A critical exchange among scholars exploring various aspects of the medieval world and its modern interpretations took place at the annual meeting organized by the Medieval Academy of America, held at Harvard University in Massachusetts, USA (March 20–22, 2025). Marking its 100th anniversary, the Academy hosted 500 researchers from three continents, 23 countries, and over 200 academic institutions. The program focused not only on the medieval world from the North Atlantic to the Sea of Japan, but also on the history and future of medieval studies themselves.
A Czech panel was featured, showcasing the research of Barbora Kocánová, Lukáš Lička, and Ota Pavlíček from the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, who study the history of quodlibetal debates as part of the #ERCStG Academia project.
Ota Pavlíček’s paper presented the overlooked genre of quodlibetal disputations held at Faculties of Arts in late medieval Europe. He analyzed the differences in these debates between Central and Western European universities and highlighted their mutual influence.
Lukáš Lička focused on this type of text in the field of optics at Central European universities (1350–1500). He presented a newly reconstructed corpus of 110 manuscript texts and challenged the traditional view of disputations as merely an educational supplement, pointing to their interdisciplinary overlaps with astronomy and physics and to their unusual technical features.
Barbora Kocánová’s paper explored medieval approaches to comets based on a Vatican manuscript. She showed how comets were perceived in quodlibetal debates at the University of Heidelberg, whether they were considered celestial or meteorological phenomena, and how they were used to forecast weather and significant events, including political ones (19–22 March 2025).
More about the event: https://sites.harvard.edu/maacentennial2025/
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