Anthony Lappin

Research Professor, Maynooth University

Anthony John Lappin studied at Magdalen College, University of Oxford, where he gained his D.Phil. After
a Junior Research Fellowship and a Temporary Lectureship at The Queen’s College, University of Oxford,
he was employed as a lecturer in the Department of Spanish, Portuguese and Latin American Studies at
the University of Manchester, followed by a period as Professor of Spanish at the National University of
Ireland, Maynooth. He is currently on the monographs’ board of Medium Ævum, having served as the
Society’s president for the last five years.

Lappin’s research has focused upon medieval religious history and literature, with a particular interest in
hagiography, monasticism and especially Christian–Muslim relations.

A recent Leverhulme Trust Award allowed him to begin work on the earliest Latin translation of the Qur’an,
the Alchoran latinus from 1143, carried out by Robert of Ketton and Herman of Dalmatia at the behest of
Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny. The translation was enormously popular in the Middle Ages and
early modern period, and two editions of different states of the text have been published: Alchoran Latinus, I:
Paris, Bibliothèque de l’Arsenal ms. 1142 and III: Editiones Theodori Bibliandri (Rome: Aracne, 2012–
2013). Whilst at SCAS, Lappin will be working towards an edition of the numerous marginal annotations to
the text, with particular attention to those that originated in neo Platonist and philo-Kabbalistic circles towards
the end of the fifteenth century.

Previous publications include studies of hagiography (Berceo’s ‘Vida de Santa Oria’ [Legenda, 2000] and
The Medieval Cult of Saint Dominic of Silos [Maney Publishing, MHRA Texts and Dissertations, 2002]),
medieval poetry (Gonzalo de Berceo: The Poet and His Verses [Tamesis, 2008]) and articles on the
development of monasticism and on various authors (e.g. Gil Vicente, Cervantes, Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz)
between the medieval and baroque periods.

This information is accurate as of the academic year 2014-15.