On a whim, I wondered about attending the 2027 Oxford Patristics Conference. I've not been for years, but the website was really rather off-putting, much more than I remember. The warmth was gone. I wonder what's happened.

Hot off the Press 📖 A Syriac Patristic Florilegium against Julian of Halicarnassus by Guido Venturini 📜 How is a #florilegium constructed, and why does this peculiar type of literary work deserve to be studied? 🧵(1/2)

It's The Pearlsong's one-year anniversary today. If you haven't yet, tune in for a fun story in Syriac, Greek, and English, and lots more to spark your interest. Open-access here, with a link to purchase a(n inexpensive) hard copy with very nice paper: cswr.hds.harvard.edu/publications...

The scandalous sale of the antiquarian books of the King's Inn, Dublin, in 1972. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

CFP EPHREM GREEK, LATIN, AND BEYOND Oxford Patristics Conference, 2-6 August 2027 🗓Deadline: August 10, 2026 Submit (1) title, (2) 250-word abstract, and (3) short biographical note to [email protected] by August 10, 2026 for consideration.

Bentley reportedly said to Pope of his Iliad: its a very pretty poem but you must not call it Homer. You can now use a treebank and other translations to see for yourself how Pope relates to the Greek. gregorycrane.github.io/persverscomp...

I understand the excitement about technology “rediscovering lost texts.” I do, & I get the media hype. But I wish people knew that there are hundreds of thousands of “lost” texts just sitting in manuscripts in libraries, which have never been published outside of those single manuscripts. 1/n

I am very excited to confirm that RGB images of the Hereford Gospels are now available online under Creative Commons license, thanks to the stellar work of Dr Bill Endres: osf.io/pswd5/overview

Mithras for sale! CIMRM 646, a statue of Cautes, is up for auction. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

Added to e-Clavis: Manuscripta apocryphorum ~ Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, gr. 276 (14 c.) feat. Acts of Pilate, Dorm. Virgin, and Apocalypse of Paul. www.nasscal.com/manuscripta-...

Coptic leaves from the White Monastery containing the Acts of St Coluthius get uploaded to the Vatican website. Just days after I posted about their publication in 1781. Coincidence can be wonderful! h/t @aaronm.bsky.social www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

New book on Mithras in Dacia! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

New translations of Tertullian's Ad Martyras and De Fuga in Persecutione are available from Brepols; plus an annotated 1597 Junius edition of his works hiding at Tresoar in Frisia! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

This is a truly remarkable development: A carbonized scroll, sealed since the eruption of #Vesuvius in 79 AD, has been virtually unwrapped and successfully deciphered in its entirety. What informations will the other carbonized scrolls reveal? What an exciting project! scrollprize.org/firstscroll

UK RED is a freely accessible database containing 30,000+ records that document the history of reading in Great Britain from 1450 to 1945. The evidence comes from published and unpublished sources (diaries, notebooks, memoirs, sociological surveys) #siteoftheweek www.open.ac.uk/Arts/reading...

25 #Manuscripts from the #Vatican this week. www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2026... Mostly fragments of Coptic hagiography, but also part of a 17th C MSS Catalog, a bio of Joannes Bellaius and a book on the theology of the Crucifixion #MedievalSky #Skystorians

A hard-to-find reference in Coptic studies - the "Fragmentum Copticum" of "A. Giorgi". www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

You can almost always find unexpected things in manuscripts. Today: an Ethiopian scribe trying his hand on a Greek note in an Arabic manuscript (Sin. ar. 506). It's not only the shape of some letters, or the use of textual dividers, but esp. the sneakily inserted word ቀሌምኮስ that gives him away.

P.Herc. 1667. The midollo as is and virtually unwrapped. Could well be a Stoic text by Chrysippus. The style the handwriting writing suggests around 200BC. Chrysippus lived ca. 279-206 BC.

Then it's worth mentioning the Middle Persian word for "giraffe": /uštargāwpalang/ (NP شترگاوپلنگ /šotorgāvpalang/) (camel+cow+leopard)

31 #Manuscripts from the #Vatican this week. www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2026... Heavy on the 17th and 18th C stuff, a lovely 15th C Cicero, Coptic Isaiah, Ge'ez Rituale for the Dead, a volume of satires on the election of Benedict XIII (!!!) and more #MedievalSky #Skystorians

A now lost copy of the two new sermons by St Augustine at Amelungsborn Abbey - looking for the inventory of 1412. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

Two new sermons of Augustine discovered in 2024, to be published by the CSEL. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

Over the weekend, I finally found a few quiet moments to write down my observations on a fascinating Arabic "hagiogeographical" text on the Holy Summit of Mount Sinai. The text has been on my mind since February, when I came across a mention of it in an unstudied fragment:

The most famous surviving work from Dioskourides' workshop is the magnificent Gemma Augustea, a large sardonyx cameo glorifying the deeds of Augustus and his successor, Tiberius. The extraordinary quality makes it the most famed and precious cameo from antiquity. 🏺 3/ g.co/arts/n4u9QmW...

According to Pliny and Suetonius, the master gem cutter Dioskourides engraved Augustus' famed signet ring (a portrait of the emperor himself). That ring doesn't survive, but the gem below does, a deeply cut portrait in amethyst of the orator Demosthenes, signed by Dioskourides. 😍 🏺 1/ 📸 me

This book (written by a scholar with language competency in Japanese using LLMs to translate secondary scholarship Korean, which he cant read) raises important questions we as a field have to face about expertise and translation, as well as what the role of language-learning is in history (🧵)

National Geographic has a new archeology related newsletter that I contribute to. My first piece is on archeology and the Nag Hammadi Library. Featureing work by Brent Nongbri, @tonyburke.bsky.social, Nicola Denzey Lewis, Mark Goodacre, and others www.nationalgeographic.com/newsletters/...

Today, I was able to use a quiet morning to finally jot some observations on a fascinating "hagiogeographical" text (or rather, its manuscripts and scribal context), which has been on my mind for the past few months: @dehypotheses.bsky.social

Just what does Deepseek do to garbage Greek embedded in an scanned document? www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

The serpent column in Constantinople in the 16th century, before the heads at the top were broken off. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

The original English translation of what might be the lost "De Baptismo" of Melito of Sardis. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

It is the last Friday of the month, which means the Cathach of Columcille (RIA MS 12 R 33) is on display from 10am - 4.30pm. The Cathach is the oldest extant Irish manuscript of the Psalter and very likely the earliest example of the form of Irish writing known as insular majuscule script.

Looking up the Life of a Welsh Saint, St Melangell, whose feast day is today. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

The possible lost work of Melito preserved in Sahidic Coptic. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

The #Vatican came back this week, with 34 #Manuscripts digitized www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2026... Grammar, histories of Florence and Genoa, Longitude, bios of Il Brandano, Carlo Gonzaga, and Cola di Rienzo, a partial catalog of Ott.lat, inside Ott.lat, and more! #MedievalSky #Skystorians

8000 fragments! Congratulations, @fragmentarium.bsky.social! Folks, PLEASE survey your early modern bindings and share what you find. #fragmentology

The Nile was much higher in the pyramid age, and had a large branch running along the base of the Giza plateau - two articles from 2022 and 2024. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

The Latin text of Eusebius of Emesa, Sermon 1. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

The mastery of artist Harry Wingfield. Painted tap (First Picture Book, 1970)

Starting work on the Latin homelies of Eusebius of Emesa; plus diagnosing a slow browser. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

Added to e-Clavis: Manuscripta apocryphorum ~ London, British Library, Or. 678 (15 c.) feat. the Egyptian collection of apocryphal acts. www.nasscal.com/manuscripta-...

Three men named Eusebius, and their Latin sermons. History brought them together - can scholarship tell them apart? Eusebius of Emesa, Eusebius of Alexandria, and Eusebius Gallicanus. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...

There are many worthier subejcts, but I'm going to nominate Cardell "Scum" Goodman (1649?-1699), whose deplorable career reads like half a dozen Blackadder episodes rolled into one.

hagiography friends: are saints often referred to as the mother or father of a martyrium?

[New Post] AD 126 – Hadrian spends the year in Rome and dedicates the Templum Divorum #Hadrian1900 followinghadrian.com/2026/05/04/a...

This is great! Also, how to support an academic: - read their papers - cite their articles and books - tell your friends and students about their work - include their work in your reading lists and syllabi - ask your library to buy their books - tell them you liked their work or that it was helpful

www.getty.edu/publications... Did you know...The Getty Museum has a Virtual LIbrary with over 300 books and publications available FREE for reading and downloading (as pdf, epub)? Here is one of the latest on ancient glass published in 2025 1/2

24 #Manuscripts from #Vatican this week www.wiglaf.org/vatican/2026... Includes books on forts, on the city of Rome, religious devotion, indexes of manuscripts, commentary on logic, origins of Lombards, Satires and more! #MedievalSky #Skystorians