Adjunct Professor
BA (Claremont), MSL (Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies), Ph.D. (Toronto), FRSC
Research Interests: Classical Studies; History of schools, books, and scholarship (late antiquity / early Middle Ages); reception of Graeco-Roman mythology in the Middle Ages; Christianity in Britain and Ireland (400-1000 C.E.)
Michael Herren is a literary archaeologist. He looks for treasures in the dimly lit corners of the early Middle Ages and usually comes up with something interesting, such as a work describing life in an Irish school in the seventh century, or a pagan charm posing as a Christian prayer, or a fantasy travel story replete with sci-fi inventions. Several of his digs unearthed materials that reveal what the early European Middle Ages knew about the ancient world, including their religion and mythology, and how they interpreted them. Another excavation turned up evidence about where Greek was studied and how much of this language scholars of the time were able to learn. He examined Medieval Latin poems that describe works of art or architecture for their value in identifying genuine works. Michael has also opened up questions about the kind of Christianity people practiced, and whether it was in line with Roman orthodoxy, and whether saints then were really saintly, as we might think of saintliness. For publications illustrating these diverse investigations see The Hisperica Famina, 2 vols. (Toronto, 1974, 1987), The Cosmography of Aethicus Ister (Turnhout, 2011), The Sacred Nectar of the Greeks (with Shirley Ann Brown, London, 1988), “Eriugena's ‘Aulae Sidereae,’ the ‘Codex Aureus,’ and the Palatine Church of St. Mary at Compiègne” (Studi Medievali n.s. 28.2, 593-608), “The Earliest European Study of Graeco-Roman Mythology” (Acta Classica XXXIV-XXXV, 35-50), The Anatomy of Myth (New York, 2017), and Christ in Celtic Christianity (with Shirley Ann Brown, Woodbridge, Suffolk, UK, 2002).
Before coming to Trent Michael taught Latin (classical and medieval) and courses on early Christianity and classical reception at York University and the University of Toronto. He gave lecture series and courses at University College Dublin, Cambridge, and Berkeley, and was Senior Research Fellow at King’s College London. He founded the Journal of Medieval Latin and co-founded its subsidia series. He received a number of awards: a Distinguished Research Professorship at York, a Killam Research Fellowship, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Research Prize from the Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation, and the Konrad Adenauer Prize (Royal Society of Canada – Humboldt Foundation). He also received two volumes of essays in his honour. Michael is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada and the Medieval Academy of America, and an Honorary Member (Corresponding Fellow) of the Royal Irish Academy.