Roger Reynolds
The specialist of dark-ages ecclesial history in the early medieval period, Richard Reynolds, who was part of the Department of History of Carleton University between 1968 and 1977, passed away on September 24. His former colleagues of Carleton remember how he travelled all over Europe, especially the Balkans and Italy, to visit important sites of worship for material on services, theology and administration, entertained a remarkable network of correspondents, and helped establish the University’s scholarly reputation as a whole, as well as the department’s national reputation for MA studies in medieval history in particular. He prepared and rehearsed his lectures with the same assiduousness and enthusiasm, and helped develop survey courses which guaranteed enrolments for a long time. Upon his arrival in Ottawa from Harvard, he became a regular visitor of the reading room of St. Paul’s University whose holdings he held in high esteem. Reynolds was recruited for a position at the Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies of the University of Toronto, where he revived the program in the history of liturgy and taught about worship, ceremony and canon law. It is from this institution, where he spent the rest of his career, surrounded by researchers working on closely related subjects, that he prepared most of his publications, from a large project of critical publication of liturgical manuscripts, Monumenta liturgica beneventana, to countless articles, books, exhibitions and reviews, listed in 2004 in the book edited by former students: Kathleen G. Cushing and Richard F. Gyug, Ritual, Text, and Law (Ashgate). His colleagues of Toronto praise his contribution to the prestige of their Institute, and his lasting contributions to scholarship.
Dominique Marshall, Chair, Department of History
with the help of John Bellamy, Carter Elwood, David Farr, and Peter Fitzgerald