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New publication: François Soyer, The Gran Complicidad and the Spanish Empire (1635–1649) in The Encyclopedia of Jews in Latin America, Brill, 2026. DOI: 10.1163/2950-5860_EJLA_SIM_088253 referenceworks.brill.com/display/entr...

referenceworks.brill.com

The Gran Complicidad and the Spanish Empire (1635–1649)

"The Gran Complicidad and the Spanish Empire (1635–1649)" published on by Brill.

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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 · 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 · 28/09/2026

I like to fill the intervals between big book projects with smaller book projects! 😄

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

That's the next book project. It's well under way and I am planning to finish it by the end of next year. 🙂

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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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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 25/09/2026

Cannot tell you how much I hate this & how ashamed & angry I am that @ukri.org have taken this step. We KNOW this sort of gAI is socially biased, we KNOW it favours slopAI output over human-written. Our research landscape is falling apart due to underfunding, & they do this? it's *appalling*

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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 · 22/09/2026

Apparently pancake printers are a thing...

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Stephanie Porras @periodeye.bsky.social · 08/09/2026

Extremely excited to announce an article co-authored by myself and Aaron Hyman on the visual and material cultures of Dutch piracy in the early modern Caribbean is now out in Renaissance quarterly @rsaorg.bsky.social , and open access! www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/...

journals.uchicago.edu

Recasting the Silver Fleet, or The Propaganda of Piracy in the Dutch Caribbean | Renaissance Quarterly: Vol 79, No 3

In 1628, the Dutch West India Company captured a Spanish silver fleet off the shore of Cuba. A broadside by Claes Jansz Visscher (1587–1652) celebrated the event, illustrating the battle and providing...

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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

Some naughty Englishmen were accused of eating a roast duck on a fast day by neighbours who suspected they were Protestants. The Inquisition investigated, turns out it was a roast chicken rather than a duck and they got a slap on the wrist for being impious as eating on a fast day is hardly heresy.

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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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Dr. Nick Posegay @nposegay.northsky.social · 25/08/2026

This is a 12th-century list of property that a fabulously wealthy Egyptian Jewish woman is bringing into her marriage (and what she's owed in case of divorce). Items include a gold tiara (80 dinars), a crystal rooster (4 dinars), a Chinese pen set (13 dinars), and 250(!) dinars' worth of books.

A single dark brown paper manuscript leaf that's been folded into quadrants. Approximately 30 lines of Judaeo-Arabic text in black ink is spread between 2 columns. The leaf sits on a blue background next to a yellow label reading T-S J1.29 (https://cudl.lib.cam.ac.uk/view/MS-TS-J-00001-00029/1)

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

Thank you. Looks very interesting!

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

Let me know if there are any relevant conferences in Europe during this period that I might have missed!

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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 · 14/08/2026

Feel free to email: fsoyer@une.edu.au Happy to help if I can.

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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 · 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 · 08/08/2026

A new breakfast-time friend.

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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 · 07/08/2026

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Jesse Locker @jessemlocker.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Peer review [“Le Manuel des Péchés” (Handbook of Sins), late thirteenth century, University of Nottingham fol. 48r.]

Two grumpy-looking demons show a list of sins to a miserable-looking guy on his deathbed

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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 · 24/07/2026

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Dr Vanessa @hpsvanessa.bsky.social · 18/07/2026

"don't cite what you haven't read" remains the basic entry level academic responsibility; & if your discpline "doesn't have that as a norm" then sorry, your discipline needs reforming for this new world. Citations are structural parts of trust and knowledge building, not trinkets or optional extras

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Francois Soyer @fsoyer.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

Amid the 2026 World Cup excitement, let's remember Monty Python's Germany vs Greece International Philosophy World Cup Final www.youtube.com/watch?v=i21O...

youtube.com

Germany vs Greece International Philosophy FINAL

YouTube video by Radu O

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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 · 25/06/2026

Claiming that Saint Augustine was the most perfect soul in grace and virtue after Christ would be deemed highly scandalous (and potentially suspect of heresy) because it directly suggests that Augustine possessed a greater abundance of grace and virtue than the Mother of God.

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

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

A marginal note records that he was personally reprimanded by the Inquisitor General Prince-Cardinal Henrique.

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

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

A marginal note records that he was personally reprimanded by the Inquisitor General Prince-Cardinal Henrique.

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

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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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Dr Ellie Mackin Roberts @elliemackinroberts.net · 23/06/2026

I am once again begging universities to realise that staff - academic, professional services, estates, all of them - are the product they are trying to sell. Without staff there is nothing to sell. No amount of flashy buildings will replace staff in universities. UKHE is in freefall.

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