A modern controversy brings to light a passage in pseudo-Epiphanius, Praises of the Theotokos. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

The 174 letters of the sophist Procopius of Gaza (early 6th century) to his friends are really very charming. One of them even found its way among the letters of St Jerome. There is a beautiful Italian translation by Federica Cicciolella. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Look what my awesome @simmonsuniversity.bsky.social Library Science students did! This year, we studied a manuscript broken in the 1980s (likely by Ferrini, but we don't know for sure). It's generally known as the Hours of St. Alexis because many of the roundels illustrate scenes from his Vita...

#DigiBodAdvent day 3. Everybody loves fragments, and St John's have digitized a whole collection for you (MS. 235). Here are nos 72, Augustine In Evangelium Iohannis, and 18, "unidentified scholastic philosophy" 📜 digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/fa67... digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/1627...

How many letters of St Jerome remain untranslated? Surprisingly few! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Ladybird Artists Advent Calendar Window 7 ‘Frost’ Artist: CF Tunnicliffe

Last weekend I resumed blogging and have done another post today; I hope to maintain a weekly schedule. The two new posts concern illuminated leaves from the collections of Victor Goldschmidt and Count Stroganoff. mssprovenance.blogspot.com

This is the feast of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan, d. 397. 🕯️ BNF lat. 1732 is an early-8th-c. Uncial MS of several of his works. The headings to the various items have lovely colors and some fun beasties. The Uncial is very mannered: look at the loops on those As! #medievalsky

If we want to read the Letters of St Jerome, where do we start? www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Notes on the 1505 Hereford Breviary. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Back to St Botolph. Can I ever escape this project? www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

A pair of gold armbands from the Colchester Fenwick hoard, buried before Boudica’s attack in AD60. As the Roman last stand took place where Colchester Castle now sits, the owner may have perished where their jewellery is now displayed @ColMuseums.bsky.social #FindsFriday #BoudicaFriday #Echolands

It wasn't all wretched though. These documents record a religious festival (possibly the oldest written evidence for a midsummer celebration in England) at the fort, where beer, wine, pork, fish sauce and more was consumed! Learn how Roman fish sauce was made in Antiquity 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy...

El Deir fortress (El Munira monastery), Roman fortress in Kharga oasis, Egypt. It was built at the very end of the third century AD. It is surrounded by a Roman cemetery. #RomanFortThursday

Images of the manuscript, a scroll over 14ft long in Manichaean script, are available at idp.bl.uk/collection/1...

This stunning head is part of a life-sized, free-standing sculpture and exemplifies an idealized portrayal of a ruler. This head has been attributed to Pharaoh Amasis (570-526 BC), who ascended to the throne through a military revolt. His rule then brought a new era of peace to the country. 📷 me 🏺

The Internet Archive just released tens of thousands of seed catalogs, spanning over two centuries! They are both lovely and interesting. Check them out! archive.org/details/usda... 🗃️ #c18th #c19th #c20th #illustration

A mummy portrait from #Roman Egypt, depicting a bearded young man dressed in a white tunic with dark red stripes. We don't know his name, but he probably lived & died towards the end of the C2nd AD, & may well have been a soldier in life 🏺 #AncientBlueSky

Brrrrrrrrrr 🥶 #RomanFortThursday (John Kenney 1959)

Had to buy an academic book today. Couldn't find a PDF, didn't think an interlibrary loan would do much any time soon. But luckily all the ex-review copies are unsold, so it was cheap. Hurrah for selling off review copies! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Still trying to finish up the text and translation of the Life of St Botolph. Today... three breviaries containing versions of the Life spring out at me, from where they were hiding. One in Nidaros/Trondheim, one from York, one from Hereford. Aaarrgh! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Good to see the problems facing our colleagues @britishlibrary.bsky.social being raised here by @hetanshah.bsky.social (of @britishacademy.bsky.social). If this had happened in France it would be considered a national problem to be urgently addressed! www.cityam.com/the-british-...

Any help gratefully received to transcribe the Life of St Botolph from a Swedish breviary. I've done what I can (included) but the script is a bit beyond me. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Life and the pursuit of happiness in the Roger Pearse world. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

People do not talk enough about the fact that the Neo-Punic translation of Latin Imperator is a loan from Numidian (Lepcis Magna Neo-Punic 14: mynkd, Numdian MNKDH)

Does a Georgian translation of a work by Barsabas contain the earliest mention of the Trinity? Probably not. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Got to supervise the students. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Well, there aren't any. Probably. Not before the 9th century. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Got an English translation of some German handbook? Better check the footnotes in the original - the translation may not contain them, or be transcribed correctly. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

English translation of pseudo-Chrysostom homily on Easter now online (CPG 4408). www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Just banged out a perfectly decent English 9 page translation of a pseudo-Chrysostom homily on Easter in a couple of hours this evening. So I'm feeling very proud of myself. My secret? Start with a nice modern French translation...

Tracking down "Tantum ergo sacramentum": www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

#ReliefWednesday - One of the pieces I so wanted to see when I first went to Venice a while back was the 'Tetrarchs', the statue group looted from Constantinople in 1204... But it was behind scaffolding, so this was the best shot I could get! Even so it was fabulous to get so close to it! #History 🏺

Less Latin than we thought: an anecdote by Ronald Knox. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

When I came across these images in an old book, I had to double-check they weren’t by a Ladybird artist. They’re not - but are so cheery I have to share them anyway. 1/2

Unrelated to Proclus: one of the first texts in this codex is a "Lamentatio de calamitatibus in Cypro insula, a. 1191, sub Richardo, Angliæ rege," by Neophytus the monk. De Re Militari's site has a translation: deremilitari.org/2013/04/conq... "England is a country beyond Romania on the north..."!

Unrelated to bombycin: a lot of the texts have very pretty shaped or tapering layouts at their ends. Here's the end of the text just before Proclus's letters.

New open-access publication: Discover how a multidisciplinary approach helped identify and contextualise three Qurʾānic parchment fragments from the University of Münster collection, revealing their shared origins in an Umayyad Qur’an: www.nature.com/articles/s40...

Looking up stuff in Gregory of Nyssa. Bibliography yeah. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Reading the Latin bible of Ps. 1:1 raises questions. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...

Now available on Wordpress! phdnix.wordpress.com

30th September is the feast of St Jerome who is here depicted as translator of the Psalms #StJerome BnF MS Latin 1152; Psalter of Charles the Bald; 9th century (between 842 CE & 869 CE); School of the Palace of Charles the Bald; f.4r @gallicabnf.bsky.social

Great news! JSTOR now have a free account with an Independent Researcher category. You can access 100 documents per month www.jstor.org/action/showL...

a string of Middle Persian ordinals in Gr. Bundahišn, 3.7 (ed. Cereti in FS Emmerick): /nazdist asmān ud dudīgar āb, sidīgar zamīg, čahārom urwar, panǰom gōspand, šašom mardōm ud haftom ātaxš/ "1st the sky, 2nd water, 3rd the earth, 4th plants, 5th small livestock, 6th people, and 7th fire"

It's a very open community! Info at iiif.io/get-involved/ and you can request invitations to the Slack at docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1F...

Still no Bodmin/Padstow Gospels though 😪

Sir G. Carteret, Mr. Coventry, and I by invitation to dinner to Sheriff Maynell’s, the great money-man.

I'm sorry, worldwide, irrevocable, non-exclusive, transferable permission to my voice and likeness? For what now? In any manner for any purpose??? This is in academia/.edu's new ToS, which you're prompted to agree to on login. Anyway I'll be jumping ship. You can find my stuff at hcommons.org.

Hey @phil-lol-ogist.bsky.social Do you do any Gothic language stuff? If so, any recs for where to start learning Gothic? I’ve tried Lambdin’s Intro to Gothic before and gotten a few chapters in, but was frustrated because I couldn’t find a key anywhere to check my work on the exercises.

Hagiographical material embedded in random early modern Scandinavian breviaries? Here's how to find it! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2025/...