The seventeenth annual meeting of the Illinois Medieval Association was co-sponsored by Loyola University Chicago's Medieval Studies Program and the University of Chicago on Friday and Saturday, February 16 and 17, 2000. The theme of the meeting was "Crafting History for the Present: Uses of the Past in the Middle Ages." Plenary sessions were sponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop of the University of Chicago in honor of the retirement of Walter Goffart of the University of Toronto.

   The 2000 meeting was funded by the Loyola Endowment for the Humanities, the College of Arts and Sciences, and the Medieval Studies Program of Loyola University Chicago, and by the Medieval Studies Workshop and the Divinity School of the University of Chicago. The program committee included Michael I. Allen and Rachel Fulton form the University of Chicago and Barbara Rosenwein and Allen J. Frantzen of Loyola University Chicago.

   The annual business meeting was held during lunch on Saturday, February 18, and was chaired by President Anne Clark Bartlett of DePaul University. Officers for IMA for 2000-2001 proposed by the Executive Committee and approved by the membership at the business meeting are as follows: Barbara H. Rosenwein, President; Mark D. Johnston, The Newberry Library, Vice-President; and Allen J. Frantzen, Loyola University, Executive Secretary. Counselors are Anne Clark Bartlett; Raymond Clemens, Illinois State University; William Fahrenbach, DePaul University; Lisa Lampert, University of Illinois-Urbana-Champaign; and David Wagner, Northern Illinois University. The membership accepted the invitation of Mark D. Johnston to hold the eighteenth annual meeting in February 2001 at the Newberry Library.

   The essays contained in this Volume were chosen from among those submitted for publication and were subsequently revised, and, in some cases, expanded. The editorial committee consisted of Lisa Lampert, William Fahrenbach, David Wagner, and Allen Frantzen, and outside readers who wish to remain anonymous.

   Although papres from the plenary sessions sponsored by the Medieval Studies Workshop of the University of Chicago were not available for publication in this Volume, we are pleased to include, as an appendix, a list of the papers read I honor of Walter Goffart.