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Professor David Wallace Gives SAIMS Annual Lecture (podcast available)

The recent SAIMS Annual Lecture, held on the 7th of March, was given by Professor David Wallace, Judith Rodin Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He gave a paper entitled ‘A View from St Andrews: The Council of Constance, 1414-1418’.Europe Literary history

Professor Wallace’s lecture was in a similar vein to his forthcoming edited volume Europe: A Literary History, 1348-1418. This work looks at Europe transnationally, using literary sources to determine how Europeans identified themselves during the fourteenth century, following the crisis of the Black Death, and during the early fifteenth century, a period of regeneration.

Focussing on the regeneration of Europe, Professor Wallace opened his lecture with the founding of the University of St Andrews, which served as an example of Scotland’s intellectual recovery and realignment with Rome. He then examined the contemporaneous Council of Constance, which he argued was one of the greatest examples of the restructuring of Europe following the catastrophic fourteenth century. He focussed primary on the chronicle of Ulrich von Richental and the journal of Guillaume Fillastre, shedding light upon many details of the Council, from the buying and selling of goods to performances to the condemnation of heretics. Professor Wallace concluded his lecture with a reference to Britain’s EU referendum, arguing that the Council of Constance is still relevant in the modern day.

You can listen to the full lecture now via SoundCloud.