This text consists of the ‘lectio praecursoria’ given at the defense of my doctoral dissertation “The Good Noblemen Who Conquered the Kingdom: Islam, Historiography, and Aristocratic Legitimation in Late-Medieval Portugal”. This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late…[Read more]

This text consists of the ‘lectio praecursoria’ given at the defense of my doctoral dissertation “The Good Noblemen Who Conquered the Kingdom: Islam, Historiography, and Aristocratic Legitimation in Late-Medieval Portugal”. This dissertation deals with aristocratic historiography and political legitimation in late-medieval Portugal (late…[Read more]

This article investigates several discussions of “chemistry,” understood as an analysts’ category referring to theories and practices dealing with the structure and transformation of matter. By reading these texts (a treatise defending kīmiyāʾ by al-Fārābī, the famous passage from Ibn Sīnā’s Shifāʾ on transmutation, Ibn Taymiyyah’s fatwā…[Read more]

article + 6 photographs from the Manuscriptistan Project

article + 6 photographs from the Manuscriptistan Project

The present article challenges Walter C. Kaiser, Jr’s influential proposal for evangelical Old Testament missiology. Out of concern to avoid an understanding of “Israel as God’s favored or pet nation,” Kaiser argues that God’s promise to Abraham in Gen 12:3 is for the sake of all nations, and as such, “the first Great Commission mandate of…[Read more]

This blog post gives an overview of the Camden Material and Colour Guide. The guide provides property owners of heritage buildings in the Camden Heritage Conservation Area with tips and hints on restoration and conservation of their houses. The guide provides colour schemes on building exteriors and interiors by housing styles between 1840 and…[Read more]

Sicily – and especially Syracuse – seems to have had an ongoing preoccupation with paired eyes as an apotropaic or magico-religious symbol. This brief paper explores some signature pieces and speculates that the excised eyes of Santa Lucia, patron saint of Syracuse, may be but a recent embodiment of a propensity that dates back to the Neolithic era.