Distinguished Medieval History Prof. Retires
BY NICK STILLMAN

Professor of Medieval History Marcia Colish began teaching at Oberlin in 1963. She witnessed vigorous student protests of the Vietnam War, the creation of the Credit/No Entry system in 1970 and an era when no one thought twice about smoking in College buildings. Now, after this semester, Colish will retire.

(photo courtesy Marcia Colish)

Colish will move to Guilford, Conn. this summer to continue research for her next book, which she plans to call Ambrose’s Patriarchs. Her recent work has focused on the fourth century ethicist Ambrose, whom Colish sees as unique because he compiled a treatise of general ethics for common people, instead of a book of ethics for specific groups of people, a far more ordinary early medieval practice.
Professor of History Isaac Miller, who has been teaching at Oberlin for two years, will assume Colish’s place as Oberlin’s professor of medieval history. “We knew this was coming,” History Department Chair Michael Fisher said.
Miller praised Colish’s role in establishing and legitimizing the field of medieval intellectual history, which is his specialty as well. “I would say she’s among the most preeminent medieval scholars. In a lot of ways, she sort of defined the field of medieval intellectual history,” he said. 
Miller continued to explain the numerous subdivisions within the field of medieval history, but said that Colish was one of the only scholars able to successfully incorporate all into her work. “It takes a tremendous amount of work and vision to do that,” he said.
In Colish’s honor, the history department has arranged a symposium entitled “Religious Thought and Action in Medieval and Early Modern Europe” this Saturday from 9:30-5:30 p.m. in King 106. The symposium will include several lectures from professors who are former students of Colish. “Often when there’s a distinguished scholar like her who’s retiring, distinguished former students will come back to present what they’re working on and how she helped shape their ideas,” Fisher said.
While Colish’s impact in the classroom over her 37 years at Oberlin has been significant, she has also made important contributions to College life, specifically with her successful crusade in 1970 to abolish the College’s long-standing nepotism rule.
In 1930 Oberlin’s trustees created the nepotism rule, declaring that spouses could not simultaneously work as College professors. “The trustees were worried about the Great Depression and because they had no historical perspective, they thought the Depression would last forever,” Colish said. “In this period of American higher education, schools were expanding and we were depriving ourselves of excellent choices for the faculty,” she added. “And it was typically the wife who had to resign.”
Under the administration of then-College President Robert Carr, Colish chaired the committee that abolished the rule. “I feel I’m responsible for the household happiness of several Oberlin couples,” she said with a chuckle.

Although this event led to a higher campus profile for Colish and what she called “unpaid administrative work,” she eventually settled into a role as one of the most intellectually vigorous historians at the College — and in the United States.
“Every medievalist has heard of her or knows her work,” Professor of History Leonard Smith said. Smith mentioned an instance in which he was attempting to prepare a lecture on 14th century Italian city-states that he couldn’t muster enough interest in to convey a passion for the subject to his class. When he approached Colish for advice, she delivered a masterful analysis of how to analyze state power in medieval Italy. “It was breathtaking,” Smith said. “She’s known for that throughout the profession.”

Professor of Medieval Art History Erik Inglis (OC ’89) had Colish’s classes twice as an Oberlin student and attributed the handouts he distributes before each class to Colish’s influence. “What I try to do with my handouts, with the extensive additional bibliography, came directly from her,” he said. “I haven’t used her [as a reference] as often as I should have, but she’s been incredibly generous with her knowledge.”
Although Colish has retained her post at Oberlin for nearly four decades, she has received offers from other institutions, some of which were difficult to reject. When Rice University offered Colish a position as endowed chair in 1985, Oberlin created a specific chair position for her, honoring her prior services and exhibiting a commitment to retaining the College’s top professors.

Colish gave credit to a non-competitive and supportive history department for making Oberlin an attractive option for so many years. However, like so many professors who retire from Oberlin, she said the quality of the students was the factor no other institution could compete with. “The thing at the top of the list in terms of why I’ve stayed at Oberlin is the student body. It’s as bright as you would find anywhere.”

While Colish said her style of teaching has remained fairly constant since she began, she said the discipline of medieval intellectual history, her primary concentration, has developed and expanded vastly. Until recently, the division between Renaissance and medieval scholarship was distinct. Currently, the boundaries are blurring and topics like women in the reformation and popular religious culture are now receiving unprecedented attention.
She credited her interest in medieval studies to a professor at Smith, her undergraduate institution. “He taught a Medieval England course that I loved and after I took a [medieval] intellectual history course I was sold — this was what I wanted to do,” she said.
Colish’s 1994 two-volume book Peter Lombard won the Haskins medal from the Medieval Academy, an award given to a senior medieval scholar for the best book within a five-year period. “That really tickled me. My professor in college was a student of Haskins and he invented medieval intellectual history,” she said.
Her most recent book, 1997’s Medieval Foundations of the Western Intellectual Tradition, which she dedicated to her students, has won the widest acclaim of all her works and was a History Book of the Month Club selection. The book essentially relates the information Colish covers in her “Medieval Intellectual History” course. “What she’s teaching in her class has become one of the most popular books in medieval history,” Fisher said.