Programme 2025

Wednesday 26 March 2025, 6-7.30pm

Queen’s Lecture Theatre 4.2, University of Exeter

Nicholas Orme Public Lecture 2025, presented by the Centre for Medieval Studies

Medieval Lived Religion: The Complex Lives of Medieval Ritual Objects

Speaker: Prof. Roberta Gilchrist (University of Reading)

Preceded by a postgraduate research symposium (13h-15h, Marchant Syndicate Room, Building:One)

For further details contact Gregory Lippiatt G.E.Lippiatt@exeter.ac.uk or Thomas Hinton T.G.Hinton@exeter.ac.uk

 

How did medieval people use material culture to live out their relationships to the sacred, the supernatural and their families and communities? This lecture harnesses a fresh source of archaeological evidence to shed new light on everyday religion in the English Middle Ages (c. 1000-1550 CE). It draws on research in collaboration with the Portable Antiquities Scheme (British Museum) to glean new historical insights from public finds data – objects recovered and recorded by members of the public, principally metal-detectorists. Among the 325,000 later medieval public finds are objects of personal religious devotion, amulets, pilgrim souvenirs and ecclesiastical artefacts. How were they used by ordinary people to provide spiritual protection at critical times? And why did so many of these potent ritual objects end up discarded in plough soil? 
 
Roberta Gilchrist FBA is professor of medieval archaeology and Associate Pro-Vice- Chancellor Research for Heritage and Creativity at the University of Reading. She has published extensively on the archaeology of medieval gender and the life course, burial, magic, and monasticism, including major studies of Glastonbury Abbey and Norwich Cathedral.

To book a place via Eventbrite Medieval Lived Religion: The Complex Lives of Medieval Ritual Objects Tickets, Wed, Mar 26, 2025 at 6:00 PM | Eventbrite