Dr. Marie T Champagne

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, “ ‘Bind the book very strong, cut the top and bottoms […] no marginal notes’: The Life and Afterlife of a Twelfth-Century Text," is the result of over a decade of research. The published monograph provides an up-to-date study of the life of Nicolaus 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, political, 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.