Dr Philippa Byrne

 

Associate Professor in History, 1000-1500

Biography

Philippa Byrne is a historian of the intellectual and political culture of the Middle Ages. Her research examines the ways in which medieval thought was transformed in the period c.1000-c.1300. Before taking up her current position, she held posts as an Assistant Professor at Trinity College Dublin, a Departmental Lecturer at Oxford, and as a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow.

Research interests

Philippa's research examines the intellectual and political transformations of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, across Europe and the Mediterranean, and across Arabic, Greek, and Latin cultures. These transformations are sometimes labelled the ‘Twelfth-Century Renaissance’, and her work investigates the meaning and implications of that label.

She is particularly interested in the ways in which new ideas, texts, and translations shaped new institutions, like universities, and stimulated the creation of new social groups, like lawyers, administrators, and students. She is also interested in the persistence of older traditions and customs within these new political structures.

Her earlier research examined these themes in the context of the British Isles, by looking at how moral theology developed in the schools of northern France shaped the early English common law. Her first book considered how medieval English judges used theological and rhetorical texts to guide them when the law itself was silent or ambiguous.

Most recently, she has worked on the Norman Kingdom of Sicily. This kingdom—a trilingual, religiously plural society—provides a fascinating and complex case study for understanding the dynamics of intellectual exchange in the twelfth century. She is currently preparing a book which examines the place of the kingdom within our models of twelfth-century intellectual exchange. More broadly, her research examines the connections between Islamic and Christian polities in the Middle Ages, and the way in which historians theorise and conceptualise those connections.

 

Publications

Byrne, P. (2025). ‘Towards a Framework for Rebellion in Medieval Sicily’, in Jobson, A., Kersey, H., and McKelvie, G., (eds), Rebellion in Medieval Europe, c.1000 – c.1500. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.

Byrne, P. (2024). ‘A Local Translation in a Global World: Odoric of Pordenone, William of Solagna, and a Giant Tortoise in Fourteenth-Century Padua’, Journal of Medieval History 50:4.

Byrne, P., and Ellis, C., eds. (2023). Maritime Exchange and the Making of Norman Worlds Turnhout: Brepols.

Byrne, P. (2023). ‘Cassinese Horizons: Peter the Deacon, Cowdrey’s “Golden Age,” and Benedictine Tradition in Southern Italy’, Viator 54:1.

Byrne, P. (2023). ‘Portable Scholasticism? The Sicilian Intellectual Horizons of Gervase of Tilbury’, Journal of the History of Ideas 84:3.

Byrne, P. (2023), ‘Bathing, Medicine, and Classical Learning in Early Thirteenth-Century Southern Italy’, Reading Medieval Studies 49.

Byrne, P. (2023). ‘Translating German Emperors: A Staufen-Sicilian Synthesis under Henry VI?’, The German Quarterly 6:2.

Byrne, P. (2021). ‘Is there a Medieval Legal Theology? Legal Learning, Legal Careers, and Historical Methodology in the Twelfth Century’, Reading Medieval Studies 47.

Byrne, P. (2022). ‘What was Open in/about Early Scholastic Thought?’, in Openness in Medieval Europe, ed. M. Gragnolati and A. Suerbaum. Berlin: ICI Berlin Press.

Byrne, P. (2021). ‘Camping with Tarantulas: Nature as Protagonist in Eleventh-Century Sicily and Southern Italy?’, Mediterranean Studies 29:2.

Byrne, P. (2021). ‘“Testify Against Me”: The Use of Biblical Exegesis in Holding the Bishop to Account in Thirteenth-Century England’, in The Officer and the People: Officers and Popular Accountability in the Pre-Modern World, ed. Maria Angeles Martin Romera and Hannes Ziegler. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Byrne, P. (2021). ‘Cutting out the Camel-Like Knees of St James: the De Viris Illustribus Tradition in the 12th-Century Renaissance’, Historical Research 94.

Byrne, P. (2020). ‘“Reddimus urbem”: Civic Order and Public Politics at the End of Norman Sicily’, Al-Masāq: Journal of the Medieval Mediterranean 32:2.

Byrne, P. (2020). ‘In Search of Lost Time: Temporal Uncertainty in the Letters of Adam Marsh’, in Medieval Temporalities: The Experience of Time in Medieval Europe, ed. A. Suerbaum and A. Sutherland. Woodbridge: Boydell and Brewer.

Byrne, P. (2019). Justice and Mercy: Moral Theology and the Exercise of Law in Twelfth-Century England. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

Byrne, P. (2018). ‘Legal Learning and Saintly Authority in Thirteenth Century Hagiography: The Magna Vita Sancti Hugonis’, Journal of Medieval History 44:1.

Byrne, P. (2018). ‘More than Roman Salt: Sallust, Caesar and Cato in Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century Moral Thought’, Cerae: An Australasian Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 5.

Byrne, P. (2017). ‘Despair and Presumption in Late Twelfth- and Early Thirteenth-Century Pastoral Care’, Viator 48:3.

Byrne, P. (2017). ‘Exodus 32 and the Figure of Moses in Twelfth-Century Theology’, Journal of Theological Studies 68:2.