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Lucas McMahon

@chrysoboullon.bsky.social
507 followers 261 following 290 posts

PhD Princeton. The logic and logistics of empire. Foreign affairs, information security, and digital spatial history. Long Roman Empire, sometimes even the Komnenoi. British Academy International Postdoctoral Fellow @ University of Exeter. 🇨🇦

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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 14/05/2026
One of these days I am going to write a comparative piece on heterodox movements on the fringes of empire starring the Paulicians, Bogomils, Kharijites, and early medieval papacy.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
No, but someone might have a Dropbox copy here www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/328nl...
dropbox.com
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 21/04/2026
It has been an amazing last few months for stuff coming out of the Fatimid ports of al-Sham, with that and also this: www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....
tandfonline.com
‘The Franks, may God forsake them’: a Fatimid government document from 1109 about skirmishes in the Levant
This article offers an edition, translation, and analysis of a newly discovered Fatimid document preserved in the Cairo Geniza, a report by a Fatimid official in Tyre in the early summer of 1109, j...
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
I had fun yesterday giving a paper at the 'Plant Lives: Sacred Interdependencies in the Arts of the Americas' conference at Yale.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 12/04/2026
It's fun but hardly uncommon to find some Gothic names in late sixth-century Italy, but I had to do a double-taken when I saw a Mithridates.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 07/04/2026
Not 30 minutes ago I was reading her piece in the Frankopan/Shepard and was thinking of dropping her a message about it... :(
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American Society of Church History @aschurchhistory.bsky.social · 22/03/2026
Today's featured title: "The Sons of St Augustine: Art and Memory in the Augustinian Churches of Central Italy, 1256–1370," by Kristztina Ilko, Oxford University Press, 2026 @academic.oup.com @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social global.oup.com/academic/pro...
"The Sons of St Augustine: Art and Memory in the Augustinian Churches of Central Italy, 1256–1370," by Kristztina Ilko, Oxford University Press, 2026
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
That's what I love about it. Just some extra sketchy Photian icing on the cake.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/03/2026
One of my favourite historical moments took place on 5 November 869 when Peter the Monk from Rome was called before the Fourth Council of Constantinople for signing Photios' documents and his defense is, "What, me? There are lots of monks named Peter from Rome. Could have been anyone, really."
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Check mates!
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
It's day like this when I regret not spending an afternoon downloading and sorting the entire Acta Sanctorum.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
It's a haunting, brilliant book. He's a great writer. After I read it, I was really annoyed to see a bunch of reviews that were basically, "America isn't actually like this," by a bunch of people who never leave their coastal enclaves.
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 19/03/2026
Pretty amazing to see The Guardian reporting on my article winning the Medieval Academy of America's Article Prize in Critical Race Studies and on medieval chess' potential to reveal a vision of equality and mutual respect! Link in the first comment.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 16/03/2026
Update on the dire situation of classics in Canada antigonejournal.com/2026/03/clas...
antigonejournal.com
The Situation of Classics at the University of Ottawa and in Canada
GEOFFREY GREATREX The current crises in Canada
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 13/03/2026
Knowing how the empire works, I'm guessing that the "relocation" is to a concentration camp in Louisiana, or maybe a CIA black site in Kuwait? So many options!
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Antiquité | Religions | Classics - Ottawa @antrelclaottawa.bsky.social · 07/03/2026
Un plateau de jeu romain découvert aux Pays-Bas. buff.ly/vKaG5iM #Antiquité #HistoireAncienne #HistoireRomaine #archéologie
buff.ly
Grâce aux traces d’usure sur un plateau de jeu antique et à l’IA, des archéologues ont pu établir qu’il s’agissait d’un jeu de blocage romain et reconstituer ses règles
Des chercheurs ont utilisé l’intelligence artificielle pour analyser un plateau de jeu romain découvert à Coriovallum, dans l’actuelle Heerlen, aux Pays-Bas. Une simulation par IA a permis de…
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 06/03/2026
The whole meeting is actually just a black screen and then some prof at retirement age who got their job decades ago with the promise of a 4-page article in a local bulletin comes on and tells you everything is fine and to keep on trying.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 24/02/2026
I know that I'm one of those digital humanities scholars, but I have zero faith in digital archiving or computers being a way to preserve information over the long term. If Cambridge(!) can't keep Richard Talbert's Tabula Peutingeriana thing alive, what hope does anything else have?
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 22/02/2026
What a review! I hadn't seen that before, but at least now I have a guess as to the sort of person who wrote the "works" section on the Wikipedia page for Theodore of Mopsuestia, constantly bemoaning the churchman's lack of style.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
I keep hearing that the Iranian regime's grip is weak, but the lesson from Justinian is that if you tell the security forces to murder the people who complain about you and they do it, maybe you're really not all that weak?
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/02/2026
Thanks! Part 2 will be out on the blog next week (and the whole article is open-access on Archive.org).
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
sites.exeter.ac.uk/medievalstud...
sites.exeter.ac.uk
Byzantine beacons, part 1: geography
In the first of two posts, Lucas McMahon explores the legendary Byzantine optical telegraph, and asks a simple question: could it have worked?
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 18/02/2026
Empires are only as strong as their communication systems. If you're curious how the Romans in the ninth century operated a telegraph that sent messages across 700km from the frontier to Constantinople, the first part of my work on this is now on the Exeter Medieval Studies blog. Link in next post
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 14/02/2026
I will be giving a paper at the History of Liturgy seminar at the IHR in London at 5.30pm on Monday, 16 Feb. Link for in-person and Zoom registration in the first comment. 👇
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
Probably a little too late for most people's conception of Rome, but an excellent recent piece by Phil Booth on coerced naval service *against* Rome (paywalled, sadly): academic.oup.com/book/60715/c...
academic.oup.com
Romans, Egyptians, and the Second Arab Siege of Constantinople (717/18)
Abstract. Against a background of discussions around the afterlife of the Byzantine empire in the emergent Islamic caliphate, this chapter explores the def
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
How to write historical GIS: a: include the minimum technical detail that an expert needs to reproduce your work. Non-GIS reviewers complain it's not detailed enough b: fill 20pp explaining how everything works in detail. No space left for historical argumentation. Reviewers complain it's too long
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Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 10/02/2026
The next History of Liturgy Seminar is in London @ihr.bsky.social on Monday 16 Feb 17.30. The award-winning @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social on The Augustinian Friars & their Liturgical Cult of Saint Augustine. In-person (chat! drinks! people!) or online: www.history.ac.uk/news-events/... #medievalsky
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 08/02/2026
Proofs!
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Mike McCulloch 🇨🇦 @vancitymike.com · 08/02/2026
look, if we don't stand up for Canada Post, governments of the future will claim transit organizations need to be profitable, and hospitals need to be profitable, and schools need to be profitable, and they'll chop up as much of the public trust as they can and sell it to their friends for nothing.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
www.cbc.ca/news/politic...
cbc.ca
ANALYSIS | U.S. interest in Alberta separatism raises red flags over what might come next | CBC News
Communications between the Trump administration and Alberta's separatist movement raised alarm at the highest levels in Canada last week. It also raised questions about Washington's possible intention...
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 05/02/2026
Only a determined course of nation-building backed up with a nuclear arsenal will stave off the American threat. Carney will deliver neither, regardless of how tough he talks.
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Geoffrey Greatrex @otavano.bsky.social · 01/02/2026
Now it is at the University of Calgary that Classics & Medieval studies are threatened. Please sign the petition : c.org/WrCPMhK2rm
c.org
Can you spare a minute to help this campaign?
Save Classics and Medieval Studies at the University of Calgary!
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Dr. Jeroen W.P. Wijnendaele @drdragases.bsky.social · 02/02/2026
Once more unto the breach dear friends, once more. Please consider signing and sharing this petition to help saving the major in Greek and Roman Studies and the major in Ancient and Medieval History at University of Calgary.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 30/01/2026
Send the Americanists and The Chief Enabler back to their hell south of the border.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Right-click on an entry to get the "Create bibliography" window, and then below the "citation styles" box there's a blue button that says "manage styles". You can click on that and then below there's another blue line that says "get additional styles".
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
By fine, I mean "fine by the standards of 2026", which is a pretty low bar.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
Took me a few minutes to figure out why Zotero was putting out weird citations after the last update. Clicked it back to Chicago 16th and it was fine.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/01/2026
I really hope that when you become military archbishop they give you one of those armoured hats.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 19/01/2026
Still surprised that he said anything. Carney has avoided the issue despite Canadian troops being there right now on a NORAD exercise. By not standing with the Europeans, we're not going to get their help when we need them as a tripwire in defense of Canadian sovereignty.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 18/01/2026
Somewhere in the Pentagon right now a nameless logistics officer is furiously calculating how many overflowing port-a-potties fit in a C-5 in case Greenland is invaded and Germany decides to turn off the water and power at Ramstein. It will be the most emblematic airlift of our times.
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 02/01/2026
With the first copy of The Sons of St Augustine!
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 29/12/2025
My heart is with a different article that came out this year, but I am pleased to have pulled off a citation of Tolkien's 'Return of the King' as if it was some sort of source. archive.org/details/DOP7...
archive.org
Signaling Empire between the Abbasid-Byzantine Frontier and Constantinople: Investigation on the Ninth-Century Long-Distance Optical Telegraph : McMahon, Lucas : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming :...
Lucas McMahon, Signaling Empire between the Abbasid-Byzantine Frontier and Constantinople: Investigation on the Ninth-Century Long-Distance Optical...
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Levi Roach @proflroach.bsky.social · 15/12/2025
To Wien! To the Institut für Mittelalterforschung!
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Queens' College, Cambridge @queens.cam.ac.uk · 12/12/2025
Queens' JRF (@camhistory.bsky.social) @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social's new book, The Sons of St Augustine, challenges major assumptions about the medieval Catholic Church and early Renaissance. Read more about her publication on our website, and the Cambridge University press release.
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 12/12/2025
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Krisztina Ilko @drkrisztinailko.bsky.social · 11/12/2025
Wild medieval saints! 🔥🔥🔥 Dragons and miraculously sprouting cherry twigs. An evil walnut tree growing above the tomb of Nero. For these and much more in my book, 'The Sons of St Augustine' (OUP), I am delighted to share the wonderful media release that Cambridge published this morning:
cam.ac.uk
Dragon-slaying saints performed green-fingered medieval miracles, new study reveals
Pope Leo XIV's Augustinian order once performed green-fingered, dragon-slaying miracles. Dr Krisztina Ilko rediscovers their lives and wild power base
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
You could also read www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.... tl;dr: Byzantine advice to crusaders on routes being do as I say, don't do as I.
tandfonline.com
Avoiding Konya: How to go to the Holy Land in the Twelfth Century
How Byzantine armies reached Syria in the twelfth century has attracted much less attention than the long and arduous journeys made by European crusaders. While they had less distance to cover, muc...
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 02/12/2025
At every Byzantinist Event we have a moment of reflection for our colleagues who fell into error and now study the west.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 21/11/2025
“The fault lies with your leadership, elected by you.” He's not entirely wrong - that leadership has spent decades cosy-ing up the Americans, with predictably disastrous results.
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Lucas McMahon @chrysoboullon.bsky.social · 20/11/2025
Recently submitted an article on the eleventh century. Like all good things written on the eleventh century, it: 1: does not allude to Psellos; 2: does not cite Psellos; 3: does not even mention Psellos.
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