2009

Singing and pot luck: Saturday, January 9, 3-9pm at the home of Ann & Dick Jones

3-6 p.m. Singers’ Seminar and Rehearsal
5-15 p.m. Lecture with Musical Illustration: William Mahrt (Professor of Music, Stanford): Nunc Dimitis
6:30-9 p.m. Pot luck

Member's night Seminar: Monday, December 14, 7-9 p.m. at CASBS

Presentations by Sarum Seminar members around the theme Medieval Christmas:

- Elaine & Randy Kriegh: In Pursuit of Henry VIII and Father Thames. Two seemingly unconnected journeys that actually complemented each other!
- Roy Mize: Eilmer - The Flying Monk of Malmesbury - the story of a medieval monk who thought he could fly.
- Mary Fischer: Les Santons de Provence - Mary's extensive collection of hand-made terra cotta Nativity figures from Provence honors a tradition that dates to medieval times.
- Ann Jones: Out of the Shadows - Most medieval Christmas images focus on the Virgin and Child, but there are a lot of other characters depicted. We will bring some of these other people out of the shadows.

Film screening and discussion: Thursday, November 19, 7-9 p.m. at CASBS (bring your supper and join us any time after 6pm)

Allan Langdale (Art Historian and Filmmaker): film screening and discussion of The Stones of Famagusta: The Story of a Forgotten City

In this documentary film, Allan Langdale hops on his bicycle and takes viewers on a whirlwind tour of a remarkable and forgotten city: Famagusta, on the eastern shores of Cyprus. Considered to be the world’s richest city in the 14th century, Famagusta was the center of a French crusader kingdom for 300 years. The Venetians also ruled the city before being conquered by the Ottomans in the siege of Famagusta of 1571, when a small group of Venetians held off a massive Ottoman army for almost a year.

The story of the city’s meteoric rise to prominence and precipitous collapse into oblivion is told through the architecture of the town's many conquerors. Gothic cathedrals and churches -- now with minarets, having been converted to mosques -- sit alongside Ottoman bath houses, Byzantine churches, and Venetian gates and palaces. The city walls themselves, with enormous bastions and a castle, are unique and well-preserved examples of medieval and renaissance military architecture. To this day, the picturesque ruins of the city's vast churches are still riddled with the iron cannon balls fired in the siege of 1571.

2012.08 update:

• DVDs of the Stones of Famagusta are still available - see www.stonesoffamagusta.com.
• A new book from Allan is available: In a Contested Realm: An Illustrated Guide to the Archaeology and Historical Architecture of Northern Cyprus, ISBN 1845301285 (more info here; it's also available at Amazon.com).

Medieval Matters Public Lecture: Tuesday, October 27, 7-9 p.m. at History Corner (Building 200), Room 002, Stanford University. [audio]

Conrad Rudolph (Professor of Medieval Art History, UC Riverside) Pilgrimage to the End of the World: The Road to Santiago de Compostela.

For more than a thousand years, pilgrims from all over Europe have walked to Santiago de Compostela, believed to be the burial place of the Apostle James. In the Middle Ages, half a million people a year flocked to this holy place, trekking over the Pyrenees and all the way across Spain. Conrad Rudolph has made this grueling journey, walking 2½ months and 1,000 miles from central France. His chronicle melds the ancient and the contemporary, the spiritual and the physical, encompassing historical study and reflections on the ancient traditions of pilgrimage.

Seminar: Monday, Sep 21, 7-9pm. Location: CASBS. Bring a sandwich and join us for supper, starting at 6pm.

Virginia Jansen (Professor Emerita, History of Art and Visual Culture, UC Santa Cruz) on The Templar code: the new choir of the Templar's church in London.

Like The Da Vinci Code, the search for an archetype for the unusual choir of the Temple Church traverses a vast terrain, from London to Canterbury to Jerusalem.

The Templars were a widespread order of military knights, like the Hospitallers, founded to protect pilgrims traveling to the Christian holy sites in Jerusalem. Their provincial headquarters in London was famous for hospitality, banking, and burials of not only renowned knights, but also of that illustrious patron of the arts, King Henry III and his queen. (Henry was eventually interred in Westminster Abbey.) The choir of the Temple Church, consecrated in 1240, takes the form of a hall church -- the central vessel and side aisles are all the same height. It was attached to the 12th-century round nave with its famous medieval effigies. This church has been praised by Nikolaus Pevsner as "… one of the most perfectly and classically proportioned buildings of the C13 in England…" and by the 19th-century architect Lewis Nockalls Cottingham, who said, "the choir … is decidedly the most exquisite specimen of pointed architecture existing."

Were the designers of this choir imbued with ideas drawn from the architecture associated with the government of Henry III at such sites as Salisbury, Winchester and Canterbury, or with their comrades the Hospitallers, or with holy sites in Jerusalem? And why? Come hear Virginia Jansen attempt to crack the Templar architectural code.

Virginia Jansen is an architectural historian who 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. Her latest book is on the architectural patronage of King Henry III (1216-1272). 

Seminar: Tuesday, May 19, 7-9pm. Location: CASBS. Bring a sandwich and join us for supper, starting at 6pm.

Bissera V. Pentcheva (Assistant Professor of Art & Art History and Director of the Medieval Studies Program, Stanford University) on "The Performative Icon" in Byzantium.

Byzantine mixed-media icons stood in sensually rich spaces of mosaics, silk, and incense. Sunrays moving across the rich surfaces of these objects and infused them with movement of highlights and shadows, while the shimmer of flickering candles endowed the images with life. The Byzantines called this spectacle of polymorphous appearances poikilia – presence effects sensually experienced.

As modern viewers we have lost this access to the polymorphous. The lighting and ambiance of museums have destroyed the medieval poikilia, and photography has tried to capture one "objective" replica of the icon. Prof. Pentcheva has turned to film as a technology suitable for the recording of kinetic poikilia, enriching this approach with the exploration of Byzantine poetic texts. Her work reveals the medieval understanding of animation as performance, and reconstitutes the meaning of the polymorphous icon in the interaction of viewer and object.

Bissera Pentcheva joined the faculty at Stanford in 2003 after teaching as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D from Harvard in 2001 with a dissertation on the cult of the Virgin in Byzantium.
 

Seminar: Thursday, April 23, 7-9pm at CASBS.

The best of Southern California Medieval Grad students (all are PhD candidates in Medieval History, UCLA):
Dana Polanichka: Precious Stones, Living Temples: The Sacred Space of Carolingian Churches;
Alison Perchuk: Architecture, Art & Identity in Twelfth-Century Lazio: The Basilica of Sant'Elia near Nepi;
Ned Schoolman: Beyond the Grave: Bishops and Burial in Early Medieval Ravenna.

 

Stanford University Department of Art and Art History 2008/09 art history lecture series: Thursday, April 16, starting at 5:30 pm.
Location: Nathan Cummings Art Building, Stanford (435 Lasuen Mall, room AR2).

Finbarr Barry Flood (Institute of Fine Arts and Art History, NYU), The Trouble with Images: Aniconism, Iconoclasm and the Representation of Islam.

In recent years, the spectacle of image destruction has been a regular component of media reporting on the Middle East. The destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas in 2001, the (orchestrated and spontaneous) defacement of political imagery after the invasion of Iraq, and the recent controversy about caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad all highlighted the paradoxical power of images even in an era saturated by them. Assertions about these events were often questionable in their historicity and contradictory in their implications, but most commentators assumed that they could be accommodated under the rubric of an essentially ‘Islamic’ attitude towards images. This lecture takes a two-pronged approach to these phenomena. On the one hand, it looks at the historical evidence for the perception of an ‘image problem’ in Islam. On the other, it considers the theory and practice of image making in the Islamic world, the circumstances in which images were altered by those who objected to them, and the insights that these alterations provide into the perception and status of images.
 

Seminar: Monday, March 16, 7-9pm. (note change back to the 16th) Jopin us for supper first: bring a sandwich or salad to the dining room any time after 6 PM - a chance to catch up with old friends and new acquaintances.

Brian Catlos (History, UC Santa Cruz): The Crusades: conflict of clivilzations or collateral damage?
Brian Catlos works primarily on the social and economic relations among different ethno-religious groups in and around the Medieval Mediterranean. His award-winning historical monograph, The Victors and the Vanquished, examined Muslims living under Christian rule in medieval Spain. Two books are now in production: Worlds of Economics and History: A Variorum in Honor of Andrew M. Watson, and Muslims in Latin Christendom, ca. 1050-1615, and he is now at work on Common Histories: Everyday Lives of Muslims and Jews in Medieval Spain. In addition, he has written guidebooks to France and Spain, and was featured in the PBS documentary, Cities of Light.

Stanford Humanities Center lectures and seminars: February 23-26

Carolyn Walker Bynum (History, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton) will be presenting a series of lectures and seminars at the Stanford Humanities Center on Christian materiality. See here for more details.
 

Seminar: Tuesday, February 17, 7-9pm (please join us for supper beforehand: bring a sandwich or salad to the CASBS dining room any time after 6pm)

Rob Bork (Associate Professor of Art History, University of Iowa) on Life is elsewhere: European and American schools of gothic architectural history since 1945.

How can American scholars best contribute to the study of Gothic architecture, given the geographical and cultural distance between the United States and medieval Europe? Has scholarly conversation between Americans and Europeans been impeded by local patriotism, nationalism and international conflict? Rob Bork will offer some personal reflections on these questions, and will argue that Americans are likely to contribute in three main ways: by providing synthetic perspectives on themes of international scope, by studying aspects of architecture that can be considered in isolation from their archaeological context, and by participating in collaborative research programs with European scholars. The recent flourishing of electronic media facilitates all of these developments, as Bork's recent work on the geometry of Gothic drawings demonstrates: computer-aided analysis of these medieval "blueprints" reveals some heretofore unappreciated links between the architectural cultures of Gothic France, Italy, and the Germanic world.

With degrees in physics and architectural history, ROB BORK is a specialist in the study of Gothic architecture. He is author of Great Spires: Skyscrapers of the New Jerusalem, editor of De Re Metallica: The Uses of Metal in the Middle Ages, and a new book, Gotische Türme in Mitteleuropa.
 

Medieval Matters Public Lecture: Thursday, January 29, 2009
Location: Piggott Hall (building 260, room 113), Stanford.

Judith Bennett (History, USC) on Death and the Maiden: From Chaucer to Pearl Jam. Sponsored jointly by Sarum Seminar, the Program in Medieval Studies and Stanford Continuing Studies.
Buffet reception for Sarum members, 5:30-6:30pm in the Red Room of the Faculty Club, 439 Lagunita Drive, Stanford. (Parking is available in the nearby Tressider lot.)

Ever since the ancient Greeks, European cultures have nurtured a darkly erotic link between death and maidenhood. This connection was particularly charged during Chaucer's time when, in the wake of the Black Death, people began to cope with the challenges posed by large numbers of unmarried women in their midst.
How did Chaucer and his contemporaries imagine the deaths of maidens? How did the maidens approach death? And in what ways do these themes resonate in contemporary culture? Professor Bennett will place medieval imaginings of the deaths of maidens within a cultural history that extends from ancient Greek myths to contemporary American pop songs.

Judith Bennett has received numerous awards for teaching and research. Focusing on peasant women, women's work and feminist history, her books include Women in the Medieval English Countryside, A Medieval Life: Cecilia Penifader of Brigstock, Ale, Beer and Brewsters in England and History Matters: Patriarchy and the Challenge of Feminism. She is also co-author of the most widely used textbook on the European Middle Ages, Medieval Europe: A Short History, now in its tenth edition.

Singer's seminar + pot luck: Saturday, January 10
Location: Jones home

Singers' Seminar with William Mahrt (Music, Stanford) followed by Pot Luck.

2008

Stanford's Center for European Studies Lecture: Wednesday, October 15, 7-9pm
Location: Stanford Pigott Hall (Bldg. 260) Room 113.

Gary Dickson, University of Edinburgh The Children's Crusade.
 

Members' Night: Tuesday, December 16, 7-9pm

Bob Nyden: Looking for St. Denis
Ann Jones: Sex, Violence and Other Deadly Sins
Elaine & Randy Kriegh: Christmas in England
 

Special Seminar: Wednesday, November 19, 7-9pm
Location: Stanford Green Library

John Mustain (Librarian, Stanford) with selected materials from Stanford's Special Collections.
 

Seminar: Monday, October 27, 7-9pm

Philippe Buc (History, Stanford) on the Fall of Jerusalem to the First Crusaders, 1099.
 

Seminar: Thursday, September 25, 7-9pm

George Hardin Brown (Emeritus, English and Classics, Stanford) on Education and Scholarship of Abbesses and Nuns in Anglo-Saxon England
Phyllis Brown (English, Santa Clara University) on Hrotsvit von Gandersheim and the education of nuns in Germany.
 

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!
 

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.
 

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!
 

Medieval Matters Public lecture: Wednesday May 28, 7-9 pm
Location: Stanford campus Cubberley auditorium [audio]

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. [audio]

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