T. J. H. McCarthy

History | Medieval and Renaissance Studies | Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies | International and Area Studies

Education

MA (Dubl.-Oxon.)
MLitt. (Dubl.)
DPhil (Oxon.)
LMS (Rome-Toronto)

Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and Oriel College, Oxford, T. J. H. McCarthy is an internationally recognized scholar of medieval intellectual, ecclesiastical and cultural history. His published work explores a rich array of musical and historical sources from eleventh- and twelfth-century Germany, focusing on topics such as the intellectual context of Gregorian chant, manuscript transmission and biblical studies. More recently he has worked on medieval historical writing and his 2018 book The continuations of Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle had the distinction of being the first book published in English by the Monumenta Germaniae Historica in Munich. He is currently editing Abbot Ekkehard of Aura’s Chronicle for the Monumenta as part of the collaborative project Die Bamberger Weltchronistik des 11./12. Jahrhunderts.

Professor McCarthy teaches a range of medieval courses from music to the crusades, and offers advanced tutorials in subjects such as palaeography and Latin translation. He believes it important that students be introduced to the latest research in the field and endeavours to share his own expertise in the material he teaches. Professor McCarthy is a founding editor of Manchester University Press’s Artes liberales monograph series and a corresponding member of the Zentraldirektion of the Monumenta Germaniae Historica.

Recent Courses

Sex, lies and damnation: Pope Gregory VII and Emperor Henry IV
The sixth liberal art: music, ritual and performance in the Middle Ages and Renaissance
A brief history of the Bible
The Middle Ages and the birth of the modern world
Kingdom of Heaven: the First Crusade and the conquest of Jerusalem
Religious communities: spirituality, gender and identity
The Carolingian Empire
The papacy from Constantine to Constance
Historical Methods

Selected Publications

Monographs, editions and translations

Ekkehard von Aura: Chronicon (Monumenta Germaniae Historica Scriptores in folio 33/3; in progress).

The continuations of Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 74; Wiesbaden, 2018).

Aribo’s De musica and Sententiae: a critical edition and translation (Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, 2015).

Chronicles of the Investiture Contest: Frutolf of Michelsberg and his continuators (Manchester Medieval Sources, 2014).

Music, scholasticism and reform: Salian Germany, 1024–1125 (Manchester University Press, 2009).

Articles

‘The Empire under the Salians and Staufen’, in S. Mossman (ed.), Debating medieval Europe 2. The central and later Middles Ages, c. 1050–c. 1450 (Manchester; forthcoming).

‘Jenseits des platonischen Texts: Digitale Hilfsmittel und ihr Nutzen für die Erfassung textlicher Komplexität in chronikalen Schriften des Mittelalters’, in M. Hartmann and H. Zimmerhackl (eds), Quellenforschung im 21. JahrhundertVorträge der Veranstaltungen zum 200-jährigen Bestehen der MGH vom 27. bis 29. Juni 2019 (Schriften der Monumenta Germaniae Historica 75; Wiesbaden, 2020), pp. 151–70.

‘Translatio imperii: Ottonian Germany’, in S. Mossman (ed.), Debating medieval Europe 1. The post-Roman world (Manchester, 2020), pp. 97–124.

‘Scriptural allusion in the crusading accounts of Frutolf of Michelsberg and his continuators’, in E. Lapina and N. Morton (eds), The uses of the Bible in crusader sources (Leiden, 2017), pp. 152–75.

‘Salian intellectual history in historiographical perspective’, History Compass 14 (2016), 9–18.

‘Quos manu sua pene omnes ipse scripsit: Frutolf of Michelsberg’s legacy to a Bamberg scriptorium’, in A. Nievergelt et al. (eds), Scriptorium. Wesen, Funktion, Eigenheiten (Comité international de Paléographie latine, XVIII. Internationaler Kongress St. Gallen 11.–14. September 2013; Munich, 2015), pp. 325–37.

‘Frutolf of Michelsberg’s Chronicle, the schools of Bamberg and the transmission of imperial polemic’, Haskins Society Journal 23 (2011), 51–70.

‘Biblical scholarship in eleventh-century Michelsberg: the Glosa in vetus et novum testamentum of MS Karlsruhe, Badische Landesbibliothek, 504’, Scriptorium 62 (2008), 3–45.

‘The origins of Commentarius anonymus in Micrologum Guidonis Aretini in the medieval glossing tradition’, Revue d’histoire des textes n.s. 3 (2008), 217–27.

‘Aribo’s De musica, Commentarius anonymus in Micrologum Guidonis Aretini and Guido of Arezzo: textual correspondence and scholastic method’, Mediaevistik. Internationale Zeitschrift für interdisziplinäre Mittelalterforschung 20 (2007), 141–61.

‘Aribo’s De musica and Abbot William of Hirsau’, Revue bénédictine 116 (2006), 62–82.

‘The identity of Master Henry of Augsburg (d. 1083)’, Revue bénédictine 114 (2004), 140–57.

‘Literary practice in eleventh-century music theory: the colores rhetorici and Aribo’s De musica’, Medium Aevum 71 (2002), 191–208.