The Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies at Durham has been approved to become a research institute. This is very good news for its internal and external status.

With the history of territory book I’ve been writing, I found myself more and more drawn to this period. In the past my sense of the history of philosophy was rather like Plato, Aristotle – fast forward – Descartes…; in political theory it was to pick up with Machiavelli. Now in this large book six of the nine substantive chapters are on the time traditionally understood as the medieval or renaissance. I’d originally intended to do some work on thinkers like Augustine and Aquinas, but it quickly exploded beyond that and now several years later looks at thinkers such as Boethius, Isidore of Seville, Gregory of Tours, John of Salisbury, Aegidius Romanus, Dante, Ockham, Bartolus of Sassoferrato, Baldus de Ubaldis… It’s been a fascinating journey. I’ve tried as much as possible to be led by the problem and not by the canon.

I have to say how hugely impressed I’ve been by the scholarly virtues and skills of people working in this area. The textual scholarship is just superb. Having spent some time working with sixteenth century printed texts, I am hugely appreciative of the labours of those who have made a modern critical edition available. Yet that kind of work, like translation, is seriously undervalued in the academy.

Of course, medieval studies can quickly slip into parody. This conference is my favourite recent example – on Underpinnings: The Evolution of Underwear from the Middle Ages through Early Modernity