The only one whom I would honour - not for birth or rank, but for intellect, virtue and merit. For what I consider pretz, valor e cortesia (and a damn good sense of humour, too).

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For my Emperor:
( Hymns to Helios Apollo… )

I am off down to the new billet for a few days from Monday (job interview, and my Classics teacher's funeral), but on Monday itself, as always, I shall be holding in my heart the fact it is the anniversary of my Emperor's death. Amusingly, in the Whovian universe, it's also the date of the Crack in the Universe (which I used in my fanfic Emperor & ( Read more... )

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The tower on the left in the 15C painting is the north tower of Notre Dame de Paris.

( If you know the Victor Hugo novel... (click to read on) )

Here's an interesting article on the truly alarming Parabolani, one of the inspirations (besides the Dominicans and the 15C Florentine friar Savonarola) for the 'Sparrows'. (If you've ever seen the film Agora, despite some inaccuracies, it shows up the Parabolani and their odious master, Archbishop Cyril ( Read more... )

Interesting tip on lapis lazuli ( Read more... )

Julian writes to the Jewish community.
What a difference to the history of Europe and the Middle East could have been made…

His view of their religion was:they revere a god who is truly most powerful and most good and governs this world of sense, and, as I well know, is worshipped by us also under other names. They act as is right and seemly, in ( Read more... )

The Dolorous Blow.

Yeats:
I sing what was lost and dread what was won,
I walk in a battle fought over again,
My king a lost king, and lost soldiers my men;
Feet to the Rising and Setting may run,
They always beat on the same small stone.

Fitzgerald/Omar:I sometimes think that never blows so red ( Read more... )

Flavius Claudius Julianus:
We ought to share our goods with all men, but most of all with the respectable, the helpless, and the poor, so that they have at least the essentials of life. I claim, even though it may seem paradoxical, that it is a holy deed to share our clothes and food with the wicked: we give, not to their moral character but to ( Read more... )