Sometimes manuscripts only survive in pieces. Here is an example: a 15th c. breviary used to make collages in the 1800s. An interesting historical example, but not something you would want to to today! (UPenn Ms. Coll. 713) 🔗: https://bit.ly/4mdY3P2

Watch Laura Ingallinella ( Italian, Spanish, Portuguese & LAS / CMS ) on "Trade, Poetry, and Belonging. Carlo del Nero, a Merchant in Fifteenth-Century Languedoc" for The Medici Archive Project. www.youtube.com/watch?v=kw6F...

The cyberattack on The British Library in October 2023 knocked out ebooks and almost ever other computer thing there for years. Ebooks just came back. They were knocked out everywhere using the BL’s license (legal deposit libraries I think? More libraries?) Distributed physical copies matter.

Extremely niche news but open-source Ibn Abi Usaybia: scholarlyeditions.brill.com/lhom/

easter week chant in Beneventan notation, complete with merpig(?)

From human origins to contemporary conflicts, our curated collections contain tons of free and #OpenAccess #archaeology on specific periods, themes and regions of the world! 🏺 Explore them all at antiquity.ac.uk/collections

Finder’s fee: seasonal fruit. Early modern provenance mark on the flyleaf in a 16th-century illuminated manuscript: ‘This book belongs to Catrina Leoners. Whoever finds it should return it to her for an apple or a pear…’ #rarebooks #earlymodern #bookhistory 💙📚📜

He clearly liked big books! The owner of the books is the man sitting at the scholarly working desk: a Jewish astronomer. And the young man entering on the left is supposed to be Muhammad (the later founder of Islam), by the way. The image is part of a Christian account of the 1660s on Arabia. 1/2

We thought we were living in a cyberpunk dystopia but this is actually straight from Warhammer 40K. The machine spirit must be appeased using the proper rituals. Blessings affixed with purity seals will keep the cogitator functioning.

April 8 Perseus Digital Library Update: I'm glad to report that Perseus access has been restored. We will continue to monitor the traffic and post further updates as necessary. (Hopefully that won't be necessary anytime soon, but lately it always seems to be!)

🇨🇦 Canada’s Council of Prairie & Pacific University Libraries (COPPUL) has joined a global movement to protect digital rights for libraries, archives & museums supporting access, preservation & heritage online.📚 Learn more ⤵️ internetarchivecanada.org/2026/04/07/c... @internetarchiveca.bsky.social

all these universities kept axing medieval history departments as if they thought tyrants beefing with the Pope was going to stop being relevant

Let's start off with a banger: Our call is now live! What do you want to contribute to intersectionality and medieval studies? cims.hypotheses.org/412 Please share widely and send us your abstract until 31.08.2026.

But the President is still asking Congress to eliminate library funding in the next federal budget. Call your Senators TODAY to urge them to #FundLibraries: ala.org/showup

NEWS: The Trump Administration has DROPPED its appeal of an earlier federal court ruling that reinstated the Institute of Museum & Library Services (IMLS)! This is an enormous win for libraries nationwide. Learn more: www.ala.org/news/2026/04... #FundLibraries #ForOurLibraries

Now in #paperback, Ancient Christianities traces the evolution of early Christianity—or rather, of early Christianities—through five centuries of Empire, mapping its pathways from the hills of Judea to the halls of Rome and Constantinople. Read a free preview: press.princeton.edu/books/paperb...

In-italja is an innovative digital humanities project that documents, illustrates, and dynamically narrates the history of Jewish mobility in Italy, as well as the complex interrelations between Jews and Christians from the Middle Ages to 1938. #jewishstudies mjsnow.hypotheses.org/21054

Currently reading: Living Law: Women and Legality in Marinid Morocco, by Rosemary Admiral.

Happy Easter: “I’ve spent well over 20 years studying the history of the Crusades, thinking about the ways that sanctified violence works once it takes hold in a culture and becomes institutionalized. Once leaders start talking the way Pete Hesgeth does …limitations can easily fade away.”

Happy Easter! Here's a medieval rabbit or hare from the Franciscan Friary in Waterford City. With such fancy shoes he must be the Easter Bunny! 🐰 #Ireland #SpéirGhorm #Medieval

Agree! Which could also encourage more comparative studies of zoomorphy (for instance, there is some amazing work being done on the politics of zoomorphy in the Eurasian steppe and China — see Petya Andreeva’s “Fantastic Fauna from China to Crimea”). edinburghuniversitypress.com/book-fantast...

heyyy medievalists, here's a weird hill I will defend: we should adopt the term 'zoomorph' (and the related 'anthromorph') bc 'grotesque' is an obviously loaded term esp when we have so little real idea what work those designs did for medieval viewers.

In the spirit of yesterday‘s discussions, here is a reminder that my new book about why Shakespeare was Shakespeare is out in the world!

Curators Examined the Book of the Dead—& Found a 3,300-Year-Old Version of Wite-Out: Upon digital & infrared inspection, the team discovered the use of ancient correction fluid to trim a drawing on one of the illustrated spells 🪄 📚 📜 #BookScience www.popularmechanics.com/science/arch...

Blank pages invite use. In this 1578 print album by Philip Galle, published in collaboration with the Officina Plantiniana, a later reader used the flyleaves and leftover white space to sketch contemporary faces and figures. #bookhistory #rarebooks #earlymodern 💙📚📜

Headline writers really going for the outrage bait here

Reading the article, it seems they were fired from the directorship (and not from their teaching position) for using the center’s newsletter to send these emails. Is that still an academic freedom violation? Would be curious if it’s normal to do stuff like that, since the article isn’t very clear.

If you weren't able to make this week's #CoffeeWithACodex featuring a collection of Middle English devotional works, you can watch it now on YouTube! youtu.be/-P0B2DdlOF0

(slaps roof of charter) you can fit so many popes in this baby (pope count update: 1 reigning and *4* future popes signing here so far)

And so my reading list gets longer… XD

I've got two Otto Ege Chortlemuffins™ (h/t @sonjadrimmer.bsky.social) to report, regarding these two dismembered manuscripts - a Qur'an (l) and an Armenian lectionary (r). 🧵

Publication – « Lectori vago. Manuscripts, Libraries, and Classical Scholarship from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Period. Liber amicorum Luc Deitz », éd. Claude D. Conter, Thomas Falmagne, Marc Laureys, Christophe Marinheiro, Max Schmitz, Tom Zago rmblf.be/2026/04/02/p...

reposting from yesterday. the history of Christianity and violence is deeply entangled and has been since the beginning. the way we all can deal with the Hegseth's bloodlust is to realize there's an alternative that's equally valid.

Hyperfixation of the week: there is apparently a field called “forensic hairdressing” where people try to reconstruct ancient hair techniques. Below is one from Ancient Rome ca. 120 AD. The leading figure is a hairstylist-turned-archaeologist named Janet Stephens who also does video tutorials. Cool!

she hasn't gone anywhere?? am I watching the wrong Artemis????

These woollen chitons (or long tunics) have - incredibly - survived from Roman Egypt due to the dry climate. Amazing finds showing a wonderful insight into past fashions. 🕰️5th-7th century AD 🏛️📷Museum of Byzantine Culture, Thessaloniki

Reminder to next dem government: take all of SpaceX’s federal contracts and give the money back to NASA.

2026 vs. 2025 Shapiro family Seder table. The first night of Passover has always been special for our family. But nearly one year ago, on this first night of Passover, an arsonist destroyed this very room — and this very table.

Day infinity of wishing I lived in Europe.

Popetastic #volvelle!

Downloading books on Libby and marveling, as ever, about this unique and glorious service offering. No ads! No popups! No subscriptions!

For #CoffeeWithACodex On April 2 (12pm Noon ET, on Zoom), curator @leoba.bsky.social#CoffeeWithACodexwill bring out Ms. Codex 196, a collection of three devotional works in metrical verse in Middle English and Latin. Written in England, circa 1400. #medievalsky #manuscriptsky Register here: https://bit.ly/3NIssbv

My cohort are finishing up their undergraduate theses at the moment. I’m really happy for them but also struggling with the fact that I had to drop out to due medical issues and now have no “product” of my research to show. 🙁

I love coming across little archival guys

She deserves far better than what we got. So do the residents of Rutherford County. fox17.com/news/local/r...

A book that survived fire – by losing its first page. The Brest Bible (1563) is one of the most remarkable witnesses of the Reformation in Lithuania. Printed in Brest (Brasta), it was the first full Bible translation in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania into a vernacular language – Polish.🧵

Blocking archives risks harming the public record. Some news organizations are restricting access to the #WaybackMachine over fears of AI scraping. Mark Graham explains why these concerns are unfounded. Get the story on Techdirt 🔗 www.techdirt.com/2026/02/17/p... @mark.bsky.social #techdirt

Passover begins on the evening of 1st April: depiction of a matzah with creatures. #Passover BL Or 2737; 'Hispano-Moresque Haggadah'); 1275 CE-1324 CE; Spain; f.22r @blmedieval.bsky.social

Why use scratch paper for addition when there’s paper right there?

Really enjoyed this @newbooksnetwork.bsky.social podcast with Richard Calis talking about his book on a 16th-century Tübingen scholar's encounters with Greek Orthodox travelers from the Ottoman empire & the broader Mediterranean cultural world: newbooksnetwork.com/the-discover...