Arch of Constantine A cavalry battle that started at a defile on the Cassian Road at saxa rubra and continued downhill to the Tiber and...

Virgin & Child, Chora Monastery Istanbul I daydream about a future civilisation condemning the artistic fruits of its Latin precursor by...

I recently did a Zoom chat in which I was asked which Byzantine item I’d rescue in a nuclear holocaust. I started by answering that it...

The Great Palace of Constantinople is usually advertised as the last great hurrah of late antique architecture. Indeed, its style – which...

There’s an oft cited passage of Psellos that describes Zoe’s love of perfumes as well as her devotion to the icon of Christ...

When Mehmed II entered Constantinople in 1453 he was surrounded by ruins and ghosts of the Roman Empire. A sacred landscape, the city was...

Nowhere has the link between dress and identity received more scrutiny than in recent scholarship dealing with veiling trends among women...

Agilbert (d. 675) was bishop successively of Dorchester-on-Thames and Paris. A Frank who’d studied in Ireland, he left the West Saxon...

Fig.1 - The Annunciation, Museo del Castello Sforzesco, Milan. In 1899 a group of ivory carvings (figs. 1-5 provide a sample) was...

Vortigern was the most dominant figure in what remained of the Roman administration after the departure of the Roman legions. His...

From the appearance of the Lombards in Venetia[1] in AD 568/9, Venice had to play a clever game to enforce any sort of autonomy in the...

There is a disturbing lack of early evidence for the cult of St Demetrios at Thessalonica. In light of this the majority of modern...

House of Dionysios, Archaeological Museum of Delos Whenever the clash of paganism and Christianity is discussed, minds jump to the easy...

Was there an equivalent use of distinctive motifs employed as ornament by the Byzantine nobility (to convey the same messages of...

At the beginning of the second century, Christian ritual was loosely organised. The congregation would assemble at sunrise on Sunday for...

If Rome evolved a stational liturgy in order to connect scattered cemeteries and tituli (which were by the third century accorded...

“Only a few things in the Platonic books need to be altered to make their authors Christian.”[1] St Augustine “Oneself is not the subject...

Ancient Ravenna lay much closer to the coast than it does today, the sea now having receded approximately six miles. Our earliest...

In AD 669 Theodore, a Byzantine monk from Tarsus, arrived in England having been appointed Archbishop of Canterbury two years previously....

Referring to restoration, reintegration and reconstitution, Apokatastasis is the restoration of all creation to its proper place in...