New in open access #medievalsky: Bede's Medical Books! www.cambridge.org/core/journal... Keepin' it Old School this time

Interested in letter-writing in early medieval Britain? A three-year postdoc on @francescatinti.bsky.social’s and my project is now available. Apps close on 17th Oct. Let me know if you have any questions and please circulate! 🙂 jobs.kent.ac.uk/Vacancy.aspx...

Tämä ei ole hyvän mielen postaus, mutta ehkä syksyn tärkein postaukseni. Suosittelen kaikille tutkijoille ja tutkimusryhmille: käsitelkää törkyriskejä ja suunnitelkaa toimenpiteitä etukäteen yhdessä. Lähiaikoina on tiettävästi odotettavissa törkyä tiedeyhteisöä kohtaan. Ketjusta muutama pikavinkki.

This is the feast of Theodore of Tarsus, d. 690, Archbishop of Canterbury. 🕯️ Let's look at a few early manuscripts of works that have been attributed to him. 🧵 The most securely-attributed work is the Laterculus Malalianus, seen here in the earlier of 2 surviving MSS, BAV Pal. lat. 277, 8c.

'sickos' vocitantur, de eo quod per fenestram ridentes, 'ha ha ha... sic!' clamant -Isidorus Hispalensis

2046: the american empire lies in ruins. in the east, the trump dynasty holds sway over the remains, united in the orthodoxy that charlie kirk is of one substance with the Father; in the west, barbarian successor kingdoms have recently converted to a heresy that holds him to be of similar substance

A two-line verse dedication: "Non rodant mures, non ausint tollere fures Librum, qui domino datus est a patre Frowino." Engelberg, Stiftsbibliothek, Cod. 76; Expositio S. Hieronymi duodecim prophetarum; 1143-1178; Engelberg; f.1r (www.e-codices.ch/en/list/one/...)

Well, BretPal is coming to a swift end as of 30 September. Between now and then, I'll be posting my favourite Breton manuscripts, starting with the iconic horse Mark from the Boulougne Gospels (Boulogne sur Mer, MS 8).

The last page of the first part of Gratian's Decretum, ending with D.101 d.p.c.1 in a manuscript from the 1190s, written in Bologna. The second gloss layer in the bottom contains a version of the apparatus "Ecce vicit leo" on C.1 authored before 1210 by Petrus Brito, professor in Paris. 1/

This is a tale of two castles One of those buildings is fully original, an almost model example of its style; the other one is fake, built on the ruins of a medieval castle with a fully modern interior. 1/

Charles West @pseudo-isidore.bsky.social has gone through EME’s back catalogue to create this timely virtual special issue on tariffs and tolls in early medieval Europe gathering five contributions originally published between 1992 and 2025. onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

'In nomine Domini, Clemens Uuillibrordus anno sexcentessimo nonagessimo ab incarnatione Christi ueniebat ultra mare in Francea.' A collection of all my posts related to my research on #Willibrord & early medieval #Echternach in one thread. #MedievalSky

Vase, reputed to be the one used by Saint Martin to collect the blood of the martyred Theban Legion - according to legend, it was brought to him by an angel for that very purpose. In reality it's a Roman sardonyx vessel from around the year 0, set in a gold cloissoné mount from around the year 500.

We need a Star Trek episode about how the invention of the universal translator caused people to stop valuing actually learning languages, while they fatally overestimated the UT's accuracy and the resulting misunderstandings led to a massive war that tore the quadrant apart

I aced my early medieval palaeography exam in 2013. Can confirm.

Just described the Carolingians to a student as "boring glory" and I think I'm gonna stick with that.

Apparently I need to spend money to make my dissertation Open Access on Proquest, so I've instead hosted it on my blog. If you want to read "From Usurper to Emperor: Political Practice and Dynastic Tradition in the Reign of Arnulf of Carinthia, 887-899" just follow this link: #medievalsky

Corpus of Early Medieval Latin Medicine getting some attention today in the Times! If you missed it last week our handlist of "new" pre-1000 medical manuscripts can be found here cemlm.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/handlist/ #medievalsky

The Papyrus Museum of the Austrian National Library in Vienna is an underrated treasure with a spectacular collection of Coptic, Greek and Arabic papyri from Egypt. #papyrus #ancient #medieval Highlight 🧵 : A Coptic amulet for protection against scorpions. (1/6)

when your boss throws a pizza party and it's the fourth century

Hey! My friend Emilia has written a piece on the headaches of being an international trans person - which are considerable. Do read and share around!

I am seeing posts that it is ostensibly World Goth Day, which surely cannot be correct as it is the anniversary of neither of their greatest victories, which were both in August.

I need to rant & praise re: folio numbers in digitized manuscript interfaces. Long boring 🧵 coming, unless you, too, obsess over niche usability matters. Background: when I'm choosing MS images to use for my saints+manuscripts posts, I want to navigate to the page I want, download a high-res image,

#medievalsky #seenbutwithoutthebird

My therapist: Don’t worry, Merovingian cursive is not real, it can’t hurt you Merovingian cursive:

Waiting for this Leo to randomly crown someone emperor on Christmas. Just wait for someone to kneel on the big red dot and BAM! CORONATION TIME!

Delighted to see EME's new Special Issue, guested edited by Danuta Shanzer, is now out: *Talking Narratives in Early Medieval Europe*. "Stories are like accordions, expanded and compressed". onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/toc/10.1...

A few weeks ago, a colleague asked me for help dating a medieval document long considered a forgery. Yes, a forgery—but one with a precise date: the year 1033. And yet no one had ever asked: what if that date actually matches the likely time it was produced? 👇 #MssStudies

This very fine book of @xuthal.bsky.social's greatest hits is now available for pre-order with @cornellupress.bsky.social: www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9781501... #medievalsky

My little liturgical-codicological mind has been blown. When I was reading the Bobbio Missal and Gelasian Sacramentary in Holy Week, I focused for the 1st time on the description of the ceremonies in Lent where the 4 Evangelist symbols + the opening of each Gospel were explained to catechumens. 🕯️🧵

Our opening @ceraejournal.bsky.social conference keynote, @jkeskiah.bsky.social, on the origins of dreams in Gregory the Great: dreams can be a product of a full (or an empty) stomach, and holy men can discern dreams by a secret taste. Well, I have just one response to that: MEDIEVAL CHEESE DREAMS!

Delighted that my article, ‘The Circle of the World: The Global Diplomacy of Caliph al-Manṣūr’, is now out OA with BSOAS. Come for a journey stretching from the Atlantic to China, tracing how the caliph brought the world to Baghdad: www.cambridge.org/core/journal... #MedievalSky #GlobalMiddleAges

Re-posting for the morning crowd...

Anything during the saeculum obscurum of the tenth century where they just kept getting murdered and appointed on an almost yearly basis

As we enter #HolyWeek, we'll take a break from Saints+MSS & look instead at manuscript evidence for liturgies of the week. This is John 12:12-16, the Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem, in the Bobbio Missal, Paris, BNF lat. 13246, from early 8th c. Merovingian Gaul. #medievalsky #liturgy #paleography 🧵

A couple of days ago I shared the study of Lévêque et al. 2025 who had revealed through aDNA analysis that the books produced in the Cistercian abbeys in Western Europe were in fact covered with sealskin, previously thought to be skins of local animals (deer, boar etc.)

🧵 Is this a Dire wolf... 🤔? No... Our @erc.europa.eu Beasts to Craft team led by Élodie Lévêque uncovered the true identity of mysterious hairy covers on #medieval #Cistercian #manuscripts - they're ... 👇

An excellent thread on the Cistercian ms covers, by one of the paper's authors.

How will Trump’s trade war affect global CO2 emissions and energy? Initial thoughts.

The fetishisation of Magna Carta is bad. But the notion that the rule of law on its own is going to save you is worse. Roman Empire and medieval polities had elaborate legal systems allowing them to exploit large swathes of the population. Modern arrogance about the historical context is stunning.

Mixed feelings on this article. On the one hand, research about the educated female medieval experience is momentarily occupying the mainstream. But on the other hand, the closer you look at their methodology, the less helpful the results appear to be. #medievalsky #medievalwomen #skystorians 1/🧵

First saint of the day is Julian of Toledo, d. 690. He had some bad attitudes, but he yields some fun manuscripts. First up, @parkerlibcccc.bsky.social CCCC 399, a 9c copy of his Prognosticon futuri saeculi. This is a detail of f.1r. Whole MS here: parker.stanford.edu/parker/catal... 🧵 #medievalsky

We're delighted to announce the speakers for the 2025 Ceræ conference! @chloehouston.bsky.social from the University of Reading and @jkeskiah.bsky.social from the University of Helsinki will give keynote speeches on April 26 and 27. We are so glad to have them! ceraejournal.com/conference-i...

<<sobbing in academic-who-actually-researches-and-publishes-on-this-topic>>

Somehow I'd never realized that the digitization of the Exeter Book includes raking light photographs of drypoint images in the margins! Overview here: theexeterbook.exeter.ac.uk/drypoint.html and you can click through to the manuscript viewer to zoom in. #medievalsky #manuscripts #oldenglish

One of the most fascinating uses of dry point I know of is this inscription of the beginning of Psalm 1 in Latin in runic letters in the upper margin of Cod. Guelf. 17 Weiss. (9th c.), f. 1v: diglib.hab.de?db=mss&list=...

Grateful to @skr.fi for funding my work on my monograph on early medieval thinking about the soul #kulttuurirahastontuella

Proofs!

OPEN POSITIONS: HCAS, Neuroscience Center at HiLIFE & @univhelsinkics.bsky.social invite applications for three research fellowship positions (3 years) as part of the new collaborative framework INTELLIGENCE3 funded by @helsinki.fi. Deadline: 28.2. Read more: www.helsinki.fi/en/helsinki-...

Seeing posts about how now is totally the time for Europe to poach America's best academics but the thing is Europe needs to actually have some academic jobs for that to happen