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Jan 12, 2020
3 min

Stabbed in the Front: How Romans Facilitated Their Own Colonisation

In the fifth century, several barbarian peoples were accorded settlements on the provincial soil of the empire. The details are worth inv...

325 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Jan 9, 2020
7 min

Carolingian Learning

In the course of my own book, which touches on the fusion of Byzantine and Latin learning in the fifteenth century, I found myself attemp...

437 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Dec 13, 2019
6 min

An Interview with Professor M. Whitby

I first encountered Michael Whitby through his translation of the Pascal Chronicle (1989); a text marking such a sea-change in Roman hist...

151 views0 comments

The Ultimate LARP: How Germanics Mimicked Their Way Into Forging The West

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Dec 6, 2019
6 min

The Ultimate LARP: How Germanics Mimicked Their Way Into Forging The West

The post-Roman states languish in an electric day-dream. Martial and ephemeral, they’re conventionally presented as biblical scourges i.e...

252 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Nov 22, 2019
4 min

Mystras: Kosmikos & Apokosmos

“William found a remarkable hill, a fragment of a mountain” and “called it Myzithras because they shouted it thus, and he made it into a ...

429 views0 comments

The Fourth Crusade Blame Game: The Betrayal of Byzantium

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Nov 14, 2019
4 min

The Fourth Crusade Blame Game: The Betrayal of Byzantium

Launched by Pope Innocent III in August 1198 with the aim of taking Jerusalem from the Ayyubids, the fourth crusade’s blueprint had a Ven...

251 views0 comments

Linguistic Gatekeepers: How Byzantium dominated the diplomatic language game

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Nov 7, 2019
5 min

Linguistic Gatekeepers: How Byzantium dominated the diplomatic language game

One of the most confusing aspects to potential catechumens of Byzantium’s ideology is its ethnography. Unless well-versed in it, the Byz ...

398 views0 comments

Did Byzantium kill Athens? The closure of the Academy

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Nov 2, 2019
5 min

Did Byzantium kill Athens? The closure of the Academy

Two major elements in the anti-Christian prism through which the jaded West has historically viewed late antiquity (mentioned in the arti...

564 views0 comments

Draconian Dreams: Julian the Apostate and the Pagan Police-State

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Oct 24, 2019
7 min

Draconian Dreams: Julian the Apostate and the Pagan Police-State

It’s easy to line Catherine Nixey between the crosshairs. Almost as undemanding, perhaps, as it was it was for her to portray the ascende...

768 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Oct 18, 2019
4 min

An Epilogue: Byzantine Spain & Africa

The Byzantine chapter on Africa (and to a lesser extent, Spain) tends to be a short one. It starts with a whiff of betrayal from men like...

329 views0 comments

How Byzantium Duped the West into Thinking It Had Fallen

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Oct 10, 2019
8 min

How Byzantium Duped the West into Thinking It Had Fallen

Answering why societies rise and fall is often what brings enquiring minds to study history. And, in the West, the most totemic society o...

1,327 views0 comments

Unlikely Companions:
Anglo-Byzantine Relations 500-1500

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Oct 3, 2019
14 min

Unlikely Companions: Anglo-Byzantine Relations 500-1500

While it would hysterical to claim Byzantine links to the English were ever stable, considering the fact Lundenwic and Constantinople sto...

1,210 views0 comments

Byzantine Treasures in Britain: Late Byzantium

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Sep 26, 2019
5 min

Byzantine Treasures in Britain: Late Byzantium

In 1440, Canon Fursy de Bruille arrived in Cambrai with an icon of the Virgin & Child he had received in Rome. Purchased in the belief it...

213 views0 comments

Byzantine Treasures in Britain: The Middle Period

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Sep 23, 2019
6 min

Byzantine Treasures in Britain: The Middle Period

The road from the achievements of Justinian (527-565) to the drastic actions of Leo III (717-41) was a remarkably short one. Threats came...

147 views0 comments

Byzantine Treasures in Britain: Early Byzantium

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Sep 19, 2019
4 min

Byzantine Treasures in Britain: Early Byzantium

In 1860 the chairman of the Select Committee on the British Museum, questioning Sir Anthony Panizzi, the museum’s principal librarian, pr...

303 views0 comments

Low Life: Culinary Adventures in Constantinople by Nigel Hillpaul

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Sep 12, 2019
4 min

Low Life: Culinary Adventures in Constantinople by Nigel Hillpaul

Breakfast around the Middle East is usually a washout. Two places I’ve enjoyed it have been the Hotel Baron in Aleppo and over the border...

102 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Aug 29, 2019
4 min

High Life: Eating out in Constantinople

Despite Turks being associated with kebab culture in Europe – and much of the world thanks to the antics of Salt Bae (AKA Nusret Gokce) o...

677 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Jun 20, 2019
6 min

Ethnic minorities in Byzantium Part 3

Jews Byzantine relations with the Jews have always been complex, not least because the former effectively stole the latter’s ideological ...

478 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Jun 14, 2019
5 min

Ethnic Minorities in Byzantium Part 2

Bogomils Gnostics to the bone, the Bogomils seem to have snowballed in their Macedonian-Bulgarian heartland after John I transferred anot...

394 views0 comments

Henry Hopwood-Phillips

Jun 7, 2019
5 min

Ethnic Minorities in Byzantium Part 1

“One finds me Scythian among Scythians, Latin among Latins… And also to Persians I speak in Persian… To Alans I say in their tongue: ‘...

964 views0 comments

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