Abstract

Twenty-Five years ago, on 15 April 1950, my predecessor Fred Norris Robinson in his presidential address pointed out that “Some question had been raised … as to whether we are properly celebrating our quartercentennial at this meeting.” It is interesting to note that his predecessor George Coffman, in his presidential address of 1947, recalling the first impulses to the formation of the Mediaeval Academy — impulses that went back to a meeting in Baltimore late in 1921 — and recalling the act of incorporation of the Academy on 23 December 1925, suggested that the twenty-fifth anniversary should be celebrated at the annual meeting of 1951, i.e., at the first meeting after our having completed twenty-five years of legal existence. This would have made it 1976 for the semi-centennial