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(Limoges, France, the home of Pelagia.) ‘Since the pressures of the world weighed heavily on a woman, not least on a widow, Erkanfrida needed to...

Last week, I went to the Silk Roads exhibition at the British Museum. It situated slavery in wide-ranging Eurasian commercial networks, through which (for example)...

(James C. Scott, 1936–2024. Photo credit: Yale.) By James Burns Even if one accepts that the serf, the slave, and the untouchable will have trouble...

By James Burns At this year’s International Congress on Medieval Studies at West Michigan University in Kalamazoo, Sheida, Seth, and I gave our papers on...

On Monday 15th April 2024, our Principal Investigator, Erin Thomas Dailey, will be giving the Joseph C. Miller Memorial Lecture, at the Bonn Center for...

Slemish, in present-day County Antrim, where some think Patricius laboured as a slave Unlike most early medieval authors, who remain unknown to the broader public,...

Why did the Roman Empire fall? Little did I know, when I first encountered this question as an undergraduate, that it would propel me along...

By James Burns and Seth M. Stadel James: I have been reading Seth’s new book on Syriac exegesis, the abstract of which is below. When...

The Ratchis Altar, presented in an elevated position to reflect its original setting. Wikipedia Commons. An eighth-century altar, housed in the Museo Christiano & Tesoro...

The burial cave of rabbi Judah, Beit She’arim, Israel In a famous passage from the Talmud, which even got its own code in the Aarne-Thompson...