Alex > Recent Status Updates

"We are told that Justinian was already preparing to flee when Theodora stiffened his spine: ‘The purple makes a fine winding sheet,’ she is reported to have said. But, be that as it may, the emperor now decided to fight."

"If we are to believe the narrative of Procopius’ Anecdota (the ‘Secret History’ he wrote to record the dark side of the emperor he praised so lavishly in his public works), Theodora became a celebrity on account of her sexual appetites and her willingness to indulge specialist tastes."

"At times, one can almost sense the royal frustration: Burgundian indifference to the sanctity of sworn testimony under Roman law forced Gundobad to permit the old customary practice of trial by battle. By these sorts of small steps, the world and the worldview of antiquity slowly disappeared."

"Late in his [Oroacers] reign, however, he launched a war of conquest against the Rugian king Feletheus in Noricum, destroying a petty kingdom that had existed north of the Alps for about thirty years, during which we know very little about it save that it was there."

"The fire blazed for three days, and Aspar won great praise for his commanding leadership in a crisis, personally rushing about the city with pails of water and hurling them on the flames."

"Only very late in the reign of Yazdgerd and at the start of Varahran V’s reign was there renewed persecution of Christians in Persian territory, instigated by the Christian destruction of a fire temple, but even then the open warfare that threatened to break out was avoided by both sides."

From the footnotes (I think so was the last)
"Marcellinus, whom Jerome [Migne, 27:1111] puts among the popes, probably of the time of Diocletian, is reported to have fallen away in time of persecution and sacrificed to the gods. He acknowledged his mistake in the presence of a synod of bishops who refused to sit in judgment on him on the ground that prima sedes a nemine judicatur—the primal see is judged by no one."

"In his Postills, Doc., 729 Huss said: “Jesus went aboutpreaching on foot, and did not drive about in a splendid carriage as nowadays our priests drive. I, alas, also drive about . . . and I do not know whether it will be a sufficient excuse in the future that I have not been able to cover the long distances on foot and with sufficient speed.”"

From the footnotes:
"In his Com. on Galatians, Luther spoke of the church invisible, est invisibilis habitans in Spiritu, etc., and Zwingli seems to have been the first to use both terms, in his Expos. fidei, 1531[...]. The XXXIX Articles use the term invisible. Schwane, Dogmengesch; p. 510, says: “Huss rejected the definition that the church is a visible community of believers in Christ.”"