“The Power of God’s words… shall never pass away.” Leo III, Ecloga [1] In 705, the noseless Justinian II returned to Constantinople and...

“Since the days of Scipio, no bolder enterprise has been attempted than that which Heraclius achieved for the deliverance of the empire.”...

Aquinas arrived on the Byzantine literary scene on 24th December, 1354, when Kydones completed his translation of Summa contra gentiles....

Few will have heard of Golinduch.[1] She’s not in the western canon and – despite her extraordinary life and “death” – she is not a...

The sixth-century bureaucrat John Lydus wrote that Roman military dress had changed over time but that there were still some troops who...

Around 500 BC the Greeks began dating events by reference to the name of an important local office holder e.g. the priestess of Hera at...

Around the late 340s Cyril – the future bishop of Jerusalem – announced that the city’s church was in possession of the “wood of the...

I’ve tried to omit some of the obvious big ticket items like Aquae Sulis (modern Bath, which is Roman only really up to the stylobate)...

A parenthesis about Clovis in a passage I wrote here inspired this article. I outlined how Clovis’ appointment as consul by Anastasius...

Bruno of Cologne was appointed to the court of his older brother Otto the Great at the age of fifteen. Thirteen years later he was made...

Having recently written about Russian and English ethnogenesis, it’s time to alight on what ethnicity meant in the medieval period....

As with the Arian controversy (318-) Nicaea took place without any considerable Western involvement, a trend that continued until roughly...

It’s not certain how Christianity got to Gaul let alone Britain. Perhaps the most prominent theory is that the faith entered Marseilles...

There has always been the assumption that Roman Britain became post-Roman (or “sub-Roman”) the moment it was denuded of Roman troops (by...

George Scholarios was about fifty years old when Constantinople fell in 1453. Three years earlier he had taken the name of Gennadios on...

The New Testament is about Christ and the consequences of his life. Yet it contains no words written directly by the Messiah. This...

Talking of Europe to a European would have been irrelevant for much of Western history. Not because the occidental peoples didn’t have...

Proverbial wisdom has it that the fastest way to a man’s heart is via his stomach. Though bumptious sorts like to add it’s really through...

“O Hagia Sophia that great temple! O the wonders and antiquities in the Hippodrome!... Constantinople is greater even than its name! May...

Roland Betancourt’s recent book Byzantine Intersectionality (2020), which I negatively reviewed here, contained the claim that the...