Dr Johanna Dale convenes upcoming conference sponsored by the British Academy

Dr Johanna Dale will be convening the upcoming conference Liturgy, Literature & History: Oswald of Northumbria and the Cult of Saints in the High Middle Ages which will take place online, 5th-6th August 2021. 

The centrality of the cult of saints to medieval Christianity is reflected in surviving liturgical, historical, literary and administrative texts, material culture and architecture.  Too often, however, disciplinary boundaries mean these sources are studied in isolation from one another.  A multi-disciplinary approach is needed if we are to properly understand both the mechanisms by which saints’ cults spread and also the manner in which veneration of the saints drove other forms of political, cultural and social expression.  This conference, focussed on the cult of Oswald of Northumbria in the high Middle Ages, brings together historians, literary scholars, musicologists and art historians to explore the cult of saints through texts, objects, space, sound and the senses and particularly interrogates the influence of the liturgy on society.  The conference was intended to include a performance of Oswald’s feast-day liturgy drawn from Peterborough manuscripts and enacted in the space for which it was originally envisioned, we hope this recreation will be possible on Oswald’s feast day in 2022.

Full details about the conference, which is free and open to all, can be found here.