A curious tale about the burial of St Peter – a fake by Leo the Great?

Headbanger websites can be very frustrating.  You know the sort of thing — the sort of website that eagerly recounts how the Fathers of the Church boasted of being liars, how Mithras had 12 disciples and was born of a virgin (sic), and so on. But they can also be a joy, for they can […]

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From my diary

‘Twas Christmas Eve in the workhouse …  and I’m still busy even as late as this. I’ve been reading John Carey’s “Down with dons” (PDF) with great enjoyment this evening.  Written in 1975, it accurately predicts many of the disasters of the coming decades.  I love the way that it depicts the Oxford University establishment.  Indeed […]

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A visit to the Verulamium Museum

A dinner engagement took me to St Albans this evening.  The road-widening on the M25 caused me to go early; and a look at my own Mithras site revealed that the Verulamium Museum there had some Mithraic items.  I took my mobile phone, paid for parking, then admission, and wandered in. The museum didn’t place […]

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From my diary

There’s quite a lot going on in my world at the moment.  Too much, indeed, for me to keep on top of it all. Firstly, I’ve been asked to write a paper for an academic volume.  As I am not an academic, this is quite unusual; the explanation, perhaps, is that the subject is an intractable […]

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From my diary

I’ve asked a colleague to translate for us Leontius of Byzantium, Adversus fraudes Apollinistarum (Against the forgeries of the Apollinarists) (CPG 6817, PG 86, col. 1948-1976).  This is fourteen and a half columns of Migne, and may well be interesting.  The circulation of banned works under other names was an inevitable consequence of the intolerance […]

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From my diary

I’m afraid the sickliness of the current season has interfered quite a bit with my ability to do anything other than work and sneeze! But I still have several projects going forward.  Eusebius’ Commentary on Luke is progressing – a third chunk arrived this week and I reviewed it yesterday.  Likewise the translation of a […]

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From my diary

I’ve been looking at some of the entries for Syria in the CIMRM, the collection of all Mithraic monuments and inscriptions.  In particular the two altars at Sia have drawn my attention.  One is easy enough to deal with — I have a photo from the original publication, plus another from the web. But the […]

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From my diary

I have been collecting images of Mithraic monuments from the web and identifying them, and adding them to my Mithras site.  It’s fun; and there are more to do. I’ve also written a short section in the site on Mithras and the Taurobolium.  Did the cultists of Mithras perform the taurobolium, a ceremony of being […]

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Finding interesting things at the Christies web-site

Few of us will be aware that there are good quality images of past sale objects on the website of Christie’s, the fine art dealers.  But an accident took me there this evening, and I found half a dozen objects relating to Mithras, which had been sold over the last 20 years.  There were photographs […]

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