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Roger Pearse

@rogerpearse.bsky.social
875 followers 233 following 1.1K posts

Patristics, texts & transmissions, ancient history. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog

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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
Some open-access Greek stuff leads to an interesting French court judgement - that the *text* of a critical edition of an ancient or medieval author cannot be copyright as there is no "authorial intention" but the opposite. Definitely true! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
The texts of critical editions under French law are not subject to copyright?
An interesting post on Twitter by Gregory Crane of the Perseus project leads to some interesting finds: The Scaife viewer build on work by @PonteIneptique. It would be easy to import the texts into…
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Jon Hawke @archaeohawke.bsky.social · 25/09/2026
#FrescoFriday Fragment of a Roman fresco depicting Harpocrates, the god of silence in the Hellenistic religion, 2nd century AD, Sirmijum, Panonija Inferior, Serbia.
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Adam Bremer-McCollum @acbm.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
Some details and sources on the Syriac texts here:
gedsh.bethmardutho.org
Alexander Cycle
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Andy Hilkens @andyhilkens.bsky.social · 21/09/2026
brentnongbri.com/2026/09/21/p...
brentnongbri.com
Papyri Related to the Alexander Romance
In the process of studying the Antinoopolis Charioteers papyrus, I spent some time with other papyri containing texts related to the Alexander Romance. I say “related to” the Alexander …
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Helen Gittos @helengittos.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
A complete copy of the gospel of St John written in Coptic in 1099/1100 and found in a twelfth-century burial in Naqlun, Egypt in 2002 by the Polish Centre of Archaeology. (!!) pcma.uw.edu.pl/en/2019/02/1...
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Kate Wiles @katemond.bsky.social · 11/09/2026
1066 And All That continues to be the most accurate and important work of history writing ever published
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Rutger K. 🟥 @anotheraspirin.bsky.social · 09/09/2026
Out of nowhere - or to celebrate finishing the proofs of my book - here's a public appreciation message for @rogerpearse.bsky.social and his blog at www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/. So much good stuff there, from musings & analyses to simply sharing data. Including on Saint Nicholas. Thanks for that!
roger-pearse.com
Roger Pearse
Thoughts on Antiquity, Patristics, putting things online, information access, and more
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 07/09/2026
A bunch of useful translations from Luke J. Stevens - ps.Jerome, Dionysius bar Salibi, Gregory of Elvira, Victorinus of Poetovio, and the anon "De decem virginibus". www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
Translations at Luke J. Stevens
Luke J. Stevens is an independent researcher who is publishing interesting material in the JTS, JECS and other significant journals.  Thankfully this is all accessible through his personal website,…
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Kevin Wilbraham @kpw1453.bsky.social · 06/09/2026
The ‘Colchester Sphinx’ which was found in the garden of the General Hospital at Colchester in 1821. Dating to the 1st century AD, the sculpture was probably part of a tomb. Now part of the collections at Colchester Castle. #StoneworkSunday #Colchester #RomanBritain
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 05/09/2026
Reorganising my shelves, and a problem. How do you shelve a series of normal paperback novels where the author changed publisher, so that the last three are in the larger trade paperback size? (Other than curse, and silentlywish upon them the torments of the abyss?)
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 03/09/2026
Pierius, the biblical exegete, the "Origen the Younger" - did he in fact sacrifice to the pagan gods in the persecution of Diocletian? www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
Did Pierius sacrifice?
The Acts of St Phileas record the events of 305 AD during the Great Persecution under Diocletian.  An ancient Latin translation exists, but in the 20th century two Greek versions of the Acts were d…
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HMML @visithmml.bsky.social · 31/08/2026
🧵(1) August 30 was the feast day of Takla Hāymānot, perhaps the most famous Ethiopian saint, also venerated by the Coptic Church. An account of his life was translated from Ge‘ez into Arabic. While numerous texts were translated from Arabic into Ge‘ez, this is the only known case of the reverse.
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Chuck Jones @chuckjones.bsky.social · 30/08/2026
ancientworldonline.blogspot.com/2026/08/corp...
ancientworldonline.blogspot.com
Corpus Numericum Gemmorum Antiquorum
Corpus Numericum Gemmorum Antiquorum   Dans l'Antiquité, les pierres précieuses et semi-précieuses furent largement appréciées pour leurs...
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Critical Texts @criticaltexts.bsky.social · 28/08/2026
Nearly 3 years after the British Library cyberattack, images of its Greek New Testament manuscripts are slowly returning online—and the restored images are now available under public domain. What's back, what’s still missing, and what can we learn from the recovery? criticaltexts.com/nearly-3-yea...
criticaltexts.com
Nearly Three Years After the British Library Cyberattack: What Happened to Its Greek New Testament Manuscripts?
On October 28, 2023, one of the world’s most important research libraries effectively disappeared from the internet. The attack was not a temporary outage: it crippled the British Library’s digital…
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Digital Scholarship @ British Library @bldigischol.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
Reaffirming the British Library's commitment to making metadata as open as possible: Sharing British Library open metadata with our communities: www.bl.uk/about/governance/policies…
bl.uk
Sharing British Library Open Metadata with Our Communities
This policy reaffirms the British Library's commitment to making metadata as open as possible.
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Following Hadrian @followinghadrian.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
#ReliefWednesday - The Chatsworth Relief shows Praetorian soldiers with containers of unpaid debt records. Hadrian's early reforms included cancelling personal debts to the imperial fiscus and Senate treasuries, and forgiving 900 million sesterces in unpaid taxes accumulated over fifteen years.
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
Apologies if you are late antiquity and I have not followed you back. My notifications are drowning in aggressively political accounts and it makes it hard to see real people.
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 26/08/2026
So you want to be a hermit? Where do you stash your slave? A fascinating article on ascetic life in late antiquity. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
Can you, must you for your own safety, keep a slave if you are an ascetic and renounce all your possessions?
A truly interesting and very well-written article has appeared in Early Medieval History this month.  Fortunately it is open-access.  The article is T. Dailey & Justin Piggott, “Ascetics, slave…
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Tobias Wilson-Bates @phdhurtbrain.bsky.social · 21/08/2026
James Bond: you think I haven’t faced death before? Supervillain: oh, I don’t expect you to die, Mr. Bond. I expect you to suffer. *opens travel funding reimbursement software I think you will find your motorboat rental and casino reservations especially complex James Bond: no. no. pls kill me
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 24/08/2026
It's August so let's have some pseudo-history. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
A new modern apocryphon – Scott Wolter and the “Yeshua Scroll in the Green Jar”
Modern apocrypha are fun!  You know the sort of thing – things like the Archko Volume, or the Aquarian Gospel, or any one of a hundred or a thousand similar items.  They’re all modern, …
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 17/08/2026
Let's get sceptical. Did Ussher really find a missing chunk of a letter quoted by Bede? www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
A missing chunk of Pope Vitalian’s Letter to King Oswiu about Easter?
In Bede’s Ecclesiastical History book 3 chapter 29, he quotes a letter from Pope Vitalian to the Anglo-Saxon King Oswiu, encouraging him to adopt the new simpler Roman calculation of the date…
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 15/08/2026
8 pages are all that has reached us of the Coptic encomium on St Colluthus delivered by Bp. Phoebammon in the early 6th century. Here's an English translation of them. Apparently an unpublished complete Arabic text exists in the British Library... www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
The encomium of Phoebammon on St Colluthus
There are two long encomia / eulogies on St Colluthus.  The first of these exists in English already.  The second, by Bishop Phoebammon or Phoibamon, acting as deputy in the 6th century for the exi…
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 13/08/2026
Not every academic preface is dreary. Here's one enthusiastically explaining why we should read those awful Coptic Martyrdoms. Yes, really. Rather inspirational. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
So why should we edit Coptic martyrdoms anyway? The CSCO editor replies.
I’ve started to look at the modern critical edition of the texts around St Colluthus.  This was printed a decade ago  in 2013 in the Corpus Scriptorum Christianorum Orientalium (CSCO) volume …
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
Do you need a copyright-free theological work for your research that has not yet been digitized? You can request a digital copy of such a volume free of charge via the IxTheo "Digitization on Demand" service. Further information and order form in the link below.
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 12/08/2026
The Coptic Martyrdom of St Colluthus (d. 314) - new and "improved" version (with added miracles!) www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
The Martyrdom of St Colluthus - Second Version
St Colluthus was a Coptic physician who was tried and executed in 314 AD.  This was part of the great persecution of Christians ordered by the emperor Diocletian.  The original court record survives, ...
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
An enthusiast has translated Harnack's reconstruction of Marcion's "Gospel" and "Apostle" into English. Free download! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
An English translation of Harnack's reconstruction of Marcion's gospel
An interesting email this morning from W. C. Muenchow IV of truetestament.org: I'm writing to let you know about ... the first complete English translation of Adolf von Harnack's textual reconstruct...
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Scott McDonough @sjmcdonough.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
His painting of the arch is really lovely too. It appears Svoboda made several of the same subject, with some changes in the foreground.
Image of arched ruin on flat plain.
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Scott McDonough @sjmcdonough.bsky.social · 09/08/2026
I've never seen Alexander Svoboda's photos of the Ṭāq Kasrā Sasanian Palace at al-Madāʾin, Iraq. Taken before the 1887–88 collapse of the north half of its east façade. Really spectacular. #Sasanian
View of East façade of the Sasanian palace Ṭāq Kasrā at al-Madāʾin, Iraq. Sepiatone photo with huge central arch flanked by multiple level arched arcades.View of south side of Sasanian palace Ṭāq Kasrā at al-Madāʾin, Iraq. Sepiatone photo showing with massive barrel vault.
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ariel @toomuchpiano.bsky.social · 10/08/2026
i mean in my (limited) experience in Arabic studies, it’s usually a matter of tracking down some scholarly work about the text in question; even if they’re working from the original, they’ll usually point out the best edition and a translation of it exists
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New-Cleckit Dominie @ncdominie.bsky.social · 28/07/2026
I am politely asking web designers, in the thrice-accursed name of Nyarlathotep the Crawling Chaos, to stop taking stuff that is easy to use and replacing it with shinier stuff that's not. Thank you in advance. If you don't comply then I shall descend upon you in the darkness and consume your soul.
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Scott D. Hendricks 📜🪶🪔 @scottdhendricks.bsky.social · 02/08/2026
Galen, , Ioannis Polemis, Sophia Xenophontos, and Sophia Xenophontos. 2023. <i>›on Avoiding Distress‹ and ›on My Own Opinions‹</i>. Berlin: De Gruyter. doi.org/10.1515/9783....
doi.org
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G. Willow Wilson @gwillow.me · 03/08/2026
There is no version of yourself you could become that would satisfy the people who hate you. So you might as well be who you are.
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Nina Willburger @drnwillburger.bsky.social · 31/07/2026
Mammoth remains revealed in Bulgaria after Danube water levels hit record low. 🦣 www.reuters.com/business/env...
Two large mammoth teeth partly exposed in muddy ground, showing layered enamel ridges and brown sediment around them.
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Kenneth F. Duggan 🇨🇦 @kfduggan.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
I discovered during my PhD that there are academics who like to take MA and PhD students' work and use it for their publications. Seeing it happen to people I know (and me!) affected my willingness to share work then and now. It's unfortunate, because academics need to share their work more often.
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 30/07/2026
You are the patriarch of Alexandria in AD 304. The persecution is raging. One of your bishops has buckled and sacrificed. Do you (1) Excommunicate him (2) Write to others to avoid him (3) Write to him and pull him back. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
A letter of Peter of Alexandria to a bishop who apostasised in the persecution under Diocletian
In the Acts of St Colluthus, which record events in May 304 AD, the persecutor Arianus attempts to get Colluthus the physician to apostasise by sacrificing to the gods. Not that Arianus, nor the emper...
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NASSCAL @nasscal.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
Added to e-Clavis: Manuscripta apocryphorum ~ Mount Sinai, Monē tēs Hagias Aikaterinēs, ar. 409 (13 c.) feat. Acts of Andrew and Matthias and several homilies on the Dormition. www.nasscal.com/manuscripta-...
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 29/07/2026
I wish it was easier to find Coptic texts. Truly. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
A few musings on Colluthus and Coptic and copyright infringement
I'm still pottering around in the Coptic martyrology area, especially with regard to the Great Persecution of the church under Diocletian.  I have  a translation of another version of the Acts of St C...
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Patrick J. Burns @diyclassics.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
Why not rely on an LLM for Latin vocabulary list generation? Some thoughts here on explainable/interpretable (computational) philology... exploratoryphilology.org/posts/introd...
exploratoryphilology.org
Introducing… LatinCy Vocab – Exploratory Philology Blog
Introducing LatinCy Vocab, a Python package and spaCy component that turns plaintext Latin into pedagogically-aware, well-formatted vocabulary lists.
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 27/07/2026
A Roman trial of a Christian in 304 AD - a literal transcription in English of court proceedings in the persecution under Diocletian. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
The trial of St Colluthus ca. 304 AD - a literal transcription of the court proceedings
St Colluthus was tried and executed in the Great Persecution ordered by the emperor Diocletian, in May 304.  Unusually we have a near-exact transcript of his appearance before the Roman provincial gov...
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Nicole Oesterreich @noester.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Finally, the new #Ge'ez grammar from Stefan Weninger is out! This should replace the old Dillmann grammar.
Orange book cover of Stefan Weningers Grammatik der altäthiopischen Sprache from Harrasowitz with an image of an ancient Fidel manuscript.
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UCD Archives @ucdarchives.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
If anyone is considering editing something from our collections, we will happily supply a digital copy at no cost. Please contact Kate (archives at ucd dot ie).
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Helen Day @lbflyawayhome.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
Other work of the Ladybird artists. ‘Eastbourne’ (circa 1950) Artist: Ronald Lampitt
View looking down on a very crowded beach, filled with people doing normal beachy things. The road is equally packed with colourful cars that look like Matchbox toys
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 25/07/2026
A 1973 academic book which could be better! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
From my diary
A book arrived through the post yesterday: E.A.E. Reymond & J.W.B. Barns, Four Martyrdoms from the Pierpont Morgan Coptic Codices, Oxford (1973). This contains the martyrdom of St Colluthus, plus an E...
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
English translation of two medieval Coptic miracle stories from the martyrium of St Colluthus. Not very interesting, but the first items to reach Europe from the White Monastery. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
Two miracle stories of St Colluthus from the White Monastery
As I wrote earlier, the first pages - parchment - to arrive in Europe from the library White Monastery at Sohag in Egypt were leaves of a life of the incredibly obscure St Colluthus (or Coluthus), con...
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
Gorgeous papyrus from 200-300 AD showing a verb table! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
A 3rd century papyrus conjugating γράφω in the indicative
Here is a truly fascinating item.  It's a leaf of papyrus from Oxyrhynchus.  On it, someone has drawn out a table of the forms of the Greek verb γράφω ("I write")! Here's a splendid image of the verso...
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philologistgrc.bsky.social @philologistgrc.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
First pass at supporting Classical Persian: selections of the Shahnameh from Pizzi 1883. work of @farnooshamsian finally starts to surface. tinyurl.com/5n8yfh9v
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 24/07/2026
A gorgeous papyrus, showing a schoolboy drawing out the forms of a Greek verb! www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
A 3rd century papyrus conjugating γράφω in the indicative
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Roman Sites @romansites.bsky.social · 22/07/2026
Inscription to Sol Invictus at Corbridge near #HadriansWall. Dedicated by a detachment of the VI Legion under Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, governor of Britannia 162-168 CE. First line defaced c. 193 CE. Details in ALT text. 📷my own 2012 #RomanBritain (Repost with corrected dates).
Although not a full legionary fortress, Corbridge (Coria), an important town and supply base just south of Hadrian's Wall, hosted a temporary detachment (vexillatio) from one or two legions - including the VI Legion Victrix Pia Fidelis (Victorious, Loyal, Faithful). 

The text reads: 
SOLI‣INVICTO (defaced) 
VEXILLATIO 
LEG‣VI‣VIC‣P‣F‣F‣ 
SVB‣CVRA‣SEX‣ 
CALPVRN͡I‣AGRICO 
LAE‣LEG‣AVG‣PR‣PR 

Translation (from RIB 1137) reads: 

To the Invincible Sun-god a detachment of the Sixth Legion Victrix Pia Fidelis set this up under the charge of Sextus Calpurnius Agricola, emperor’s propraetorian legate.
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Nathan Melson @nsmelson.bsky.social · 21/07/2026
I did this years ago on Twitter, but, here's a list of tools/utilities that every medievalist show know about and have bookmarked: #medievalsky
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Roger Pearse @rogerpearse.bsky.social · 20/07/2026
Another synaxarion entry for St Colluthus. www.roger-pearse.com/weblog/2026/...
roger-pearse.com
St Colluthus again, from a different Synaxarion
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