Matthias Bryson
After several years as a secondary school teacher I returned to academia to pursue a career in history. Before coming to Cambridge I completed a BA in History at the University of Kansas and an MSc in History at the University of Edinburgh, where I wrote my dissertation on the construction of a saintly masculine identity in two hagiographic texts dedicated to King Henry VI of England: John Blacman’s life of Henry VI and the miracle accounts collected from pilgrims’ testimony at the king’s tomb shrine. I have carried many of the themes of this research—religious practice, gender, local and regional identity—with me into my PhD thesis, which examines the veneration of non-canonised Brittonic and English women as saints in late Medieval English liturgy. In examining why veneration of such minor religious figures continued as late as the Reformation, I hope to reassess the role of local saint veneration in late medieval religious practice, how it was informed by local and regional cultural factors, and what it can tell us about the relationship between ecclesiastical authority, the local priesthood, and the laity.
I am interested in religious, cultural, and social history in Britain, with a particular emphasis on saint veneration, liturgy, and worship practices in the fourteenth through the sixteenth century.