Syon Abbey was founded in 1415 by Henry V of England. It was a double abbey house of Birgittinesses that became a centre of teaching and preaching, as well as devotional and liturgical practice. When Henry VIII broke with Rome and closed the English monasteries, a small group of sisters moved from Syon to Antwerp and lived with the Birgittinesses in Marientroon (Dendermonde). This study examines the sisters' wanderings in the Cambrai diocese between 1539 and 1580 as a context for local lore of their devotional and administrative books.
Biography
Virginia Blanton is University of Missouri Curators' Distinguished Professor and currently a Fulbright Scholar with the Ruusbroec Society at the University of Antwerp. Her research focuses on representations of medieval women and their relationship with books, as writers, readers, singers, patrons and book owners. Dr Blanton is co-editor of the three-part series Nuns' Literacies in Medieval Europe (2013-2017), and she is also a founding member of the multidisciplinary NEH-funded team CODICES, which conducts optical, chemical and computational analyses of manuscripts and early printed books.
Practical
Wednesday 24 April 2024 at 18:30
Nottebohmzaal, entrance via Hendrik Conscienceplein 4, 2000 Antwerp
English lecture
Free admission
Miraeus Lectures
Since 2009, the Flemish Book History Working Group, in cooperation with the Association of Antwerp Bibliophiles, has been organising book history lectures that place book history in the Netherlands in an international perspective. The lectures, in English, French or Dutch, take place on Wednesday evenings in the Nottebohm Room of the Hendrik Conscience Heritage Library, and are free of charge.
(c) Universiteitsbibliotheek Gent
