A short article about the Nachleben of the Romans and classical antiquity in Anglo-Saxon England.

This article discusses the development of the spelling for the name of Cnut the Great, Viking king of England from 1016 to 1035, from to . The origin of this disyllabic spelling is uncertain and has been attributed to taboo deflection, the simplification of the consonant cluster /kn/ in English and even a pope’s inability to pronounce the name C…[Read more]

This note calls attention to a precursor of the Latin text of Durham Proverb 7 in the ninth-century Collectanea Pseudo-Bedae and, in doing so, sheds some light on the unresolved relationship between the Old English and Latin versions of the Durham Proverbs in general and Durham Proverb 7 in particular.

This note established that an Old English confessional prayer in BL Vespasian D.xx is a close analogue to the Latin text in the Book of Cerne (Cambridge University Library MS L1.1.10). These two text and two other Old English prayers in BL MS Tiberius C.i and the Old English Handbook for the Use of a Confessor may have sprung from a common, Latin…[Read more]

This is the accepted manuscript version of my review of the edited volume Golden Middle Ages in Europe for Early Medieval Europe journal. Some wording may differ from the final published version. Please refer to the journal website.

This is the accepted manuscript version of my review of the edited volume Golden Middle Ages in Europe for History journal. Some wording may differ from the final published version. Please refer to the journal website.

This paper discusses the issue of the Emperor Herakleios’ mid career adoption of a large handlebar mustache at the end of the seventh century Byzantine-Persian war.

Pseudo-Arabic is a form of ornament, derived from Arabic script, which appears in both Islamic and Christian contexts from the 10th century onwards. The city of Bari in south-east Italy, and its hinterland, boasts a number of examples of this motif. This article explores how pseudo-Arabic was employed in Bari and how the circulation of luxury…[Read more]

The aim of this contribution is to review some of the major areas of current research on the Arabic Bible, along with the factors and trends contributing to them. Also we present some of the tools that are currently under development in the Biblia Arabica team, Munich.

We provide here a very condensed survey of the transmission of traditions,…[Read more]

This is a book review (pre-print) of the 2013 CIPL edited volume on scriptoria.

This is a book review (pre-print) of the 2014 book by Lifshitz.

This is a book review (published version) of the 2015 book on Carolingian monasteries edited by Becker, Licht and Weinfurter.

This chapter examines a particular miscellany manuscript’s strategies for arranging its texts for ease of use, legibility and coherence. It argues that such manuscripts were purposefully compiled and that their texts were enhanced by others produced in the same codicological context, showing that early medieval book-making was an innovative and…[Read more]

The Middle Commentary on Aristotle’s Poetics by the Andalusian philosopher Ibn Rushd (d. 1198) has been treated by commentators as wide-ranging as Borges, Renan, and Kilito as an exemplary case of the failure of translation. Critics who presume Ibn Rushd’s failure often concentrate on his rendering of Aristotle’s tragedy and comedy by praise…[Read more]

Based on the basilica of the Theater in Messene the architectural planning and building practices in provincial monuments of the sixth century is examined. In the basilica’s impost capitals, the use of position- ing marks for the correct setting of the colonnades is observed and on the paved floor of the sanctuary auxiliary etchings are visible f…[Read more]

During the older excavation of Messene by Anastasios Orlandos a quite original smaller than life-size marble statue of a Roman emperor wearing a short tunic and holding in his left hand the orb had been located and dated to the 4th c. AD. Further exploration of the area by Petros Themelis in the 1990s unearthed a magnificent Roman urban domus of…[Read more]

This dissertation proposes a social analysis of the Early Christian basilicas (4th-6th century) of Southern and Central Greece, predominantly those in the Late Roman province of Achaia. After an introduction which places the dissertation in the broader context of the study of Late Antique Greece, the second chapter argues that church construction…[Read more]