‘In worship of hym that thys mesur is of’: Measurement Relics, Representation, and Truth in Late Medieval English Manuscript Rolls
Supervisor: Dr Jessica Barker
Advisor: Professor Alixe Bovey
Funded by Consortium for the Humanities and Arts South-East England (CHASE)
My doctoral research examines a group of fifteenth-century English manuscript rolls, each containing at least one example of a ‘measurement relic’ – a figure purportedly made to the precise length of a sacred object. Pre-modern theories of measure imbued dimensions with power far beyond the mere recording of reality. Measurement was believed to convey the essence of the measured subject: candles made to the length of a body were burnt at shrines, the sins and illnesses of the measured subject evaporating along with the wax.
These measurement relics, due to their precise replication of the length of their prototype, thus in some sense were that subject – their self-proclaimed metrical relationship with their prototype imbuing the figures with potent apotropaic powers. I examine them in detail, placing them and the manuscripts that hold them in dialogue with contemporary practices involving measurement, such as magical and medical practices, ritual measurement of sacred sites and objects associated with pilgrimage, and the creation of measured or weighed ex votos.
Research Interests
- Measurement, its uses and meanings in the fifteenth century.
- The long fifteenth century
- Scale, size, and particularly the idea of the ‘life-sized’
- Acheiropoieta
- Authoritative images and their reproduction and replication
Education
2022 – present: PhD, Â鶹ÊÓƵ Institute of Art.
2020–2021: MA History of Art, Â鶹ÊÓƵ Institute of Art, Special Option: Miniature to Monumental: Encounters with Medieval Art (taught by Jessica Barker and Alixe Bovey).
2016–2020: MA (Hons) History of Art, University of Edinburgh.
Other Academic Activity
Doctoral Placement, Schoenberg Institute for Manuscript Studies, University of Pennsylvania (September–December 2024).
Associate Editor, Immediations Postgraduate Journal (2023).
Co-organiser, with Natalia Muñoz-Rojas, of the postgraduate colloquium ‘Medieval Art on the Move’ at the Â鶹ÊÓƵ (March 2025).
Teaching
Associate Lecturer, BA1 module ‘Medieval Sculpture in London Collections,’ Spring 2025.
Guest speaker, MA History of Art special option ‘Miniature to Monumental: Encounters with Medieval Art’, Autumn 2023.
Teaching Assistant, BA1 Foundations, The Â鶹ÊÓƵ Institute of Art, Autumn 2023.