Henry Hopwood-PhillipsJun 27 minForging Venezianita: Venice the Byzantine Naval BaseSLAVIC BRAKES (3.1) The first half of the ninth century saw Croats and other polities emerge. A group named Narentines were particularly...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsMay 1917 minForging Venezianita: The Birth of VeniceREMILITARISATION OF ITALY (2.1) Italian society had not contributed large amounts of manpower to the Roman military since the mid-third...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsApr 2810 minForging Venezianita: La Serenissima’s Tortured Relationship with its Byzantine DNASt Theodore’s Column, Venice, Sydney Vacher (1919) AIM: This paper is split into four parts and seeks to address the source scarcity that...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsFeb 175 minExploring Gender and Paganism within Christianity's DNADuring the Reformation Protestants accused Catholics of harbouring ideas that were less Christian than Greco-Roman i.e. pagan. It was a...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsFeb 311 minA Deadly Dance: The Papacy, Anglos, Britons & Irish“To go to Rome Is much trouble and little profit. The King whom you seek there Unless you take Him with you, you will not find.” – An...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsJan 1415 minEternity’s Eye: A Chronology of Rome’s Earliest Surviving Christian Mosaics (400–850)I spent 2021’s Indian Summer (Sept–Oct) in Rome documenting the city’s Byzantine churches. My appetite had been whetted by days 5–7 of...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsJan 115 minThe Long March of Latin Alienation from the EmpireYou ought to know that the pontiffs of Rome preside in that city in order to maintain peace like a common wall occupying the middle...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsDec 23, 202111 minWhat hath Jerusalem to do with Milan?[Fashion] represents a long… legitimate hope to actualise a lost image… [which] retains… an unquiet fascination with an allusive glory...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsDec 16, 20213 minFloat like a Stylite, Sting like an Imperial Decree: Byzantine Monasteries in RomeProfile of Rome As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, pastoral care in early Christian Rome was looked after by the tituli. These numbered twenty...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsDec 9, 20213 minDid Regional Theology Trump Imperial Loyalty? An Egyptian Case-StudyEgypt mattered. Though no emperor since Diocletian had travelled to the country, its tax revenues accounted for roughly a third of the...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsDec 2, 20214 minRegionalism in Byzantium & Early IslamHistorically, the scholarly literature on the Rhomaioi has either melted sub-identities in a vast Orthodox soup, or fractured the empire...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsOct 22, 20217 minCartographers of the Mind: Byzantine Views on NatureByzantines, on the one hand, celebrated nature as a reflection of God’s glory. On the other, they considered it fleeting, corruptible and...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsSep 23, 202111 minFlagship of Romanitas: Constantinopolitan Statuary“Thus, for this and many other reasons, one sees just how low sculpture and with it the other arts had fallen by the time of Constantine....
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsSep 16, 20215 minAnthemius: the Betrayed Byzantine Saviour of the WestWhen all seemed lost; when the chasm between the elder Rome and the new seemed unbridgeable; when the extent to which the Germanics had...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsSep 9, 202112 minThe Invention of Roma Christiania: How the Early Papacy Policed Art & Faith“Hi sunt olivae duae coram Domino Et candelabra luce radiantia Praeclara caeli duo luminaria Fortia solvent peccatorum vincula Portas...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsAug 12, 202110 minImitatio Theclae: Exploring Gender in Thecla's WorldA disciple and colleague of the apostle Paul, Thecla was the most celebrated female saint of late antiquity. Recognised for her...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsJul 29, 202110 minThe Sky Cannot Brook Two Suns: Frankish Impressions of Constantinople“Ce nos ont nostre livre apris Que Grece ot de chevalerie La premier los et de clergie, Puis vint chevalerie a Rome Et de la clergie la...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsJul 15, 20215 minAnti-Byzantine Rhetoric in the RenaissanceI’ve resisted writing up the exchange below because it features heavily in a book I’ve scribbled, half of which is dedicated to the theme...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsJul 8, 20216 minLondonium: a ReappraisalNo archaeology has substantiated the medieval tradition of London (AKA “New Troy”) being founded by Brutus in 1108 BC, or its later...
Henry Hopwood-PhillipsJun 10, 202110 minFashioning Romanitas on the Bosphorus‘You must dress well to gain admiration from your subjects.’ Patriarch Photios to Boris of Bulgaria Contemporary remnants of ‘Byzantine’...