Meetings

These meetings feature talks on architecture, music, and history by university professors, professional practitioners such as architects, and the seminar's own members.

There is a $10 fee per session to cover expenses, but your first meeting is free for those who would like to try us out.

All Sarum Seminar participants are warmly encouraged to develop individual or small-group projects of their choice and present their work in these seminars.

The current meeting series

The next-to-occur meetings are at the top of the list. (Note: all dates and speakers are subject to revision.)

2008

Courtauld Institute Research Forum: Saturday June 14, 9:45am-6:15m
Location: The Courtauld Institute of Art, Somerset House, Strand, London WC2R 0RN, UK.

‘In despight of the devouring flame’: The Temple Church in London.

For more information: flyer, web site, email. Not one of ours, but likely to be of interest to the group, nonetheless!
 

Seminar: Sunday June 15th, 11:15 a.m.
Location: Foothill Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Sarum members are invited to Ann's presentation of her new paper, Flaring Flames and Luminous Light which she will deliver at the International Medieval Congress in Leeds, England in July.

Member meeting and pot luck party: June 21, 5-9 pm
Location: Mitchell home in Atherton.

5:00 p.m. Member Meeting to critique this year's program and solicit your thoughts for next year (if you're not able to attend, there will be other ways to submit your program ideas).
5:30 Pot Luck party!

Prior seminars

Arranged with the most recent meetings at the top. Only seminars and lectures are shown here.

2008

Medieval Matters Public lecture: Wednesday May 28, 7-9 pm
Location: Stanford campus (Cubberley auditorium).

William Chester Jordan (History Dept, Princeton): Departing for War in the Age of the Crusades

 

Special meeting: Thursday Apr 17, 7-9 pm
Location: Stanford Green Library Special Collections.

John Mustain (Stanford): our annual Medieval treasures and other delights evening.
 

Image adapted by Brian Catlos from folio 22r of Alfonso X's Book of Chess.

Seminar: Tuesday Mar 11th, 7-9 pm
Location: CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences), Stanford (directions).

Brian Catlos (History Dept, UC Santa Cruz): From Bobby Fisher and Bob Dylan to Bill Gates: Islam, Spain and the Roots of the Modern West

 

Seminar: Monday Feb 11, 7-9 pm
Location: CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences), Stanford (directions).

Graduate student talk: Patrick Geary's research team (History Dept, UCLA) presented The St. Gall Plan Digitization Project.
Edward is a graduate student in history at UCLA, studying the transformation of Mediterranean cities between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. He is part of the research team at UCLA and the University of Virginia that has worked over the past three years to develop the St. Gall Plan website.
The Plan of St. Gall is the earliest preserved and most extraordinary visualization of a building complex produced in the Middle Ages. It was created in the period 819-26 A.D., and ever since then has been preserved in the Monastic Library of St. Gall, Switzerland. The complex depicted in the Plan was never actually built, but it may have been meant to describe the ideal monastery that could be built anywhere in Europe. The team has made high-resolution photographs of both sides of the manuscript, digitized it so it is searchable by keyword, and linked it to an enormous database of texts and images illuminating the material culture of Carolingian monasticism.
This Sarum Seminar was the “unveiling” of the St. Gall Project to a general audience. Following Edward's presentation of the website, we had an opportunity to explore it “hands-on” and give feedback to the design team. 
 

Singer's seminar: Saturday Jan 12, 3-9 pm
Location: Dick and Ann Jones's house.

3pm Singers' Seminar & Rehearsal led by William Mahrt
5 pm William Mahrt (Stanford): Illustrated lecture on Medieval Music
6 pm Pot luck

2007

Seminar: Monday Dec 10, 7-9 pm
Location: CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences), Stanford (directions).

Members’ Night, featuring presentations by: Karen Duncan on medieval medicine,  Dick Jones on Lincoln Cathedral, Kathleen Much on the Templars, and Bob Nyden on 13th Century events.
 

Seminar: Thursday Oct 18, 7-9pm  (bring a sandwich or salad and join us for a brown-bag supper on the beautiful patio, any time after 6 pm!).  Location: CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences), Stanford (directions).

Jennifer Summit (Stanford): Remaking Libraries in Reformation England. In 1400, most of England's medieval books were housed in monastic libraries. Following the dissolution of the monasteries, the books were scattered, and those that were not lost or destroyed were later gathered by Renaissance book collectors. Their libraries remain the major collections of medieval books in our own age, including the Parker Library in Cambridge, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the Cotton Library in London.
By examining these libraries and their foundation, this talk considers a set of larger questions that concern the future of libraries no less than their past: what is a library? how does its organization shape its uses and the meanings of the materials it holds? and how does it persist not just as a place for reading and writing, but as a symbol of the place of reading and writing in the broader world?

Jennifer Summit is Associate Professor of English and Director of the Medieval Studies Program at Stanford. A Bay Area native, she received her Ph.D. from Johns Hopkins University in 1995, the same year that she began teaching medieval and early modern English literature at Stanford. She is the author of the forthcoming book, “Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England” and “Lost Property: The Woman Writer and English Literary History, 1380-1581”, as well as numerous articles on books, writing, and literary culture, with topics that include Chaucer's representations of the crusades, the poetry of Elizabeth I, and the impact of the Reformation on English ideas of nationhood and its medieval past.
 

Public lecture: Wednesday Nov 14, 7 pm
Location: Stanford campus (TBD).

Patrick Geary (UCLA): Medieval Matters public lecture sponsored jointly by Sarum Seminar, Medieval Studies & Continuing Studies.
 

Seminar: Tuesday Sept 18, 7-9pm  (bring a sandwich or salad and join us for a brown-bag supper on the beautiful patio, any time after 6 pm!).  Location: CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences), Stanford (directions).

Virginia Jansen (UCSC): A Tale of Three Medieval Towns: Salisbury, Old Sarum, and Wilton.

Old Sarum, depicted in Ken Follett's novel, The Pillars of the Earth, was an Iron Age hill fort in southern England, that became a governmental and ecclesiastical center after the Norman Conquest (1066). But the foremost city in the region was Wilton, ten miles away, adjacent to a famous Anglo-Saxon nunnery.

In the early 13th century Old Sarum’s bishop moved the site of his cathedral down from the hilltop onto the plains below, and also established a market and a new town there, called Salisbury. Within little more than a century, Salisbury had eclipsed both of the older towns. Old Sarum became completely uninhabited, and Wilton devolved into a small village.

What motivated the clergy to move a cathedral from Old Sarum and start afresh to create a brand new cathedral and city? How did the upstart town of Salisbury erase the viability of the other two, which never recovered? These questions will be explored in Prof. Jansen’s slide lecture and in the discussion that follows.

Virginia Jansen taught art history for 30 years at UC Santa Cruz. She has published widely on Gothic architecture, specializing in the buildings of medieval England and Germany, and has published three articles on Salisbury Cathedral. She is completing a book on the architectural patronage of King Henry III (1216-1272). She is a frequent and popular Sarum Seminar speaker.
 

Seminar: Monday June 4, 2007 from 7-9pm (brown-bag meal starts at 6pm)
Location: Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions).

William A. Christian Jr.: Saints, Animals and Humans in Spanish Fiestas.

Many of you will remember the fascinating seminar Bill presented on visions and miracles three years ago, while he was a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.  His talk will be based on the photos of Cristina Garcia Rodero.  Bill is an independent scholar who writes about Catholicism in Spain and southern Europe. His central concern has been the relationship of individuals and groups with the saints, Mary, and God. His studies involve fieldwork in contemporary communities (primarily in Spain) and archival work covering the medieval and early-modern periods. His books include Person and God in a Spanish Valley, Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain, Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain, Moving Crucifixes in Modern Spain, and Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ.
 

Seminar: Monday May 14, 2007 from 7-9pm (brown-bag meal starts at 6pm)
Location: Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions).

Joshua Birk, Assistant Professor, Eastern Illinois University: Convert or apostate? The Court Eunuch, Religious Identity, and Power Politics in Medieval Sicily.

Professor Birk is a specialist in Medieval European history, with a research focus on the Medieval Mediterranean world. His current research focuses on interactions between Christians and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean. He is currently completing his dissertation at UC Santa Barbara on Sicilian Counterpoint: Power and Pluralism in Medieval Sicily.  [background material]
 

Special visit: Thursday 12 April 2007, 7-9 PM.
Location: Special Collections room, Green Library, Stanford University. 

John Mustain hosted our now-annual Medieval Treasures and Other Delights - a visit to some wondrous samples from the Stanford Special Collections
 

Seminar: Friday, March 16, 2007 from 7-9pm (brown-bag meal starts at 6pm)
Location: Learning center (off the courtyard) of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions).

Jennifer Borland: Considering Women's Spaces: Architecture and the Bodies of Medieval Sheela-na-gigs. 

Sheela-na-gigs, or sculptured bodies of women displaying exaggerated genitalia, appeared in a variety of architectural structures in the Middle Ages.  This talk will investigate the connections between these images and some of the female audiences who may have viewed them.   Dr. Borland received her Ph.D. in art history from Stanford University in 2006, and is currently teaching medieval and Islamic art history in the Department of Art and Design at CSU Fresno.
 

Seminar: Tuesday, February 13, 2007 from 7-9pm (brown-bag meal starts at 6pm)
Location: CASBS (Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences), Stanford (directions).

Robert Bork: Who Killed Gothic Architecture?
Rob is a specialist in the study of Gothic architecture, and regularly teaches at the University of Iowa. He has won teaching awards and has numerous publications. This year he is a fellow at CASBS.
Summary: Gothic architecture went out of fashion with surprising speed around 1530 in spite of being, in many respects, more sophisticated than its upstart Renaissance rival. Rob uses computer-aided analysis of original medieval drawings to reveal the logic of the Gothic design process. Plausible explanations for the "murder" of Gothic involve the three “R”s: Renaissance, Royalty, and Reformation.

2006

Joint seminar: Tuesday 14 Nov 2006, 7-9pm (doors open at 6pm)
Location: Stanford Campus, Pigott Hall, Room 113. (Pigott Hall is Building 260 in the Language Corner across Lasuen Mall from the School of Education and the Clock Tower.)

Norbert Nussbaum, author of German Gothic Church Architecture (ISBN 0300083211): Patterns of Modernity: German Late Gothic Architecture Reconsidered.

A wine and cheese party will follow the lecture.
 

Seminar: Monday 16 Oct 2006, 7-9pm (doors open at 6pm)
Location: Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

DaVinci-Code-themed night Current presenters include Rev. Evelyn Vigil about myths and scholarship on Mary Magdalene, Marion Harris on St. Suplice, Dick Harte on the Cathars, and Ann Jones on a comparison between some of the sculpture at Temple Church, London and the Salisbury Chapter House.
 

Seminar: Monday 11 Sep 2006, 7-9pm (doors open at 6pm)
Location: Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Bob Scott and his latest thoughts on Cathedrals as Expressions of Monumental Building, and
Ann Jones with Beaming or Screaming: Emotion and Gesture in Images of the Last Judgment.

 

Seminar: Monday 22 May 2006, 7-9pm (doors open at 6pm)
Location: Learning center (off the courtyard) of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Christy Junkerman (San Jose State, and Stanford Continuing Studies) on: The transition from Gothic to Renaissance.

Seminar: Monday 17 April 2006, 7-9pm (doors open at 6pm)
Location: Learning center (off the courtyard) of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Maureen Miller (Director of Medieval Studies, UC Berkeley History Department) on: Towers into Palaces: Spolia in the Episcopal Residences of Ravenna and Florence.

 

Seminar: Tuesday 21 March 2006, 7-9pm (doors open at 6pm)
Location: Learning center (off the courtyard) of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Virginia Jansen (Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Cowell College, University of California, Santa Cruz) on: Steelyards and fondaci: Embassy Suites of the Middle Ages.

 

Seminar: Monday 13 February 2006, 4:30-6:30pm and 7-9pm
Location: Stanford Green Library, Medieval room (map).

Rega Wood (Research Professor in the Philosophy Department at Stanford): Incipient Anglicana: adventures in the origins of a medieval script.
This is your chance to not only hear about a very interesting topic, but also find out about the resources in the Medieval Room. This is a small room, so there is a limit of 10 people at each session.

 

Singers Seminar, Music Seminar, and potluck: Saturday, 21 January 2006, 3-9 PM
Location: Home of Ann and Dick Jones

Singers Seminar 3-6pm: In addition to those who have been on a singing trip to Salisbury, other Early Music Singers are invited to join the group. Bill Mahrt promises some of the music we've sung on trips as well as something new. Non-singers are welcome to come and listen, but are especially invited to the ...

Music Seminar 5:15pm: a mini-performance of the music that's been rehearsed in addition to words of wisdom from Bill.

Potluck 6:30-9pm: also be at Ann and Dick's.

2005

Seminar: Monday 5 December 2005, 7-9pm (doors open at 6pm)
Location: Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Jacqueline E. Jung, Assistant Professor in Medieval Art at UC Berkeley will speak on Liturgical Furnishings and Pictorial Embellishments in Late Gothic Churches of Germany and Austria. Most of you have heard about her great Sarum Seminar on choir screens. This is your chance to hear her again.

 

Seminar: Thursday 17 November 2005, 7-9 PM.
Location: Special Collections room, Green Library, Stanford University

John Mustain hosted our now-annual Medieval Treasures and Other Delights - a visit to some wondrous samples from the Stanford Special Collections (click the title to see what we saw).

 

Seminar: Monday 17 October 2005, 7-9 PM.
Location: Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Dick Jones will present The Great Scaffold Debate.  Dick is the author of the chapter Ironwork at the Top: A Medieval Jigsaw Puzzle in Salisbury Cathedral's Spire in the recently published book, DeRe Metallica: The Uses of Metal in the Middle Ages. He is a recognized authority on technology as applied to medieval construction. The great spire at Salisbury Cathedral, the tallest stone spire in England, encloses an oaken scaffold that was used to construct it -- or at least this was the notion until the 1990's, when a proposal emerged that the scaffold used in construction was exterior to the spire, and that the extant scaffold was inserted subsequently to facilitate maintenance. Recent tree-ring dates are claimed to support the exterior scaffold hypothesis. This lecture demonstrates that the tree-ring dating does no such thing, and that the external scaffold hypothesis is itself fallacious. For those of you who want to know more about medieval construction, this is the lecture for you.

Elaine and Randy Kriegh will treat us to Andalusian Delights.  Elaine and Randy's trip was featured in our recent newsletter. Their lecture will concentrate on Moorish Spain. Anyone who has traveled with them, has benefited from their advanced, detailed research on the places visited and on Elaine's extensive knowledge of castles. Their itinerary included most of the well-known Moorish sites -- the Alhambra in Granada, the Sevilla Alcazar, and the Mezquita in Cordoba -- along with some lesser known spots. They have promised lots of pictures.

 

Seminar: Monday September 26, 2005, 7-9 PM.
Location: Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Bob Scott: Reflections on the Medieval Cult of Saints. Bob is Associate Director Emeritus of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, located on the Stanford campus. While working on his recent book, The Gothic Enterprise, he became fascinated to learn a bit about the miracle cures associated with saint's' relics. Last winter, Bob spent two months as Visiting Fellow at New College, Oxford, giving him even more time for research and reflection.

Seminar: Thursday, May l9, 2005, 7-9 PM
Location: Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Ann Jones: Beardless youth and grizzled geezers: usage of beards on thirteenth century gothic sculpture.
In gothic sculpture, youth and age is indicated by absence or presence of beards. This is one of many rules on the usage of beards which everyone "knows." Does reality match this perception? Are there indeed rules with no known exceptions? Are there regional variations? Does sculpture follow fashion in facial hair? Does usage of beards depend on type of sculpture or its location? Major thirteenth century sculpture programs across Western Christendom are surveyed to establish the actual usage of beards. Analysis of several thousand individual sculptured heads and figures demonstrates what exists, and adds to what we "know."

Ann adds: I have also scheduled two additional lectures as part of Foothills Congregational Sunday Forums.  Everyone is welcome to attend these, too.  These sessions will be aimed at intelligent people who do not necessarily know anything about gothic sculpture.  The first session is after the 10:30 service on Sunday, May 8, at about 11:45am titled Gothic Sculpture in Sacred Space.  This will discuss uses of gothic sculpture within the architecture of medieval cathedrals and churches and some of the surprising places masons put sculpture.  The second in the series is on May 15, also at 11:45am,  titled Religious Themes in Gothic Sculpture.  Gothic sculpture is more than art, it is a reflection of how religious knowledge was organized in medieval times.

Seminar: Monday, April 18, 2005, 7-9 PM (room opens at 6pm for brown-bag suppers)
Location: Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Arlene Okerlund (Professor of English at San Jose State): Elizabeth Wydeville: A Queen Slandered by History.
"There have been thousands of academic and popular studies on Richard III and the princes in the tower. Several have criticized Elizabeth, the mother of the princes. Come hear some insight on this fascinating, much maligned queen."

Seminar: week of Monday, March 14, 2005, 7-9 PM
Location:  Foothills Congregational Church, Los Altos (directions)

Carolyn Malone (Associate Prof. of Art History at Univ. of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles):  Façade as spectacle: ritual and ideology at Wells Cathedral
"The 'spectacle' that is the western façade of Wells Cathedral broke with tradition when it was conceived of and built in the 1220s. Whereas previous façades had been rather plain, Wells was bedecked with architectural motifs and sculpture of the Coronation of the Virgin, with an array of saints, a real reflection of 'liturgical pomp and display'. This book examines both the spectacle and its meaning within the context of the 1220s. Carolyn Marino Malone discusses what we know of its patron, Bishop Jocelin, and his ideas for the façade, as well as its designer who had to transform these into reality, taking into account architectural and more practical decisions. Placed within the theological, liturgical and political context of the Church in England in the 1220s, this study reveals how Wells signified a change of approach in how the Church engaged with its audience through architectural symbolism and discusses what motivated this ideologically-motivated statement."  [from the David Brown web site]
 

Seminar: Monday, February 14, 2005, 7-9 PM
Location:  Stanford Center for Behavioral Sciences

William M. Reddy (William T. Laprade Professor of History and Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University, and Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences): The Triumph of Love: The History of Western Romantic Love in Comparative Perspective.
There is a Sanskrit term, srngara rasa, that is impossible to translate into English. It has been translated as “love,” as “passion,” and as “erotic mood.” It could be said to mean “the nectar of love-arousal,” or “the extract or essence of passionate love-desire.” (Some) temple women, in pre-colonial times, had the function of performing dances in (some) temples that inspired srngara rasa in (certain) spectators. (Some) British administrators and missionaries were deeply troubled by these “temple prostitutes”; gradually their dance rituals were suppressed and have (all but) disappeared. In contrast to the Sanskrit-Hindu bundle of traditions, the Western Christian (and, to a large extent also Jewish) bundle of traditions has no way of conceptualizing an uplifting or spiritualized lust. Sexual desire is a bodily appetite, and falls on the material side of the divide between spiritual (mental, abstract) and material. The uplifting form of sexual relationship is one based on “romantic love,” an “emotion” that includes desire, and, by strictly governing desire, purifies it and renders it guilt-free. Developed in the twelfth century, propagated surreptitiously to avoid clerical condemnation, treated by many as “natural” since the Enlightenment, romantic love became, for most educated locals in most Western industrialized countries, in the twentieth century, the sole legitimate grounds for marriage. Many priest, rabbis, and ministers (once the sworn enemies of romantic love) now recommend it to their faithful. The full significance of this “triumph” of love in the present is difficult to fathom.

Seminar and potluck: Saturday, January 22, 2005, 3-9 PM
Location: Home of Ann and Dick Jones

William Mahrt: Music Program from 3-5. William will lead a seminar/rehearsal for singers followed by a mini-performance at 5:15. Potluck from 6-9.
 

2004

Seminar: Monday, December 6, 2004, 7-9 PM
Location: Room 103 of Braun Music Center, Stanford. (Braun is next to Dinklespiel Auditorium, near Tressider Union.)

Bob Scott: Can the placebo effect tell us anything about medieval miracle cures?
Bob has moved on from his book, The Gothic Enterprise to work on the medieval cults of saints. He hopes this provocative title can help get a good discussion going. We will continue with coffee and tea in the faculty lounge following the presentation.

Seminar: Monday, November 15, 2004, 7-9 PM
Location: Special Collections, Green Library, Stanford University

John Mustain: Fantastic books. Reservations required, due to limited space.

Seminar: Thursday, October 21, 2004, 7-9 PM
Location: Classroom 103 Braun Music Center, Stanford University

David Clover: Engineering at Assisi.
David is a consulting engineer who has worked on several medieval sites including the Tower of Pisa and the Cour Carree in the Louvre as well as the church in Assisi.
Several of us will be meeting the speaker in the CoHo (Stanford Coffee House) in Tressider at about 6pm before the talk. Join us if you'd like. The talk will be followed by a reception (with refreshments of course) in the Braun Music Center lounge, which is on the floor above the meeting room.

Seminar: Thursday, September 30, 2004, 7-9 PM
Location: Learning Center, Foothills Congregational Church, 461 Orange Avenue, Los Altos

Medieval Music and the Art of Memory with Anna Maria Busse Berger.

Seminar: Tuesday 25th May 2004, 7:00-9:00 PM in the Frances C. Arrillaga Alumni Center, Stanford University

Gábor Klaniczay: Images and legends of the stigmata of Saint Margaret of Hungary.
We have a real treat for our concluding seminar this spring. We move to Central Europe and historical anthropology. Professor Klaniczay is a Permanent Fellow of Collegium Budapest, Professor of Medieval Studies at the Central European University, Budapest, and at Eötvös Loránd University (ELTE), Budapest. In 2003/2004 he is a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford. Gábor's research focuses on the historical anthropology of medieval and early modern European popular religion (sainthood, miracle beliefs, healing, magic, witchcraft), and medieval dynastic sainthood in Central Europe. Currently he is examining the historical role of the judicial context within the formulation of the images on the supernatural, in the middle ages and the early modern times, from the canonization trial to the witch-trial. He is a pioneer in the application of anthropological methods to historical analysis in Hungary. His other endeavor is related to the comparative approach to history, within the framework of which he intends to situate historical observations on Hungary and Central Europe in an all-European context. His most recent topic is a comparative and cross-cultural analysis of medieval and modern visions and apparitions.
Gábor's most recent publications include The Uses of Supernatural Power. Transformations of Popular Religion in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, translated by Susan Singerman, edited by Karen Margolis. Cambridge, Polity Press - Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1990, and Holy Rulers and Blessed Princesses: Dynastic Cults in Medieval Central Europe translated by Éva Pálmai, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2002.

Seminar: Monday 19th April 2004, 7:00-9:00pm

William A. Christian Jr: Visions of the Miraculous Crucifix at Limpias, Spain 1919-1925. He will discuss who saw what, how what people saw changed over time, what parts of the statue they looked at, what kinds of communication they described, how the media affected the visions.
William A. Christian Jr. is an independent scholar who writes about Catholicism in Spain and southern Europe. He is presently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences. His central concern has been the relationship of individuals and groups with the saints, Mary, and God. His studies involve fieldwork in contemporary communities (primarily in Spain) and archival work covering the medieval and early-modern periods. Christian has been investigating what happens during and subsequent to apparitions, moments in which people claim to be in direct contact with the divine. His books include Person and God in a Spanish Valley (1972, 1989), Local Religion in Sixteenth-Century Spain (1981), Apparitions in Late Medieval and Renaissance Spain (1981), Moving Crucifixes in Modern Spain (1992), and Visionaries: The Spanish Republic and the Reign of Christ (1996).

Seminar: Tuesday, 23 March 2004, 7:00-9:00 PM

Nicola Coldstream: Eleanor crosses (Making Public Monuments in Thirteenth-Century England: The Tombs and Memorials of Eleanor of Castile).
Nicola Coldstream taught medieval art history for many years.  Her books include Masons and Sculptors (1991) and The Decorated Style, Architecture and Ornament, 1240-1360 (1994).  She has published many articles on medieval architecture, decoration, and furnishings. She is now a independent scholar and a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Seminar: 26 February 2004, 7:00-9:00 pm.

Jacqueline E. Jung (Assistant Professor in Medieval Art at UC Berkeley): French and German choir screens.
Jackie studied with Stephen Murray at Columbia. Her doctoral dissertation was The West Choir Screen of Naumburg Cathedral and the Formation of Social and Sacred Space. Jackie is a frequent presenter at medieval conferences and won a prize for her article in Art Bulletin entitled Beyond the Barrier: The Unifying Role of the Choir Screen in Gothic Churches.

2003

Special visit: Monday 17 November 2003, 7:00-9:00 pm.
Location: the Special Collections Department, Green library, Stanford University.

John Mustain (host): A third evening in the Stanford University Libraries' special collections. Our (now traditional) visit to a selection of books and manuscripts from the Stanford Library special collections. Always a treat!

Seminar: Tuesday 28 October 2003, 7:00-9:00 pm.
A Medieval Military evening

Bruce Paschel will talk on swords and maile, and bring several examples.
Bob Nyden will bring his trebuchet model.
 

Seminar: Monday, September 29, 7:00-9:00 pm.
Location: Stanford Alumni Center, 326 Galvez, Stanford University.

The Sarum Seminar will start off our 2003-4 year with a Salisbury evening.
Bob Scott will talk about his new book The Gothic Enterprise, which is finally out(!).
Linda Jack will talk on The piety of William Longespée. William Longespée, earl of Salisbury, died at the castle at Old Sarum on March 7, 1226. As his funeral procession wound its way down the hill from the castle to the new and unfinished cathedral, Roger of Wendover relates that the tapers shed light throughout the journey, "not withstanding the showers of rain and the violence of the wind," thereby showing that the earl had died in a state of grace. Linda examines the contemporary evidence for Longespée's pious acts and traces the friendships, kinship connections, obligations of lordship, and political alliances that were an integral part of his piety.

Seminar: Thursday, May 22, 7:00-9:00 pm.  Location: Stanford Alumni Center, 326 Galvez, Stanford University.

Anna Maria Busse-Berger (Professor, Medieval and Renaissance History and Theory, University of California, Davis), with an introduction by Bob Scott: Medieval Music and Memory

Seminar: Tuesday, April 28, 7:00-9:00 pm.  Location: Stanford Alumni Center, 326 Galvez, Stanford University.

Virginia Jansen (Professor of Art History and Visual Culture, Cowell College, University of California, Santa Cruz): The Case for Bishop Richard Poore as "Architect" of Salisbury Cathedral (Or, Forget Elias of Dereham)
 

Seminar: Thursday, March 13, 2003, 7:00-9:00 pm, at Frances C. Arrillaga Center; 326 Galvez, Stanford University (If you are so inclined, come early for supper or a glass of wine at the cafe.)

Asa Mittman, Stanford University Art Department: Headless Men and Hungry Monsters: the Anglo-Saxons and their "Others". (From Fall'03, Asa will be teaching at Santa Clara University.)

Asa writes: "Anglo-Saxon England was a deeply multi-cultural society, composed of Angles, Saxons, Jutes, Britons and Romans. To provide some measure of national unity, authors and artists cast their gazes outward to disparate Others. Perhaps more than any other medieval society, the Anglo-Saxons focused on a host of monsters believed to inhabit distant Africa and Asia: The dog-headed, fire-breathing cynocephali, one-footed sciopods, wonderful headless, mindless, possibly soulless blemmyes, and many others. These creatures, along with a fantastic host of dragons, ogres and elves, populated the Anglo-Saxon world with a very real presence. In this discussion, I deconstruct their very careful, consciously constructed bodies - freakish, hybrid bodies that, in turn, render the bodies of their viewers as stable and normal."

Special visit: Thursday, February 27, 2003, 7:00-9:00pm. At the Special Collections Department, Green library, Stanford University

John Mustain (host): Medieval treasures and other delights: a second evening in the Stanford University Libraries' special collections.

Music Program/Singers' Reunion and Potluck: Saturday, January 11.  At the home of Ann and Dick Jones.

Music programs from 3:00-5:00 and 5:15-6:00, followed by potluck from 6:30 to 9:00 pm.

2002

Tuesday, November 19, 2002, 7:00-9:00 pm.  Location:  Arrillaga Alumni Center, 326 Galvez Street on the Stanford University campus.

Building Salisbury Cathedral - a video featuring Yoshio Kusaba, Cal State Chico;
Dick Jones: Ironwork at the top: a medieval jigsaw puzzle
in Salisbury cathedral's spire (the paper he presented at Leeds in July 2002);
Reading recommendations by members.

Thursday, October 24, 2002, 7:00-9:00 pm (Come at 6:30 for wine and tapas before the meeting starts.)

Along the Pilgrimage Route to Santiago de Compostela
Since medieval times pilgrims have traveled across Northern Spain to worship at the tomb of St. James. Join us as we hear reports from a hardy band of modern day travelers who made the same long and arduous trek (by air conditioned bus!) this past summer,  seeking the heady delights of medieval architecture rather than the traditional pilgrimage goal of penitence.

Bob Nyden on Pilgrimages
John Wilkes on Architectural Wonders
Linda Jack on The Treasures of the Church of San Isidoro, Leon
Ann Jones on Stained Glass Windows

For those of you who were not able to take our virtual tour of the Santiago pilgrimage route at the last meeting, here is a live web cam in the square in front of the cathedral at Compostela.

And a website that Bob found at UCLA with a nifty computer model. UCLA is creating computer models of a number of historic buildings including the Cathedral at Santiago de Compostela.  The restoration project will show the building as it appeared when dedicated by Bishop Pedro Muñoz on April 3, 1211 A.D.

And last, but not least, here is Evelyn's recommended reading list:

Hopper, Sarah. To Be a Pilgrim: The Medieval Pilgrimage Experience. Stroud, Sutton Publishing Limited, 2002. 
Excellent overview of the meaning and experience of medieval pilgrimage, illustrated with photographs and reproductions from illuminated manuscripts, a visual delight.

Lozano, Millan Bravo. A Practical Guide for Pilgrims: The Road to Santiago. Madrid, Editorial Everest, 2001.
The modern-day pilgrim's guidebook. Every section has a map, hints, food and lodging, special instructions for the walker, the biker, the driver. Every page also has photos of the notable buildings along the way.

Raju, Alison. The Way of St. James, Le Puy to Santiago: A Walker's Guide. Cumbria, Cicerone Press, 1999.
Every traveler has room for this compact little guidebook in their pack. Tells you in great detail when to turn right, when to turn left (at the third brown cow standing in the field), when to go straight ahead and where to find water! Lots of photos, some in color.

Monday, September 16, 2002. 6:30-9pm (Please join us for a social hour from 6:30-7:30 pm to greet old friends, meet new members, and swap summer stories. For those of you who are breaking your fast, there will be food and beverages available. Bob's talk will begin at 7:30.)

Robert A. Scott, sociologist and author of the forthcoming book, The Gothic Enterprise, will speak on Cathars, cathedral building and the problem of heresy in 13th Century Europe
 

Monday, April 29, 2002. 7-9pm

Papers to be presented at Kalamazoo

• Susan Altstatt: Building the New Jerusalem: the German order as patrons and practitioners of the arts
• George Hardin Brown: The wound in Christ's side as a site of devotion for Bede and later women mystics
• William P. Mahrt: Acoustics, liturgy, and architecture in Medieval English cathedrals
• Kerry McCarthy: Mundy's Vox patris celestis and the Assumption of the Virgin

Note: this meeting took place in Stanford University, Department of English, Building 460, Stanford Main Quad Terrace Room, uppermost floor. (A wine and cheese reception followed.)
 

Thursday, May 16, 2002. 7-9pm

Prof. Achim Timmermann: The penance cross, the poor sinner's cross and the pillory: monuments of crime and punishment in late medieval Germany
Note: this meeting took place in the Parish Hall of Foothills Congregational Church, which is at the top of the triangle formed by Orange and Lincoln in Los Altos, CA.
 

Tuesday, March 19, 2002. 7-9pm

Elain Kreigh: Walking the Paston Way: Medieval treasures in modern Norfolk
In July 2001 Elaine and Randy walked the Paston Way in Norfolk , visiting 16 medieval churches and villages, each with something unique to offer. The route was devised by students at Paston College in North Walsham and named for the Paston family, known for their abundant correspondence in the fifteenth century.
 

Monday, February 11, 2002. 7-9pm

More medieval manuscripts
 

Wednesday, January 16, 2002. 7-9pm, in the Stanford Green Library

John Mustain: An evening in the Stanford University libraries' special collections: medieval treasures and other delights John was kind enough to provide an annotated list of the treasures we were able to examine - and touch.

2001

Tuesday, November 27, 2001. 7-9pm

Jenny Jacobs: Discovering history through conservation: Bath Abbey, Cirencester parish church, and St. Paul's Cathedral
 

Thursday, October 25, 2001. 7-9pm (A free meeting.)

The Battle of Agincourt: October 25, 1415

As dawn broke on the morning of October 25, 1415, the prospects for the English army camped around the village of Maisoncelles in northern France could hardly have seemed worse. Ten weeks previously, England's 26-year-old King Henry V had landed an expeditionary force in Normandy where he planned to take Harfleur on the Seine estuary before marching on Paris. Henry shared with his forefathers the ambition to add France to his domains. The English army was racked by disease and short of food. But even worse, the French had managed to raise a huge army and assemble near the village of Agincourt, blocking the English path to Calais and home.

The Battle that followed inspired William Shakespeare to pen one of his most popular history plays, Henry V, including the stirring patriotic passages that continue to inspire. A recent example is the recent tile for HBO's World War II series, Band of Brothers taken from Act IV, Scene 3: We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.

Our program has inspired contributions by four Sarum Seminar members on various topics related to the Battle of Agincourt and its larger context, the intermittent fighting between France and England that we know today as the Hundred Years' War.

We had:

• Don McDonald, reading the Prologue to Act I of William Shakespeare's Henry V
• Marion Harris, Cry, 'God for Harry, England and St. George' -- St. Crispin's Day 1415
• Bob Nyden, Gules, Azure, and Lions Passant: Heraldry at Agincourt
• Ann Jones, Living Through the Hundred Years' War
   

Tuesday, September 18, 2001. 7-9pm

John Gillingham (Profesor Emeritus of the London School of Ecxonomics, and author of many notable books including Richard the Lionheart, The Wars of the Roses, and The Angevin empire): Gentlemanly conduct in medieval England.
 

Tuesday, May 15, 2001. 7-9pm

Virginia Jansen (Professor of Art History, University of California at Santa Cruz): Medieval secular architecture.
 

Monday, April 30, 2001. 7-9pm

Tom Beaumont James (Professor of Regional Studies, King Alfred's College, Winchester, England): Clarendon Palace, near Salisbury: rediscovering a lost palace of the Plantagenets.
 

Thursday, April 19, 2001. 7-9pm

Elaine Kriegh: Castle as midwife: the relationship between Helmsley Castle and Rievaulx Abbey.
John Wilkes: slide show - some northern French cathedrals.
 

Thursday, February 15, 2001. 7-9pm

The CD Medieval Stained Glass of Fairford Parish Church presented by Ann Jones.
 

Thursday, January 11, 2001. 7-9pm

Members reviews: good books, useful websites and newly-found research tools

2000

Monday, December 11, 2000. 7-9pm

Stephen Murray (Professor of Art History, Columbia University): The Virtual Cathedral: a CD-ROM tour of Amiens Cathedral
 

Tuesday, November 14, 2000. 7-9pm

Linda Jack: Ela, the Countess of Salisbury and the politics of family history.
 

Thursday, October 19, 2000. 7-9pm

Kerry McCarthy (Ph.D. Candidate in Musicology, Stanford University): Reform and revolution in Tudor church music.
 

Monday, September 18, 2000. 7-9pm

Linda Papanicolaou, PhD (art teacher & independent art history scholar): Stained glass: the art of the elusive pure color.
 

Tuesday, May 23, 2000. 7-9pm

Virginia Jansen (Professor of Art History, University of California at Santa Cruz): The problem of German gothic architecture
 

Monday, April 24, 2000. 7-9pm

Alice Tinker: Misericords in English cathedrals & abbeys (misericords are carvings under the seats of choir stalls) and Elaine Kriegh: Castles for Dummies (just kidding!)
 

Tuesday, March 21, 2000

Malcolm Miller, lecturer and guide at Chartres Cathedral: Chartres Cathedral (A special offsite talk at San Jose State University's Art Museum.)
 

Thursday, February 24, 2000. 7-9pm

Robert Scott (Associate Director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences): The building of Stonehenge, 3100-1100 B.C.
 

Monday, January 24, 2000. 7-9pm

Prof. George Brown (Department of English, Stanford University): A small cathedral of learning: Venerable Bede's eighth century monastic library

1999

Thursday December 2, 1999. 7-9pm

Dick Jones: Horse, Ox, and Blocks
Marion Harris: Usurpation amid the architectural treasures of medieval London -- April 9 to June 6, 1483
 

Tuesday, October 26, 1999. 7-9pm

Dinah Hazell Poverty and Plenty: Chaucer's Poor Widow and her Fabulous Cock: An evening in the enchanted world of Chauntecleer the Rooster and his nemesis, Renart the Fox. Using Chaucer's charming beast fable, The Nun's Priest's Tale, as a window on medieval culture, we will look at two important social concerns: poverty (ideal vs. real) and anti-clericalism. How are these issues related to a talking chicken? Come find out!
 

Monday, September 27, 1999. 7-9pm

Prof. William Mahrt (Associate Professor of Music, Stanford University) Chapter Houses, Choir Screens, Lady Chapels and Such: Aspects of liturgical architecture illustrated with sides taken on Sarum Seminar trips, with special attention to differences between monastic and secular uses
 

May 25th, 1999. 7-9pm

Reports from the field and the armchair:
(1) Dick Harte: Stone skeletons - the engineering of temples and cathedrals
(2) Bob Nyden: Medieval time
(3) Bob Nyden and all, Book review and round-table discussion: "Goings-on in Europe in the year 1300". Bring your own knowledge of that era to help flesh out a picture of what life was like - the politics, philosophy, clothing, food...
 

April 13th, 1999. 7-9pm

Run-throughs for the Medieval Studies Conference in Kalamazoo:
Dick Jones: Estimating the weight of the timber scaffolding in the spire of Salisbury Cathedral
Linda Jack: Facilitating adult learning through communities of practice
 

March 9th, 1999. 7-9pm

Robert A. Scott (Associate Director, Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences): Social bases of religious experience: implications for understanding cathedrals
 

February 16th, 1999. 7-9pm

Prof. George Brown (Dept. of English, Stanford University): Durham cathedral: Salisbury's opposi
 

January 23rd, 1999. 7-9pm.

Singer's reunion: alumni of all the trips sing together!
(Home of Dick and Ann Jones, Los Altos Hills)
 

January 26th, 1999. 7-9pm.

The Very Rev. Hugh Dickinson (Dean Emeritus of Salisbury Cathedral): Doctrine and architecture: the shaping of worship spaces

1998

November 10th, 1998. 7-9pm.

Alice Tinker: Change-ringing of church bells
Ann Jones: Troyes Cathedral.
 

October 13th, 1998. 7-9pm.

The Rev. Richard D. McCall, Ph.D. (Dean of the Chapel and Lecturer in Liturgics, The Church Divinity School of the Pacific, Berkeley): Medieval liturgy: constructing church from word and act.
 

Tuesday September 22, 1998

Linda Jack: Medieval Gardens
Evelyn McMillan: Everything you never wanted to know about the Black Death in 45 minutes or less.
 

Monday May 18, 1998

Bill Maht: Sacred time and sacred space: the processions and the doors in the Sarum Rite.
 

Tuesday April 21, 1998

Two talks resulting from the March 1998 Sarum Seminar trip to Salisbury.
John Wilkes: Salisbury cathedral - a photographic essay and
Bob Nyden: Walking the River Nadder in search of a medieval shipping route.
 

Tuesday January 13, 1998

Bob Scott talked on his latest exploration: Cathedrals as memory.
 

Tuesday February 10, 1998

Dick Jones: Gleanings from the accounts of Westminster abbey in 1253.
Bob Scott: The role of the dead in the world of the living in medieval times.

1997

November 11, 1997

Barbara Abou-El-Haj (Associate professor of Art History at Binghampton University, SUNY): Power and program in the glass of Reims cathedral
 

October 14, 1997

Maureen Miller (Professor of History, Hamilton College, Clinton, NY): Power and architectural innovation: loss is gain.
 

September 16, 1997

Richard McCall: Liturgy: the performance of cosmos and culture.
 

May 13, 1997

Marda Buchholz: The Cathedral Church of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Salisbury: its dedication.
Dick Jones: Show and tell: pages from the actual Westminster Abbey account books.
 

March 18, 1997

Dick Jones: Money, materials and labor in the building of Westminster Abbey in 1253.

1996

December 10, 1996

John Wilkes: The building of King's College Chapel, Cambridge.
Elaine Kriegh: Tomb monuments.
 

November 12th, 1996

Professor Yoshio Kusaba: Problems of interpreting evidence in cathedral stonework.
 

October 8, 1996

Jim Boyd: The Cathedral crusade - Gothic timelines.
Floyd Kessler: Your money or your life - Jews in medieval England.
 

September 10th, 1996

Virginia Jansen: The social and functional uses of medieval architecture.
 

August 13, 1996

Linda Jack: Sheelah na-gigs.
Bob Nyden: Was Salisbury's stone moved down the Nadder river?
 

July 9, 1996

Ann Jones: Manuscript illumination.
Dan Sternberg: The science of stained glass.
 

June 27, 1996

John Tillotson (an associate of David Bartlett's) gave A guided tour of restoration work on the main quadrangle at Stanford University.
 

June 11, 1996

David Bartlett: Conservation issues involved in his work on the West Front of Wells Cathedral.