Aachen Cathedral (and associated thoughts)

Two weeks ago I moved to Berlin with my husband. We are planning to be here until August, while I work on a project part-funded by the DAAD, during which time I will be a postdoctoral researcher at the Großbritannien-Zentrum, part of the Humboldt University. We decided to drive from Oxford to Berlin, stopping in…

Teachable Features 1: Binding Error, MS Bodl. 565

I've just written a blog for Teaching the Codex, the manuscript pedagogy initiative I run with my colleague, Dr Tristan Franklinos. We are launching a series called 'Teachable Features', as a resource for teachers to give quick demonstrations, as well as for anyone interested in learning about manuscripts who does not have immediate access to…

William Wey’s Itinerary to the Holy Land: Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 565 (c. 1470)

I'm very excited that my article on binding errors and scribal identity in MS Bodl. 565 is available in the latest issue of the Bodleian Library Record (April 2015). In lieu of an abstract, here is the first paragraph: In 1456, the middle-aged Master William Wey, bursar of Eton College, set out on the first…

St Oswald’s Temperamental Raven

Search online for “St Oswald”, and you won’t have to look too far before finding an image of the saint holding a raven. The raven generally belongs in the continental Oswald tradition, but it has become a fairly standard part of his iconography, as you can see from the following images:    The images are,…

A Wintry Pylgrymage

I am currently working on a DPhil thesis which looks at pilgrimage writings produced by two Germans and two Englishmen towards the end of the long fifteenth century. I am reading these texts as literature, and considering what they have to tell us about identity and experience. The German writers are Bernhard von Breydenbach and…