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March 10, 2003
UNM'S MEDIEVAL LECTURE SERIES LOOKS AT BARBARIAN EUROPE
The University of New Mexico's Institute for Medieval Studies presents
"Barbarian Europe: The Creation of a Civilization," Monday-Thursday,
March 24-27 in Woodward Hall room 101 on the main UNM campus.
The spring lecture series features a team of five acclaimed experts delivering
seven lectures exploring major transformations and achievements of the
centuries following the collapse of the Roman Empire. The lectures will
cover history, literature, women's studies, art and archaeology and music.
All lectures are free and open to the public.
"Barbarian Europe: The Creation of a Civilization" is the 18th
Spring Lecture Series offered by the Institute for Medieval Studies. As
in previous years, the lectures are organized to appeal to a large cross-section
of the Albuquerque community. Most lectures will focus on the critical
period from the sixth to the ninth century, when the groundwork was laid
for the emergence of a vibrant new civilization out of the ruins of the
Roman Empire.
Barbarian Europe was a multicultural melting pot producing remarkable,
larger-than-life missionary St. Boniface, who helped transform the politics
and culture of eighth-century Europe; individuals such as Balthild, the
Anglo-Saxon slave who rose to become queen of France; the and the Emperor
Charlemagne, who brought a new unity to Western Europe.
With Europe seeking once again to forge a unity overriding national borders,
the legacy of barbarian Europe and its major political creation, the reinvigorated,
transformed Holy Roman Empire, has a special relevance and resonance.
That legacy includes the formation of values that have helped to define
western culture and to provoke admiration while also bringing the West
into confrontation with other cultures. The seven lectures of "Barbarian
Europe: The Creation of a Civilization" will offer a stimulating
and informative overview of this most important historical period.
The topics of the lectures:
Monday, March 24, 7 p.m.
Henry Mayr-Harting, "Doing Business with Barbarians"
In his keynote lecture, Henry Mayr-Harting, Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical
History at Oxford University, will propose that Germanic and other barbarian
tribes - the Huns, the Goths, the Burgundians, the Franks and others
- far from destroying the late Roman Empire in the fifth and sixth centuries,
actually helped to sustain it.
Tuesday, March 25, 4 p.m.
Jane Tibbetts Schulenburg, "Women in Early Medieval Society: Saints,
Heroes, and 'Transgressors'"
Medieval writers were especially interested in heroic women in both
secular and spiritual realms; female heroes in medieval literature were
often described as "manly" or "virile." Schulenburg,
professor of history and women's studies at the University of Wisconsin
at Madison, will show how, for moral authorities of the early medieval
period, there was a fine line between heroic, virile acts of formidable
queens, saints, abbesses, and nuns and transgressive behavior. Women
who challenged traditional male hierarchy or authority by cutting their
hair and assuming male dress and male roles were seen as "crossing
the line."
Schulenburg examines the fascinating tradition of early medieval women
in England, France and the Viking world who were remembered for their
heroic, virile behavior and virginal defense.
Tuesday, March 25, 7 p.m.
Martin Carver, "Sutton Hoo: The Burial Rites, the Poetry, and the
Politics"
Martin Carver, professor of archaeology at the University of York and
director of the Sutton Hoo Project, will describe the remarkable finds
made in the burial mounds at Sutton Hoo in southeast England, the richest
and most important of all medieval archaeological sites. The mounds
were explored by local landowner Edith Pretty on the eve of the outbreak
of World War II; underneath one of them were discovered the remains
of a large ship in which a king had been buried amid a huge mass of
gold, silver and other treasures. Why did the Anglo-Saxons dispose of
such wealth in this remarkable burial site? What did the ship mean?
Carver will describe the story of an early English population whose
loyalties were torn between allegiance to pagan Scandinavia and Christian
France.
Wednesday, March 26, 4 p.m.
Charles Atkinson, "A Matter of Scale: On the Origins of the Tone-System
of Western Music"
Atkinson, professor of music at Ohio State University and an alumnus
of UNM, will discuss why scales play such a large part as the "building
blocks" of Western music when they do not have the same importance
in other musical traditions. He will show that the crucial period for
the development of the Western musical scale was the Middle Ages: major,
minor and chromatic scales were not a self-evident component of Western
music from the beginning, but were the result of a centuries-long process
of development in which the early Middle Ages were a focal point. Without
this process, the sound of Western music would not have been the same.
Wednesday, March 26, 7 p.m.
Eugene Vance, "Holy War and The Song of Roland, Then and Now"
Vance, professor of French, comparative literature and comparative
religion at the University of Washington, will examine how The Song
of Roland, the earliest and greatest epic of medieval French literature,
exemplifies critical issues of war and peace that emerged in western
Europe in response to a confrontation with the Islamic religion. The
Song of Roland describes the Emperor Charlemagne's campaign against
the Moors of late eighth-century Spain; but the poem was not composed
until the 11th century and reflects themes that emerged in the era of
the First Crusade, when the Christian ideology of Holy War gathered
force and when the Islamic discourse of Jihad veered from its traditional
system of values toward the same ideals of militant aggression and martyrdom
that Roland himself incarnated.
Thursday, March 27, 4 p.m.
Martin Carver, "Processes of Conversion: The Early Pictish Monastery
at Portmahomack, Tarbat Ness, Scotland"
Carver's second lecture describes his current archaeological excavations
at Portmahomack, a fishing village on the shores of Dornoch Firth in
northeast Scotland. Early in the 20th century, a fragment of stone carved
with a Latin inscription was found there, the only such inscription
yet discovered in the land of the Picts, the pagan people who occupied
the eastern part of Scotland between the fourth and the eighth centuries.
It appears to offer the first evidence for a monastery in Pictland.
Excavations conducted since 1994 have revealed not only a church, but
workshops for making parchment and artifacts of bronze, gold, silver
and glass. The monastery appears to have been founded in the sixth century
as part of the Irishman St. Columba's mission to the Northern Picts.
Thursday, March 27, 7 p.m.
Henry Mayr-Harting, "St. Boniface and the Creation of Carolingian
Europe"
St. Boniface (d. 754), called "the greatest Englishman" in
the title of a recent book, was an Anglo-Saxon monk who undertook to
convert the pagan Saxons of Germany. His missionary work on the continent
of Europe brought him into contact with the major political figures
of his time, including the pope and the progenitors of the Carolingian
dynasty. Boniface helped to shape Carolingian relations with the papacy
and the Carolingian monastic ideal; he also has a claim to be considered
one of the creators of Germany. No less fascinating than Boniface's
missionary and political career is his correspondence, including letters
he wrote to and received from female admirers and disciples. Boniface's
life and literary remains offer a full, luminous insight into the culture
of his time.
Visit the Institute for Medieval Studies on the Web at http://
www.unm.edu/~medinst or email at medinst@unm.edu.
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