Some Reflections on Medieval Studies in Canada

In June 1987, at a large international conference in Rome organised by Canadian art historians to honour both Richard Krautheimer and Leonard Boyle, Roger Reynolds delivered a tribute to one of the two honorees entitled "Leonard Boyle and Medieval Studies in Canada." In the published version of this essay, Reynolds documented the role of those many scholars—among them Etienne Gilson, Raymond Klibansky, Philippe Verdier, John Leyerle, and of course Leonard Boyle, to name but a few—who had brought their vision of a new discipline of “medieval studies” to this country, and had subsequently worked hard to promote it, primarily although by no means exclusively through the vehicle of the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. And of course one must add to that distinguished list the name of Roger Reynolds himself, whom I was very privileged to have first encountered as an undergraduate student at Carleton University in the early 1970’s. Indeed, I still have the notes which I took at his lectures! Canadians should be very proud that the notion of “medieval studies,” as we understand it today—in other words, a multidisciplinary approach to the study of the Middle Ages that encompasses not only the intellectual territory of many traditional disciplines but also the large spaces between them, along the lines of Classical Studies—should have been largely created and matured in this country, and that we continue to produce a number of significant journals in this field, including the flagship Mediaeval Studies. As Reynolds explained in his paper, the spinoffs have been huge: the subsequent development of programs in medieval studies at many Canadian universities, and significant international projects such as The Dictionary of Old English or Records of Early English Drama, to name but two.