A translation of 2 rival accounts of an expedition that deteriorated into friction and feuding. The French Conquest of the Canary Islands translated by Craig Taylor and Jane H M Taylor is out now. buff.ly/Ko959Sj #medievalsky

Today at 5pm EST / 11pm CET! MAP FORUM PRESENTS: Trading at the Edge of Empires: Francesco Carletti, Florentine Family Networks, and Global Commerce by Brian Brege. MAP Forum talks are available exclusively online. To join, visit medici.org.

I've been working with Transkribus for fifteenth-century Latin notarial contracts, including testaments, so I'm looking forward to seeing this presentation!

Elated at Joel Mokyr's Nobel Prize! You can find numerous accounts -now multiplying by the minute- of his scholarly contributions. Today I want to celebrate the man and the mentor.

"Bob Fogel said to me once: For economics to work without economic history is like an evolutionary biologist without paleontology. You just miss 99.5% of all the species that ever walked on this earth." Joel Mokyr www.youtube.com/live/__0sGvj...

Fifteenth-century Latin place name of the day: "Antona" which refers to Southampton and not Ancona, a common mistake made by many scholars, including myself (especially since late medieval Italian notaries often alternated between using 'c' and 't' in words requiring either.

My review of @stefanbauer.bsky.social and Simon Ditchfield's edited collection A Renaissance Reclaimed: Jacob Burckhardt's Civilization of the Renaissance in Italy Reconsidered, in Marginalia Review of Books. www.marginaliareviewofbooks.com/post/moderni...

The latest open-access text from the Ptolemaeus Arabus et Latinus project has arrived, an edition of Giovanni Pontano's 15th-century commentary on the pseudo-Ptolemy astrological "Centiloquium" - scroll down to the final title on their pubs list: ptolemaeus.badw.de/publications #HistSci #medievalsky

In our tour of Toronto libraries, my daughter Celeste and I recently visited the S. Walter Stewart Library in East York. We loved the spacious architecture and overall atmosphere, as well as (of course) the selection of books!

Negotiations have stalled. Trump keeps changing his policies. Ukrainians, backed by Europeans, are taking matters into their own hands, @anneapplebaum.bsky.social writes:

A concise graphic summarizing the Creative Commons License Spectrum... crucial for understanding licensing in the cultural heritage sector. More detail at creativecommons.org/share-your-w... @creativecommons.bsky.social

The digital version of God, Slavery, and Early Christianity is officially out! If you're interested in ancient Mediterranean slavery's effects on Christian thought and practice, this is for you. www.cambridge.org/core/books/g...

In the next few days we'll be circulating our Autumn 2025 project newsletter! 🍂✉️ To receive a copy and find out what we've been up to over the last few months, make sure you're signed up to our mailing list: forms.office.com/e/JbUEq4Za1u @leverhulme.ac.uk @uoearchhist.bsky.social #history

A fascinating talk by Hisayuki Kubota at the ACRE 2025: Climate Data Recovery Conference in Singapore... the breadth of scientific and historical sources (Japanese, Russian, English, Chinese ++) in his study of the "cold period" in Asia during the early 20th century is very impressive! #envhist

Haven't seen this before. A husband and wife stamped a different side of the same piece of wax with their seal. LFC Ch XXV 14. #medievalsky

1. It is good to have access to Francesco Pegolotti’s manuscript, since Allan Evans has somewhat simplified the spelling of some of the names in his edition. #mongolsky #tengri “Avixamento del viaggio del Ghattaio per lo chanmino della Tana ad andare e tornare chon merchatantia.

the crisis in which the University of Chicago is now engulfed -- one entirely of its own making, and which has led to the (hopefully temporary) suspension of admissions into numerous PhD programs in the humanities -- represents I think a seismic event in the history of American higher education 1/

Tom Lehrer was a treasure... I loved the chemistry song when I was young!

Jazz haters suck

It is so good to see BBCRadio3 celebrate the 90th birthday of the great Arvo Pärt. A musical visionary of our age. 1st, a retrospective from Gillian Moore on Saturday’s Record Review — www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m...

Interestingly (to me, at least), I searched 13th-century court records for – and ultimately found! – the outlawed John Milksop mentioned in the Annals of Tewkesbury. This, to the best of my knowledge, had never been done before and the connection adds a great deal to the jurisdictional dispute.

I've found more information about this Genoese Niccolò Machiavelli (not the famous Florentine one...) and his links to the Florentine patriciate, which I will be posting soon!

It was a beautiful morning for a neighbourhood stroll with my daughter Isabelle!

Treasures of legal history and an example of the earliest written law in Scandinavia for a medieval Monday – The rune inscriptions on the Forsa Rune Ring viking.archeurope.com/runes/forsa-... #medievalsky

An excellent essay by @brianklaas.bsky.social on the effects of generative AI on cognitive development.

The sigille of notaries Paolo Felice and Alessandro Niccolò Ivani [source: ASGe, Conservatori del Mare 303, testimony recorded 1715-04-11]

My daughter Celeste's 13th book of our 2024 Reading Challenge (I know, so far behind on posts), "Darius the Great is Not Okay" by‪ @adibkhorram.bsky.social. She says: "I loved this book so much! The characters are written so well!" and also told me it was here second-favorite book of the year.

My 13th book of the 2024 Reading Challenge (I'm far behind in my posts) with my daughter Celeste, "North Face of Soho" by Clive James, the fourth volume of his memoirs in which our hero starts work as a literary reviewer and stumbles into TV criticism, and eventually TV itself.

The Medieval Black Sea Project hosted by the Center for Collaborative History at Princeton looks like a promising endeavour that shines light on an important and often overlooked region of Mediterranean world. #medievalsky medievalblackseaproject.princeton.edu

One of my most common transcription errors over the past several years working with notarial contracts was to transcribe "ad sanctam Dei evangeliam" when I should have transcribed "ad sancta Dei evangelia", having overlooked that "evangelium, -i" is neuter. #medievalsky

Happy Bloomsday to all who celebrate! My latest Ulyssean acquisition is this marvelous illustrated edition with over 300 images by Spanish artist Eduardo Arroyo. I'm hoping to re-read Ulysses sometime this year. #bloomsday

📜All the documents our project looks at have one thing in common - they were drawn up by a notary. 🪶Each medieval notary used a distinctive personal mark. Find out more here: www.artandinequality.com/whats-your-s... #medievalhistory #arthistory #nonelite #history #testaments #notary

Historical demography is so often misunderstood. The *average* life expectancy up until the 20th century was so low because of extremely high infant mortality (more than 1 in 3 didn't live to their 1st birthday). If you survived early childhood chances were good that you'd live well into your 70s.

So, was Florentine culture all about projecting soft power? A conversation with Ada Palmer paulkrugman.substack.com/p/inventing-...

Finally some good news!!!

1. Caffa, November 28, 1289: #mongolsky #tengri

This is Łucja Charewiczowa. A professor at the University of Lviv in the 1930s, she wrote on the economic history of Poland and the Black Sea region. In 1940 she joined the underground resistance. She was imprisoned (prisoner 64373) and murdered at Auschwitz in 1943. #SkyStorians #MedievalSky

Documents bearing witness to the lives of enslaved people in Aruba are now recognized by UNESCO’s Memory of the World Register. These documents are preserved at Aruba's National Archives & National Library, and are accessible at the Internet Archive. Learn more: blog.archive.org/2025/04/15/a...

An advertisement from Riunione Adriatica di Sicurtà, one of the largest insurance firms in Italy, circa 1969, in the form of a node-edge graph with a star (or spoke-and-hub) topology.

The sailors who corroborated testimonies in early modern marine damage claims often signed with the cross (†), or sometimes, like Giuseppe Rummolo in this example, who signed his name with roughly 'drawn' letters. Should we classify both groups as illiterate?

For #MapMonday today we have this Portolan atlas - a series of navigational maps marked with place names and rhumb-lines - written in Venice between 1535 and 1538. It is probably from the workshop of Battista Agnese. (LJS 28) 🔗: find.library.upenn.edu/catalog/9948...

The Medici Archive Project is offering 12 short-term fellowships for pre-doc students and postdoc candidates, working on fields related to early modern Italy (preferably with a specific emphasis on Tuscan or Medici history). Deadline: 15 June. www.medici.org/fellowships/

Impressed by this #earlymodern bill measuring 105 cm in length, which resembles an exceptionally lengthy supermarket receipt. Table linen merchant Hans van Velroeij supplied dozens of tablecloths and napkins for the wedding of Maria de Sweert and Jan Moretus II in July 1605. #Skystorians #Antwerp

I had the pleasure to take a course with Ian during my undergraduate years at U of T. An outstanding professor and scholar, always helpful and kind. And a pioneer in digital humanities as well. Rest in peace, Ian.

Probably one more session of tidying to go before I've got a complete route network for Italy as published #16thCentury - #18thCentury! I like this view of Northern Italy to show that the #earlymodern routes (red) are not just the Roman roads (green). 🗃️ @emdigit.bsky.social

California pilots a solar-over-canal system to combat drought. Project Nexus will cover canals with solar panels, generating clean energy while preventing water evaporation. The project showing potential for 13 GW of annual energy, while saving 50,000 acres of land. buff.ly/ZBokAil #ShareGoodNewsToo

My 12th book of the 2024 Reading Challenge with my daughter Celeste, "A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" by James Joyce. My third Joyce (after Dubliners and Ulysses) and probably my least favourite, so far...

My daughter Celeste's 12th book of our 2024 Reading Challenge, "I Hope This Doesn't Find You" by Ann Liang.