IMC 2026: Sessions
Session 240: New Approaches to Medieval Office Liturgy, I: Material Approaches to Office Liturgy
Monday 6 July 2026, 14:15-15:45
| Organiser: | Rhiannon Warren, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge |
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| Moderator/Chair: | Rhiannon Warren, Department of Anglo-Saxon, Norse & Celtic, University of Cambridge |
| Paper 240-a | Old Books, New Techniques: Densitometry and Patterns of Use in Early Medieval Liturgical Manuscripts (Language: English) Index terms: Lay Piety, Liturgy, Manuscripts and Palaeography, Technology |
| Paper 240-b | St Who?: Books of Hours and Medieval Ireland (Language: English) Index terms: Lay Piety, Liturgy, Manuscripts and Palaeography |
| Abstract | The past decades have seen exciting developments in medieval liturgical scholarship, moving beyond analysis of texts to examining liturgical practices as diverse, lived, localised, and contested devotional frameworks. Perhaps nowhere is this more apparent than in the study of the Divine Office or Liturgy of the Hours: the cycle of daily prayers structured around the eight canonical hours (Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline), central to the spiritual, intellectual, temporal, and communal life of the medieval Christian world. This first panel focuses on what material approaches can bring to the study of medieval liturgy. It will explore what cutting-edge codicological imaging can tell us about patterns of manuscript use in pre-conquest England; how combining analysis of textiles with the Anne Office can help us better understand rites at Marienberg bei Helmstedt, and what the physical form of Books of Hours with medieval Irish associations reveals about their production and use. |