If you’re in London this Friday and want to hear me talk about why the past really matters to how we live (and worship) today, and what we can learn from the more difficult bits of history, come join me at the Angel pub in Rotherhithe at 6:30 for a drink and a bit of a chat. Should be great fun.

Join me next year at the #SSCLE conference in Porto, from 29 June-3 July 2025. Do please share this #CFP with anyone who studies the Later Crusades (post-1291) and would like to share their research with an enthusiastic and perceptive audience. #skystorians #medievalsky #earlymodernsky

Setting up Moodle for my digital history class this term and considering what to do for an assignment on the week I talk about AI slop and fake historical records. I've settled on a bibliography assignment. Use your favourite AI to generate a bibliography, then verify the references.

On this, the final weekend before what’s shaping up to be a brutal term, I’m in Hammersmith on a sort of pilgrimage.

A poem from this morning.

ACADEMIC READING ALREADY COMES WITH A SUMMARY IT IS CALLED THE ABSTRACT

Sod’s Law of Research Days: As soon as you request the manuscripts you want to see at the library hours away from your home, several different people will email you wanting to set up urgent meetings for that very same day.

My Saturday project is doing a bit of conservation work on two 17th-century carved panels I’ve just acquired (rather cheaply, I may add). Treated them for woodworm just in case, and now comes the polishing.

All the most interesting stuff about the Tudors comes from their interaction with the Habsburgs. There, I said it.

22 July 1456: A thanksgiving service for the deliverance of Belgrade from the Turks held #otd at St. Frideswide's #Oxford - now Christ Church (Diliff)

CS Lewis wrote this book in 1938. It's called Out of the Silent Planet. Bryan Johnson is just LARPing the role of the book's antagonist, who sounds precisely like this.

It’s now live! I’ve been working on this Peasants’ War project with some fabulous colleagues from @ox.ac.uk and @royalholloway.bsky.social over the past year+ and we’re delighted to share the fruits of our research.

The last bits are falling into place on the Peasants’ War project. It feels a bit odd that phase 1 is almost done. But - huzzah! - follow-on funding will now enable us to follow up the monasteries project with research on castles in the PW. If you’re in Bristol tomorrow come say hi!

Went to the National Gallery yesterday to experience the re-hang in the Sainsbury Wing. Came across this… interesting… potted history of the Reformation. Not quite sure it rises to the level of 1066 And All That.

Very much looking forward to talking about our @germanpeasantswar.bsky.social project at the SRS conference next week. See you in Bristol, if you’ll be there!

Using AI to “read” literature implies that literary style is ancillary to some informational substance. It’s just simply not. Style is intrinsic to story: how a story is told is inextricable from the story itself. I have never got on with Dickens’ style, but this misses the point by a mile.

I didn't take much convincing to sign up to this fabulous-looking conference. Tyndale's Antwerp is (for me) John Hackett's Antwerp. Wolsey's right-hand man was negotiating payment of a crusade subvention whilst simultaneously tasked with intercepting Tyndale's Bible before it reached England.

A certain well-known ebook database has added an AI-powered "Research Assistant" to its interface. No thank you. Apologies for incinerating half a tree to generate a single inane point about Duns Scotus. My "Research Assistant" was meant to summarise a wide-ranging chapter about Scholasticism. 🤷‍♀️

Today at the @cemskcl.bsky.social conference I learned that ghosts are a Jesuit conspiracy. They stick candles on crabs, then release them into graveyards to convince the unwary of the doctrine of Purgatory. (Either that or they’re just chaps dressed up in bedsheets.)

#OTD in the German Peasants' War Monday, 5 June 1525 (Pfingstmontag) Peasants threaten the Töß convent outside Winterthur. The clever diplomacy of the city council and the Töß nuns manages to steer the angry crowd into getting drunk instead. The peasants return home the next morning. #histsky

I think it’s jolly rude to send unsolicited auction catalogues to impecunious scholars who cannot purchase All The Old Books.

Putting the finishing touches on some slides for tomorrow’s @cemskcl.bsky.social colloquium on early modern war narratives. It’s a great joy to return to the crusader I call ‘Bob’, whose story has been the jumping off point for so many fascinating lines of research since I first ‘met’ him in 2018.

Sod’s Law of Academic Writing: Five minutes before the library closes, you will inevitably be making rapid progress on a difficult paragraph - which it is then necessary to abandon mid-thought.

25 May 1570: The Papal Bull Regnans in Excelsis, excommunicating Elizabeth I, is nailed to the door of the Bishop of #London #otd (NPG)

This will be an exceptional colloquium, and you should all come - especially if you want to hear about one of the most cringeworthy (but still fascinating) neo-Latin war poems ever. @cemskcl.bsky.social have outdone themselves. Hope to see you all there. kingsearlymodern.co.uk/events/lamen...

Told you.

This is probably the most ambiguous episode in Warham’s career. After presiding over the submission of the clergy, Warham seems to have changed his mind - and prepared for martyrdom by drafting a speech against Henry’s reforms. But why? Historians have differed widely.

Drink too much of this and you’ll be seized by the desire to found a diocesan seminary and zealously maintain records of confessions and communions in your parish

I’ll be giving a paper at this colloquium on early modern war narratives. If you’re into the later crusades, wannabe-humanist poetry, or the history of emotions, there will be something for you in it. (The other speakers look fab as well!) Hope to see some of you there!

For those who love history and/or spectacle and fancy robes, a conclave is the gift that keeps on giving. (I’m mostly here for the robes, myself.)

It all went down in the Peasants' War 500 years ago today.

This is highly impressive, in its way, but still nowhere near the hijinks that some of the medieval (legitimate) popes got up to. Still, golf clap for this antipope trying to get into the spirit of things. (Do read the thread, which only gets better - or worse, depending on your perspective.)

The reason for the season:

And so he was, in a manner of speaking. (His boss shouldn’t get off scot free, though obviously under interrogation one is going to blame the king’s advisors rather than the king.)

I’m sorry but if your students use AI to write papers and you use AI to grade them zero school is happening. You are running together on a hamster wheel

I am one of the authors whom Meta stole (sorry, ‘scraped’) from, by using their books to train Libgen. So I’m biased. But this from @mscaitlinmoran.bsky.social is👌

#OTD in the German Peasants’ War: Sunday, 2 April 1525 The citizens and peasants of Jettingen attack the monastery at Wettenhausen. They empty the cellars and ransack the library. #earlymodern #skystorians

I was rather grumpy this morning at having to get up to teach a class after a long and tiring week away at a conference. Then my students (a different class) surprised me with a bouquet and a lovely card. I’m very grateful for them - the students as well as the flowers.

Our team has had an excellent day at the German Peasants’ War conference in Freiburg. Do follow us for more Peasants’ War attacks as they happened exactly 500 years ago. (If Thomas Müntzer had BlueSky, he totally would have live-blogged the war.)

From this week we’ll be live-posting the German Peasants’ War as it happened. Today is the 500th anniversary of the peasant attacks on the monasteries of Mergentheim. Follow @germanpeasantswar.bsky.social for more.

This made me cheer. It gets directly at a problem I’ve often noticed: people don’t fundamentally understand what a historian *does*.

Once again loving this interpretation of Caesar’s last words #IdesofMarch 🗡️

Arrived at work today to find this card and gift on my desk from a group I taught last term at theological college. Well that’s made my day!

I'm modestly optimistic that it's going to be a good day. Our research team just got the news that we've received funding for phase 2 of our project, and I'm sitting down to finally (!!) finish and submit an article I started ages ago. Let's do the heck out of this.

I’ve immensely enjoyed teaching mature students. They want to be there, they’re not afraid to contribute to classroom conversations, and they often care more about genuinely learning from the assignments than they do about obtaining a good mark by any means necessary. More mature students please.

I'm so excited about a #digitalhumanities project on the German Peasants' War that my colleagues and I are debuting at the @srsrensoc.bsky.social conference in July, in time for the 500th anniversary of the conflict. If you're interested in early modern religious conflict, I hope to see you there!

Movies you have watched more than six times, GIFs only.

If the Vicar of Bray was henchman to a serial murderer, he’d be Richard Rich.

So looking forward to teaching a special subject on 20th-c church history next term. I've decided on the theme of 'disenchantment and re-enchantment'. How have churches (esp Anglican and RC) responded to the crises of modernity? We'll start by reading poetry: Matthew Arnold and Gerard Manley Hopkins

Re-reading the Lord of the Rings for the first time in about 15 years, and like a journey on Shadowfax it’s flying by. I’m very taken with this handsome cloth-bound four-volume set with nice substantial paper. It’s a small thing but makes such a difference to the experience.