Alessandra Bordini and John Maxwell’s “Remediating the Past, Engaging the Present” deals with the concepts of remediation in representing early print and its digital surrogate. #AldusManutius #aldinepress #booksinbrowsers #DigitalHumanities #bookhistory #DHSI doi.org/10.7202/1124...

New article by Stephen Bowd, drawing on letters by dozens of women in northern Italy around the 1st phase of the Italian Wars (1494–1530). It shows how military activity, female agency and dynastic identity were closely allied in their letters. #EarlyModern 🗃️ onlinelibrary.wiley.com/share/S9XNMD...

Currently reading:

Our first recommendation of July is "Sources for the History of Medicine in Late Medieval England." The material contained here derives from a wide variety of printed and manuscript sources, chosen to give some idea of the rich diversity of evidence available to the historian of English medicine 1/2

Baby Jesus flipping through a book of hours. From the St. Anne Altarpiece, c. 1500-1520. Note the cloth, gold edges, and especially the brightly-colored border illuminated with plants and animals, which was characteristic of Flemish books of hours. #medievalsky #medievalart #bookhistory

Our #NationalOutfitOfTheDayDay outfit is this reconstruction of the costume of Nubian Royal Mother Martha, based on a wall painting from 10th century AD Faras Cathedral and made, dyed and decorated based on medieval Nubian archaeological evidence. 🆓 doi.org/10.15184/aqy... 🏺 #Archaeology

Essays in Long Late Antiquity | Volume 1, Issue 1 We are pleased to share that the first issue of ELLA, the innovative new journal in first millennium studies, is here! ➡️Read it #OpenAccess: bit.ly/ELLA-1-1 @calthalas.bsky.social @sihonglin.bsky.social @barber-samj.bsky.social @emuehlbe.bsky.social

Today in “stuff found in old books”:

The long & the short of it is that machines are good for speed, but sometimes speed is a hindrance to other outcomes such as human learning. Fragmentology is best when being a human endeavour. (6/6)

That’s…not how that happened.This is why I have to patiently explain to my students every year that it’s not weird that medieval Christian art portrays Greek and Roman myth.

Any liturgical scholars out there? I think this leaf straddles two consecutive Sundays: Homilia III in Dominica Tertia post Trinitatem on Luke 15:4 and Homilia IV in Dominica Quarta post Trinitatem on Luke 6:37. There's notation (v rubbed) on the lower half. Need some help identifying use. Thanks!

1/3 Rare books are reaching new audiences through social media. 📚📱 Book historian Allie Alvis shares historic books & collections online, making rare materials visible beyond reading rooms. Read “When Preservation Meets Social Media” in the Vanishing Culture report ⤵️ archive.org/details/vani...

Mark writing the first line of the Gospel of Mark, from an 11th-century Byzantine manuscript. “Ἀρχὴ τοῦ εὐαγγε..” Leaf from a lectionary commissioned by Empress Katherine Komnene c. 1063. The manuscript was broken and the leaves dispersed (sigh). Photos by me. #medievalart #medievalsky

All 'bout the 💰! New blog post on our project "Money, History, and Moral Economies: Communicative Functions of Monetary Information in the Institutional Historiography of the Later Middle Ages" is out now! Kindly published by @ghilondon.bsky.social.

Phantastic presentation by Visiting Fellow Pavel Sládek on #Hebrew manuscripts and books in @bodleian.ox.ac.uk now online available youtu.be/y1k5R6ep9tE @bkhistoxford.bsky.social @oxmedstud.bsky.social

The Carolingian South is now out! This new edited volume approaches the Franks from a new direction. To celebrate @manchesterup.bsky.social sat me and @graemeyward.bsky.social to ask us some questions about the book: manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/blog/2026/06... #medievalsky

Publication – « Uses and Reuses of Medieval Manuscript Books / Usi e riusi del libro manoscritto nel Medioevo. Southern Italy. Latin Manuscripts / Italia meridionale. Manoscritti latini », éd. Angela Cossu, Elvira Zambardi rmblf.be/2026/06/16/p...

A hybrid witness: between Jewish legal tradition and Judaeo-Arabic scribal culture. #jewishstudies mjsnow.hypotheses.org/21799

I was particularly struck by Henry VIII's careful drawings of birds and manicules in this book. he was clearly a prince with time on his hands... 🗃️ #BookHistory

I've identified some new marginalia by Henry VIII on the psalms at the @britishlibrary.bsky.social You can read all about it in the latest issue of the Library: www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/10.3828/... #BookHistory #EarlyModern #skystorians

I get endless cold-emails selling me something. Was wondering how many of them are human. The answer turns out to be: none. Updated my LinkedIn profile yesterday. 10 monastic messages today, of which this was the best.

I’m at a point where I can read Arabic better in Hebrew letters than Arabic ones. It’s a little embarrassing

This photo will be up on the Williams College library website at some point:

‘The early press was like a great vertical vice, operated by a screw. This technology was centuries old, having been developed for the pressing of grapes to make wine.’ @tomlukejohnson.bsky.social on William Caxton and the story of the English printing press. www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Thanks i hate it

Partner took me to see The Sheep Detectives as a birthday present. What a fun and sweet film! Absolutely recommend. (I’m not biased at all by a childhood summer spent taking care of some very wonderful sheep)

Do not let the White House convince you that they are dictating what happens for the 250th. They're doing a bunch of stuff, but it's all fleeting spectacle. There is genuine, thoughtful, history-focused programming happening all over the United States. Get offline and go find it.

Cabbage heist ys not goinge well.

This is also my view regarding students using AI. I sympathize a lot with the pressure of college and the messed up incentive structures, but you’re still making a bad decision.

A fascinating piece detailing Muslim scribes’ involvement in Genizah /Geniza documents. And I am so looking forward to the publication of the Indian Ocean project.

This Thursday, May 28th, Natasha Jenman and Dean A. Irwin will give the next #davidpattersonlecture: 'In the Footsteps the Lincoln Jewry: Walking Tour/Book Launch'! Join us online or in person at 6pm on Thursday! us02web.zoom.us/meeting/regi... #medieval #booklaunch #Oxford

Over on ‘All Old Strange Things’ I wrote in defence of translation as an activity for humans open.substack.com/pub/drfranci...

Newest addition to the 2nd Plague Pandemic bibliography: Susan Einbinder's edition & translation of a Hebrew text from the 1340s, showing a practicing physician wrestling w/ a swiftly lethal disease amid an unfolding pandemic. #histmed #EpiSky #MedievalSky www.arc-humanities.org/978180270397...

I actually laughed out loud when I got Greek Orthodox. Guilty as charged. My grandparents’ house is full of icons and Greek flags!

Terrible news for a resource I use almost daily. It’s not going offline for now, but who knows how long that will last. 😔

The word that stumped me for a whole week, conquered upon further examination of references for capital letterforms! (I think it says “It[e]m”) #historysky

There are people who know how to draw a hand… and then there are people who draw this. A wonderfully rustic maniculum in this copy – less “elegant pointing hand,” more “tiny creature trying its best.” #BookHistory #Marginalia #Maniculum

My book is 50% off through Princeton's Spring Sale if you were looking to snag it at a deal. press.princeton.edu/books/hardco...

Synchronizing the Body in Ancient Medicine and Philosophy / Giouli Korobili , Kassandra J. Miller, & Philip J. van der Eijk, eds. www.degruyterbrill.com/document/doi... #openaccess @dgb-ancientstudies.bsky.social

Our new article by Abdulqadir Haidermota is out ! Read more on our website: The Affective Algorithm: Mapping the Emotional Architecture of Fatimid Geniza Petitions (Part 1) digitalorientalist.com/2026/04/14/t...

✉️ Explore 145,000 medieval merchant letters as a live map: the correspondence network of Francesco di Marco Datini (c.1363–1412), spanning Florence to Barcelona to North Africa. Visualise routes, travel times & seasonality. docuracy.github.io/datini/ #DigitalHumanities #MedievalHistory

There’s no greater feeling than finally identifying a place name in that one document you’ve been struggling to decipher. Suddenly everything falls into place and the clouds part to reveal a rainbow! #medievalsky

If you missed this morning's paper by Larissa Ficulle Santini on fertility control in Byzantium, here is the recording! youtu.be/V4khg32-r-w

I don't think people fully understand yet just how fragile university-hosted digital resources are after external funding ends (especially if the lead academic retires or moves or is made redundant).

Yep. When you digitize old stuff, you now have to look after the original artifact *and* it's digital surrogate. "Just put everything online" is not the labor-saving flex laypeople think it is.

The quote from the choir director has me LOLing. “There’s a bit of antisemitism in the Greek community” As a Greek Jew I have never heard a greater understatement in my life. Go to a Greek heritage event and tell then you’re Jewish and just wait! It never gets old.