Michael Herren | |
---|---|
Academic background | |
Education | PhD., University of Toronto |
Thesis | A philological commentary on the Hisperica famina (1969) |
Academic work | |
Institutions | York University |
Michael Wayne Herren (born December 15,1940) is a Canadian classical philologist and medievalist. He taught at York University in Toronto for almost four decades and most recently held the position of Distinguished Research Professor of History and Classics there. [1] Scott G. Bruce characterizes him as a central figure in the academic debate on the classical tradition and its reception in medieval Western Europe. [2]
Michael W. Herren was born on December 15,1940,in Santa Ana,California, [3] and received his Bachelor of Arts in Humanities with a concentration in Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College in 1962. In 1967,he completed his Master of Studies in Latin and Paleography at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. In 1969,Herren received his doctorate in Classics from the University of Toronto for a commentary on the Hisperica Famina. [4] In 1974,he published an edition and translation of A-text of the Hisperica Famina (whose origin he argues is Ireland);classics scholar Charles Witke commented that "text,commentary and 'translation bear witness both to industry and to insight of a high order". [5] Michael Winterbottom said it was "the basis for any fresh progress" on the text. [6]
At York University,where he spent most of his academic career,Herren founded the Program in Classical Studies at Atkinson College. He taught courses in the humanities and in Greek and Latin literature. For the last fifteen years of his full-time teaching career,he also supervised doctoral students in the graduate program in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto. [7]
In 1991,Herren founded the Journal of Medieval Latin ,which quickly became a leading journal in the field of medieval Latin literature. [8] He also co-founded the Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin series,which has been published since 2001. [9] Another project he initiated is the Epinal-Erfurt Glossary Editing Project,which aims to produce a critical edition of a Latin–Old English dictionary from the seventh century. [10]
Awards and grants include include: [11]
Herren was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1999,an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2002,and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2010. Two Festschrifts,one for his 65th birthday in 2006 and another for his 80th birthday in 2021,honor his scholarly achievements.
Alexander Neckam was an English poet,theologian,and writer. He was an abbot of Cirencester Abbey from 1213 until his death.
Hiberno-Latin,also called Hisperic Latin,was a learned style of literary Latin first used and subsequently spread by Irish monks during the period from the sixth century to the tenth century.
Ælfric of Eynsham was an English abbot and a student of Æthelwold of Winchester,and a consummate,prolific writer in Old English of hagiography,homilies,biblical commentaries,and other genres. He is also known variously as Ælfric the Grammarian,Ælfric of Cerne,and Ælfric the Homilist. In the view of Peter Hunter Blair,he was "a man comparable both in the quantity of his writings and in the quality of his mind even with Bede himself." According to Claudio Leonardi,he "represented the highest pinnacle of Benedictine reform and Anglo-Saxon literature".
Rabanus Maurus Magnentius,also known as Hrabanus or Rhabanus,was a Frankish Benedictine monk,theologian,poet,encyclopedist and military writer who became archbishop of Mainz in East Francia. He was the author of the encyclopaedia De rerum naturis. He also wrote treatises on education and grammar and commentaries on the Bible. He was one of the most prominent teachers and writers of the Carolingian age,and was called "Praeceptor Germaniae",or "the teacher of Germany". In the most recent edition of the Roman Martyrology,his feast is given as 4 February and he is qualified as a Saint ('sanctus').
Aelius Donatus was a Roman grammarian and teacher of rhetoric.
Aethicus Ister was the protagonist of the 7th/8th-century Cosmographia,purportedly written by a man of church Hieronymus,who purportedly censors an even older work for producing the book as its censored version. It is a forgery from the Middle Ages.
The Lacnunga ('Remedies') is a collection of miscellaneous Anglo-Saxon medical texts and prayers,written mainly in Old English and Latin. The title Lacnunga,an Old English word meaning 'remedies',is not in the manuscript:it was given to the collection by its first editor,Oswald Cockayne,in the nineteenth century. It is found,following other medical texts,in the British Library's Harley MS 585,a codex probably compiled in England in the late tenth or early eleventh century. Many of its herbal remedies are also found,in variant form,in Bald's Leechbook,another Anglo-Saxon medical compendium.
The Blickling homilies are a collection of anonymous homilies from Anglo-Saxon England. They are written in Old English,and were written down at some point before the end of the tenth century,making them one of the oldest collections of sermons to survive from medieval England,the other main witness being the Vercelli Book. Their name derives from Blickling Hall in Norfolk,which once housed them;the manuscript is now at Princeton,Scheide Library,MS 71.
Lupus Protospatharius Barensis was the reputed author of the Chronicon rerum in regno Neapolitano gestarum,a concise history of the Mezzogiorno from 805 to 1102. He has only been named as the author since the seventeenth century. Lupus,along with two other Bariot chronicles,the Annales barenses and the Anonymi Barensis Chronicon,used some lost ancient annals of Bari up to 1051. William of Apulia appears to have used these same annals. Lupus also used the lost annals of Matera. Perhaps most unusual to Lupus is his dating method. He began his years in September and so places events of the latter half of a given year in the next year.
The Glossa Ordinaria,which is Latin for "Ordinary [i.e. in a standard form] Gloss",is a collection of biblical commentaries in the form of glosses. The glosses are drawn mostly from the Church Fathers,but the text was arranged by scholars during the twelfth century. The Gloss is called "ordinary" to distinguish it from other gloss commentaries. In origin,it is not a single coherent work,but a collection of independent commentaries which were revised over time. The Glossa ordinaria was a standard reference work into the Early Modern period,although it was supplemented by the Postills attributed to Hugh of St Cher and the commentaries of Nicholas of Lyra.
Anglo-Latin literature is literature from originally written in Latin and produced in England or other English-speaking parts of Britain and Ireland. It was written in Medieval Latin,which differs from the earlier Classical Latin and Late Latin.
Goscelin of Saint-Bertin was a Benedictine hagiographical writer. He was a Fleming or Brabantian by birth and became a monk of St Bertin's at Saint-Omer before travelling to England to take up a position in the household of Herman,Bishop of Ramsbury in Wiltshire (1058–78). During his time in England,he stayed at many monasteries and wherever he went collected materials for his numerous hagiographies of English saints.
Richard Sharpe,,Hon. was a British historian and academic,who was Professor of Diplomatic at the University of Oxford and a fellow of Wadham College,Oxford. His broad interests were the history of medieval England,Ireland,Scotland and Wales. He had a special concern with first-hand work on the primary sources of medieval history,including the practices of palaeography,diplomatic and the editorial process,as well as the historical and legal contexts of medieval documents. He was the general editor of the Corpus of British Medieval Library Catalogues, and editor of a forthcoming edition of the charters of King Henry I of England.
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William Compaine Calin was a senior scholar of Medieval French literature and French poetry at the University of Florida. His work has focused on Occitan Studies and on Franco-British literary relations.
Michael Lapidge,FBA is a scholar in the field of Medieval Latin literature,particularly that composed in Anglo-Saxon England during the period 600–1100 AD;he is an emeritus Fellow of Clare College,Cambridge,a Fellow of the British Academy,and winner of the 2009 Sir Israel Gollancz Prize.
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