samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social - Profile | ThreadSky | a Reddit-style client for Bluesky

Hot of the press: new blog by Jeff Doolittle on a tenth-century manuscript on medical recipes, veterinary science and cosmetics cemlm.wp.st-andrews.ac.uk/2025/05/15/m... #medievalsky

submitted 9 hours ago • 0 comments

Cool to see this translated. Theotmar is an interesting figure because usually historians think he is not that important to Arnulf, but there are traces in the charters where I think we can see his involvement. So I think, as this letter also shows, he has a bit more of a role

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This week, @samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social looks at a world in flux on the eastern frontier of the Carolingian world: salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/05/15/d...

submitted 9 hours ago • 0 comments

New on the blog, a century ends and a new world begins. The East Franks are ruled by a child, the Moravian empire teeters and Hungarians sweep across Europe. In the midst of all this, an archbishop has complaints about episcopal appointments. #medievalsky salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/05/15/d...

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The sentence ‘Give us back our golden balls’ is not one I anticipated encountering when I began reading Richard Evans’ biography of Eric Hobsbawm, and yet here we are.

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Rather pleased with this draft book cover (but comments welcome!).

submitted 2 days ago • 9 comments

Letting unis go bust will be popular with voters right up until the economic and societal affects hit them square in the face. This is exactly why outsourcing politics to focus groups and those who cannot adjust from campaigning to governing is disastrous.

submitted 4 days ago • 19 comments

Going for Baroque at the Karlskirche #Wien

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Intriguing report of the thinking of the Universities Minister www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/05...

submitted 5 days ago • 14 comments

For those who enjoyed reading my blog, I am now hosting it on @ghost.org. I hope you will subscribe, please share widely! More information about the site can be found here explaining what the site is about, why it has a paid option, and why I haven't yet migrated off Substack fully (see below). 1/3

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

The papal conclave gave me the idea to talk about the Cadaver Synod, which I assumed would have something to do with Arnulf, but became an important lesson in letting the sources take you on an unexpected journey. #medievalsky

submitted 6 days ago • 1 comment

I’m not saying we’re getting a new Emperor of the Romans, I’m just saying interesting things can happen when there’s a Pope Leo and a King Charles knocking around at the same time.

submitted 7 days ago • 2 comments

Find yourself someone as enthusiastic about you as Odo of Cluny was about King Ralph, courtesy of @ralphtorta.bsky.social #medievalsky salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/05/08/o...

submitted 7 days ago • 0 comments

A very useful thread of recent articles in early medieval studies (which may feature me in it).

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A splendid story in al-Tabari about the Caliph Hisham and the importance of precision when discussing musical instruments. #medievalsky #umayyad

submitted 8 days ago • 0 comments

A question that I haven't heard a good answer to: if cutting migration by a third in a year hasn't changed the narrative on it at all - what would make you think cutting it by another third (or half] would?

submitted 9 days ago • 117 comments

In which @ralphtorta.bsky.social explains why it’s expensive to become a medieval abbot. Whether this has any relevance for the upcoming papal conclave is up to the reader. #medievalsky

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A few weeks ago, a colleague asked me for help dating a medieval document long considered a forgery. Yes, a forgery—but one with a precise date: the year 1033. And yet no one had ever asked: what if that date actually matches the likely time it was produced? 👇 #MssStudies

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

The study of Indo-Roman trade has really expanded (🫶) in the last two decades. And Rebecca Darley has a great historiographical essay on this field expansion in JRS: “Indian Ocean Trade in the First Millennium C.E.”. Definitely a great comps list addition for many. www.cambridge.org/core/journal...

submitted 10 days ago • 1 comment

Now available in OA: My article on 'Studying the networks and the mobility of clerics between Ireland, Britain and Francia (c. 640–750)' in the volume on early medieval mobility edited by @laurysarti.bsky.social and Helene von Trott zu Solz. Congratulations to the editors! #MedievalSky

submitted 36 days ago • 0 comments

The Venus of Willendorf, about 30,000 years old and absolutely extraordinary. At the Natural History Museum in Vienna.

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Evening by the Danube #Wien

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Historians being cautiously curious about how things work in other times and places is a good thing

submitted 13 days ago • 0 comments

Michel is far too kind! I got a lot out of Farris, Population, Disease, and Land (1985), Piggott, The Emergence of Japanese Kingship (1997), Von Verschuer, Across the Perilous Sea (2006) and Ooms, Imperial Politics and Symbolics (2009). Any other reading suggestions for early medieval Japan?

submitted 13 days ago • 1 comment

While I'm always in awe of the content posted on the blog, I found this one esp. interesting. I had the chance to visit Japan & stand in front of the Great Buddha in Nara recently & I also couldn't help but to reflect on the diff. & simil. btw. 8th-c. Japan & Europe... any further reading sugg.?

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

This week on the blog, @samottewillsoulsby.bsky.social does... well, exactly what it says on the tin: salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/05/01/c...

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When I taught my "politics and power in the global Middle ages" course Japan was one of the most useful complement and juxtaposition to Carolingian Europe

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I clicked this link so fast!

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Never good at staying in my lane, this week on the blog, I annoy two sets of historians for the price of one by comparing early medieval Japan with the Carolingians. #medievalsky #GlobalMiddleAges #Japan salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/05/01/c...

submitted 14 days ago • 1 comment

Oh, it is this time of year again: did people in medieval Europe have a different relationship with work and free time than we do? Yes, of course. Did they just lie around half of the year doing nothing and enjoying their church-prescribed holidays and basked in their free time? No. 1/

submitted 15 days ago • 6 comments

yet another example of why not to get your history from an anthropologist

submitted 15 days ago • 45 comments

Absolutely thrown to find Ulysses S. Grant, writing in his memoirs in 1885, referring to someone as a ‘dude’. Much fascinated subsequent clicking around on the internet introduced me to Evander Berry Wall, the ‘King of the Dudes’ in New York in the 1880s.

submitted 15 days ago • 0 comments

In which @ralphtorta.bsky.social gives us the view from Rome in about 900. Charles the Bald fans, avert your gaze. #medievalsky salutemmundo.wordpress.com/2025/04/29/t...

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

@princetonupress.bsky.social is holding it’s annual 50% off sale which includes, amongst many excellent books, a certain volume featuring an emperor and an elephant 🐘

submitted 16 days ago • 1 comment

As an entirely disinterested observer I am forced to endorse this statement. 😆

submitted 16 days ago • 0 comments

I got a copy and read this a while back, it's really great! It is informed by a deep amount of scholarship but you don't need to be an expert to access it because of Sam's writing!

submitted 17 days ago • 2 comments

It's that time of year again: the annual @princetonupress.bsky.social 50% off sale! Traditionally used to purchase volumes on medieval forgery...

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment

I’m delighted to hear that it was useful! Sounds like a great exam topic!

submitted 17 days ago • 1 comment