Sir Richard William Southern (1912-2001) was a notable English medieval historian, based at the University of Oxford.

Southern was born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne and educated at the Royal Grammar School, Newcastle and at Balliol College, Oxford where he graduated with a first-class honours degree in History. At Oxford Southern's mentors were Sir Maurice Powicke and Vivian Hunter Galbraith. He was a Fellow of Balliol from 1937-61 (where he lectured alongside Christopher Hill), Chichele Professor of Modern History at Oxford from 1961-9, and President of St John's College, Oxford, from 1969-81. He was knighted in 1974. He died in Oxford.

Southern's Making of the Middle Ages (1953) established his reputation as a medievalist. This pioneering work opened up new vistas in medieval history and it has been translated into many languages. Southern's studies of St Anselm and Robert Grosseteste have redefined their historiography.

Bibliography

• The Making of the Middle Ages (1953)
• Medieval Humanism: And Other Studies (1970)
• St Anselm and his Biographer (1963)
• Robert Grosseteste: The Growth of an English Mind in Medieval Europe (1986, 2nd ed. 1992)
• St. Anselm: A Portrait in a Landscape (1992)
• Western Society and the Church in the Middle Ages (1970)
• Western Views of Islam in the Middle Ages (1962)
• Scholastic Humanism and the Unification of Europe (1997)
• History and Historians: Selected Papers of R.W. Southern, edited by Robert Bartlett (2004)

External links

• Gifford Lecture biography - By Dr Michael W DeLashmutt
• Palmer, William. "Sir Richard Southern looks back", Virginia Quarterly Review, Winter 1998.

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