Medieval people everywhere!

What a huge day.  I love this medieval conference stuff… it’s like going to an SCA collegium weekend but run by crazy people (well even more crazy than usual) who spend their entire lives dedicated to research the most out of left field, bizarre niche shit you can imagine!

Today I attended seminars on these topics:

Emotions of Crime and Death in Medieval and Early Modern Europe…

  • Benefit of Clergy: Complexities of Mercy and Emotion
  • Pro Timore: Criminal Suicide in the Middle Ages
  • “Because I loved that husband of mine”: Early Modern Witchcraft Trials for Sources of the History of Emotion.

Translating Medieval Thought…

  • From Aristotle to the Heaven of the Moon: Dante on Acting against Conscience
  • Translating of the Spirit: The Birth of Religious Orders and the High Medieval Rationalization of Spiritual Identity
  • Nature Law and Reason : Models of Moral Action between XII and XIII century

Courtly Cultures in Translation…

  • Not Lost In Translation: Aragonese Court Culture on Tour
  • Eleanor of Aragon and her Spanish interpretation of the Role of the Princely Consort.
  • The Representation of Female Power and Co-Rulership in Fifteenth Century Ferrara.
  • Instructing the Next Generation: Eleanora of Aragon and her Daughters

And a keynote address by internationally renown art historian, Anne Dunlop…
European Art and the Mongol Middle Ages: Two Exercises in Translation

And I hate to think that each each session had seven panels running at the same time so I have only managed to see the tip of the iceberg.  It’s so hard to choose which panels to go and see.  For anyone interested in Medieval and Early Modern studies in the Australia/New Zealand, I highly recommend joining this organisation – ANZAMEMS. You will get on their mailing list, gain access to the back catalogue of the Parergon journal that they publish and keep an eye out for info on next years’ conference which I believe is being hosted in Brisbane, Queensland… and it’s totally open to independent scholars (ie: people not officially currently associated with an education institution).

It’s been a huge day and I can’t believe I get to see more amazing research papers presented tomorrow.   So yay, more Medieval fun tomorrow, but for now… I am le tired.

book of hours (‘The Maastricht Hours’), Liège 14th century.

Voracious Monkey Puts a Fish in the Arse
Book of Hours (‘The Maastricht Hours’), Liège 14th century.
British Library, Stowe 17, fol. 83v

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