Michael Herren

Michael Herren
Academic background
Education	PhD., University of Toronto
Thesis	A philological commentary on the Hisperica famina (1969)
Academic work
Institutions	York University

Michael Wayne Herren (born December 15, 1940 in Santa Ana, California) is a Canadian classical philologist and medievalist. He taught at York University in Toronto for almost four decades and most recently held the position of Distinguished Research Professor of History and Classics there. Even after his retirement in 2006, he remains a central figure in the academic debate on the classical tradition and its reception in medieval Western Europe.

Life

Michael W. Herren was born on December 15, 1940 in Santa Ana, California and received his Bachelor of Arts in Humanities with a concentration in Philosophy from Claremont McKenna College in 1962. In 1967, he completed his Master of Studies in Latin and Paleography at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies. In 1969, Herren received his doctorate in Classics from the University of Toronto.

At York University, where he spent most of his academic career, Herren founded the Program in Classical Studies at Atkinson College. He taught numerous courses in the humanities and in Greek and Latin literature. For the last fifteen years of his full-time teaching career, he also supervised doctoral students in the graduate program in Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto.

In 1991, Michael W. Herren founded the Journal of Medieval Latin, which quickly became a leading journal in the field of medieval Latin literature. He also co-founded the Publications of the Journal of Medieval Latin series, which has been published since 2001. Another important project he initiated is the Epinal-Erfurt Glossary Editing Project, which aims to produce a critical edition of a Latin-Old English dictionary from the seventh century.

Honors and awards

Michael W. Herren has received numerous important awards and grants for his outstanding research work. These include, among others:

• Humboldt Research Award (2013)
• Konrad Adenauer Award of the Royal Society of Canada (2003)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (1998)
• Killam Research Fellowship (1995)

Herren was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 1999, an Honorary Member of the Royal Irish Academy in 2002, and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America in 2010. Two Festschrifts, one for his 65th birthday in 2006 and another for his 80th birthday in 2021, honor his outstanding scholarly achievements and his significant contributions to Classical Philology and Medieval Studies.

A selection of his writings

Monographs

• The Anatomy of Myth. The Art of Interpretation from the Presocratics to the Church Fathers, New York 2017.
• The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister. Edition, translation and commentary, Turnhout 2011.
• With Michael Lapidge: Aldhelm. The Prose Works, Woodbridge 2009.
• With Shirley Ann Brown: Christ in Celtic Christianity Britain and Ireland from the Fifth to the Tenth Century, Woodbridge [a.o.] 2002.
• Iohannis Scotti Erivgenae Carmina, Dublin 1993.

Editorship

• Latin letters in early Christian Ireland, Aldershot [a.o.] 1996, – collection of own essays.
• With Shirley Ann Brown: The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks: the Study of Greek in the West in the Early Middle Ages, London 1988.
• Insular Latin Studies. Papers on Latin texts and manuscripts of the British Isles: 550-1066, Toronto 1981.

Essays

• Philology and Mercury after the Wedding. Truth and fiction in three didactic works. In: Crafting Knowledge in the Early Medieval Book. Practices of Collecting and Concealing in the Latin West, ed. by Sinéad O'Sullivan & Ciaran Arthur, Turnhout 2023, pp. 115-53.
• The classical canon and its use in late antiquity. 600-775 CE. In: Journal of Late Antiquity, vol. 16 (2023), pp. 477-519.
• P. Édouard Jeauneau: (August 14, 1924 − December 10, 2019). In: Peritia, vol. 30 (2019), pp. 245-48.
• Comedy, irony and philosophy in late antique prosimetra. Menippean satire from the fifth to the tenth century. In: The Journal of Medieval Latin, vol. 28 (2018), pp. 241-75.
• With Hans Sauer: Towards a new edition of the Épinal-Erfurt Glossary: A reading sample. In: Die Zeitschrift für Mittellatein, vol. 26 (2016), pp. 125-198.
• Classical exegesis - from Theagenes of Rhegium to Bernard Silvestris. In: Florilegium, vol. 30 (2013), pp. 59-102.
• Johannes Scottus and Greek mythology. The resumption of an ancient hermeneutic in the Parisian commentary on Martianus Capella. In: Die Zeitschrift für Mittellatein, vol. 22 (2012), pp. 95-116.
• The cosmography of Aethicus Ister and ancient travel literature. In: The World of Travelers. Exploration and Imagination, ed. by Kees Dekker [et al.], Leuven [et al.] 2009, 5-30.
• The “cosmography” of Aethicus Ister - speculations about date of origin, provenance and addressees. In: Nova de veteribus. Mittel- und neulateinische Studien für Paul Gerhard Schmidt, ed. by Andreas Bihrer & Elisabeth Stein, Munich/Leipzig 2004, pp. 79-102.
• The “Greek element” in the “Cosmographia” of Aethicus Ister. In: Die Zeitschrift für Mittellatein, vol. 11 (2001), pp. 184-200.
• The earliest European study of Greco-Roman mythology (600-900 AD). In: Acta Classica Universitatis Scientiarum Debreceniensis, vol. 34/35 (1998/99), pp. 25-49.
• The transmission and reception of Greco-Roman mythology in Anglo-Saxon England, 670-800. In: Anglo-Saxon England, vol. 27 (1998), pp. 87-103.
• With Patrick Terrell Gray: Columbanus and the Three Chapters Controversy - A New Approach. In: The Journal of Theological Studies, Ser. NS, vol. 45, 1994, pp. 160-70.
• What was the purpose of the forgery of the cosmography of Aethicus? In: Latin culture in the VIII. Jahrhundert. Traube-Gedenkschrift, ed. by Albert Lehner & Walter Berschin, St. Ottilien 1989, pp. 145-59.
• Linguistic peculiarities in the Hibernolatine texts of the 7th and 8th centuries. In: Die Iren und Europa im früheren Mittelalter, Tbd. I, ed. by Heinz Löwe, Stuttgart 1982, pp. 425-33.

External links

Profile of Michael W. Herren on the York University website.

Literature

• Scott G. Bruce: Michael W. Herren. An Appreciatio. In: Litterarum dulces fructus, Studies in Early Medieval Latin Culture in Honor of Michael Herren for His 80th Birthday, ed. by Scott G. Bruce, Turnhout 2021, pp. 9-13.

Guggenheim Fellows