British Society for the History of Pharmacy: Byzantine Pharmacology between East and West

British Society for the History of Pharmacy

Maplethorpe Lecture Theatre, 

UCL School of Pharmacy, 

29-39 Brunswick Square, 

London WC1N 1AX 

Monday 5 February 2018, 17:30

Lecture by Dr Petros Bouras-Vallianatos, Wellcome Trust Research Fellow in Medical Humanities.

All welcome, no need to book, no admission charge. Refreshments from 17:00

The Byzantine Empire, with its capital in Constantinople (now Istanbul), then a mainly Greek-speaking region, constituted a natural crossroads between East and West for more than a millennium (AD 324–1453). This lecture aims to determine the degree of influence on Byzantine pharmacology from Arabic, Persian, and Latin pharmacological traditions, and reassess the notion of the primacy of tradition over empiricism. Decisively overturning the view that Byzantine medical tradition was ‘stagnant’, simply preserving the best ideas from antiquity, and that Byzantine literature consisted of mere compilations, this paper aims to demonstrate that Byzantine pharmacology in particular was far more open to outside influence than has hitherto been thought and that Byzantine physicians were eager to inform their material with observations derived from their daily contact with patients.

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Renaissance College: Corpus Christi College, Oxford in Context, c.1450-c.1600

6-9 September 2017

Corpus Christi College, Oxford was founded, on humanistic principles, in 1517. Its fellows included specially-appointed lecturers in Latin literature, Greek and Theology and its new trilingual library featured works in Latin, Greek and Hebrew. Throughout the sixteenth century, Corpus was a major centre of learning and religion: it played host to the Spanish humanist, Juan Luis Vives and the German astronomer and mathematician, Nicholas Kratzer; its fellows included the Catholic reformer Reginald Pole and the Protestant thinkers John Jewel and Richard Hooker.

In the College’s 500th anniversary year, we shall be holding a conference to discuss the wider context and implications of this remarkable foundation, exploring the inter-connected worlds of learning and education, prelacy and public service, charity and communal life, religion, literature and the arts, in Oxford and beyond, during a hundred-and-fifty year period of Renaissance and Reformation. 

There will be papers from Susan Brigden, Clive Burgess, Jeremy Catto, Paul Cavill, Alex Gajda, Anthony Grafton, Lucy Kaufman, Nicholas Hardy, Pamela King, Julian Reid, Richard Rex, Miri Rubin, David Rundle, Christopher Stray, Joanna Weinberg, Magnus Williamson, and William Whyte. A round table of Mordechai Feingold, Felicity Heal and Diarmaid MacCulloch, chaired by Keith Thomas, will bring proceedings to a close.

More details will become available over the next few months, but if you would like to make a provisional booking now, please contact sara.watson@ccc.ox.ac.uk; or, for more information about the academic aims and content of the conference,john.watts@ccc.ox.ac.uk

Greek Texts and the Early Modern Stage

Monday 14 July 2014, University of York, UK

Keynote Speakers: Gordon Braden (University of Virginia), Yves Peyré (IRCL ­ Montpellier III)

Roundtable discussion: Fiona Macintosh (Oxford), Charles Martindale (York), Richard Rowland (York)

This colloquium will explore the impact of Greek texts on the drama of Shakespeare and his contemporaries. Although recent criticism has revitalised discussions of early modern engagement with Latin literature, there has been little attention to the way English playwrights responded to Greek writers. Yet Greek texts circulated at this time, in the original language as well as in translations and adaptations, and critics are beginning to explore their consequences for the period's literary production. Greek provoked strong responses for a number of reasons: its controversial associations with Erasmus, Protestantism, and heresy; the spectre of democratic governance; the rebirth of interest in Galenic medicine; the pervasive influence of Greek culture on Latin literature; and the identification of Greece with the origins of theatre. Excavating the influence of Greek texts in this period comes with a set of challenges that require new approaches to classical reception. The distinctive complications surrounding the transmission of Greek texts give a new role to history of the book in such work. The texts¹ simultaneous availability in original and mediated versions calls for new approaches to reading and intertextuality. The context of the early professional theatre, and therefore of viewers and readers lacking reliable familiarity with Greek texts, poses anew the question of the audience of classical reception.

Programme and details at http://www.york.ac.uk/crems/events/events/2013-14/greek-texts/
Co-organisers: Tania Demetriou (York) and Tanya Pollard (Brooklyn College and the Graduate Center, CUNY)