I'm back from my research trip, and back at work. It's vaguely surreal to be back in the office and classroom.

Also, I am advising, and some of students have proposed schedules that are sadly delusional. No, you should not sign up for multivariable calculus if you have only taken high school algebra II.

Now here's a bad nun for you

When I'm transcribing documents I tend to get in kind of a flow, where I am making sure what I'm writing down are actual words, but I'm not really processing the content very closely. The other day I was rolling along typing in this manner, listing off the various accusations against a particular prioress, when it suddenly sank in that the word I was just typing was "interfecit." 

I stopped and took a closer look. Yes, indeed, the accusation was that this prioress had killed another nun. The hell? Now, there's not a lot of detail here, so it's not clear whether we're talking premeditated murder or accidental death. Said prioress had also apparently given birth at her nunnery. The bishop's wrath can be imagined. Understandably enough, he had his bailiff lock up the errant prioress. And then things took an interesting turn.

A local miles, evidently a cousin of the imprisoned prioress, rode to her rescue. Not alone, but with a troop of armed followers. The bishop complains that they rode up on horseback shouting and raising a terrible fuss. Though he also complains of their violence, it's not clear whether they actually fought with the bishop's guards, or whether the bailiff turned the prioress over in response to their intimidation (the bishop doesn't seem too happy with the bailiff, either, which inclines me toward the latter conclusion). 

There are several letters about the incident, as the bishop excommunicated the prioress and the miles and repeatedly begged various authorities to turn them in. One letter names around twenty individuals also excommunicated, these presumably constituting the armed troop. Some of those men share surnames with the prioress, others with the miles, suggesting that we're looking at an extended family group.

As is so often the case, I have no idea at the moment what the outcome was. Nor do I have any real idea what to do with it, other than post the incident for your entertainment.

Bookworm damage

is the pits.

The phrase I've been typing most often lately

(aside from basic opening and dating formulae):

in virtute sancte obediencie, et sub pena excommunis

I wish I could credibly put the same thing on my syllabi:

in virtue of holy obedience, and under penalty of excommunication, we order that you turn in your work on time and do not plagiarize, students!

Notes from the archives

I'm writing from an undisclosed location in the land of research. And I was just fondly remembering back before I got my (now not-so-new) job, when I actually used to talk about the subjects of my research on this blog. Ahhh. 

I've been looking at a register of episcopal letters to see what sorts of letters the bishops sent to nuns. Some observations I found interesting:

--Usually the bishops write in Latin, but when writing to nuns (and some lay men and women) they often use the vernacular instead. 

--In the case of one community, when the bishop writes to a particular nun in that house, he writes in Latin, but when writing to the nuns collectively, he writes in the vernacular.

Further, I think the register may actually be the originals of the letters. There are emendations in the text (words crossed out, others added in the margins) which suggests to me that a clean copy was made to send off afterward, rather than the register being a copy of a letter composed separately.

A few letters deal with disciplinary issues, which the bishop says are very scandalous. I find it interesting that those letters have a LOT of emendations. Dare I think this suggests some emotion on the author's part--agitation or anger at the scandalous behavior, perhaps? 

The content of the letters is interesting, too, but I need more time to ponder it.

Not all of us were here then

I have started and abandoned several posts over the last couple of weeks. I would like to talk about some of my new responsibilities as a second-year faculty member, by way of continuing to chronicle my journey from contingent to tenure-track faculty. These things feel difficult to talk about, though. Even pseudonymous, I have a hard time figuring out what conversations with advisees / committees / whatnot should be best kept private, and I have been erring on the side of "private."

There is a discourse on campus, though, that I find vexing as a new faculty member. Our campus is the midst of discussing some large-scale curricular changes. There is a lot of anxiety about whether the current proposed changes will pass, and what the consequences of that will be, both from supporters and critics of the proposal. Although the current proposal was put together just last year, the original movement for curricular change started several years ago, in the days of Legendary Committee. The thing I find vexing is that many faculty who have been here longer speak about the changes as if all of us are familiar with the work of Legendary Committee, and as if the discussion held at that time about the college's curricular goals is now set in stone. "Well, the goals of this proposal came out of the Legendary Committee report," they will explain. "At the time of Legendary Committee, we all agreed on X, so surely we must still agree on X now?" There are a lot of assumptions that everyone remembers the long process that has led up to this moment.

Not so. I was one of several new faculty last year. There were several the year before that, and several more the year before that, and so forth. There are quite a few new faculty this year. All together, that represents a sizable minority of the entire faculty who were not involved in the Legendary Committee discussions, and who may bring different ideas and expectations to the table. The faculty does not actually exist in a fixed, unchanging state, where a consensus established at one moment can be expected to endure forever.

End of the week

Well, it was less "easing in" than I'd hoped. The processing and welcoming of new students (and bidding farewell to their parents) went off fine, but registering the new students teetered on the brink of disaster all week. Our online registration system is clunky and difficult at the best of times, and this time it kept refusing to recognize new students as first-years, which meant it wouldn't register them for their required first-year courses. Argh. It is not a good thing when your college's registrar has to send emails titled "Don't panic!" in the middle of registration. I had enough to do trying to keep track of my advisees' interests, AP credits, and the like, without also having to fight the software.

On the other hand, the prospect of starting class on Monday does indeed seem like a breeze, in contrast.