Tom Flanagan
@TomBFlanagan
Mostly my uneducated and quickly deleted opinions. @kingshistory late antiquity & early middle ages - Visigoths, law codes & canon collections.
Diaries are lost technology
Whenever a book has a direct quote from an old conversation the author had I usually assume it’s mostly made up cause how could you remember the exact words someone said 10 years ago
President George W. Bush and Ozzy Osbourne at the 2002 White House Correspondents Dinner
I do actually think history PhDs from Britain should know enough about Alfred the Great to answer a vox pop interview
France. France is core Europe. Always has been. The first time the term ‘Europeans’ was used was in a Spanish chronicle referring to the Christians at Tours, under Charles Martel.
What do you think of as core Europe?
Josephus is already well-utilised for early Christianity, but I think he needs to be widely read by legal historians trying to understand the changing scope of Roman law in late antiquity, too. Within his writings, one can perhaps see early the Roman curiosity toward the religion
It’s difficult for moderns to understand, but the Romans were a deeply moral people. Many of the words we use to describe morality come from them, like virtue, dignity and humanity. Although, they had slightly different meanings, for a slightly differently morality.
Here we go… Yea the Romans did some ruthless things. If you wanna hate almost all of human history before the modern era based on those standards, go ahead. But it’s shallow and thoughtless.
I hate the "mob mentality" — so different from the collective righteous anger that emerges organically from my own community of like-minded souls.
I'd never noticed it before, but it's pretty wild that Acts 19:1-7 says that Paul meets followers of John the Baptist in Ephesus! just how big was his following?
Almost finished. A very interesting book, which is filling in many of the gaps in my mind of how the rise of bishops actually worked.
What is everyone reading right now?