 | Anders Winroth |
Yale medieval historian Anders Winroth has been named a MacArthur Fellow by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, which honors individuals for the originality and creativity of their work and the potential to do more in the future.
MacArthur Fellows receive $500,000 in support over five years. The funding can be used in any way the recipients choose.
The MacArthur Foundation cited Winroth's research of "the development of medieval canon law, an important intellectual antecedent to contemporary legal reasoning."
Winroth, 38, who was named an associate professor this year, published "The Making of Gratian's Decretum" in 2000. The Decretum was the first scholastic canon law textbook produced in the Middle Ages.
Winroth is credited with showing that manuscripts previously thought to be abbreviations of the standard text are actually early versions of the text.
"This painstaking analysis would have been impossible absent his mastery of canon law, command of medieval Latin, and aptitude for paleographic reconstruction of materials that exist primarily in the form of unedited medieval manuscripts," the MacArthur Foundation stated. "By reversing the chronology of the earliest publications in canon law, Winroth opens new avenues for interpreting its origins and development."
Professor Jon Butler, chair of the history department, said, "Anders is a simply stunning scholar and wonderfully warm, humane person. His ingenuity and discipline flow naturally out of a personal graciousness that makes him a marvelous teacher and colleague. By honoring our most creative, path-breaking scholars, MacArthur Fellowships remind us all of academia's principal purpose -- the pursuit of knowledge and learning in the pursuit of truth and human dignity."
Winroth, who learned of his honor through a surprise phone call from the MacArthur Foundation, was one of 24 MacArthur Fellows for 2003.
"The annual announcement of the MacArthur Fellows is a special opportunity to celebrate the creative individual in our midst," said Jonathan F. Fanton, president of the MacArthur Foundation. "The new MacArthur Fellows illustrate the foundation's conviction that talented individuals, free to follow their insights and instincts, will make a difference in shaping the future."
The foundation's board of directors choose MacArthur Fellows based on the recommendations of a selection committee and several hundred nominators. The committee members and nominators serve anonymously.
"To receive this fellowship, many people must have believed in my potential to do more things," Winroth said. "There are people out there who must have recommended me, others who evaluated my work. I have a responsibility to them and to the foundation now."
Last July, Yale College Dean Richard H. Brodhead informed Winroth that he had been chosen to receive the Samuel and Ronnie Heyman Prize for Outstanding Scholarly Publication for his book on the Decretum. "In the judgment of the referees, the book is a remarkable piece of hard-headed academic detective work that changes our understanding of the Middle Ages in a significant way," Brodhead wrote.
Winroth said 17th-century parliamentary procedure, later adopted by the founders of the United States, can be traced back to Gratian, the Italian author of the Decretum.
Winroth received his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1996 and was the Sir James Knott Research Fellow at the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1996-1998. He joined the Yale faculty as an assistant professor in 1998. He is co-editor of "Charters, Cartularies, and Archives: The Preservation and Transmission of Documents in the Medieval West" (2002). His research is focused on the cultural, intellectual and legal history of the European High Middle Ages and on the economic and social history of early medieval Scandinavia.
T H I S
Historian Winroth wins MacArthur Fellowship
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