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...

You ought to know that the pontiffs of Rome preside in that city in order to maintain peace like a common wall occupying the middle...

[Fashion] represents a long… legitimate hope to actualise a lost image… [which] retains… an unquiet fascination with an allusive glory...

Profile of Rome As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, pastoral care in early Christian Rome was looked after by the tituli. These numbered twenty...

Egypt mattered. Though no emperor since Diocletian had travelled to the country, its tax revenues accounted for roughly a third of the...

Historically, the scholarly literature on the Rhomaioi has either melted sub-identities in a vast Orthodox soup, or fractured the empire...

Byzantines, on the one hand, celebrated nature as a reflection of God’s glory. On the other, they considered it fleeting, corruptible and...

“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....

When all seemed lost; when the chasm between the elder Rome and the new seemed unbridgeable; when the extent to which the Germanics had...

“Hi sunt olivae duae coram Domino Et candelabra luce radiantia Praeclara caeli duo luminaria Fortia solvent peccatorum vincula Portas...

A disciple and colleague of the apostle Paul, Thecla was the most celebrated female saint of late antiquity. Recognised for her...

“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...

I’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...

No archaeology has substantiated the medieval tradition of London (AKA “New Troy”) being founded by Brutus in 1108 BC, or its later...

‘You must dress well to gain admiration from your subjects.’ Patriarch Photios to Boris of Bulgaria Contemporary remnants of ‘Byzantine’...

“Here is the Capitol where in the old days a human head was found and declared to be an omen, for in that place would be fixed the...

Rome has boasted many titles (from caput mundi to urbs sacra) over the centuries. Some are bombastic, several true, and almost all play...

My book draft contains large passages on the statuary of Constantinople. As I scribbled them up I realised that few – unless they...

“Those who came for the spectacle left instructed in the divine.”[1] Theodoret of Cyrrhus The Jews had a handful of holy places worthy of...

Defectio shared a seat with high treason in Roman law, a crime which usually resulted in ignominious forms of punishment followed by the...