Historians often try to explain why things happened, but this is an unusual case in which I tried to explain why something *didn’t* happen. Just published, ‘Untranslatable Law’ in Toma and Bara (edd.), ‘Latin Translations of Greek Texts from the 11th to the 13th Century’: brill.com/display/book...

Happy New Year! I am at Hong Kong International Airport, waiting for a 3:20am flight to New York so that I can attend the annual conference of the American Historical Association. I wouldn’t stay up this late for a party, so why am I doing it for work?!?
#AHA25

Is this a glimpse of the last #Byzantine emperor, Constantine XI Palaiologos (r. 1449-1453)? The Ephorate of Antiquities of Achaia discovered this fresco in a church near Aigio, possibly the only portrait of Constantine made during his lifetime: greekcitytimes.com/2024/12/13/p...

#medievalsky

In my #Byzantine History class yesterday, we discussed how the Ottoman Mehmed II took the title ‘Kayser-i Rum’ (1453) and Ivan IV of Moscow became ‘Tsar’ (1457). Made me wonder: how many ‘Roman Empires’ have there been in history?

Original
Western
Eastern/Byzantine
HRE
Ottomans
Russia
… any others?

I’m lecturing on the 14th century this week, which means I get to show off the #Scottish Declaration of Arbroath (1320)!

‘It is in truth not for glory, nor riches, nor honours that we are fighting, but for freedom - for that alone, which no honest man gives up but with life itself.’

#medievalsky

A couple of days ago, I shared an image of a 14th-century Italian classroom. In the interests of balance, here is a 12th-century #Byzantine classroom. Two ‘philosophers’ sit at the front and address a group of students in this folio from the Madrid Skylitzes.
#medievalsky

I’ve been reading this study of Byzantine bishops in the 11th to 12th centuries by Jack Roskilly. A little niche, maybe, but I’m enjoying it!

The intersection of science and religion? This 14th-century #Byzantine monk is using an astrolabe to take astronomical readings while a scribe jots down the results. Natural science is an underappreciated aspect of the 'Palaiologan Renaissance' of late #Byzantium.
#medievalsky

Replace the books with computers, and it isn't so different from a modern lecture! This C14 carving from Verona shows the physician Antonio Pelacani (d. 1327) lecturing to students in a medieval classroom. I'll be doing something similar when I show it to my own students tomorrow...
#medievalsky

I’ll finish here with a bifolium from the 10th-century canon law collection Laud gr. 39 in Oxford. This shows a section of the Nomocanon in Fourteen Titles. This manuscript has some sentimental value for me, as it was the first one that I studied when I began work on my PhD thesis in 2015!

Add. 24369 has a really weird title page, by the way. This is the title of Alexios Aristenos’ commentary (c. 1130) on the Synopsis of Canons. I’ve never seen it presented like this before. Also, whoever rebound the manuscript in the modern era managed to insert the title page backwards somehow.

Of course, marriage is more complicated than that. Thanks to Patriarch Sisinnios II (996-998), you also have to count your in-laws (up to five degrees) as well as blood relatives. These diagrams in the 15th-century Add. 24369 can help with that. Sorry, you can’t marry your sister-in-law’s brother.

Maybe you’re an aristocrat and want to marry your cousin, but unsure if it counts as incest or not. This useful diagram in the 14th-century civil law collection Roe 18 can help you figure out if your future spouse is within six degrees of consanguinity. Just start in the middle and count the steps!

Are you a Byzantine judge who needs to understand Roman legal terminology but can’t read Latin? Not to worry! This Latin-Greek legal glossary in the 13th-century canon law collection BN II C 7 has you (sort of) covered. It even has a guide to the ‘Roman’ (Latin) alphabet at the top.

This collection of the Novels of Leo VI (r. 886-912) isn’t actually from Byzantium. Marc. gr. 179 was produced for a Greek judge in the Kingdom of Sicily in the late 12th century called Sinator Maleinos. You can just make out the Greek letters of his first name at the top of this unusual title page!

I was lucky to be able to present some of my research on Byzantine legal manuscripts at a conference in Taiwan recently (‘lucky’ in a very literal sense - there was a super typhoon the day before!). Here are some of my favourite highlights from the manuscripts that I discussed!
#ByzantineLaw

Some self-shilling: you can find my first book, Byzantine Religious Law (OUP, 2021) at global.oup.com/academic/pro...