In Memoriam: Meredith Parsons Lillich (1932–2026)

Meredith Parsons Lillich, eminent scholar of medieval stained glass, was professor emerita at Syracuse University, where she taught for forty years (Figs. 1-2). A founder of the United States Corpus Vitrearum, she was greatly beloved and highly esteemed by her American Corpus colleagues. She authored the CV volume Stained Glass Before 1700 in Upstate New York (2004).

Meredith was well-known internationally for her brilliant scholarship and passionate dedication to stained glass research. At colloquia, she engaged animatedly and keenly with colleagues. Meredith was particularly attentive to rising scholars, listening intently and encouraging their endeavors with sage advice on glass as well as life. Those of us who were her doctoral students count it an immense privilege to have enjoyed Meredith’s friendship, mentorship, and support throughout our careers as she followed our progress closely over decades. Ever proud of our achievements, she would become ebullient with superlatives, which were followed immediately by an emphatic “Keep it up!” Meredith taught us how to be resilient and persistent in surmounting the inevitable obstacles, an area in which she was eminently expert. In seeking to become a woman medievalist at a time when the academic world was regulated and dominated by men, Meredith succeeded in overcoming the difficulties and obstructions in her path by relentless hard work paired with dogged tenacity and sheer determination.

Meredith Lillich was born in Chicago on 9 February 1932. From an early age, she possessed an indefatigable curiosity and love of learning that was nurtured eventually at Oberlin College. There she flourished, thriving in the intellectual opportunities it offered, particularly, solid instruction in art history from scholars such as Wolfgang Stechow and Ellen Johnson. In 1953, Meredith graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a BA in art history and English. Yearning to study abroad, she applied for and won a Fulbright Fellowship to Belgium, where she studied at the Free University of Brussels. In Europe at last, she discovered what would become the object of all her life’s work, medieval stained glass.

Juggling her roles as wife and mother, Meredith earned an MA from Cornell University in 1957 and a Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1969. She encountered kindness and encouragement from scholars who were undoubtedly impressed by her brilliant intellect, strong will, and relentless effort. Among these were Rudolf Wittkower and Robert Branner. It was the latter who arranged for Meredith an interview with Louis Grodecki when he was visiting New York. Grodecki, the most influential and nearly the only scholar working in the field of French stained glass, suggested as Meredith’s topic of study Saint-Père de Chartres. The choice proved prescient, as Meredith wrote in her autobiographical chapter in the book Women Medievalists and the Academy, “…that was to become my dissertation, my first book, and ultimately the root of my magnum opus on western French glass of 1250 to 1325.”¹ Meredith elaborated, “Through Grodecki…I had met Jean Lafond, the French scholar who is installed in my pantheon of heroes.”² In 1960, Meredith moved to Syracuse, New York, where her husband was to teach law. In 1968, while finishing her dissertation, The Stained Glass of Saint-Père de Chartres, she began teaching at Syracuse University, where she remained until her retirement in 2010.

Meredith was wont to admonish her students never to let a year go without at least one publication regardless of life circumstance. Over the course of her career, she took her advice to heart, so much so that she merited her own volume of collected works, Studies in Medieval Stained Glass and Monasticism (2001). Meredith composed foundational essays or book chapters forever transforming the art historical understanding of diverse topics across manifold areas of specialization: discussions of Cistercian hydraulics and sanitation benefiting historians of science and technology;³ her exhortation for the foundational import of heraldry in the public, high-profile medium of stained glass accompanied an invaluable primer on how to link heraldic blazons to their respective noble families;⁴ reconsiderations of the band window as a monumental formula in stained glass;⁵ the role and cost of glaziers’ soap and the material complexity of predominantly grisaille panes;⁶ recognition of the chemical and artistic potential of silver stain;⁷ reexaminations of rose windows;⁸ devout appreciation for the synthetic integration of architectural framework and inserted glass panels in microanalyses, such as her groundbreaking discussion of Le Mans Cathedral.⁹ She was editor of Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture.¹⁰ This indefatigable polymath also cultivated longstanding mutually beneficial ties with Dr. Robert Brill (d. 2021), research scientist at the Corning Museum of Glass, New York, collaborating routinely on research into the altogether novel field of conservational approaches to the study and care of medieval stained glass panels, and receiving the Museum’s Rakow Award for Research (1988).

Meredith Lillich published three books by the mid-nineties, The Stained Glass of Saint-Père de Chartres (1978), which won the Millard Meiss Publication Award, Rainbow Like an Emerald: Stained Glass in Lorraine in the Thirteenth and Early Fourteenth Centuries (1991); and The Armor of Light: Stained Glass in Western France 1250-1325 (1994), a Centennial Book at Berkeley including the discussion of Le Mans noted above. After publishing Armor and reflecting on what to do next, Meredith arrived at this conclusion: “Gothic stained glass was as necessary to me as breathing.”¹¹ More books followed; The Queen of Sicily and Gothic Stained Glass in Mussy and Tonnerre (1998), Stained Glass Before 1700 in Upstate New York (2004), The Gothic Stained Glass of Reims Cathedral (2011). Over the course of her career, Meredith published forty-four articles and numerous book reviews. She frequently presented papers and organized and chaired sessions at conferences across the United States and Europe, and regularly presented her research at International Corpus Vitrearum colloquia, as in 1998 in Krakow, where she spoke eloquently on “The Monumental Program of the Green Rose of Châlons Cathedral” (Fig. 3). On 13 November 2010, the Corning Museum of Glass convened a one-day symposium with colleagues, former students, and specialists presenting papers in her honor: “Medieval Glass Illuminates what Art and Reason Reveal, a Celebration of Meredith Lillich’s Passionate Legacy.”

In 2007, Meredith had been awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship for her work on Reims, the most recent in a long history of honors and grants; she was a National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) fellow in Paris (1976); director of the NEH Summer Seminar for College Teachers (1980); a fellow of the American Council of Learned Societies (1980–1981); a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, Washington, DC (1981); a  Fulbright Senior Research Fellow in Paris (1983); a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton (1988), and recipient of various travel, research, and publication grants. At Syracuse University, Meredith was the recipient of the William Wasserstrom Award for Excellence in Graduate Teaching (1987), the Arts and Sciences Special Service Award for Service to Field (1989), and the Chancellor’s Citation for Exceptional Academic Achievement (1999). Meredith’s professional service extended to numerous organizations; to name just a few, the American and International Corpus Vitrearum, the Medieval Academy of America, the College Art Association, and the International Center for Medieval Art, serving on the Board of Directors (1983–1986) and as Vice-President (1976).

“Translucence is better!” Meredith once declared of glass, her beloved medium.¹² Besides her children and grandchildren, she wrote, “my research in French Gothic stained glass has always been the glue that holds my life together.”¹³ Meredith Lillich is survived by two wonderful daughters, Victoria A. Lillich and Olivia P.L. Hilton, and four grandchildren, who have been for Meredith a source of immense delight and pride; Rebecca Lillich Krüger, Miles Hilton, Rupert Krüger, and Aaron Hilton. Meredith Lillich’s wry sense of humor and intellectual generosity will be remembered by all who knew her as a colleague and treasured her as a friend.

Renée K. Burnam, Alyce A. Jordan, Eric Ramirez-Weaver

Get to know Meredith and her work, see her autobiographical chapter ‘Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (1932 -),’ in J. Chance (ed.), Women Medievalists and the Academy, Houston, 2005, pp. 932–944, at https://corpusvitrearum.us/in-memoriam-meredith-lillich-1932-2026/, accessed 20 April 2026.

Footnotes

1. M. P. Lillich, ‘Ars Longa, Vita Brevis (1932 -),’ in J. Chance (ed.), Women Medievalists and the Academy, Houston, 2005, p. 936.[↩]
2. Lillich, ‘Ars Longa,’ pp. 937–938.[↩]
3. M. P. Lillich, Studies in Medieval Stained Glass and Monasticism, London, 2001, chapter XIII, pp. 355–394.[↩]
4. Lillich, Studies, chapter XV, pp. 419–433[↩]
5. Lillich, Studies, chapter III, pp. 62–78.[↩]
6. Lillich, Studies, chapters IV, pp. 79–96; V, 97–117; XIV, pp. 395–418.[↩]
7. Lillich, Studies, chapter II, pp. 38–61.[↩]
8. Lillich, Studies, chapter XVIII, pp. 155–67.[↩]
9. Lillich, Studies, chapters XIX, pp. 490–504; XX, pp. 505–530.[↩]
10. Studies in Cistercian Art and Architecture, M. P. Lillich (ed.), Kalamazoo, 6 vols,  1982–2005.[↩]
11. Lillich, ‘Ars Longa,’ p. 940.[↩]
12. Lillich, ‘Ars Longa,’ p. 939.[↩]
13. Lillich, ‘Ars Longa,’ p. 938.[↩]