Our next seminar will be this Wednesday 4 March with Niall Ó Súilleabháin (King's College London), speaking on 'Archives of Servitude in Post-Carolingian Francia'. All welcome - please register here! IHR Wolfson NB02, 5.30pm.

Looking forward to seeing friend-of-the-project Niall give his paper on post-Carolingian servitude at the IHR this Wednesday! We were lucky enough to get a preview of Niall's fascinating research from a lecture he gave at Leicester last year, so we know his paper will be fantastic.

For Week 4 of 'Slavery in Late Antiquity', students read April Pudsey and Ville Vuolanto's chapter on 'Enslaved Children in Roman Egypt: Experiences from the Papyri'. They then searched for further evidence for the lives of child slaves on the papyri.info database.

It's great to see more work on slavery and medieval Islamic households! Looking forward to reading this:

📕 Congratulations to Cristina de la Puente, Karen Moukheiber & Serena Tolino on their new publication "Slavery and the Shaping of the Premodern Muslim Family", Vol. 28 in the DSS Series. Now available via Open Access. 👉 More: buff.ly/IQbiYXr @unibonn.bsky.social @dfg.de @degruyterbrill.bsky.social

Theodore of Mopsuestia was the most important theological authority for the Church of the East, often mislabeled as "Nestorians"

We are pleased to share that our research associate, Sofia Puchkova, has published an authoritative entry on Theodore of Mopsuestia for the DHGE – Louvain Dictionary of Church History (vol 34, fascicule 199b-200) www.brepols.net/products/IS-...

Week 3 of Slavery in Late Antiquity focused on material & visual culture. Students read articles about three different sources: Jennifer Trimble on slave collars; Marice Rose on slaves & mistresses in art; Avigail Manekin-Bamberger on the incantation bowls of Jewish households in the Sasanian Empire

Would also be very interested to know this, #medievalsky

For Week 2 of 'Slavery in Late Antiquity', on the origins of the enslaved, students read and discussed Kyle Harper's chapter on the Roman slave supply, St Patrick's Confessio & Epistula, a slave sale contract, and Augustine's letter (10) on slavers kidnapping children.

ICYMI: Bart Danon’s (University of Groningen, @facultyofartsug.bsky.social) excellent new book *Wealth, Office and Rank in Roman Italy* (@universitypress.cambridge.org) is available as a free digital download ⬇️ www.cambridge.org/core/books/w...

"A truly sensational find" made by my friend and colleague Adrian C. Pirtea 👀👇 #Syriac #ChristianArabic #ChristianEast

I had a great time starting teaching a third-year undergrad module on 'Slavery in Late Antiquity' today. We talked about the controversy over Sarah Ruden's translation of servus as 'slave' not 'servant' and dominus as 'master' not 'lord' in her translation of Augustine's Confessions

This includes several discussions of slavery in early Judaism, including in a fascinating article by Carmen Palmer on the legal status of wet-nurses

The IMC programme out - the DoSSE project is sponsoring four sessions on slavery (in Merovingian, Visigothic, Greek, Arabic, Persian, Armenian, and Venetian sources) on Tuesday 7th July. Details attached.

Very pleased for our University of Leicester colleague Jessica Hendy-Hodgkinson, whose fantastic research on a nun's doodles has just been published in Early Medieval Europe and is rightly being shared widely

Today on the blog, why the Carolingian empire wasn’t the worst place in the early medieval world to be Jewish. Featuring trade, slavery, and, most joyous of all, taxes! #medievalsky #jewishhistory salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2026/01/08/l...

𝗪𝗼𝗺𝗲𝗻 𝗶𝗻 𝗟𝗮𝘁𝗲 𝗔𝗻𝘁𝗶𝗾𝘂𝗶𝘁𝘆 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗘𝗮𝗿𝗹𝘆 𝗠𝗶𝗱𝗱𝗹𝗲 𝗔𝗴𝗲𝘀 𝗦𝘁𝘂𝗱𝗶𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗿𝗼𝗺 𝗪𝗲𝘀𝘁𝗲𝗿𝗻 𝗘𝘂𝗿𝗼𝗽𝗲 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗡𝗼𝗿𝘁𝗵 𝗔𝗳𝗿𝗶𝗰𝗮 Éric Fournier, Maijastina Kahlos (eds) More Info: bit.ly/49KnjI8 #Women #Antiquity #Medieval #Womensstudies #Europe #Africa #History #Medievalsky #Medievalists

Very happy to have received these three super books for Christmas! ~James

Soon to appear, Eric Fournier and Maijastina Kahlos (eds.), Women and Gender in the Post-Roman Kingdoms, see www.brepols.net/products/IS-... and www.academia.edu/145456266/Wo... (incl. my paper on "Secular Women in the Lombard Kingdom“).

🚨CfP: Land and Power in the Late Roman World. Deadline: 11 Jan 26, event 29 Jun-1 July 26. Come join the Land & Loyalty team in sunny Tubingen to discuss why land was so important in the late Roman world. ECRs especially solicited! research.st-andrews.ac.uk/landloyalty/...

Day 1 of “The ‘Other’ and ‘Empire’ in Christianity: Postcolonial Readings of Late Antique Literature,” a small conference/workshop organised by Classics and Ancient History at Durham University (www.durham.ac.uk/departments/...). This has been a superb meeting so far.

🎉 Today I defended my dissertation and passed with summa cum laude. The title is "Dependent Lives In and Beyond Archives: Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Early Modern Bridgetown, Barbados (1654-1800)." The abstract is below, and I hope to publish it soon.

Our research associate Dr Sofia Puchkova co-organised this fantastic, free-to-attend conference in Durham on 'Postcolonial Readings of Late Antique Literature'. The first sessions took place today and there will be more tomorrow. See the programme below:

Very happy for our DoSSE project alumnus Seth M. Stadel, whose new translation of 'The Catalogue of Books of ‘Abdisho‘ bar Brikha' is praised by Giorgia Nicosia in the Journal of Early Christian Studies as "a tool of lasting importance for everyone working on Syriac literature"

Now updated with an extra, 1st century BC example of a slave sale from Roman Egypt, and with references to parallel concepts of property ownership in Aramaic and Arabic documents:

"Whatever you want to do with me, may you have the power of doing..." So reads a Merovingian contract for selling oneself into slavery. But where might this concept of slave ownership have come from? Find out more from our new blog post: www.dosseproject.com/from-francia...

Two fully paid PhD positions at Lund University! One in Hebrew Bible and the other in Jewish studies, focus late antiquity. Gorgeous location and gorgeous colleagues. Don't sleep on this! (Set filter to HT to access these two in particular.) lunduniversity.lu.se/vacancies

well, what the heck. it's the tuesday before thanksgiving, and whoever is on here deserves a treat: the first new translation I've posted in a long while: the Life and Martyrdom of Susanna: andrewjacobs.org/translations...

We are very excited to announce that the DoSSE project will be sponsoring four panels on slavery at #IMC2026 in Leeds, on Tues 7 July, featuring Merovingian, Sasanian, East Roman, Armenian, Visigothic, Islamic, Jewish & Venetian sources - and more! More details in due course.

Delighted to announce that our four sessions and roundtable in Memory of Walter Goffart have been accepted for the @imc-leeds.bsky.social next year! Looking forward to see you there on Wednesday 8 July.

"Let no one dare to kill another’s female slave or half-slave as if she were a witch..." So ordered the Lombard king Rothari. Our new blog post examines his edict as well as an extract from Gregory of Tours about an enslaved woman burned at the stake. Read more here: tinyurl.com/y7976pjs

This new book, by Nathan Leidholm, on 'Slavery and Unfreedom in Byzantine Thought on the Household', looks brilliant (and will obviously be essential reading for us!) www.arc-humanities.org/978180270120...

The first in-depth account of the lives and careers of educated slaves and freedmen in ancient Rome. Intellectual Property by Harriet I. Flower is now available (2 Dec UK pub). Read a free preview: press.princeton.edu/books/hardco... #AncientRome #AncientHistory

In Oxford? Erin will be giving a paper at the Late Antique and Byzantine seminar tomorrow: "Why Did the Byzantine Empire Forbid Slave-Owners from Making Eunuchs of their Slaves? Castration, Masculinity, and Identity in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages" 5pm at the Ioannou Centre

Our latest virtual issue on: "Immobility" curated by 2023-25 @ihr.bsky.social Past & Present Fellows @anastruillou.bsky.social, Malika Zehni and Lamin Manneh Can be read below and is free to access: academic.oup.com/past/pages/i...

📬 In our November blog post, Jamie Wood, former BCDSS Guest Researcher and Prof. of History and Education at Lincoln University (UK), shares insights into the research he conducted during his stay in Bonn: buff.ly/XBlQiLo #Intermediaries #Christianity #Visigoths @unibonn.bsky.social @dfg.de

(I am teasing a bit, but it's only preserved because a couple of Carolingian scribes thought it worth copying - one wonders what they made of it)

Never heard of this before, what a fascinating source. Would welcome any of my Late Antique friends to send me any relevant literature...

Such a fascinating Carolingian source ;)

The Querolus is a fabulous source. From memory: there is (at least partially) a translation in A.C. Murray's 'From Roman to Merovingian Gaul'. And I wouldn't be surprised if it features in Ray Van Dam's 'Leadership and Community in Late Antique Gaul', because of it mentioning the Bacaudae.

"IT IS AGREED AND MOST EVIDENT THAT ALL MASTERS ARE EVIL..." So begins the speech of the slave character Pantomalus in the Querolus, the only extant late antique comedy. It will feature in a slavery sourcebook that we are working on. Read more in our newest blog post: tinyurl.com/zrmc4a6s

James will be speaking about 'Slaves and Robbers in Merovingian Gaul' at the Nottingham Medieval Research Forum on Monday 27th October, 5pm (Trent LG6): live-uk-uon.contensis.com/humanities/d...

Unexpectedly, the OA version of "Mediterranean Connections. The Frankish Kingdoms and the Roman Empire (476–756)", The Medieval Mediterranean 145 (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2025), is already out! (first they told me 27.11, then 30.10) ...Download: brill.com/display/titl...

3 more weeks to apply for this... please continue to share widely.

God, Slavery, and Early Christianity is out in the real world with @universitypress.cambridge.org! I have some extra, so retweet this by the end of Oct. 19 if you’re interested in receiving a copy! Book info here: www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...

Need cheering up on a gloomy October afternoon? The new issue of Early Medieval Europe is out! Articles on justice in Bavaria, tolls in Italy, women in 10th-c. Rome, Carolingian kingship, and child slavery: mostly available Open Access 😎https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/toc/14680254/2025/33/4

Looking forward to reading the many fascinating contributions to this new book, especially Jessica van 't Westeinde on Christianisation and the mobility of slaves, and Lisa Bailey on women in service and concepts of grace.

Reposting because this ought to get more views.