studies Centre, which he finished in 2019. He is due to enrol as a CHASE funded PhD candidate at MEMS this September, to work on a thesis entitled ‘Land, ownership and power in post-Roman Britain and Gaul’.

One day in Canterbury: The Story of an Anglo-Saxon Charter

On the 20th February 723, King Æthelberht II of Kent gave his assent to a charter granting land at Lyminge to St Mary’s Church. Subsequently, St Mary’s passed into the possession of Christ Church, Canterbury, and the charter was held there until it passed into the hands of Robert Cotton after the dissolution. It finally came to rest at the British Library as Cotton Augustus II 91. As with most Anglo-Saxon charters, it has been widely studied, so what can such a short, apparently formulaic document have left to tell us? This paper examines Cotton Augustus II 91 to see how much it can reveal about the moment of its creation, and about the broader society in which it was born. It considers the process of granting charters, where it was signed and in what kind of ceremony. It asks who the witnesses were, how they were chosen, and what was their relation to the king. It questions what the charter can tell us about levels of literacy and attitudes to writing, the place these held in Anglo-Saxon society, and how far such documents may have been representative of a society in the throes of change.

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Andrew LevieFor his undergraduate degree, Andrew Levie studied English and Classics with Creative Writing in the National University of Ireland Galway before beginning the MSc in Medieval Literatures and Cultures at the University of Edinburgh this academic year. His research interests mainly lie in the transmission of classical literature through the Middle Ages, and how medieval authors utilised the classics within their works for their own contemporary means.

The Thematic Transformation of Translatio Imperii: From its Original Conception in Virgil to its variations within the Middle English Romances of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and Sir Orfeo are two Middle English romances that scholars of Virgilian intertextuality would not typically turn to, especially in relation to the Aeneid. There is a dramatic change in not just the language but in the narrative tone and form as well as space of over twelve hundred years between them. However, if one examines the convention of translatio imperii, the concept of the westward shifting of imperial power, in Virgil and these two romances, one can see how the Middle English authors challenged such a conception within the literature that came before them as well as playing with such a theme in their own contemporary setting. Although the formal convention of translatio imperii was invigorated in Middle Ages, its beginning as a mode within literature can be traced back to the Aeneid, when it glorifies Augustus (VI.791-4) as a descendant of the westward-moving and conquering Aeneas. Within the twelfth century, Geoffrey of Monmouth and the romans antiques re-explored this notion, thus leaving it as bait to be later challenged and adapted by these two Middle English poets.

Dr Kirsteen M MackenzieDr Kirsteen M MacKenzie is a historian and broadcaster specialising in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms 1638-1660 and Jacobitism c.1688-1788. Her monograph on the Solemn League and Covenant and the Three Kingdoms c.1643-1663 was published by Routledge in 2017. Her current interests are in British and Irish book history c.1603-1707. Dr MacKenzie has presented many papers in the UK and Ireland including at NTS Culloden and has featured on BBC Radio 4 and STV’s ‘The People’s History Show’. You can follow her on Twitter at @kirsteenMM

Interception, Intimidation and Brinkmanship: Anglo-French Diplomacy under Cromwell

The Anglo-French negotiations which resulted in an alliance in March 1657 are often seen as a long process of compromise and coercion between two major protagonists, Oliver Cromwell and Cardinal Mazarin. Accounts of the negotiations often refer to the conciliation of both countries on the grounds of military assistance or mutual promises of religious toleration in both countries. This paper will move beyond the motives of Mazarin and Cromwell and will examine the personal experiences of resident French diplomats’ in London during the 1650s. In doing so it will uncover a murky world of underhanded tactics, spying, intimidation and mind games, with diplomats caught between two seemingly immoveable objects; an intimidating and secretive English state and a determined and firm Cardinal. The diplomats also faced further pressures due to their own personal circumstances which by the later 1650s, often led to frantic and repeated requests to return to France. The

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diplomats’ experiences significantly contributed to the tense standoff between England and France leading to the creation of the Anglo-French treaty in 1657.

Ada MascioAda Mascio is one of the archivists at The National Archives. She qualified in Italy and trained at the Vatican Archives. Since 2010 Ada has been involved in several cataloguing projects at TNA. She will be the second TNA co-supervisor for a PhD on refugees, religion and diplomacy in early modern Europe due to start in October.

The Archivist’s Tale: extreme cataloguing at The National Archives

The second paper of “Stories from the National Archive”, a trio of papers showcasing some of the varied record collections at The National Archives and the different ways in which these records can be used for research. This paper, presented by Ada Mascio, showcases some of the varied cataloguing projects she has recently worked on. This paper shines a light on the cataloguing practice that goes on behind the scenes at The National Archives, while sharing the variety of different types of records in some of the recently-catalogued medieval and early modern series.

Lydia McCutcheonLydia McCutcheon is reading for an MSt in Medieval Studies at the University of Oxford. She received her BA in History in 2019 from the University of Kent. She is particularly interested in the histories of saints and sanctity, pilgrimage, and childhood and the family.

Familial Relationships in the Miracle Collections for St Thomas Becket and the ‘Miracle Windows’ of Canterbury Cathedral

On the 7th July 1220, the body of Archbishop Thomas Becket was translated in Canterbury Cathedral from the depths of the crypt into the newly constructed Trinity Chapel. The glazing programme was the chapel’s crowning glory: an illuminated, technicolour display of the miraculous accounts of Saint Thomas’ power and presence from beyond the grave. The inspiration for these windows is believed to be the miracle collections of the Christ Church monks, who recorded testimonials of Canterbury pilgrims. The glass and collections provide indispensable evidence of the nature of the cult of St Thomas and medieval pilgrimage.

This paper will examine a sample of the miracles involving familial relationships and interaction. Family members of the recipients of miracles are often present in the textual and visual accounts, including parents, siblings and heads of households. For example, Juliana of Rochester, a young blind woman, is led on pilgrimage to the tomb by her devoted father; her cure takes place shortly after, in a domestic setting. Studying these miracles through the lens of the histories of emotions, childhood and family allows a broader understanding of miraculous encounter. To argue that the individual recipient is at the heart of these miracles is to tell only part of the story: family and household members played an expected and integral role in the events of the narrative, suggesting that the impact of miracles was understood in broad, communal terms.

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Grace MurrayGrace Murray completed her BA in English at the University of Cambridge, and recently finished her MA in Early Modern Studies at UCL. Her MA dissertation focussed on the image of the labyrinth in early modern mathematical books, which built on undergraduate work on garden mazes and the poetics of scientific texts. In October 2020, she will be embarking on her PhD in English at the University of York, exploring imagined spaces in practical how-to manuals.

Thomas Tusser’s “Mnemonic Jingles”: Reading and Remembering the Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandry

This paper focusses on Thomas Tusser’s phenomenally successful agricultural advice manual Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandry, first published in a shorter edition in 1557 and frequently reprinted and republished in England until the early seventeenth century. Written in rhyming verse, it has traditionally been regarded as a repository of familiar rural proverbs, and dismissed as little more than a collection of “mnemonic jingles” by C. S. Lewis. In this paper I read the Five Hundred Pointes not as a book of universal wisdom but as a personal and continually evolving text, designed to be in dialogue with a changing community of readers. Through analysis of marginalia and commentary by sixteenth- and seventeenth-century readers, including Gabriel Harvey and Ben Jonson, I argue that Tusser’s appeal to both tenant farmers and the gentry was made possible by a carefully crafted authorial voice. I build on recent critical reappraisals of Tusser as an experimental poet to suggest that his innovation lay not only in varied and striking typesetting and verse forms, but also in the creation of a persona whose musings on his efforts to collect and present his advice were as memorable as the verses themselves. Finally, I turn to an unpublished critical edition prepared in manuscript by the eighteenth-century botanist Joseph Banks (now housed in Kent Archives) which named Tusser as one of the great “old Poets”, and argue that his marginal position in literary history is a result of his ability to defy expectations of modern and early modern readers alike.

Michael PerryMitchell Perry is currently a MA history student at the University of Winchester. He is interested in sixteenth and seventeenth-century royal studies, with particular focus on England, Scotland and Spain. His current MA dissertation focus on the field of Mirrors for Princes and the instructional texts prepared by Emperor Charles V and James VI and I of Scotland and England. He has previously for his BA dissertation at Winchester focused on the Conquest of Mexico and the economiendero system.

How to be King: The Educational Instructions of the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V and King James VI and I of Scotland and England

This paper will concern the ideas connected with ‘mirrors for princes’ and the formation of a prince and ruler’s own concepts towards ‘how to be king’. The construction of princely education was motivated by issues including absolutism, divine right of kingship and composite kingship. The sixteenth century provides evidence of rulers preparing their own advice for their respective heirs. This project discusses the May 1543 letters from Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, to his heir Philip as

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well as the educational treatise, Basilikon Doron, that James VI and I of Scotland and England produced for his heir, Henry Stuart. These texts provided contradictory idealisation towards educating a prince, particularly contrasting with ideals present within contemporary mirrors such as Desiderius Erasmus’ The Education of a Christian Prince, Niccoló Machiavelli’s The Prince and George Buchanan’s De Jure Regni Apud Scotos. Given the focus of this project, it is useful to consider this within the perspective of gender history, especially in respect to the women within these rulers’ lives from absent mothers, Juana of Castile and Mary, Queen of Scots, regnant female predecessors, Isabel of Castile and Elizabeth I and influential women such as Margaret of Austria and Anne of Denmark. Alongside, this gendered approach, the project includes consideration of masculinities through these educational advice texts, examining in particular whether these rulers’ ideals portrayed a masculine display of their image, authority and power.

Anna-Nadine PikeAnna-Nadine is currently a taught Masters student at the Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent, having graduated from the University of Oxford in 2018. Her research focuses on performativity within late medieval mysticism, and the interrelation of text and textiles.

“Spekyngly Silent”: Moments of Irrationality in The Cloud of Unknowing.

As an anonymous work of late fourteenth-century apophatic mysticism, The Cloud of Unknowing asks an unanswerable question: how can one write about things which cannot be rationally thought? As a performative text, the structure and linguistic forms within the Cloud work actively to limit the conscious thought processes of its audience, indirectly allowing its contemplative reader or hearer to unlearn (or forget) their preconceptions about how a text ‘should’ work. Asking to be embodied rather than analysed, The Cloud of Unknowing is instead governed by moments of illogicality within its text which offer its audience a glimpse of the atemporal stillness which is both the source and the object of their contemplative work. At once grounded in, and actively resisting, the complexities of the pseudo-Dionysian via negativa, developed within Victorine theology, the ‘work’ of the Cloud is almost disconcertingly simple: it allows its audience to consciously stop thinking. To do so is to encounter the ‘threshold of contemplation’, as impossible spaces and seemingly illogical leaps within the text foster instances of pure affect in its audience, surprising them into non-rational engagement with the Cloud’s divine subject. This paper will consider five such leaps into ‘unknowing’, considering the Cloud’s competing linear and circular structures, its irregular chapter-divisions, impossible imagery, and play with the fundamental arbitrariness of language. It hopes to offers a new way of reading the Cloud, looking not for pattern or logic, but for the silence spaces of an irrationality which exists beyond language.

Emily RoweEmily Rowe is a third-year PhD student in English Literature and Linguistics at Newcastle University. Rowe’s thesis is exploring the materiality of language; specifically, how language was described and experienced as metal in early modern England. Her research engages with material culture, historical linguistics, literary metaphor, and the history of metallurgy, coinage, and alchemy. This project is supervised by Prof. Jennifer Richards, Dr Kate de Rycker, and Prof. Karen Corrigan.

Whetstones of Wit: Iron Wits and Cutting Words in Early Modern English Prose

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To be told you have an ‘iron wit’ can hardly be a good thing. When Shakespeare’s Richard III resolves secretly to murder his nephews, he declares he must only share his plans with ‘iron witted fools’. After all, iron is hard, stubborn, dull, and cheap. But to have a ‘sharp’ wit, a ‘refined’ wit, or a ‘well tempered’ wit is surely a compliment. Yet these are all qualities iron can possess, if it is properly worked. This paper discusses how the concept of wit was described through ironworking metaphors in early modern English prose. It will begin with John Lyly’s Euphues texts (1578-80), whose titular character is the epitome of a ‘sharpe witte’ but whose youth means his wit is impressionable, like when ‘yron béeinge hotte receyueth any forme with the stroake of the Hammer’. If properly worked, a ‘sharp’ wit could be a useful tool in the literary marketplace. It was for Thomas Nashe, who put his wit to use in his verbal ‘duelling’ with his literary rival Gabriel Harvey in the 1590s. In one attack on his rival, Nashe commended his own witty words for having ‘steele and mettall in them, which pierst & stung [Harvey] to the quick’. This paper asks: why were iron and steel common metaphors for talking about wit? And how, then, was language itself conceived as metallurgical in the early modern period?

Francesca Saward-ReadFrancesca is a current MA MEMS student, with an interest in early modern drama and fashion. Previous areas of research have included the performance of the everyday on stage, audience interaction with drama, and recreation of garments as a means of study.

Audience Culpability in Early Modern Drama

When watching a Shakespeare play in a modern theatre there are many factors that remove us from the action. The forced fourth wall, a supposed language barrier, and an over familiarity with what we are seeing are just a few. Perhaps most importantly, our moral compasses are far removed from that of an original audience. Therefore, the most we can interact with these early modern plays is on an empathetic level, a recognition of the action and the feelings of the characters. So, would an early modern audience feel the same? Would they have engaged on a base level or had deeper emotional interactions with the plays? Would they have judged the immoral acts on stage or agreed with them? This paper will look at the effect monologues and soliloquies within revenge tragedies had on an early modern audience, using The Spanish Tragedy (Kyd, 1585), Hamlet (Shakespeare, 1601), and The Revenger’s Tragedy (Middleton, 1606). The environmental and physical factors acting on the audience will also be examined. The conclusion will then decide if the audience would have felt any form of culpability for the atrocities they were witnessing on the stage.

Benjamin SharkeyBenjamin is undertaking an MPhil at the University of Oxford with research focusing on the Church of the East in Central Asia and the Islamic world. He completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Birmingham with a dissertation on comparative Christian responses to Muslim rule in eighth- and ninth-century Cordoba and Baghdad, and he participated in a Research Scholarship on the excavation of the ninth-century church of San Ambroggio, Salerno, Italy. He has a broad interest in nomadic and animal history, and the Islamic and Mongol worlds.

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Christian Conversion among the Turkic Nomads of Central Asia: The Sixth to Eleventh-Century.

The Church of the East is well known for its missionary activity east of the Tigris. However, its conversion efforts among the nomads of Central Asia have received little attention. In this paper the extensive evidence for nomadic conversion to East Syrian Christianity will be examined. Four main conversion accounts will be explored, recounting the conversions of the Hephthalites; a kinglet near Merv; the Qarluqs; and the Kerait. Archaeological evidence alongside this will demonstrate the truth and extent of these conversion claims. Christian conversion amongst Turkic nomads was not characterised by political considerations. The evidence of so many nomadic conversions to a Christianity devoid of political support complicates such an approach, as do similar nomadic conversions to Manichaeism and Judaism. Instead, it will be argued that conversions occurred as a result of demonstrated and accepted spiritual authority, encountered through mystical, visual, emotional, educational and intellectual experiences. Lastly this paper shall demonstrate the continued development of these sources of authority, and the process through which, by the thirteenth century, Turkic believers had come to shape the Church of the East with a distinctly Turkic expression. Nomads have often been overlooked by historians, and this study will look at how, within their liminal experience of Christian religion, their lifestyle shaped their beliefs and practices into a particularly Turkic expression of Christianity.

Philippa SissisPhilippa Sissis studied Art History and History in Berlin and Paris. She worked on subjects like the Louvre sketchbook of William Turner, the drawings of Lorenzo Monaco and museum and collection History. From 2015 to 2019 she worked on her PhD project on the aesthetics of the humanistic layout of the manuscripts written by Poggio Bracciolini in Florence around 1400.

Philippa has also collaborated in different book projects, for example the collection of foreign visitor impressions in the museums of Berlin (1830 to 1998) at the Technische Universität Berlin, published in 2012 with Bénédicte Savoy, and the question of books as objects in the junior research group around Philippe Cordez and Julia Saviello at the Ludwig-Maximilian-Universität München. At the present moment she is working in the research cluster translocations at the Technische Universität Berlin, questioning the displacement of cultural assets around the world.

Philippa’s main research areas are the iconicity of script and book history, cultural history of the early Renaissance, but also drawings and sketch books. For her postdoctoral project she will turn to questions of cultural encounters in the Caribbean manifested in drawings and book illustrations since the seventeenth century.

Humanist Aesthetics of Script: The Humanistic Miniscule of Poggio Bracciolini

Seeing script begins with reading – or so it seems. But even before reading, or rather, before decoding the letters to form words, which then turn into content and ideas, the reader is a contemplator of the page. This matter was of the highest interest to the early humanists Poggio Bracciolini and Niccolò Niccoli when copying ancient texts in Florence around 1400. They were not only reproducing these texts: Their work was philological, historical, grammatical and orthographical with the ambition to restore the „unaltered“ form of the texts. In addition, Poggio and Niccoli gave them a new form: They created a humanist aesthetic which uses the script and other micro- and macrotypographical elements as parts of the page display. This paper will explore how the strikingly

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‘modern’ appearance of Poggio’s manuscripts, developed in response to historical traditions, is embedding him clearly in the cultural and artistic environment of early Renaissance Florence: In using the iconographic potential of scripts these humanists are translating rhetorical ideas in visual presentation to form a paratext to the humanist copies making them both visual objects and artefacts to read.

Noah SmithNoah Smith obtained his BA in Medieval Studies from Penn State University in 2015, writing his undergraduate dissertation on twelfth-century vernacular poetry and graduating with a John Taylor Scholarship. He then completed his MA in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the University of Kent in 2016 with a dissertation entitled Franciae Specialis Patronus: Domestic Policy and Military Disaster in ‘La vie de saint Denis’. After taking a short break to sell books and work in a butcher’s, he returned to Canterbury with his wife in 2017 to begin his PhD. His interests include cultural history, art history, memory, and medieval woodworking.

Bakers, Fishmongers, and Militant Brotherhoods: Reassessing the Guild Iconography of the Leugemeete Chapel in Ghent circa 1334

Fourteenth-century Ghent was a powerful political and economic hub that supported dozens of independent communities, each concerned with constructing their own self-identity and sense of civic pride. This paper will demonstrate how, by analysing the spaces that specific groups patronised and the manner in which they decorated them, urban spaces such as the Leugemeete could accommodate and integrate concepts of self, community, and civic participation.

Destroyed by the city of Ghent in 1911, the Leugemeete Chapel featured some of the most significant and ichnographically complex late medieval wall paintings in Western Flanders. The monumental, multi-tiered visual programme was discovered under whitewash in 1846, and is still the subject of much debate; only a handful of nineteenth-century wax calques and watercolours surviving as evidence to its original ornamentation. Pulling from the most recent chapter of my doctoral thesis, this paper will explore the provenance of the chapel before delving into the identities of the specific groups represented within the space’s iconographical programme.

Jack WilcoxJack Wilcox completed both his Undergraduate and Masters Degrees at the University of Kent, before starting his CHASE funded doctorate in Medieval and Early Modern Studies at the same institution under the supervision of Dr Emily Guerry. His work examines the use and development of the iconography of the Tree of Jesse across England in the thirteenth century in manuscripts, sculpture, and stained glass. He is currently focusing on Lincoln Cathedral, the East Anglian School of Manuscripts, and the use of the Jesse iconography by Henry III.

The Mystery of the Tree of Jesse Tomb Slab in Lincoln Cathedral

The Tree of Jesse, a visual representation of Christ’s genealogy, was one of the most widespread iconographical depictions in the Gothic period. Most commonly found in illuminations, sculptures,

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and stained glass, Lincoln Cathedral contains an unprecedented four examples of the iconography: a portal sculpture, a window, a ceiling boss, and also a unique medium for the Tree iconography – a tomb slab. The scholarship for this tomb slab has focused on its material, Tournai stone, and has ignored the developed iconography found thereon. It has traditionally been dated to be from the middle of the twelfth century and variously suggested as being for Bishops Remigius, Alexander, and Robert de Chesney. However, a more thorough analysis of the iconography may reveal a later date for the tomb than previously thought.

This paper will suggest that the tomb was made as the centrepiece of an abortive saint’s cult, prematurely surpassed by the popular cult of Saint Hugh, by studying this tomb slab within the context of the rebuilds of Lincoln cathedral and its links to Canterbury Cathedral, investigating the other Tournai tomb slabs of the period to assess their usage and meanings, and delving into the twelfth-century developments in the Tree’s iconography. By these means it will answer the question of for whom the tomb was made and why the Tree of Jesse was carved upon it, all whilst exploring the wider implications which this knowledge presents to us.

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