The Academy Vivarium Novum is offering ten full tuition scholarships for high school students of the European Union (16-18 years old) and ten full tuition scholarships for University students (18-24 years old) of any part of the world. The scholarships will cover all of the costs of room, board, teaching and didactic materials for courses to be held from October 7, 2013 until June 14, 2014 on the grounds of the Academy's campus at Rome.
Application letters must be sent to info@vivariumnovum.net by July 15th in order to receive consideration.
A good knowledge of the fundamentals of Latin and Greek is required.

The courses will be as follows:
1. Latin language (fundamental and advanced)
2. Greek language (fundamental and advanced)
3. Latin composition
4. Roman History
5. Ancient Latin literature
6. History of ancient Philosophy
7. Renaissance and Neo-Latin literature
8. Latin and Greek music and poetry
9. Classics reading seminars

The goal is to achieve a perfect command of both Latin and Greek through a total immersion in the two languages in order to master without any hindrances the texts and concepts which have been handed down from the ancient times, middle ages, the Renaissance period and modern era, and to cultivate the humanities in a manner similar to the Renaissance humanists.

All the classes will be conducted in Latin, except for Greek classes which will be conducted in ancient Greek.

In the letter the prospective student should indicate the following:

1. Full name;

2. Date and location of birth;

3. What school you currently attend;
4. How long you have studied Latin and/or Greek;

5. Which authors and works you have read;

6. Other studies and primary interests outside of school.


In addition, please attach a recent passport/ID photograph.

(For more information about the Academy, you may visit the website www.vivariumnovum.net.)

Jennifer Immich (Anthropology) has been awarded the Barry Prize by the American Society for Irish Medieval Studies (ASIMS). This is an annual prize awarded for the best conference paper on a subject of relevance to Irish Medieval Studies written by a graduate student. Jennifer's winning interdisciplinary paper is titled "Three Timber Castles: Modeling Landscape Siting with GIS." Please join us in congratulating Jennifer!

Congratulations to Barbara Weissberger, Professor Emerita in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese! Her article "'Es de Lope': Child Martyrdom in Cervantes's Baños de Argel", published in the journal Cervantes, 32.2, (Fall 2012), was awarded the Luis Andrés Murillo Prize for best article of the year in that journal.

Ann Zimo (History) has been awarded the Social Science Research Council's International Dissertation Research Fellowship and the Council of American Overseas Research Centers' Multi-Country Research Fellowship. These will allow her to spend next year abroad completing research for her dissertation on the experience of the Muslim communities under crusader rule.

Amanda Taylor (English) has received the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship for European Studies, Summer 2013 (Italian) and the English's department's Marcella DeBourg Fellowship, awarded to students whose work gives "creative expression to women's lives."

Congratulations to Ann and Amanda!

The Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Minnesota is establishing an annual lecture in medieval communication technologies in memory of the renowned paleography and chemical engineering professor Rutherford "Gus" Aris. We are very excited to inaugurate this event with a lecture by Professor Elaine Treharne, a distinguished scholar of medieval manuscripts from Stanford University. Professor Treharne will deliver a lecture on Thursday, May 2 entitled "'True Vision': Modeling the Medieval Future of Digital Technology."

For full details about this event, visit the University events calendar.

Department of History professor and past CMS director Kay Reyerson has won the Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies. A description of the award from the academy website:

"The Robert L. Kindrick-CARA Award for Outstanding Service to Medieval Studies recognizes Medieval Academy members who have provided leadership in developing, organizing, promoting, and sponsoring medieval studies through the extensive administrative work that is so crucial to the health of medieval studies but that often goes unrecognized by the profession at large."

Please join CMS in congratulating Kay for this well-deserved honor!

The 48th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held May 9-12, 2013 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Check out our list of sessions featuring Minnesota graduate students, professors, and alumni and let us know if we've missed anyone. If you would like to ride in the CMS van, please send an email to cmedst@umn.edu to let us know. The van will leave Minnesota on Wednesday, May 8 and leave Kalamazoo after lunch on Sunday, May 12. Cost will be determined based on participation.

Congratulations to Mary Franklin-Brown, Associate Professor in the Department of French and Italian! The American Comparative Literature Association has awarded the 2013 Harry Levin Prize to Professor Franklin-Brown for her book Reading the World: Encyclopedic Writing in the Scholastic Age (University of Chicago). The 2013 Levin prize distinguishes the best first book in comparative literature published in 2010-2012.

Name one plant used to produce a pigment which, mixed with egg yolk, was often substituted for gold in medieval painting.

Please send trivia responses by email to emsdgs@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

In what city is Saint Thomas Aquinas's heart preserved?

Please send trivia responses by email to emsdgs@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

On February 6, Vivian Ramalingam will be presenting a workshop titled "Lancelot and the Rabbis." The workshop is being held in 1210 Heller Hall and begins at 11:30 a.m. If you are interested in participating, please respond to cmedst@umn.edu and be sure to check out the handout Vivian has prepared. It includes a passage and some suggestions for how to prepare for the workshop. Handout for Lancelot-2_6_13.doc

Look for a new trivia question in the first week of spring semester. Until then, please send your suggestions for future trivia questions to cmedst@umn.edu.

January

Tuesday, January 29
Gabriel Hill, History, University of Minnesota
"Marginalizing Mary: Fifteenth-Century Revisions to John Mirk's Festial"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

February

Tuesday, February 5
Karen Marsalek, English, St. Olaf College
"Spirit/Body and Ghost/Corpse Pairings in Early English Drama"
Co-sponsored with the Center for Early Modern History
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Wednesday, February 6
Vivian Ramalingam, Independent Scholar
"Lancelot and the Rabbis"
Vivian has prepared a handout for the workshop, including suggestions for how participants can prepare. Handout for Lancelot-2_6_13.doc
N.B. This event is a lunchtime workshop.
11:30 a.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Tuesday, February 19
Heather Flowers, Anthropology, University of Minnesota
"Entangled Bodies, Ambiguous Beasts: Ideologies of Transformation in Early Medieval England"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Tuesday, February 26
Claire Sponsler, English, University of Iowa
"Media Archaeology and Medieval Drama"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

March

Tuesday, March 12
Peter Wells, Anthropology, University of Minnesota
"Ornaments, Burials, and Change in Migration Period Europe"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

April

Tuesday, April 2
Reuven Amitai, History, Hebrew University, Jerusalem
"250 Years of 'Foreign' Control: The Impact of Mamluk Rule on the History of Palestine and Its Environs"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Tuesday, April 9
Riccardo Pizzinato, Art History, University of Minnesota Morris
"Diptych Vision and Ruler Theology in the Codex Aureus of Saint Emmeram"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Friday, April 12
IAS Mediterranean Collaborative Workshop on the Mediterranean South
Shamil Jeppie, Director of the Timbouctou Manuscripts Project, University of Cape Town
"A Timbuktu Book Collector between the Mediterranean and the Sahel"
5:30 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Saturday, April 13
IAS Mediterranean Collaborative Workshop on the Mediterranean South
Getatchew Haile, Ethiopian Study Center, Hill Museum and Manuscript Library
"The Case of Ethiopian Manuscripts"
Part of a larger panel titled "African Manuscripts and Their Influence on the Mediterranean World"
9:00 a.m., 1210 Heller Hall

Tuesday, April 16
Ramzi Rouighi, History, University of Southern California
"The Role of Islam in the Medieval Mediterranean"
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

May

Thursday, May 2
The Inaugural Rutherford Aris Memorial Lecture
Elaine Treharne, English, Stanford University
"'True Vision': Modelling the Medieval Future of Digital Technology"
7:00 p.m., 120 Andersen Library

Tuesday, May 7
Kieran O'Conor, National University of Ireland - Galway
"Medieval Rural Settlement in Anglo-Norman Ireland"
3:30 p.m., Blegen 415

According to Isidore of Seville's Etymologiae, a certain creature is said to be especially hostile to oysters. This creature waits patiently for the oyster to open its shell, inserts a pebble that prevents the oyster from completely closing its shell, and then devours the oyster's flesh. Name this oyster-eating creature.

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

As Thanksgiving feasting approaches, remember to eat your leafy greens. Collards are a staple in kitchens of the American South. The name "collard" is a corruption of what older name for the primitive cultivated cabbage of the middle ages, commonly included in pottage and said to sharpen sight, ease gout, and heal ulcers?

Please send trivia responses to emsdgs@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Local trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting the office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

Professor Robert S. Nelson, Yale University: "'Lords of One Quarter and One Half Quarter of the Empire of Romania': Byzantine Art and State Authority in Venice"
Part of the James Ford Bell Library "Celebrating Venice!" series

"Once did she hold the gorgeous East in fee And was the safeguard of the West..." Wordsworth thus begins a sonnet, titled "On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic," written in 1802 after the city had fallen to Napoleon. The English poet had learned well an insistent theme of Venetian political propaganda. Although the historical reality was more complex, the message was essential to Venetian identity, and art and spoils of victory over Byzantium played an important role in maintaining this and other myths of the city. This lecture will examine the Venetians use and adaptation of Byzantine artifacts during and after the Middle Ages.

Robert Nelson is a professor of the History of Art at Yale University, where he studies and teaches medieval art, mainly in the Eastern Mediterranean, and the history and methods of art history. He was the co-curator of Holy Image, Hallowed Ground: Icons from Sinai at the J. Paul Getty Museum in 2006-2007. His book, Hagia Sophia, 1850-1950 (2004), asks how the cathedral of Constantinople, once ignored or despised, came to be regarded as one of the great monuments of world architecture. Current projects involve art and the ideology of war, the social lives of illuminated Greek manuscripts in Byzantium and their reception in Renaissance Italy, the artistic perception of light in the Middle Ages, and the collecting of Byzantine art in twentieth-century Europe and America.

Among Professor Nelson's many other publications are Later Byzantine Painting: Art, Agency, and Appreciation (2007) and, as co-editor, The Old Testament in Byzantium (with Paul Magdalino, 2010); San Marco, Byzantium and the Myths of Venice (with Henry Maguire, 2010); and Approaching the Holy Mountain: Art and Liturgy at St. Catherine's Monastery in the Sinai (with Sharon Gerstel, 2011).

What wireless technology is named for a 10th-century Danish king? Bonus point if you explain the logo for this technology.

Please send trivia responses to emsdgs@umn.edu with "Trivia" in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

Identify the Trecento Italian composer and musician who gave his name to a cadence that became ubiquitous in French and Italian music of the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries.

Please send trivia responses by email to emsdgs@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

September

Friday, September 14
Joint open house with the Center for Early Modern History
Noon-2:00 pm, 1210 Heller Hall

Tuesday, September 18
Dwight Reynolds, Religious Studies, University of California - Santa Barbara, "Re-evaluating Influence: The Interaction of Arab and Northern Spanish Music in Medieval Iberia"
Cosponsored with the IAS Mediterranean Collaborative, the School of Music, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese
4:00 p.m., 1210 Heller Hall

October

Tuesday, October 2
Geraldine Heng, English, University of Texas at Austin, Winton Visiting Professor, College of Liberal Arts, University of Minnesota
"An Experiment in Collaborative Humanities: Envisioning Globalities, 500-1500 C.E."
4:00 pm, 1210 Heller

Thursday, October 11
The 50th Annual James Ford Bell Lecture
Joanne M. Ferraro, History, San Diego State University
"Binding Passions and Shielding Virtue in Early Modern Venice"
Part of the James Ford Bell series "Celebrating Venice!"
7:30 pm, 120 Andersen Library

Tuesday, October 16
Jelena Todorovich, French & Italian, University of Wisconsin - Madison
"Dante before 'Dante': Bridging the Alps"
Cosponsored with the Department of French and Italian
4:00 pm, 1210 Heller Hall

Thursday, October 25
The Carl Sheppard Memorial Lecture in Medieval Studies
Robert Nelson, History of Art, Yale University
"'Lords of One Quarter and One Half of the Empire of Romania': Byzantine Art and State Authority in Venice"
Cosponsored with the James Ford Bell Library as part of its series: Celebrating Venice!
7:30 pm, 120 Anderson Library

November

EVENT POSTPONED--Check back for details about rescheduled lecture.
Thursday, November 1
Alan M. Stahl, Art and Archaeology, Classics, History, and Curator of Numismatics, Princeton University
"Wealth and Power in Medieval Venice: The Condulmer Family in the Century After the Black Death"
Cosponsored with the Institute for Advanced Study and with the James Ford Bell Library as part of its series: Celebrating Venice!
7:30 pm, 120 Anderson Library

Thursday, November 8
The Kann Memorial Lecture in Austrian Studies: Nora Berend, History, St. Catherine's College, University of Cambridge
"Violence as Identity: Christians and Muslims in Hungary in the Medieval and Early Modern Period"
Organized by the Center for Austrian Studies
3:30 pm, 120 Anderson Library

Monday, November 23
Elisheva Carlebach, Salo Wittmayer Baron Professor of Jewish History, Culture and Society, Columbia University
"In Praise of Error: Jewish Culture between Script and Print"
Organized by the Center for Jewish Studies and cosponsored by the Center for Early Modern History
12:00 pm, 325 Nicholson Hall

December

Tuesday, December 11
Anatoly Liberman, German, Scandinavian and Dutch, University of Minnesota
"Solving an Insoluble Riddle (What Did Odin Tell Baldr on the Funeral Pyre?)"
4:00 pm, 1210 Heller
FOLLOWED BY END OF SEMESTER HOLIDAY PARTY

Rachel Gibson (French and Italian) has been awarded a 2012 SSRC International Dissertation Research Fellowship. The fellowship will support a year of research abroad in Paris at the BNF, and in Venice at the Marciana Library and Venetian State Archives.

Basit Hammad Qureshi (History) has received the Bourse Chateaubriand Fellowship from the Embassy of France in the U.S. The fellowship will support a year of archival research at several departmental archives in central and western France as well as at the BNF in Paris.

Congratulations to them both!

Marigolds were used in cooking during the Middle Ages and remain in use today. What expensive spice did they frequently replace in recipes in medieval Europe?

Congratulations to Thomas Heebøll-Holm who is this week's trivia winner. Pier Gerlofs Donia rebelled against the Duke of Saxony, the Burgundians, and the Hapsburgs after his village was attacked by the Black Band in 1515. (An honorable mention goes to Katie Robison, who also wrote in with the correct answer.)

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

What famous Dutch rebel and pirate fought against the Duke of Saxony, the Burgundians, and the Hapsburgs after his village was attacked by the Black Band in 1515?

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

There's lots of good news and congratulations to go around this week!

...To Liz Swedo (History), who will be spending next year as Visiting Assistant Professor at Wooster College!

...To Gabriel Hill (History), who successfully defended his dissertation!

...To Rachel Gibson (French and Italian), who will serve on the Medieval Academy of America's Graduate Student Committee for 2012 through 2014!

...And, to Jesse Izzo (History), who has received a Fulbright grant to work in Israel for the academic year 2012-2013! He'll be at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem working with Professor Reuven Amitai-Preiss on Mamluk/Mongol/Crusader relations in late 13th-c. Syria.

Who was the youngest individual elevated to the papacy?

Congratulations to John Manke who is this week's trivia winner. Zeus chose Zagreus to be his heir, but after being consumed by the Titans his heart (or some other part of his body) was planted in Semele/Luna and was reborn as Dionysus. (An honorable mention goes to Diane Anderson for guessing Dionysus.)

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line.

What Greek god did Zeus appoint as his heir, provoking jealousy among the Titans, who then painted their faces and distracted the young god with toys before dismembering and eating him?

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

The 47th International Congress on Medieval Studies will be held from May 10 to May 13 in Kalamazoo, Michigan. Over thirty scholars from Minnesota colleges and universities will be taking part - check out our list of sessions featuring graduate students, professors, and alumni and let us know if we've missed anyone. If you would like to ride in the CMS van, please send an email to cmedst@umn.edu to let us know. Cost will be determined based on participation. The van will leave Minneapolis on Wednesday May 9, time TBD and will leave Kalamazoo after lunch on Sunday, May 13.

In alchemical tradition, what metal was associated with the planet Mars?

No one responded with the answer that we were looking for last week when asking about the "frost fairs" of London. The Old London bridge, which was pierced by nineteen small arches served as something of a barrier to the river and restricting water flow and dampening the impact of the tides. The addition of water wheels and other construction all served to make the river much more susceptible to freezing.

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

What fifteenth century prince was primarily responsible for unifying the Albanian highland law, the Kanun?

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

In M.R. James's "Twelve Medieval Ghost Stories" (English Historical Review XXXVII, 1922), a number of Latin texts from fifteenth century Yorkshire recount the encounters between everyday people and the spirits of the dead. In one, a female ghost is forced to wander after her death with cobwebs hanging in strands from her right hand. What had she done to deserve her fate?

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line.

What are the origins of the word "kinky," and why is it derogative?

Congratulations to Grant Hermanson, who was the sole correct respondent to last week's rather enigmatic trivia challenge. In 1896, George Wood, who along with Orin Sands and Mark Taylor owned a Boston-based flour company, attended a performance of King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. They introduced "King Arthur Flour" later that year, and it became the flagship brand for Sands, Taylor, and Wood. The company was renamed King Arthur Flour in 1996.

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

After seeing and being impressed by Camelot, at what point did Sir Orin, Sir George, and Sir Mark band together to form their own Round Table out of wood and sand with the help of a taylor?

Congratulations to Basit Qureshi, who was randomly chosen from several correct answers as last week's trivia winner. The Carpathians, Καρπάτῆς όρος, can be found in the modern nations of Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, and Poland.

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall.

What (modern) European nations encompass the mountain range whose name derives from the Greek, Καρπάτῆς όρος?

Ron Akehurst provided the correct answer to last week's trivia challenge. Justinian's Digest replaced crucifixion with either hanging or burning alive as the summum supplicium.

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

Late medieval religiosity was increasingly focused on laypeople's responsibility for their own spiritual well-being. This shift must have changed the professional lives of priest although exactly how has not yet been studied. Tiffany D. Vann Sprecher is currently in Paris examining ecclesiastical court records to ascertain the professional and social roles of priests in Parisian parishes. She hopes to illuminate how grassroots and institutional religious reforms affected the daily lives of priests. Her research trip was made possible by the Bilinski Fellowship and the Henrietta Holm Warwick.

Why are the following days considered unlucky? October 3, November 28, February 26, April 10, June 10, and August 1.

The correct answer to last week's trivia challenge was pot-de-fer! Congratulations to Brian Hill and Linda Johnson for providing the correct answer. Since this was a two week challenge, both are eligible for a prize!

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line. Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by sending us an email or visiting our office in 1030 Heller Hall. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

Gunpowder was known in medieval Europe at least as early as 1216, when it was mentioned by Roger Bacon, and Muslim forces used various cannon and firearms in combat in Iberia and against the Mongols. But what was the first use of a gunpowder weapon to be described in Europe, appearing in French and English manuscripts from the 1320s?

There were no correct responses to last week's question. Late Gothic and Eastern European chant (14th - early 15th C) is usually notated in Hufnagelschrift, so called because the musical notes are shaped so that they look like horseshoe nails.

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line.

Vivian Ramalingam provided the correct response for last week's trivia contest and has also supplied our new question. Last week's answer was that the trivium was comprised of grammar, logic, and rhetoric and the quadrivium of arithmetic, geometry, music, and astronomy. Honorable mention goes to Kit Gordon for also getting the correct answer.

What is the connection between medieval scholar Professor Wendy Hoofnagle (Department of Languages and Literatures, University of Northern Iowa) and the study of late Gothic medieval chant?

Please send trivia responses by email to cmedst@umn.edu with Trivia in the subject line.

With Lent now over, it seems like a good time to ask a question about fasting. During traditional fasts, Christians were expected to abstain from all animal products, with the exception of fish. What animals were the exceptions to the exception, eaten during fasts even though they were not technically fish? There are at least four correct answers, so the winner will have to strive for completeness, as well as explain the reason for the exception.

Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by contacting Sharon at cmedst@umn.edu. Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

Over 750 towns were founded in southwest France over 150 years during the 13th and 14th centuries. Built for the purpose of defense, the taxing of trade, or just for settling the wilderness, what were these new towns called?

Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by contacting Sharon at cmedst@umn.edu. Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

According to Gregory of Tours, how did Mummolus, general of King Gunthrum of Burgundy (c. 532-592), attempt to prevent the rebellious Duke Gunthram Boso and his men from crossing the Rhone?

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

What films with plots that take place in the Middle Ages have been nominated for at least three Academy Awards? For the sake of argument, we'll define the Middle Ages here as the 4th century to the 15th century so that we can avoid sand and sandals epics and the Elizabethan era. However, Shakespearean adaptations with medieval settings still count.

Trivia winners can arrange to pick up a CMS mug or stationery set by contacting Sharon at cmedst@umn.edu. Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

What is the medieval word for the tail of a long hood or hat, also used to refer to the tail of a cowl in modern academic dress regalia?

Congratulations to Barbara Jabr, who was randomly chosen as the winner from among the correct respondents to last weeks question (honorable mentions go to Frank Akehurst and Catalina Rodriguez). Ramon Llull was the inventor of the Llullian Circle, and was active in a wide variety of other philosophical and theological pursuits.

"Identity in the Mediterranean World: From the Middle Ages to Today" was an extremely successful conference, with presentations by distinguished faculty from around the country, as well as up-and-coming recent Ph.D.s and current University of Minnesota graduate students. Visit http://ias.umn.edu/2011/04/07/identity-in-the-mediterranean-world-from-the-middle-ages-to-today/ to watch the sessions or download audio recordings.

The four humors aside, the stars also had a major influence over the human body according to theories of medieval medicine. If a patient complained of pain in the kidneys, what constellation's baleful influence would be indicated?

Randomly chosen from several correct respondents, Nico Parmley was the winner of last week's trivia challenge! Tribonian was made quaestor sacri palatii in the year 530 and was one of the commissioners responsible for compiling the Corpus Juris Civilis under the Emperor Justinian.

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

What medieval river's estuary ended in a series of rapids and waterfalls that was sometimes called Essoupi (the Swallower), Stroukon (the Runner), Gelandri (the Shrieker), or Leanti (the Laugher) and served to hamper traffic along the "Amber Road?"

Vivian Ramalingam correctly answered last week's question, identifying the pictured instrument as a gusli, an Eastern European cousin of the psaltery and the even older monochord, originally used in Russia or the Ukraine during the 12th or 13th century.

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

What British crown dependency is the only remaining part of the Duchy of Normandy and continued to function under "feudal" laws until 2008?

The only completely correct answer to last week's question was once again provided by Ron Akehurst! Hashshashin leader Hassan-i Sabbah took over the fort of Alamut in 1090 after recruiting followers from the Shi'a of the region who were dissatisfied with Seljuk rule. After infiltrating Alamut with his own people, Hassan offered 3000 dinars to Mahdi, the Zaydi 'Alid lord who held the castle, and he had little choice but to accept. Another story holds that Hassan tricked Mahdi by offering the money for as much territory as could be covered by a bull's hide and then cut the hide into strips and spread them around the perimeter of the fort.

When did the Hashshashin establish their stronghold at Alamut and whom did they take the fortress from?

Recent winners Ron Akehurst and Vivian Ramalingam both correctly answered last week's trivia question. Owls were seen as evil creatures that lived in darkness, and were detested and mobbed by other birds. Medieval Christian thinkers saw parallels with the Jews, who showed that they preferred darkness to light when they rejected Christ.

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com. Also feel free to send ideas for future trivia questions.

What is the oldest known existing stone representation of a winged Christian angel?

No attempt was made to answer last week's trivia question, so I'll allow it to stand for one more week. For a hint, I'll add that the representation comes from the fourth century.

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

Our traditional end of semester picnic will be held immediately following Professor Liberman's talk. All are free to join us for good food, beer, and wine!

According to Paul the Deacon's History of the Lombards, how did the noble daughters of the treacherous Romilda of the Langobards manage to escape from the lust of the invading Avars?

Please send trivia responses (or ideas for future questions) by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

What was unusual about the trial of Pope Formosus, held in 897? (And, no, the question doesn't have anything to do with the trivia title theme this week, sorry.)

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com

Erik Carlson, a fourth-year PhD student in English has won the John Leyerle-CARA Prize for Dissertation Research, a fellowship sponsored by The Medieval Academy of America. The fellowship only goes to one student in an international competition, and is for $1000.00 dollars to fund a research trip to use the collections at the University of Toronto. Erik will use the collections of Toronto's Dictionary of Old English project for research related to his dissertation on the emotion of fear in Anglo-Saxon literature and culture.

According to the hadith narrated by Abu Sa'id, and transmitted by Tirmidhi, how many poisonous dragons will torment an unbeliever in his grave until the time of resurrection?

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

We have a very impressive presence at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo this year. Please join us in supporting and congratulating such an impressive range of research by UMN professors and students.

The following session is sponsored by the Center for Medieval Studies:

Session 100: Early Medievalisms: 1600 to 1900

There will also be two special sessions in honor of William D. Phillips and Carla Rahn Phillips
Session 316: Spain and the Sea, presided by Bernard S. Bachrach
Session 378: Contributions to Comparative Work, presided by Barbara A. Hanawalt,

Numerous students and faculty of the University of Minnesota will be presenting at the congress:

Session 14
"Von Norwaege über sê ein Koufschiff": The Spatial Construction of the
Foreign and the Familiar in Gottfried's Tristan and Tristrams saga ok Ísöndar
Adam Oberlin, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 24
Languages in Contact: Perception and Use of French and Dutch in the Medieval County of Flanders
Catherina Peersman, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 28
Institutionalizing Medieval Lay Religious Women's Communities
Jennifer Kolpacoff Deane, Univ. of Minnesota-Morris

Session 106
Le reconstrucción de poemas épicos basados en la evidencia cronística
Benjamin Smith, Minnesota State Univ.-Moorhead

Session 138
Researching the Indian Contribution to Medieval Cooking and Medicine
Rachel Wexelbaum, St. Cloud State Univ.

Session 138
Sirat Bani Hilal: A Surviving Tradition
Donald Swanbeck, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 175
The Angevin Way of War: Geoffrey Plantagenet's Military Operations in Family Perspective
Bernard S. Bachrach, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 196
Robert Southwell at Kalamazoo
Response: John Watkins, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 208
In the Shadow of Zengi: Diplomatic Relations between Damascus and the
Crusader States during the Reign of King Fulk of Jerusalem
Basit Hammad Qureshi, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 230
A panel discussion with Lourdes María Álvarez, Catholic Univ. of America;
Michelle Hamilton, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities;

Session 247
Creating a Supportive Environment for Undergraduate Research
Christopher Corley, Minnesota State Univ.-Mankato

Session 258
Re-gendering John Mirk's Festial
Gabriel Hill, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 316
The Capture of the Merchant Galley of Daniel Spinola: What Was Valuable in
the Late Thirteenth Century?
Lawrence V. Mott, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 319
Mapping Conquest: The Bounds of England in Accounts of the Battle of
Hastings from the Long Twelfth Century
Christopher Flack, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 327
Derivations of the Germanic Suffix -ster: Its Origin and Survival in Germanic Languages
Paul Peterson, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 327
Heinzel and the Vienna Notker Psalms
Adrienne Damiani, Univ. of California-Berkeley

Session 327
Ulfilas's Vocabulary of Fear: Fright and Awe in Gothic
Erik A. Carlson, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 329
Mothers and the Physical Expression of Emotions
Respondent: Christopher Corley, Minnesota State Univ.-Mankato

Session 334
Trading Spaces: Negotiating Social Boundaries in the French Fabliaux
Rachel D. Gibson, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 360
Transformations of Reading through the Scholastic Encyclopedia: Citations of
Hrabanus Maurus's De laudibus sanctae crucis in the Manuscripts of Vincent of
Beauvais's Speculum maius
Mary Franklin-Brown, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 367
Landscape and Imagination in Egil's Saga
Janet Schrunk Ericksen, Univ. of Minnesota-Morris

Session 379
Gregory IX and the Crusades
Michael Lower, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 387
Chastisements in the Vestry after Mass: Reform and Resistance in Lárentíus
saga biskups
Elizabeth M. Swedo, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 509
Conduct Unbecoming? Malory, Chivalry, and Friendship in Morte Darthur
Lindsay A. R. Craig

Session 533
"It is enough to make the dead rise out of their graves!": Tolkien, Oliphant, and
Gendered Conventions of the Supernatural
Sharin Schroeder, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

Session 540
Forensic Philology: An Examination of the Vienna Notker Psalms Codex
Michel van der Hoek, Univ. of Minnesota-Twin Cities

According to Saxo Grammaticus (and others), who rescued Þóra borgarhjörtr, daughter of the Earl of Gotland, from the lindworm that encircled her home?

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

According to the 10th century scholar Al-Qadl Abu-Qasim at-Tanukhi, Al-Mansur's palace in Baghdad was surmounted by a green dome, and atop the dome was a statue. What did the statue depict and what was its significance?

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

In the late eleventh century, what two Catalan noblemen had a falling out over an inheritance dispute that led to the one dying in a "hunting accident" and the other ceding the inheritance to the dead man's son before undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem that coincided with the First Crusade?

As there were no correct responses, the following hint is provided: The two individuals in question were twin brothers. The question was also edited slightly as it originally read "dead man's brother" rather than "dead man's son," and while I could make a technical argument for that being true, it was unfortunately a confusing mistake.

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.triva@gmail.com.

In the late eleventh century, what two Catalan noblemen had a falling out over an inheritance dispute that led to the one dying in a "hunting accident" and the other ceding the inheritance to the dead man's brother before undertaking a pilgrimage to Jerusalem that coincided with the First Crusade?

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.triva@gmail.com.

There were no correct answers to last week's question, though Tim Jones does get the no-prize for writing that Margaret was still a little Norwegian princess in 1288 when she supposedly made her decree. The question will stand for another week to give everyone another chance, but I will provide a hint.

According to a legend first recorded in a 1606 pamphlet entitled "Love, Courtship and Matrimony," in 1288 Queen Margaret of Scotland decreed that during a leap year any woman was legally allowed to do what? Later, during the Early Modern period, when this custom was actually observed for some time, women who enacted their right were required out of fairness to wear a red dress while doing so.

According to a legend first recorded in a 1606 pamphlet entitled "Love, Courtship and Matrimony," in 1288 Queen Margaret of Scotland decreed that during a leap year any woman was legally allowed to do what? And, for a completely worthless bonus point, what is the most obvious indication that the story is ahistorical?
Send answers to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com

Father Steven McMichael, University of St. Thomas will speak to us about "The Night Journey (al-isra') and Ascent (al-mi'rāj) of Muhammad in Medieval Muslim and Christian Perspective." Please join us at 4:00 in Nolte 140.

Since 1996, over 60 newly discovered gravestones, shaped from granite into oblong cylinders and containing Hebrew and Aramaic inscriptions, are the first known physical evidence of a 13th century Jewish community in what region of the world?
Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.triva@gmail.com.

Elissa Hansen, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the University of Minnesota, will present her work on "Reading Revelations: Reception Histories for Julian of Norwich." Two short primary source readings are available in advance of the workshop. The first is a compilation of responses to Julian's life and work and the second is a .pdf file of the first several pages of a seventeenth century edition of Julian's life. The workshop will be held at 12:30 p.m. in 235 Nolte Center.

What Persian historian, responsible for writing (or at least commissioning) a history of the Mongols that became an entire chronicle of world history, served as Chief Minister of the Ilkhanate before being executed in 1318?

Please send trivia responses by email to umn.cms.trivia@gmail.com.

According to Stephen of Bourbon, what was the name of the animal venerated by a local tradition north of Lyons where otherwise orthodox Christians observed a rite that they claimed could heal sick or injured children?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line "trivia" directly to Gabriel Gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com).

Kathryn Kerby-Fulton, Professor of Middle English at the University of Notre Dame, and author of Iconography and the Professional Reader: The Politics of Book Production in the Douce Piers Plowman, (University of Minnesota Press, 1999) and, with Linda Olson, Voices in Dialogue: Reading Women in the Middle Ages (University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), will talk to us about "Gender, Authorship and Social Injustice: Some Major Middle English Poetic Manuscripts and their Marginalia."

4:00 p.m. 140 Nolte Center.

In Dante Alighieri's conception of the afterlife, where can you find the souls of sinners with their eyes sewn shut as disembodied voices shout about the fate of Cain?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line "trivia" directly to Gabriel Gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com). Previous weeks' trivia results will be announced en masse NEXT WEEK. We apologize for the continued delay.

David Morgan, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will speak to us about "The Mongols in Iran." Prof. Morgan is the author of two seminal books Medieval Persia 1040-1797 (1988) and The Mongols (1988) among many other publications. His lecture will explore the nature of the Mongol impact on Iran, from the time of the invasions of 1219-23 until the end of the Mongol kingdom in the 1330s. Was it wholly destructive, as traditionally believed, or were there positive elements that historians, without minimizing the death and destruction that the Mongols brought with them, ought also to consider? The workshop will take place at 4:00 p.m. in Nolte 140.

What early medieval saint did Pope Benedict XVI defend in a recent speech?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line "trivia" directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com). Previous weeks' trivia results will be announced en masse NEXT WEEK.

"The Use of Documents of European Archives for the History of the Maghreb during the Colonial Period": A workshop with Dominique Valérian (Paris, History)

"Merchant Identities in the Medieval Mediterranean World": A talk by Dominique Valerian

Dominique Valérian is maître de conférences at the University of Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He is the author of Les sources italiennes de l'histoire du Maghreb médiéval (2006) and Bougie, port maghrébin, 1067-1510 (2006), and a co-editor of Chemins d'outre-mer (2005) and Espaces et réseaux en Méditerranée médiévale (2007).

The paper for the workshop can be downloaded ValerianTexts.doc.

Additionally cosponsored by the Identity in the Mediterranean World Collaborative.

What is the given name of the titular figure in an Anglo-Saxon poem about a sea creature that can pretend to be an island in order to lure sailors to their doom?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line "trivia" directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com). Previous weeks' trivia results will be announced en masse once a new prize has been decided on.

What book, surviving from the early 10th century, consists of just a palimpsest of a few wooden tablets and wax pages, but suggests the early origins of an Eastern European heresy as the author records prayers in which the place of God is taken by that of an Armenian prophet named Alexander?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line "trivia" directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com).

Name the eighth century settlement on the Volkhov River that served as an important trading post and later as a capital city for a dynasty that then moved to Kiev and went on to survive in one form or another until shortly after the death of Ivan the Terrible.

Answers to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) with the subject line "trivia" by noon on Wednesday, 30 September.

Stephen Martin of the University of Minnesota, Duluth will be speaking on Vetting the Variorum for French-Language Studies.

Where: Nolte Center 140
When: Tuesday, October 6 at 4:00 p.m.

"Religion and Law in the Global Middle Ages" brings together internationally distinguished scholars, faculty and students from the University of Minnesota, and community members including high school teachers, to discuss the period when some of our most compelling contemporary issues were first formulated.

To be held from 9:00 am to 5:00 pm, 140 Nolte Center.

Click here to view the program for the event!

According to popular legend, what British insult was first used by English and Welsh longbowmen after they had won the battle of Agincourt in 1415?

Answers to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) with the subject line "trivia" by noon on Wednesday, 23 September.

Trivia questions will be posted again starting on the 16th!

Conrad Rudolph of the University of California, Riverside will be speaking on Time, Space and the Progress of History in the Medieval Map.

Where: Nolte Center 140
When: Tuesday, 22 September at 4:00 p.m.

Join us for the Center for Medieval Studies fall picnic!

Where: Nolte Center courtyard
When: Tuesday, 15 September 2009 at 4:30pm

Mona Burkett from the Department of History recently passed her MA exams. Chris Flack in English passed his PhD preliminary exams. Congratulations to you both!

Department of French and Italian Professor Susan Noakes has been named the first holder of the University of Minnesota Arts and Humanities Chair. This two-year award provides Susan with a research fund which she plans to use for the SCGMA (Scholarly Community for the Globalization of the “Middle Ages”) project.

For more information on the project, please see: the CMS website or SCGMA's site.

Many of our Center for Medieval Studies minors have received fellowships, been awarded travel grants, passed preliminary examinations, or defended their dissertations in recent weeks. Congratulations to all of you!

--History graduate student Philip Grace has received a Graduate School Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship to complete his dissertation on fatherhood in late medieval Basel.
--History graduate student Tovah Bender successfully defended her dissertation, “Negotiating Marriage: Artisan Women in Fifteenth-Century Florentine Society.”
--History graduate students Gabriel Hill and Kevin Mummey passed their preliminary examinations.
--English Department graduate student Elissa Hansen was awarded CMS funding for travel to Waukesha, WI to study contemporary reading practices in the Order of Julian of Norwich.
--History graduate student Kevin Mummey was awarded funds to travel to Mallorca for archival work on his dissertation on women slaveholders in 14th century Mallorca.
--History grad student Tiffany Vann Sprecher received a grant for travel to Cambridge, MA to work with a manuscript of Jacques de Vitry’s sermons.
--French and Italian graduate student Rachel Gibson was awarded funds from CMS to travel to Rome this summer in order to pursue an advanced course in Italian.
--CMS has also awarded travel funding from the Carl Shepard Memorial Fund to Ashley Deering, an undergraduate at U of M Morris, to travel to the International Medieval Congress at Leeds to present her research on “Saving Faith in Languedoc: the Dominican Practice of Medieval ‘Doctors of Souls’.” She worked on this project as a UROP with Professor Stephen Martin.

What was the name of the wife of the Emperor who created the corpus juris civilis?

Answers to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) with the subject line “trivia” by noon on Wednesday, 20 May.

At the Medieval Congress in Kalamazoo, how is the sponsoring “Societas Fontibus Historiae Medii Aevi Inveniendis, vulgo dicta” more colloquially referred to (bonus points for knowing what they do as well)?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com).

We have a very impressive presence at the Medieval Congress at Kalamazoo this year. Please join us in supporting and congratulating such an impressive range of research by UMN professors and students.

The following sessions are sponsored by the Center for Medieval Studies:

--Session 428, “Globalizing the Middle Ages I: What Have We Done So Far and Where Should We Go Next?” (A roundtable).
--Session 485, “Globalizing the Middle Ages II: Mapping the Medieval World,” includes a paper by Maggie Ragnow from the James Ford Bell Library on “Mapping Asia: Perspectives from East and West.”
--Sesson 542, “Globalizing the Middle Ages III: Ghazni, Tabriz, and Samarkand: Sounds and Images from Western and Central Asia,” includes papers by Iraj Bashiri on “Divine and Personal Will in the Thought of Nasir-I Khusrau” and Gabriela Currie on “Imagining Sound in Ilkhanid and Timurid Miniatures.”

Other UMN students and faculty present:

--Session 155, “Law and Life in Occitania: Considering the Costuma d’Agen in Its Contexts” (A roundtable) features Professor Ron Akehurst.
--Session 318, features Professor Akehurst’s paper “Before the South of France Was the pays de Droit Ecrit.”
--Session 344, Diane Anderson will present "Walahfrid Strabo and Hellen Waddell: Re-editing a Queer Icon."
--Session 522, Professor Bernard Bachrach’s “Some Observations on the Merovingian Economy.”
--Session 29, Steve Bivans will present “Viking Warfare in the Ninth Century: The Contributions of the Annales Xantenses and Annales Vedastini.”
--Session 612, Mary Frances Brown’s “The Lyric Encyclopedia: Courtly Song and Fromal Innovation in Matfre Ermengaud’s Breviari d’Amor.”
--Session 264, Erik Carlson will read “Drinking, Speaking, and Acting in Beowulf.”
--Session 291, Ashley Deering "Saving Faith in Languedoc: The Dominican Practice of Medieval "Doctors of Souls."
--Session 282, Philip Grace presents “Motive, Means, and Opportunity: Fathers in Late Medieval Didactic Treatises.”
--Session 391, Elissa Hansen and Lindsay Craig will present, respectively “The ‘Pilgrim Way’: Travel, Ecclesiastical Authority, and Regional Identity in Two Eighth-Century Hagiographies” and “By the Saints and by the Book: Invocations, Implications, and Transmission in Roman de la Rose.”
--Session 457, Jeff Hartman, “Depending on the Utlands: Food and Famine in Fourteenth-Century Iceland.”
--Session 379, Professor Ruth Karras presents “Servanthood and Age at Marriage in England and France.”
--Session 157, Mollie Madden reads “Army Finance: The Accounts of John Henxteworth for 1355-1356.”
--Session 244, Professor Stephen Martin participates in "The Place of Digital Work in Medieval Studies: Where are we Now, Where are We Going?" (a panel discussion)
--Session 291, Professor Stephen Martin reads "Imagining Love and the Middle Ages in Modern Editions of _Aucassin et Nicolete_."
--Session 31, Adam Oberlin presents “’Translating’ Tristan: Hakon Hakonarson’s Norway and the Possibilities of Translatio.”
--Session 344. Stephanie Van D'Elden reads "Deception as Translation: Examples from the Tristan Romance."
--Session 533, Tiffany Vann Sprecher, “’You will be called priest of the Lord’” A Model Sermon by Jacques de Vitry.”

This is not even to mention those who are organizing or presiding over sessions, or the vast number of UMN alumni who have moved on to other places who are presenting this year. We have good reason to be proud.

History graduate student David Crane will be studying Arabic at UCLA this summer, with the support of a FLAS grant.

Congratulations, David!

Basit Qureshi has received a Critical Language Scholarship (CLS) from the US Department of State. The scholarship fully funds a number of individuals to travel overseas during the summer in order to study what have been deemed critical need languages. From June 11th to August 9th, he will be studying intensive Arabic at the American Research Center in Egypt (ARCE), which is located in Cairo.

Ann Zimo, graduate student in the Department of History has received both a summer-term and year-long FLAS fellowship to study Arabic.

She plans to do her summer study in Chicago before returning to us in the Fall. Congratulations, Ann!

History Professor and CMS Director Ruth Karras was recently made a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America.

MAA Fellows are scholars who have made notable contributions to the Academy's goals to "support research, publication and teaching in medieval art, archaeology, history, law, literature, music, philosophy, religion, science, social and economic institutions and all other aspects of the Middle Ages." There are only a maximum of 125 Fellows at any given time.

More kudos are in order for History Department graduate students Gabriel Hill and Tiffany vann Sprecher.

They've each been awarded a Graduate Research Partnership Program (GRPP) grant. This CLA program encourages graduate students to partner with a faculty advisor on projects of shared interest. It provides Fellows with a summer stipend.

Please join us in congratulating Don Swanbeck, from English and Rachel Gibson, from French and Italian on their reciept of FLAS Fellowships.

The FLAS supports a graduate language studies, with preference given to students who would like to study less-commonly taught languages and advanced work in more common languages.

Don applied to study Arabic, and won both the summer FLAS (to study a specific language only) and the school-year version (which comes with a full tuition waiver and stipend for the year). He hopes to apply the skills he learns to working with medieval Arabic romances.

Rachel won the summer FLAS, for advanced study in Italian and will be headed all the way to Rome to do so.

Who is widely credited as having invented the form of musical notation that we still use today?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 8 April.

Answer: Guido of Arezzo

Which Canterbury Tale has a possible reference to the tradition of April Fool’s Day?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 8 April.

Answer: The Nun's Priest's Tale, which makes reference to "March 32nd."

The life of Alexander the Great, written in Czech in the late 13th or early 14th century, is known as what?

Answer: The Alexandreis, based on a Latin version of Alexander’s life.

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 1 April.

The members of the Medieval and Early Modern Research Group invite you to join them for their Annual Spring Colloquium. Three graduate students will present short selections of their work, a
question and answer session will follow, light lunch provided.

What: The Medieval and Early Modern Research Group (MEMRG)'s
Annual Spring Colloquium
When: This Friday 27 March 2009, 12:00pm
Where: Pillsbury Hall, 110

Our three presenters are:

Adam Oberlin (German, Scandinavian, and Dutch)
"Wandering Glosses for Gothic runa and Their Old English Cognates."

Eric Carlson (English)
"Drinking, speaking, and acting in Beowulf."

Elissa Hansen (English) "The 'Pilgrim Way': Travel, Ecclesiastical
Authority, and Regional Identity in Two Eighth-Century Hagiographies."

Please join us for an intellectually stimulating afternoon.

Generously sponsored by the Office of Student Unions & Activities and Coke.

Ermengard, the first wife of Louis the Pious, died while traveling to what city along with her husband and the court?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 25 March.

Answer: She was on route to Tours, but took sick in Angers, where she died.l

What famous thing, depicting the Norman invasion of England in 1066, was parodied during the opening sequence of The Simpsons?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 18 March.

The Center is pleased to welcome Professors Stephen Martin (French--Morris) and Steve Matthews (History--Duluth) to the Medieval Studies Graduate Faculty.

Professor Martin joined the faculty at Morris in 2007, becoming Assistant Professor in 2008, when he also received his PhD from the University of Virginia. He is at work on a digital edition of “Aucassin et Nicolete.” His areas of specialization are Old French, Paleography, Codicology, Editorial Theory, and Early Medieval Literature.

Professor Matthews is Assistant Professor of History at Duluth and was just named a McKnight-Land Grant Professor for 2009-2011. His book Theology and Science in the Thought of Francis Bacon was published by Ashgate in 2008. A number of his courses, including on the history of Christianity and the history of Science, cover the Middle Ages.

In “The Short Lay of Sigurd,” what does Brynhild do when she hears that the man she loves is dead?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 11 March.

Answer: She laughed.

Join us on Saturday, April 4, 2009 for a sampler of presentations specifically targeted to undergraduates, but of interest to many others about the fascinating and often unexpected world of the Middle Ages.

Place: The President's Room, Coffman Memorial Union
University of Minnesota-Twin Cities East Bank Campus

Time: 10:00 am to 4:00 pm

Schedule (subject to change)

10:00am - Registration & Welcome
10:15am - Introduction to Exhibit of Medieval Books
10:30am - On the Road with the Crusades
11:15am - Food, Feasting & Fasting
12:00pm - Lunch
1:15pm - Beowulf: Fact, Fiction, & Film
2:00pm - Exploring a Medieval City
2:45pm - Readers' Theatre: The Chase: Harts & Hearts

To reserve space for you or your students, please contact Pat Eldred (PMEldred@stkate.edu)

Deadline: March 18, 2009

Sponsored by the Medieval Research Group, Metro State University, and the University of Minnesota's Center for Medieval Studies and James Ford Bell Library.

Medieval Mosaic: Spain & Morocco is a Global Seminar. Global Seminars are short-term study abroad programs led by University of Minnesota faculty. Instruction is in English by UMN French & Italian Professor Susan Noakes.

Through lectures, readings, and various excursions students will take an interdisciplinary approach to learning about medieval studies. History, literature, visual art, and music will be explored in order to develop a broad sense of how cultural contact worked in the Middle Ages.

This course will examine how the Iberian Peninsula's earliest inhabitants, the Celts, encountered the Romans, as well as the changes that came with the arrival of the Western Goths. Students will explore how the Muslim, Jewish, and Christian cultures coexisted together from the 8th to the 15th centuries.

Prior to departure, students attend a pre-departure orientation and receive pre-departure readings and assignments. Classes consist of lectures, discussions, and excursions. Students will journal daily and develop a creative project or essay as their final project.

Travel the routes and explore the cities of medieval Spain and Morocco. Vast movements of population during the "Middle" Ages, approximately 350 to 1500, often led to tensions when one group met another. On this program you will discover the ways people dealt with these interactions, the reasons these encounters differed, the results of various cultural strategies, and lessons that can emerge for today's global migrations and diasporas.

Students receive 3-credits of 3000 level coursework during this May term course.

Deadline for applications has been extended to 13 March 2009! For further information and applications, see

If you are a student traveling to the International Congress on Medieval Studies and would like to ride along with a fun group of us in the CMS-sponsored van, please RSVP to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com).

The cost for the van will be 50$ per student. This fee is waived if you would like to volunteer to help drive; we'll take the first three volunteers. Please RSVP and arrange a time to drop off your fee by 1 April 2009.

IAS is proud to announce that Professor Enders from the Departments of
Theater and French & Italian at the University of California at Santa
Barbara will join them to speak about "The Devil in the Medieval Theatrical
Flesh." Friday, 6 March 12:00-1:30pm, 125 Nolte Center.

Co-Sponsored by the Center for Medieval Studies.

In the romance Yvain, the knight Yvain comes across a palace gate that is described as functioning like what sort of device?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia” directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 25 February.

Answer: A rat trap.

What English charter promised the immediate return of all Welsh hostages?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia" directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 4 February.

Answer: The Magna Carta.

The research of Department of Anthropology and CMS core faculty Professor Peter Wells was featured in the latest online UMNews, which highlights his newest book, Barbarians to Angels: The Dark Ages Reconsidered.

To read the full text of the article by Deane Morrison, please see here.

What 7th century legal code mandated that a woman may only wed a man older than herself?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia�? directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by noon on Wednesday 4 February.

Answer: The Visigothic Code

Over a typical Romanesque monumental portal, in what position does Christ appear?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia�? directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com)

Answer: In the "axial" position (ie, the horizontal center).

Wednesday 15 April, 2009 at 4:00pm in the Weber, David Wallace will deliver a talk entitled "Women Living with Women: Nuns in English History and Literary Imagining, 934-1674."

Nuns were few in medieval England but exerted powerful, long-lived effects on literary imagining. Even when they were gone, or moved abroad, their social functions were still lived out by generations of English women. Enclosure proved a defining issue: how did religious women negotiate the clerical principle of /aut virum aut murum/, implying that they should either marry or be permanently immured? And how were their struggles for self-directed, educated living perpetuated in the lives of those women who first sought university education?

This talk begins and ends with poet Andrew Marvell, contemplating the ruins of a former Yorkshire nunnery during the English civil war. It considers the activity of women, up to Mary Sidney, Countess of Pembroke, in the southwest of England: the heartland both of Arthurian romance and of English female communities. Syon Abbey, the most significant religious foundation in England between the Norman Conquest and the Reformation,was an élite community of female readers and worshippers; the nuns of Syon returned to England in 1557 and then returned again in the nineteenth century. The possibilities of women living with women, in circumstances at once liberatory and confined, continue to haunt the imagination-- and to leave traces on the English landscape-- down to our present moment.

On Friday, 17 April, there will also be a "Rap Canterbury Tales" performance by Baba Brinkman, at 3pm in the Weber.

Who devised the "floating man" thought experiment, and where was he at the time?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia�? directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com)

Answer: Avicenna, while imprisoned in the castle of Fardajan near Hamadhan.

The brochure and application for the 2009 Minnesota Manuscript Research Library co-sponsored by UMN's Center for Medieval Studies and the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library at St. John's University is now available. Please visit: http://www.tc.umn.edu/%7Eander002/MSS%20Research%20Lab%20web.htm for details and to apply.

Funding may be available for declared UMN Medieval Studies minors.

In the 13th century, short pieces of Occitan prose were written as introductory pieces to poetry. These detailed the life of the troubadour or provided a preface to or commentary on the poem that followed. What were these two sorts of introductory pieces called?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia�? directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com)

Answer: vidas and razos.

Last year, Professor Anatoly Lieberman from the department of German, Scandinavian, and Dutch created a website for the study of Old Norse with the help of graduate student Paul Peterson and gracious support from the UMN Language Center. That site is now available to those who are enrolled in the Old Norse course through the WebCT system.

This year he received another grant from the Center ($2,500) for the production a Middle High German website, which will be ready by mid-May. Congratulations to Professor Lieberman, and what great news for his students.

In the medieval romance “The Youth of Alexander the Great,�? Alexander has a troubling dream. In it, he is represented by an animal. What is that animal and what does it emerge from?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia�? directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com)

Answer: A dragon which emerges from an egg.

CMS will sponsor a conference on Religion and Law in the Global Middle Ages on October 23-24, 2009. More information will follow.

Kay Reyerson, professor of History specializing in Medieval Europe, Mediterranean Europe, Medieval France, Social and economic history, Legal history, and World History, has been elected a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America, a wonderful testament to her accomplishments. The Medieval Academy was founded in 1925 and is the largest and most prestigious association committed to the study of the medieval world.

Tom Gallanis, Professor of Law and a member of the Core Faculty in Medieval Studies, has been named Associate Dean for Research and Faculty Development at the Law School starting January 1. He will have a two year appointment there.

Who was the Governor of Tripoli in 1565?

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia�? directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com)

Answer: Dragut or Turgut Reis.

A colloquium by Antoinette Healey of the University of Toronto co-sponsored with the Celtic Studies Endowment, Department of English.

A talk co-sponsored by the Celtic Studies Endowment, Department of English.

This week’s eNews trivia: what nation’s people invented the ‘traction trebuchet?’

Please send trivia responses in email with the subject line “trivia�? directly to gabriel gryffyn (ggryffyn.cms@umn.edu)

Answer: China! Winner of the contest this week: Steve Bivans.

I am presently exploring medieval Jewish versions of scripture and associated rabbinical commentaries as a background for political thought, as expressed in certain polyphonic motets of the first half of the fourteenth century. This approach casts a different light on the influence of Jewish sacred literature in the intellectual milieu of the French court at that time, suggesting that it was more significant than had been supposed. I am concentrating on the evidence of the texts and music of selected ars nova, French polytextual motets with Latin liturgical tenors.

The polyphonic motets I have chosen are constructed over patterned repetitions of a fragment of Gregorian chant. The upper voices simultaneously sing two different melodic lines with two different texts, which may be in French or in Latin. The polytextual aspect makes the French motet an ideal vehicle for sensitive, complex political argument because it can make polemical assertions without providing amplification or justification, as would be necessary in normal discourse, especially political speech.

Close study of the Jewish readings that contribute to the substrates of these motet texts, and also number-symbolic clues in the music, reveal that this group of motets are essentially "position papers" on some of the fundamental issues leading to the outbreak of the Hundred Years War: legitimacy, inheritance, and liege homage. For example, the Jewish commentary explains the nature of the rights given by Isaac to Jacob, but the Christian commentary does not. The motet masks the fact that the poet makes use of one, and not the other.

The Center for Medieval Studies would like to wish a fond farewell to Susan Noakes, Professor in the Department of French and Italian, who stepped down as CMS Director this summer. Professor Noakes took the CMS helm in 2002 and successfully steered us through some big changes including moving offices and administrative units; starting a Medieval Outreach program in local schools; and co-editing the journal Medieval Encounters with Professors Kathryn Ryerson and Barbara Weissberger. Continue Reading.

We would like to congratulate UMN History PhD candidate Jeff Hartman for receiving an award for best conference paper by a historian at the 98th Annual Conference of the Society for the Advancement of Scandinavian Studies (SASS) in Fairbanks, Alaska this past spring. His paper, “Deforestation and Driftwood: Icelandic timber imports in light of the archaeology of dwelling construction,�? won the graduate student paper prize given by the Society for Historians of Scandinavia, and he received a cash award as well as a free lunch at the next conference. Jeff’s paper is also in the running for the Aurora Borealis Prize for best conference paper overall. Wish him good luck!

This week’s eNews trivia question is: What did Odin whisper in Balder's ear while Balder lay on his funeral pyre? Please submit answers in email to Gabriel Gryffyn ( href="mailto:ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com">ggryffyn.cms@gmail.com) by Friday, 24 October at 12:00pm.

This summer, English Department PhD student Gabriel Gryffyn traveled to Ireland to attend the Summer School in Mediaeval and Modern Irish Language and Literature at the Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies. The intensive two week program included courses in Modern and Old Irish in the morning with lectures on Medieval and Early Modern Irish Literature and its Transmission and Early Irish Law and Society, and the Learned Orders in the afternoon.

Gabriel was able to begin her foray into learning the twisty but beautiful mess that is Old Irish as well as use the excellent resources in the libraries both at DIAS and Trinity College, Dublin. She also had the opportunity to visit the medieval buildings at Glendalough in County Wicklow.

Location: Walter F Mondale Hall (formerly Law Bldg), 45 Medieval Studies Colloquium joins the LAW 6702 Seminar: Legal History Workshop. Speaker will be Daniel Smail, Harvard, on the topic "Goods and Debts in Late Medieval Mediterranean Europe". See the abstract (DOC).