It’s not certain how Christianity got to Gaul let alone Britain. Perhaps the most prominent theory is that the faith entered Marseilles...

There has always been the assumption that Roman Britain became post-Roman (or “sub-Roman”) the moment it was denuded of Roman troops (by...

George Scholarios was about fifty years old when Constantinople fell in 1453. Three years earlier he had taken the name of Gennadios on...

The New Testament is about Christ and the consequences of his life. Yet it contains no words written directly by the Messiah. This...

Talking of Europe to a European would have been irrelevant for much of Western history. Not because the occidental peoples didn’t have...

Proverbial wisdom has it that the fastest way to a man’s heart is via his stomach. Though bumptious sorts like to add it’s really through...

“O Hagia Sophia that great temple! O the wonders and antiquities in the Hippodrome!... Constantinople is greater even than its name! May...

Roland Betancourt’s recent book Byzantine Intersectionality (2020), which I negatively reviewed here, contained the claim that the...

In the aftermath of the Arab conquest dozens of treaties safeguarded non-Islamic places of worship. These protections rarely forbade the...

Outside Rome the West lacked the relics of important apostles. This was rectified in Venice by the theft of St Mark the Evangelist from...

Textbooks typically note that Arab armies conquered Iran 637-651. And though the civilisation didn’t melt instantly into the Arab...

In the tumult of war or imperial strategy hundreds of thousands of people were moved around the map by Constantinople in a game of...

There are a number of iconoclastic tendencies within Christianity, most obviously the Old Testament Decalogue, which prohibited the...

If challenged, most Byzantinists will have at least a couple of popular riots on the tip of their tongues. Nika (532) remains preeminent...

“If any unholy and defiled pagan does not make himself manifest… and run to the churches with his household… let him submit to the...

Venetian fritoler with portable fryer c. 1900. Sweetness has always been prized. Cave paintings near Valencia dated to around 8000 BC...

East wall, detail Once you’ve been immersed in Byzantium for long enough it’s easy to grow weary of the reel of churches, fortifications...

Hagia Sophia’s conversion into a mosque this year was part of a pattern in which the Turkish state views its legitimacy as threatened by...

“[Abbot Ulsinus] loved the district and people of St Albans and looked after their interests. He brought the people from the surrounding...

According to legend, Venice obtained its relics of St Mark from Alexandria in AD 829. Apparently the pork-barrel-smuggled saint – a...