iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 30/09/2026

The local town council's parking meter enforcement Cockatoo is not impressed and he will mess up your car if you don’t pay for your parking.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 28/09/2026

First proofs of the forthcoming book have arrived in my email inbox from Bloomsbury. In classic fashion: in the middle of frantic marking and at the start of the school holidays. 🤦🏻‍♂️

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 22/09/2026

Apparently pancake printers are a thing...

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Forget spiders🕷️, snakes 🐍 and crocodiles 🐊… meet the new Australian killers. 🦆 🦆 🦆

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 03/09/2026

The stuff you read in the margins of inquisitorial denunciations: "About the duck that went to the house of the Englishmen."

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 24/08/2026

I will be on research leave next year. I am planning to visit archives and libraries France, Spain and Portugal, finish a couple of articles on the Portuguese Inquisition and work toward the completion of a book project on the Blood Libel and Ritual Murder accusation in medieval and modern Spain.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

The perils of being an early modern military reenactor:

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 11/08/2026

"Close the curtains and blinds! Close them!

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 07/08/2026

Lisbon 1575: man has a theological argument during a meal in a tavern. He anxiously returns the next day to explain some dubious statement he made about Christ and also to have another bite to eat. Is told he can "go eat dinner at the Inquisition" (a qual lhe disse que viesse gentar à Inquisição)!

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 04/08/2026

Winter morning scenes in Australia: early walk, catching the first rays of sun on the gum trees, smelling the wattle and hand feeding the rainbow lorikeet.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 29/07/2026

A reminder that AI, even the supposedly more advanced and dependable AI systems that your institution/university pushes you and your students to use will make stuff up (aka lie to you). Don't depend on it.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Australian winter: frosty mornings and hungry parrots

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

When asked by an inquisitor in sixteenth-century Lisbon why he never married, a Christian from India responded "because he wanted to see the world" (disse que elle numqua casou porque tinha tenção de ver o mundo).

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

A synopsis for the interested...

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 01/07/2026

Napoleon's secret weapon... 🦖 🦖🦖

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 25/06/2026

September 1550: the Augustinian Sebastião Toscano is denounced to the Lisbon Inquisition by scandalized churchmen for claiming in a sermon preached in the presence of the king that “after Christ no soul was more perfect in grace and virtue than that of Saint Augustin.”

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 24/06/2026

January 1537: an enslaved African named Francisco Fernandes came to the Lisbon Inquisition and accused a 15-year-old boy named Braz Caldeira of having said that he did not know whether God was present in the consecrated host. Interestingly, Francisco signed his name in his own hand.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 20/06/2026

Patiently waiting for his sunflower seeds.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 17/06/2026

12 May 1543: a husband-and-wife couple denounce Marcos Gil to the Inquisition in Lisbon for having supposedly said “by our stork” (por nossa cegonha) instead “by our lady” (por nossa senhora) when swearing a legally binding oath.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

Some snark from 1542: asked her age by the inquisitor, Ana de Leão responded that "she did not know because she did not see herself being born" (nam sabia porque nam se vyu nacer) but admitted she was probably 19, "more or less."

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 15/06/2026

That moment when someone started to talk much faster and the inquisitorial notary transcribing the oral testimony in 1542 had to shift into turbo mode.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

Another woman, this time from 1542, with strong feelings about the Inquisition. Denounced in Lisbon for having said: "f*ck the Inquisition, f*ck those in charge of it and f*ck those who brought it [to Portugal] " (respondeu: merda pera a inquisicao e pera quem a manda e pera quem a tras).

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 11/06/2026

In June 1541, a woman loses her temper during an argument over dinner. According to the different witnesses present she exclaimed alternatively “the Inquisition can drink shit!” or screw the inquisitors!" Three dinner guests denounced her to the Inquisition in Lisbon.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 09/06/2026

January 1538. A family is denounced to the Inquisition in Lisbon for remaining Jewish & keeping kosher. Evidence? The matriarch of the family refused to eat lamprey eels "because they disgust her and look like snakes." (nam comia lamprea por que tenia nojo della por lhe parecer cobra).

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

Today's anecdote from the Lisbon Inquisition probably sets a record for vindictive pettiness. In 1544 a woman is denounced because whilst giving birth she “did not call out to the Virgin Mary but to her [own] mother.”

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 05/06/2026

The huge relief that the historian (i.e. me) feels when there is a change of staff in the Inquisition and a new notary with a much more legible hand starts to record the denunciations.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 04/06/2026

Today's anecdote from the Inquisition. Pedro Alvares, a cobbler from the Algarve, is denounced on 6 April 1543 because he claimed that "if God came and pinched his stuff then he would smash a pot on [God]'s head."

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 03/06/2026

Relaxing on the University of New England campus. 🦘

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 29/05/2026

17 September 1550: Englishman John Simons get read the riot act by the Inquisitors in Lisbon for having eaten a chicken on a fasting day, causing local people to denounce him and others to the Inquisition, thereby wasting the Inquisition's time.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

And here is someone in 1558 whose nickname was "ball head" (O Cabeca de Bola), probably due to the shape of their head.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 27/05/2026

Let's hear it for the unnamed man denounced to the Inquisition of Lisbon for blasphemy on 14 December 1537 and whom history will only remember because of their nickname: "stuffed bread" (pão relheno, perhaps because of their corpulence? Or because of their fondness for that food?)

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

He's fussy but the picture of the seeds on the box looks tasty enough, however.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 20/05/2026

Dude now lands on the drying line and looks into the kitchen forlornly until I feed him seeds. Apparently the new seed mix is not a big hit, so here I am trying to explain that there’s literally a picture of a King Parrot on it!

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 17/05/2026

A very French event: surely the only world championship race where you get to eat the participants? 🐌🏁🍽️

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 11/05/2026

One of the semi-feral cats in my parents' village in France (they've named this one "Filou", i.e. rascal), enjoying some downtime over the well in their garden.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 10/05/2026

It's been a very good year for pomegranates in northern NSW and we left a few on the tree for the parrots and other birds.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 04/05/2026

Interesting visitor outside my bedroom window: an Australian Saunders' case moth or the large bagworm (Metura elongatus). The caterpillars build elaborate, durable shelters with twigs which they carry around for up to two years before pupating.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 27/04/2026

It's official now. I have just signed the contract with Bloomsbury for my next book "Inquisition, Slavery and Transing Gender in Renaissance Portugal. The Trial of Antonio, alias Vitoria" and the manuscript is now with the press.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 21/04/2026

Seville, 1743: the Spanish Inquisition investigates because flower-seller N. Lorenzo has a tattoo of Jesus Christ on his right arm along with word "Carajo" (trans. fu*k) written under it. Sacrilege, unfortunate juxtaposition or just poor taste? ES.28079.AHN/1.1.11.6.1.9//INQUISICIÓN,3733,Exp.343

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 20/04/2026

No one expects... the Spanish Inquisition game.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 07/04/2026

Isaac Asimov, writing in 1957, was strangely prescient about the debates regarding the impact of AI on intellectual work.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 03/04/2026

For my sins, the FB algorithm has decided that NSW police will threaten me in Portuguese from now on.

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 26/03/2026

Another fascinating anecdote from the archives of the Portuguese Inquisition. The Inquisition and ⚽🏐

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

Wow, that's impressively illegible! But at least you have the whole document! 😜

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 23/03/2026

A big shout out to the scholars of medieval and early modern European paleography who not only mastered difficult scripts but then wrote instruction manuals for their successors. Real heroes! In my case Borges Nunes and their 1981 Abreviaturas Paleográficas Portuguesas. archive.org/details/nune...

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 19/03/2026

Australia does dramatic sunrises very well (Armidale, NSW).

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 18/03/2026

I do like the fact that a Spanish archivist's unfortunate error means that it is a matter of record that the Spanish Inquisition was arresting people from Molong in regional New South Wales, Australia, over a decade before the arrival of the First Fleet.

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