James Morton

Sorry, I just have a petty personal crusade to try to get people to stop causing a fuss about what we call the Byzantines.

Seriously, this isn’t anything new or groundbreaking. All of this ‘Roman not Byzantine’ stuff is rather tiresome by now.

It was first deployed in the 16th century by Hieronymus Wolf and popularised in the 17th century by Charles du Cange. It was already very well established by the 19th century.

No, I think it’s silly. For one thing, anyone with any interest in the Byzantine Empire already knows that they called themselves Romans, and we’re far enough removed from the 16th century that we aren’t being Orientalist when we say ‘Byzantine’. It’s just historiographical convention now.

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...

By the time you got off the train, your money would be half the value it was when you got on and you wouldn’t even be able to afford absinthe anymore ;)

Wandering around the Met in New York, trying to fight off jet lag before the AHA begins tomorrow. I keep coming across artefacts, thinking ‘that looks familiar’, and then recognising them from images that I use in my lecture slides!
#AHA25

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

This was definitely the most memorable new headline this year

Merry Christmas! God bless us, everyone!

Yep, that’s Margaret Mullett!

Constantine’s Wikipedia page has already been updated with the image!

Fresco painting of Constantine XI Palaiologos (r. 1449-1453) from the Taxiarches monastery of Aigialeia near Aigio

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

I’m marking hand-written exams for the first time in years. It’s fascinating to see how many students were all drawn to one or two topics on the essay question (they had a choice of six). More fascinating still, one essay topic was so unpopular that literally nobody (out of a class of 30) chose it!

My best friend made it into the Financial Times!

On my way to invigilate my first ever in-person university exam today. I used to just give take-home final papers. However, thanks to the modern technological progress of #AI, they get to experience course assessment the same way I did when I was a student!

Welcome back Principality of Antioch

Now, how long can Russia keep those last remaining bases on the coast?

Amazing developments in #Syria. When I woke up and read the news this morning, I thought it might all be over for Assad in a day or two. Turns out that it was more like an hour or two!

It’s a useful reminder that historical change comes gradually at first… and then very suddenly.

The Biden administration doing what it can to lose any remaining good will it still has in its last days.

They might want to revisit this part of their constitution to make sure that a president can’t just order the army to do a coup like this in the future. I’d also think about firing the army leaders who followed the order so obediently this time around.

If the army had done a better job of sealing it off, they wouldn’t have been able to vote. The line between success and failure was literally a question of representatives physically evading military security. That’s a little too close for comfort!

I’m obviously not South Korean or very knowledgeable about South Korea, but I don’t find it reassuring that the attempt to impose martial law ended the way it did. Yes, lawmakers were able to overturn it with a vote, but they had to break into the National Assembly building first! #SouthKorea

Portrait of Sultan Mehmed II (r. 1451-1481) by Italian artist Gentile Bellini (1480)

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?

It has been suggested that the Declaration of Arbroath might have been one of the models for the American Declaration of Independence (1776), though this is disputed.

An original copy of the Declaration of Arbroath (1320), by which the nobles of Scotland asserted the country’s independence and determination to refuse English rule. National Records of Scotland, SP13/7

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

Byzantine classroom scene from the 12th-century Madrid Skylitzes manuscript (f. 134r)

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

‘Embrace technology’ - easy words to throw out in a webinar, policy memo, or (in this case) a THE op-ed. Not so easy to define what this actually means for us in practice, though. Should we ‘embrace’ students using AI to cheat on homework? Fewer platitudes and more specifics, please.

This is about onions, but I have the same complaint about recipe cooking times in general. Why is it that it takes me an hour to cook something that is supposed to take 30 minutes? Am I just a slow cook? Is the recipe optimistically assuming a best-case scenario? Or is it just lying?

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!