Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility Faculty | History and Philosophy | University of West Florida
Skip to main content
Logo of University of West Florida
Champagne,Marie_211

Marie-Thérèse Champagne

Biography

Dr. Marie-Thérèse Champagne, associate professor, teaches European history in the areas of ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Vikings, women in the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. Champagne was looking for a new direction in her professional life when she took a trip to Europe in the ‘90s. While she was in Rome, she found the history and art in the city to be fascinating, and found her academic focus. In 2005, she completed her doctorate in European history through 1650, and began teaching in the higher education setting.

Over the years, her work has explored the history of interactions between Jews and Christians in the High Middle Ages, including the evidence contained in 12th century handwritten texts. Her publications have focused on a variety of aspects of that period in and about Rome, including: papal-Jewish relations, Roman Jews’ daily experience in the city, a Christian scholar’s work with Jewish scholars to return to the original “Old Testament” text, and most recently on the perspective of medieval Christians on the Arch of Titus in the Roman forum, constructed in the late first century AD to celebrate the Roman Empire’s conquest of Jerusalem in 70 AD.

Champagne’s current project, “A Living Legacy: The Life and Afterlife of a Twelfth-Century Text and Its Author, Nicolaus Maniacutius,” is the result of over a decade of research. The result of this research will be a monograph, which will provide an up-to-date study of the life of Maniacutius, a Christian monk-scholar and Hebraist from medieval Rome; more significantly, the monograph will present her analysis of the twenty-one medieval copies of one of his texts, Ad incorrupta pontificum nomina conservanda, composed c. 1145. Paleographic and codicological study of the hand-copied medieval versions gives valuable insight into the networks through which the text circulated; the same networks facilitated the reproduction of the text by scribes between c. 1145 and c. 1325. This analysis deepens our understanding of the economic, monastic, and scholarly world of those later medieval centuries in Europe.

During her years at UWF, Champagne has been involved in an interdisciplinary effort between the UWF History and Philosophy Department and multiple departments in different UWF colleges, as well as with the Pensacola Jewish Federation, to bring national and international speakers to the University. In addition to this work, she and her students have produced an interactive and authentic medieval event on campus, The Labyrinth, several times. The introduction of these and other High Impact Practices into her courses makes history come alive for her students and deepens their understanding of and interest in the past. 

Degrees & Institutions

Champagne received her bachelor’s degree in nursing from Southeastern Louisiana University, a master’s degree in art history from Louisiana State University, and a doctorate in European history to 1650 from Louisiana State University.

 

Research

12th century, Papal-Jewish Relations in Rome, Christian Hebraists and Exegetes in 12th century; Rome, Jewish Perspectives of Rome in the 12th century; Manuscript Studies, the Circulation of Texts in the Middle Ages.

Classes Taught:

Western Perspectives I, Rome and the Mediterranean World, The Fall of Rome and Birth of Europe, The High Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, Medieval Women (additional section for Honors Program), Issues in Gender and Diversity, The Vikings in History and Legend 

Graduate Courses:

Graduate seminars: Dirt, Death, and Disease in the Middle Ages; Jerusalem in Antiquity and the Middle Ages

Special Interests

Medieval Rome, the circulation and reproduction of texts in the High Middle Ages, Christian-Jewish relations in the Middle Ages

Publications

Marie Thérèse Champagne, “Pagan Rome in the Service of the Church: Christian Perceptions of the Arch of Titus in the Middle Ages.” In The Arch of Titus: From Jerusalem to Rome, and Back. Edited by Steven Fine and Jacob Wisse, 63-74. Leiden, The Netherlands: Brill, 2021.

Jews and Muslims under the Fourth Lateran: Commemorating the Octocentenary of the Fourth Lateran Council (1215), edited by Marie Thérèse Champagne and Irven M. Resnick (University of Tennessee at Chattanooga). RELMIN (Religion and Law in Medieval Christian and Muslim Societies) 10. Edited by John Tolan. Turnhout, Belgium: Brepols, 2018.

Marie Thérèse Champagne, “Christian Hebraism in Twelfth-Century Rome: A Philologist's Correction of the Latin Bible through Dialogue with Jewish Scholars and their Hebrew Texts.” Studies in Church History 54. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017.

Marie Thérèse Champagne. "Both Text and Sub-Text: the Circulation and Preservation of Two Manuscripts of Nicolaus Maniacutius in Twelfth-Century Europe." Textual Cultures: Text, Context, and Interpretation, 2011.

Marie Thérèse Champagne. "Walking through the Shadows of the Past: the Jewish Experience of Rome in the Twelfth Century." Medieval Encounters: Jewish, Christian, and Muslim Cultures in Confluence and Dialogue, 2011.

Marie Thérèse Champagne. "Celestine III and the Jews." In Pope Celestine III (1191-1198): Diplomat and Pastor.Edited by John Doran and Damian Smith. In Church, Faith, and Culture in the Medieval West. Aldershot: Ashgate, December 2008.

Marie Thérèse Champagne. "Treasures of the Temple: The Jewish Heritage of Papal Rome in the Twelfth Century." Aspects of Power and Authority in the Middle Ages. Edited by Brenda M. Bolton and Christine E. Meek. In International Medieval Research Series. Turnhout: Brepols, December 2007.

Awards and Honors:

American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant Fellowship, 2022-2023.

Askew Institute for Multidisciplinary Studies Fellowship, 2018- 2021.

NEH Summer Institute, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, summer, 2017.

Faculty Excellence Award, 2017-2020.

QEP Project Grant, “Daily Life in Ancient Rome,” fall 2016.

NEH Summer Seminar, The American Academy in Rome, Summer 2014

Faculty Internationalization Grant, Summer 2014

Faculty Scholarly and Creative Activity Award, Summer 2010, 2012, 2014

NEH Summer Institute, Oxford University, Summer 2008

Student Services Vice President's University Award for Outstanding Service among Faculty, 2005-2006

Dissertation Year Fellowship, LSU Graduate School, 2004-2005

John Leyerle-CARA Prize for Dissertation Research at the Library of the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies at the University of Toronto, awarded by the Medieval Academy of America, 2004

Keywords: European history, Renaissance, the Reformation, ancient Rome, the Middle Ages, the Vikings, and women in the Middle Ages, Nicolaus Maniacutius, Christian Hebraist