With the first copy of The Sons of St Augustine!

To Wien! To the Institut für Mittelalterforschung!

Queens' JRF (@camhistory.bsky.social) @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social's new book, The Sons of St Augustine, challenges major assumptions about the medieval Catholic Church and early Renaissance. Read more about her publication on our website, and the Cambridge University press release.

Wild medieval saints! 🔥🔥🔥 Dragons and miraculously sprouting cherry twigs. An evil walnut tree growing above the tomb of Nero. For these and much more in my book, 'The Sons of St Augustine' (OUP), I am delighted to share the wonderful media release that Cambridge published this morning:

“The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you.” He's not entirely wrong - that leadership has spent decades cosy-ing up the Americans, with predictably disastrous results.

Recently submitted an article on the eleventh century. Like all good things written on the eleventh century, it: 1: does not allude to Psellos; 2: does not cite Psellos; 3: does not even mention Psellos.

You always hear about how those pesky Turkish raiders ruined everything for Byzantium in the twelfth century, but when you put it on a map the reports of raiding tend to go both ways pretty equally. * Danishmendids not included. Non-descendants of Qutlamish sold separately.

Fascinating talk yesterday at UOttawa Dept. of Classics & Religious Studies / Conférence fascinante hier : Prof. Nick Hedley (SFU) on digital humanities research in Egypt / recherche en humanités numériques en Égypte. #ottawa #DigitalHumanities #AncientEgypt #EgypteAncienne #AncientBluesky

Book cover plan, now complete with the blurb on the back! 📕

This will come as a surprise to approximately no one, but Grokipedia's source for this is *me* and my article totally does not say that.

In 2023, I was a Visiting Fellow at @antrelclaottawa.bsky.social. Got to experience the department as a world class center for our discipline (especially Late Antiquity). University management now wants to axe their honours programme. Please consider signing and sharing this petition for support:

Back in the late twelfth century Al-Baghdadi saw your post about how ancient aliens built the pyramids and is embarrassed for you.

Shocking news from uOttawa: Greek & Roman Studies closed to new students without consultation. Teaching of ancient languages to end. Open letter coming soon - follow for how you can help. #DefendClassicsUOttawa #Ottawa #AncientHistory #SaveHigherEd #HigherEdCuts #AncientGreek #Latin

I wrote something. Also made some maps for it. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I dunno what you think, internet, but this 19th c. printer in Naples had a very pleasing Greek typeface.

Book launch TOMORROW at @bplmaps.bsky.social!!! 🏠

Always good to hear some positive-ish things about a weird computational spatial analysis paper one wrote for a volume on Nikephoros II. deremilitari.org/2025/10/geor...

"... Canada’s billionaires are siphoning off for themselves an ever-larger share of the nation’s wealth, at the expense of the rest of us." Exciting to see a new @lindamcquaig.bsky.social book on the horizon! www.dundurn.com/books_/t2211...

Just a quick reminder that we are still eagerly awaiting your paper proposals for the next IMC! ⏰🎓👇 @imc-leeds.bsky.social

Burg on the Berg in Bergland

Very excited to spread the news that @ryan1992reading.bsky.social and I are organising a session for the Leeds IMC next year on political culture in the High Middle Ages! Please drop us a message if interested and share widely.

For the EU, this should be a very urgent matter of national security. All EU member states should build on Denmark's wise strategy to phase out Microsoft products

"...every single one of these concessions to Trump—from axing the Digital Services Tax to slashing environmental regulations for extractive industries to massively increasing military spending—is also a concession to the corporate agenda of the Business Council and its members..."

Sounds good. "They've warned that a single lawsuit raised by three authors over Anthropic's AI training now threatens to "financially ruin" the entire AI industry if up to 7 million claimants end up joining the litigation and forcing a settlement." arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...

Canada has bent over backwards to meet Trump's demands—on defence spending, border security, taxation, and foreign policy—yet the tariffs keep coming. If free trade means surrendering sovereignty with no return, maybe it's time to walk away.

"Bill C-2 isn’t just a domestic surveillance bill. It’s a Trojan horse for U.S. law enforcement—quietly building the pipes to ship Canadians’ private data straight to Washington." www.eff.org/deeplinks/20...

A gigantic stack of copyedits to read through over the weekend!

A semi-serious question: why are medieval lions moustachioed?

Beyond just the exciting news about the book, Krisztina has joined Bluesky so you should give her a follow, and doubly-so if you're interested in Italy, chess, or the Global Middle Ages!

Here to spread the word that my book, 'The Sons of St Augustine', is now on OUP's site. 📕🎉 Forthcoming in November/December 2025: global.oup.com/academic/pro...

When did Bertha of Sulzbach die, the first empress of Manuel I Komnenos? And why should you care? The answer is it matters a great deal because diplomacy with the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the Principality of Antioch, and the Sultanate of Rum hinge on it. For more: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

The experience of an eleventh-century English abbot, or just a normal day at Rome Termini? You decide.

Was discussing the enshittification of everything, but then opened the Wikipedia page on Manuel I Komnenos and recalled that some things were just always terrible.

If your in-house citation style does not include journal issue numbers, do not pass go, do not collect $200, go straight to jail and reflect on your crime.

“The joke goes that Canada is three companies in a trench coat.” @nolore.bsky.social's CORPORATE CONTROL takes a hard but necessary look at all the ways Canadian democracy is challenged by the country’s most powerful corporations. Get a copy here: buff.ly/m7PFzGS   #Booksky #Canada #Politics

Download TR 25.05 from our website: www.tamriel-rebuilt.org/downloads/ma... Or from Morrowind Nexus: www.nexusmods.com/morrowind/mo... Release Trailer: youtu.be/i7Ufn_da_-c

First time buying a used book that happens to have the ex libris of a famous scholar on the inside.

A Byzantine woman I wish we knew more about was Agathe, third daughter of Constantine VII. Theophanes Continuatus reports that she liaised between the emperor and his officials and took care of him when ill. She seems powerful and important.

⏰️ Join us tomorrow for our next seminar! 👀 And check back on our account later this week for am extra seminar taking place in May!

I decided I should read all the published Venetian commercial documents that involve Byzantium. Take-aways: 1. My Latin is rusty and I know nothing about diplomatics. 2. Ship captains have weird names? 3. There are a dozen docs about one trip to Alexandria and not one hint about the cargo.

The 2002 videogame Morrowind was about a crumbling empire hubristically sowing the seeds of its own destruction. Definitely not relevant today.

Is Andor dropping three episodes a week because they don't think America is going to make it another full twelve weeks?

When Canada's best foreign affairs correspondent is saying things like this we are really in trouble.

University leadership: “unable to think and speak clearly about the nature of academic freedom and its relationship to a wider political society and who have been inept at political speech. This is no surprise since they have been elevated for their fundraising and managerial skills.”

Seeing a lot of fellow Canadians pleased that Carney is going to review the F-35, but don't forget that every time politicians get involved in big procurements it's a disaster, and if we don't patrol the north, the Americans will, Canadian sovereignty be damned. www.dundurn.com/books_/t2211...

And we have a cover!

It feels like I've been waiting forever to use @drdragases.bsky.social's best meme.

Publication day! My article 'Manuel I Komnenos’ policy towards the sultanate of Rum and John Kontostephanos’ embassies to Jerusalem, 1159–61' appeared in 'Crusades'. Did John Kontostephanos go to the Holy Land once or twice? I use this to look at Byzantine grand strategy in the mid-12th c.

I've just cleared a few to-do list items and been alerted that the first pre-ordered copies of Postal Intelligence have arrived (!) so now seems like as good a time as any to share some exciting and troubling tidbits from my ten years with Europe's postal technocrats 1/? #earlymodern 🗃️