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Sounding the Gallery at The Courtauld Gallery

 in Gender, Lineage, and Patterns of Patronage by

On 5-7th April 2018, project member Laura Slater attended the ‘Association for Art History’ annual conference in London, held at the Strand campus of King’s College London and The Courtauld Institute of Art. She gave a research presentation on ‘Devotional Soundscapes in the Psalter of Queen Philippa’ as part a thematic strand organised by Margit Thøfner and Tim Shephard. More excitingly, she contributed to a live musical event held at The Courtauld Gallery, organised by Dr Charlotte de Mille, founder and curator of the music programme at The Courtauld Gallery.

Cultural Production and Late Medieval Ecclesiastical Courts

 in Ecclesiastical Courts as Cultural Hubs by

On the 16th and 17th February the MALMECC team welcomed an international gathering of medievalists to Oxford for a workshop focused on ecclesiastical courts as places of cultural production, performance, reception and dissemination. The team hoped that assembling scholars of many different disciplines (including historians, musicologists, art historians and literary scholars) would both illuminate this important but understudied social milieu or setting, and facilitate future theorization.

Ancestry at Abergavenny

 in Gender, Lineage, and Patterns of Patronage by

In her last post, Laura introduced us to the elaborate tombs of the Hastings family at St Mary’s priory Abergavenny, and showed what they can reveal about attitudes towards memorial and self-image amongst late-medieval nobles. This time, Laura turns her attention to other tombs at St Mary’s, and the difficulties of studying medieval art in Britain.

Explaining Military Defeat

 in The Court and Military Action by

In this post, Christophe discusses how authors wrote about military defeat in 15th Century Burgundy.  Was the victor the captain who remained on the battlefield, or the one who captured the largest amount of prisoners and goods?  In an era of knightly ideals, the most important thing was how you framed it….

The Love Not Spoken About?

 in Uncategorised by

Fourteenth-century courtly society may have been more intolerant of ‘sodomitical acts’ than earlier in the Middle Ages, with sodomites, traitors and heretics now bracketed together as deadly sinners. By contrast, in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, a unique tradition of passionate Christian friendship developed in clerical writing. Friendship was seen as the highest form of human relationship, helping you to learn how to know and love God. And these friendships could have a consciously erotic element to them.

Mistresses and Bastards at Court

 in Sex at Court by

In part three of ‘Sex at Court’, Laura considers the status of mistresses and bastards.  Throughout the medieval period, there was little stigma attached to being the close kin of a powerful man, whatever side of the blanket you might have been born on, and many mistresses were tolerated by royal wives…