Dr Emily Guerry

Tutor in Medieval History @ChCh_Oxford @OxfordHistory

[John Phipps @John__Phipps]

@rosalyster has written an incredible piece about Bayreuth in the new LRB

[Peter Sarris @peter_sarris]

A wonderful obituary of Chris Wickham https://t.co/LngU09c9MA

[Christ Church @ChCh_Oxford]

What a day to celebrate! 🎓💛

Yesterday, our new Christ Church students officially matriculated - here's to an exciting Oxford journey ahead.

Thanks for sharing your photos! 📸

IG: meetkanyin, fifa.hajji, drishtiivaaid, soutamires.sp, ahsxn_

[Rory Loughnane @loughnrv]

New findings (w/ Brett Greatley-Hirsch) about Marlowe, Shakespeare, and the authorship of Edward III.

The article in question, 'Reintegrating Marlowe and Shakespeare', will be published later this year in SQ.

@MarloweProject

https://t.co/jtN1APDRP7

[Peter Frankopan @peterfrankopan]

So very sorry to hear about the death of Chris Wickham - one of the great medieval historians of our times and a good friend. He was a brilliant, ground-breaking and deeply insightful man from whom I (and many others) learned a great deal. And a terrific writer too... #RIP

[Sam Wetherell @samwetherell]

RIP Chris Wickham. Unlike so many historians who emphasise particularities and contingencies, he was the master of constructing grand, coherent, beautifully rendered worlds out of his evidence. This, from his 2021 Past and Present essay, is a masterpiece of historical writing.

[Alex Burghart @alexburghart]

Published this week - the Poet Laureate’s beautiful account of the Bayeux Tapestry from 2005, now printed for the first time

[Friendless Churches @friendschurches]

After years of work, St Lawrence's, Gumfreston has reopened and we have been delighted by the wonderful comments left by visitors.

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[Simon Knott @TheSimonKnott]

St Francis reads a sermon to birds who flock to a tree to listen. A wallpainting at Wissington, Suffolk. Today's the 800th anniversary of the death of St Francis in 1226. The Wissington paintings are dated c1280, so it's just possible the artist was alive in the saint's lifetime.

[Westminster Abbey @wabbey]

For #Michaelmas - the feast of St Michael and All Angels - we wanted to share this censing angel on the wall of the Abbey's south transept. Carved in the 1250s, it was originally richly coloured and gilded and is among the most important examples of English medieval sculpture of its time.

[British Library @britishlibrary]

We’re delighted to announce that Dr Paul Bate has been appointed as the British Library’s new Chief Executive.

Joining us from the UK Space Agency, Paul brings experience supporting world-class research communities, fostering discovery and building trust and purpose across teams and partnerships. We look forward to welcoming his experience at the Library.

Read the full announcement  here
https://t.co/AolaRKhZoS

[Friendless Churches @friendschurches]

Over 50 years ago, we rescued the church of St Mary's, Mundon from dereliction, saving this curious medieval structures and its beautiful array wall paintings for future generations.

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📷 © Morley Von Sternberg

[Rory Loughnane @loughnrv]

One month to go!

Shakespeare at Thirty will be published by @PrincetonUPress on 20 October.

A book about Shakespeare before he became Shakespeare: the first thirty years, the experiments, the failures, and the conditions that made a writing life possible.

[Simon Knott @TheSimonKnott]

Today's the feast of St Matthew, apostle mentioned in three of the canonical gospels and by tradition author of the first of them. Here he is at Cawston, Norfolk on the 1480s rood screen, glasses and baldness suggesting wisdom, a man conversant with Jewish Law as befits his bridging role between Old and New Testaments.

[Mark Lambert @sitsio]

One of the great misconceptions about medieval churches is that they were austere worlds of bare stone;
they were anything but.

These extraordinary columns in the church of Sainte-Radegonde in Poitiers date largely from c.1250–1300 and preserve exceptionally rare traces of the colour that once saturated the medieval sacred world. Their heraldic decoration appears to represent local lords and benefactors whose earthly identities were quite literally incorporated into the fabric of the church and that is profoundly Catholic!

The medieval church building was not conceived merely as an auditorium in which worship happened. It was both catechesis in stone and an image of redeemed creation: in an age when books were precious and literacy far from universal, colour, sculpture, stained glass, saints and biblical scenes taught the faith to the eye. The church itself became a kind of visual theology, gathering earth and heaven together and ordering the material world towards the worship of God.

Christianity did not demand the abandonment of material things, because at its heart stands the astonishing claim that the Word became flesh. Beauty, therefore, was not incidental to worship. Matter itself (stone, wood, pigment, glass, gold) could be enlisted in the proclamation of the Gospel. That makes the iconoclastic impulse of the Reformation particularly significant: when images were smashed, statues broken, walls whitewashed and shrines destroyed, something more than medieval decoration disappeared. An older Catholic sacramental imagination, in which the material world could become a sign pointing beyond itself to divine realities, was being displaced by a very different conception of sacred space.

What survives at Sainte-Radegonde gives us a tantalising glimpse of how dazzling the churches of medieval Christendom must once have been!!

[Archaeology & Art @archaeologyart]

Illustrations from Hildegard von Bingen’s Scivias, 12th c.

[Eleanor Parker @ClerkofOxford]

14 September is the Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, once known as 'Holyrood Day in harvest'. As summer moves into autumn, this festival extols a holy tree, bearing the fruit of life, standing steadfast at the still point of the turning world. https://t.co/4GPLwUH3hE

[weird medieval guys NEW BOOK OUT NOVEMBER 5!!! @WeirdMedieval]

one of the most devastating parts of seeing the bayeux tapestry irl was clocking that for 90% of it, the borders are these decorative animals, then the battle comes & they gawk in horror as the fighting spills over and the margin becomes this jumble of dismembered looted corpses

[Rachel Morley @MorleyRA]

Astounded to discover on Saturday that Church Crawling is The Times' *Book of the Week*!

If you were thinking of getting yourself a copy, https://t.co/qS1gHOin7D are offering a 15% discount on the RRP when you use the code LOVEBOOKSHOPS

https://t.co/2o0oRvwXqW

[Marysia @marysia_cc]

St. Francis Preaches to the Birds
woodcut print by Sadao Watanabe (1913-1996)