Today's @imc-leeds.bsky.social catch-up: paper 142a from @taylorcowdery.bsky.social on dodgy sexual goings-on by London embroiderers (who sound rather like Terry Pratchett's Seamstresses' Guild)

If you have a VERY large room, Lambeth Palace Library is selling off its old bookshelves. www.lassco.co.uk/product/the-...

You know him for /Against the Christians/, /Homeric Questions/, /On the Cave of the Nymphs/, the /Isagoge/, and /On Not Eating Animals/. More from Porphyry coming soon! Like the Pearlsong, this volume will be available as an open-access PDF and a beautiful hard copy.

Hadn't realised that the Connecting People book is OA as a pdf - have grabbed it from trivent-publishing.eu/home/197-369....

TIL that someone wrote a children's novel about Charles the Bald's daughter, Judith of Flanders: archive.org/details/judi...

Today's @imc-leeds.bsky.social catch-up, where in #s511 Daniela Rywiková has a rather more assertive Czech Death than I remember from Terry Pratchett...

Any UK-based PhDs working on medieval women interested in giving a lighting talk to this seminar? It'd be good to get some premodern representation.

Having just seen @rorynaismith.bsky.social on #IMC2025 catchup, I now want the Libellus Æthelwoldi Tales, in which the scheming abbot and bishop try and do down poor Aelfwold of Mardleybury and his family among others. Lots of scheming in beautiful rural locations.

Today's gem from 2025 catch-up sessions from @imc-leeds.bsky.social. A vernacular charm against worms from C15 Italian witch trials from Paolo Nanni in #s721. There are early medieval Latin anti-worm charms as well: maybe we need a long-duree study?

More @imc-leeds.bsky.social catch-up today, including another unfortunate medieval name (from paper by Adrian Jobson #s1107). When many of the charter witnesses are called John and you're the one no-one likes...

This is obviously serious, and solidarity to my fellow Unison members here, but they will need to take precautions that management doesn’t just list the strike action as a historic re-enactment attraction.

@imc-leeds.bsky.social paper inspired blog post on how notorious sinners destroyed the moral authority of Carolingian assemblies: magistraetmater.wordpress.com/2025/07/31/i...

When your medieval parents name you after a Merovingian saint, but the scribe's rubbish at spelling (from nppm.ub.uni-tuebingen.de/gast/einzelb...)

Recently published: OA translation by @shahansean.bsky.social and Stephen Shoemaker of Strategius of Mar Saba, "The Capture of Jerusalem by the Persians in 614 CE" (isac.uchicago.edu/research/pub...) #MedievalSky

Michelle C. Wang and Ryan R. Overbey (ed.s). Beyond the Silk and Book Roads. Rethinking Networks of Exchange and Material Culture. @degruyterbrill.bsky.social #AAS2025 #chinesestudies #history #silkroad #books

Anyone interested in premodern India should check out sheldonpollock.org which has a lot of OA stuff, including comparative work on China. #MedievalSky

Thanks to ecclesiastical estates & monks' account management, there is more quantitative information about farms in the high middle ages than any time until a modern census is taken. (below England, from Broadberry et al)

@IMC-Leeds.bsky.app Reminder for all those not saddened/disgusted/feeling betrayed by #Session116 on Carolingian moral sentiments at #IMC2025, there is even more Carolingian emotion in #Session1003 and #Session1103 on Carolingian hope and despair. Don't know whether to look forward or not...

New blogpost in which I try to trace as many of Jinty Nelson's PhD students as possible: magistraetmater.wordpress.com/2025/06/19/a...

Interesting OA books from Firenze UP: Navigating the Mediterranean Through the Chinese Lens (books.fupress.com/catalogue/na...), Local Societies and Peasantry Agencies in Medieval Iberia (books.fupress.com/catalogue/lo...), Carolingian Frontiers: Italy and Beyond (books.fupress.com/catalogue/ca...)

Interesting looking (but expensive) new book on The Civilian Legacy of the Roman Army brill.com/display/titl...

Looks interesting: OA Handbook of New Institutional Economics (link.springer.com/referencewor...), including chapters by Joel Mokyr and Jared Rubin.

I realise your mind may be between apocalypse and theme parks right now, but if you are able to share the below for increased reach I’d be most grateful

"One of the things about the Merovingians is that they have sex with everybody just to prove how splendid they are and they don't follow any social norms" (Ian Wood, discussing TM Charles-Edwards, "Anglo-Saxon kinship revisited.", in boydellandbrewer.com/978184383034...)

@monumenta.bsky.social edition of Hincmar's letters - 3rd and final volume is almost here!!! Talk to celebrate in Munich/on Zoom on 8th May (www.mgh.de/de/blog/post...)

Sie interessieren sich für die Entwicklung Europas nach dem Ende des karolingischen Reiches? Wir freuen uns, unseren neuesten #HIT ankündigen zu können! Die Website des Projekts „Histories in Transition“ ist nun offiziell online. @imafo-oeaw.bsky.social @oeaw.bsky.social 👁️‍🗨️ bit.ly/41Y5ZKM

Today, I've started a job at the @freieuniversitaet.bsky.social where I'll work on a new project involving early medieval manuscripts, religious education and Christian identity formation. Read more about it here: libripendis.eu/posts/21proj...

Monumental three-volume Handbook of Epigraphic Cultures to be published by De Gruyter, early next year hopefully. Open Access eBook! Includes chapters on Khitan and Tangut epigraphy.

Only just realised that Hans Hubert Anton, the great expert on medieval mirrors for princes, died last year: volksfreund.trauer.de/traueranzeig.... His work was a vital background for my study of Carolingian lay mirrors.

There's a PhD opportunity in Cardiff to work on Manichaeism! #jobs

@dunnettcentral.bsky.social Doesn't Lymond eat cannabis sweets at some point?

New blog post, explaining with example how you could get funding for a history PhD at the end of the last millennium magistraetmater.wordpress.com/2025/02/26/h... #medievalsky

I am happy to say I will be starting @imc-leeds.bsky.social with sadness, with Monday morning paper: "116-a: Vice or Virtue?: 'Bad Sadness' in Carolingian Moral Texts". In the current state of things, however, it may instead be me leading 20 minutes of collective sobbing by early medievalists.

My book now has a publisher website! It'll be a while before it's all prettied up and published, but I'm so excited (and, yes, the Roman treasury gets plundered in this one, so it's not really a break from current events).

A very long blogpost in which I consider what exactly research-led history teaching in English and Welsh universities looks like: magistraetmater.wordpress.com/2025/01/29/w...

These Swahili coast bookworms were quite considerate of the textblock

Just seen that Achim Thomas Hack, who did some very interesting research on medieval ritual/kingship/health has died de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Achim_T...

Just found a Guardian article from 2003 on the usefulness of history at universities which pitches Jinty Nelson against my current university (which had then just closed their history department). www.theguardian.com/uk/2003/may/...

🎧 Rencontres #6 – L’historienne Geneviève Bührer-Thierry Découvrez le parcours d'une historienne, spécialiste du monde franc et germanique dans le haut Moyen Âge (VIe-XIe s.). passionmedievistes.fr/rencontres-6...

Only just learned that the 2016 book on early medieval Ravenna edited by Judith Herrin and Jinty Nelson is available OA: www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv...

Finally found this article by Jinty Nelson, which I hadn't read before - a moving meditation on becoming a grandmother Nelson, J.L. Contemplating grandmotherhood. Ageing Int. 26, 3–9 (2000). doi.org/10.1007/s121... #MedievalSky

Some uncomfortable statistics about UK history departments and their recruitment of disadvantaged students: magistraetmater.wordpress.com/2025/01/13/d...

Second time this week where I’ve seen grown ass adults talking about “feudalism” as though it was a concrete thing, did Elizabeth Atkinson Rash Brown die in vain l?

Has anyone done a cross-cultural comparison of Liu Xiang's Lienü zhuan biographies of women (cup.columbia.edu/book/exempla...) with either Roman exemplars of women (epitaphs etc) or early Christian female hagiography? if not, someone should (but not me, as I have too many other projects).

Spread word! Peter Van Nuffelen is recruiting two postdocs for his ERC Advanced Grant project 'New Polities. Political Thought in the First Millennium'. The candidates should have experience with Hebrew, Middle-Persian or Arabic sources. Ghent and its university come highly recommended.

*Click* cepr.org/voxeu/column...

New blog post in which I discuss the concerns of @draliceevans.bsky.social about historians underplaying medieval misogyny: magistraetmater.wordpress.com/2025/01/02/a...

As we head into 2025, I'll be sharing 25 MEDICAL HISTORY OBJECTS starting with... #1) 5,000-year-old prosthetic eye made of bitumen paste with lines radiating out from iris. Worn by a 6’ tall woman (possibly a priestess), found near the city of Zabol in Iran. The eye would have been painted gold.

English pronunciations of the counties, through the ears of a Pomeranian knight visiting in 1584:

Job Opportunity! The Saxo Institute seeks tenure-track assistant professor in economic history with a primary focus within the period c. 1500-1900. Applicants with a demonstrated interest in European economic history are encouraged to apply. www.h-net.org/jobs/job_dis...