Gillespie, Vincent, 1954-2025

Abstract

Vincent Gillespie was a distinguished scholar of medieval English religious writing, especially in its pastoral uses and its contemplative traditions. He pursued the codicological study of such works in their manuscript formats, including a catalogue of a Birgittine library. He combined that with the literary study of their rhetorical forms, as well as study of Chaucer’s poetics and his intellectual background. Gillespie was also a distinguished teacher and was renowned for his cultivation of the academic community, in Oxford, the UK and beyond. In that work with people, he embodied many virtues expressed in the texts he studied.