Literature MIT

MIT Ancient & Medieval Studies Colloquium Series Presents, "The Irish at the Carolingian Court and the Europeanization of Europe"

Speaker: Alexander O’Hara, Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

When: Monday, March 28th @ 5:15pm (ET)
Where: In Person, Building E51, E51-095*

Abstract: During the eighth and ninth centuries Irish clergymen and theologians such as Virgil of Salzburg, Dicuil, Sedulius Scottus, and John Scottus Eriugena were drawn to the courts of the Carolingian kings and emperors. They served as advisors, teachers, and theologians for their royal and episcopal patrons in Frankia. As had been the case with the Merovingian court of the seventh century, the Carolingian court to an even greater extent brought together a cosmopolitan multi-ethnic array of courtiers, clergymen, and scholar that served as a middle ground for an emerging European consciousness. A new European dialectic emerged from this cultural mixing, one grounded in a biblical hermeneutics of the Franks as the new Israel. Coming from the margins of Europe, the Irish embraced a more inclusive strategy than their Anglo-Saxon counterparts that put them within this new European framework. This paper explores how these Irish immigrants wrote about their place within Europe and their identity as Irishmen.

Bio: Dr Alexander O'Hara is a Fulbright Fellow in the Department of Celtic Languages and Literatures at Harvard University and Honorary Fellow in the Faculty of Theology at St Patrick's Pontifical University, Maynooth. A graduate in Medieval History of the University of St Andrews and Oxford University, he has held Research Fellowships at Trinity College Dublin, the Institute of Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences, and the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton. He is the author of Jonas of Bobbio and the Legacy of Columbanus (Oxford University Press, 2018), editor of Columbanus and the Peoples of Post-Roman Europe (Oxford University Press, 2018), and translator of Jonas of Bobbio: Life of Columbanus, Life of John, and Life of Vedast (Liverpool University Press, 2017). He is co-editor of St Sunniva: Irish Queen, Norwegian Patron Saint (Bergen, 2021) and his current book project concerns the cultural perception of Ireland and the Irish from Antiquity to the Anglo-Norman Conquest of Ireland.

*Until further notice: Attendees who are not members of the MIT Community on COVID Pass may contact [email protected] for a Tim Ticket. More info on COVID-19 protocol here: http://covidapps.mit.edu/visito

AMS Colloquium presents: "Plague, War, Migration, Climate Change, S*x, and the Demographic Riddle of the Early Middle Ages"

Presented by: Shane Bobrycki, Professor of History, University of Vienna (Austria)

When: Monday, December 13th @ 5:15pm (Eastern Time)

Register for Zoom: https://mit.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMsfu6orTgoGNHxnIrNKPjsfZLRfYpj-fcz%C2%A0

Abstract: The medieval historian Marc Bloch wrote that the “fundamental characteristic” of early medieval Europe (c. 500–1000 CE) was “the great and universal decline in population” that opened the period. Many economic and social historians have agreed. Between the fifth and the seventh centuries, cities and towns diminished by orders of magnitude; some vanished entirely. Settlement density declined almost everywhere. Only gradually did cities and populations recover, a process that gained speed only after 1000. Few question that this demographic pattern had profound economic, social, and political consequences for early medieval history. But historians are less sure why it happened in the first place. What caused populations to drop off in the post-Roman West? Why did they remain low for so long? Why did the demographic fate of the West differ from that of its “sibling cultures” around the Mediterranean, the Byzantine and Islamic worlds?

In this talk, I reassess the usual suspects for early medieval European demographic history: epidemic disease, endemic warfare, migration, climate change, and the reproductive choices of early medieval families. I will argue that in each case we need to spend more time thinking about the mechanics of causation.

The Other Toni Morrison A timely new documentary celebrates Morrison’s novels, but downplays the enduring power of her work as an editor and essayist.