Byzantine bother: Artifacts back in German museum after decades

A Berlin museum is celebrating the return of dozens of Byzantine artifacts, which spent years in Soviet Russia after World War Two. Some date back as far as the 4th century – yet it is their recent history that reads like a real detective story.

By the end of the war in 1945, the Byzantine collection of Berlin’s Bode Museum totaled some 6,000 objects. To save them from Soviet hands and keep them in Germany, the artifacts were divided into groups, stored in crates and spirited away.

Almost half of the hidden treasures were however found and taken to the USSR, where they stayed for over a decade.

In 1958, the gems were brought back to Germany. But instead of being identified and sent back where they belonged, they got mixed up with other artifacts and ended up in Leipzig University’s Egyptian Museum for decades.

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New Website Showcases Suffolk’s Medieval Masterpieces

This month sees the launch of a new website designed to showcase one of the most important sets of medieval wall paintings to be found in East Anglia. The Lakenheath wall paintings website is the final stage in a project designed to conserve and interpret the superb examples of medieval art. The wall paintings, all located in the church of St Mary the Virgin, Lakenheath, have recently undergone a £54,000 programme of conservation which will ensure their preservation for many years to come.

The Lakenheath Wall Paintings Project was established after it was realised that the wall paintings in the church were in dire need of conservation. Having first been uncovered in the late 19th century the paintings had been exposed to the elements for over a century and had begun to suffer a number of problems that threatened their survival. All the paintings had been damaged by historic leaks in the roof and a general build up of dirt and grime. More worryingly, certain of the medieval images were found to be actually detaching themselves from the walls upon which they were painted. Urgent conservation work was needed to stop them simply falling off the walls.

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Austria's crown jewels offer a unique insight into medieval Europe

The octagonal crown fashioned from pure gold is studded with 144 precious stones and just as many pearls yet it is a priceless artifact for other reasons
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The crown almost certainly once graced the head of the first German emperor Otto I more than 1,000 years ago. For hundreds of years it has been one of the most potent symbols of the Holy Roman Empire, the German kingdom which stretched across most of Central Europe.

Today it rests together with the other Austrian crown jewels behind reinforced glass in the Imperial Treasury or 'Schatzkammer' at the Hofburg palace in the Austrian capital Vienna.

'Around 280,000 visitors come here every year,' said Anja Priewe who works for the marketing department of the city's tourist authority. Tourists flock to see the imperial regalia but few of them take the time to look closely at particular objects.

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Professor awarded grant to research medieval philosophy

University of Scranton Professor Andrew LaZella, Ph.D., received a development intercession grant from the University for a research project focused on medieval philosopher John Duns Scotus and his analysis of some of Aristotle’s major works, especially “The Categories.” The project is titled “Univocity, Equivocity, and Proper Concepts in Duns Scotus’s Quaestiones Super Praedicamenta Aristotelis.”

Dr. LaZella, an assistant professor in philosophy, said that he researched “in the general area” of this topic for his doctoral dissertation and is excited to delve further into the subject. He said that an interesting part of this project is the difference in Scotus’ ideas in his early works compared to his later writings.

“This is a very early work of (Duns Scotus),” Dr. LaZella said. “The question becomes did he change his mind, or are the early and late works compatible?

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Countless Treasures Found in the Excavations for the Subway in Thessaloniki

Macedonians discovered a valuable treasure hid in the bowels of the earth, thanks to the methodical excavations undertaken in the construction of the Thessaloniki metro.

Many artifacts found in the excavation, from items such as gold hoops, benches, and thousands of everyday objects, up to whole churches, remnants of the glorious, long history of Thessaloniki, have come to light. The excavations were completed by the end of the year, leaving behind thousands of “mosaics” of cultures that flourished in the city.

Archaeologists are revealing a palimpsest of the city, a city that has undergone constant and continuous phases of occupation from the 4th century BC, when it was founded in Thessaloniki, until now! “In Byzantium, Thessalonica was described as the second city of Constantinople, precisely because of its extremely important historical position in the region.” They emphasized, among other things, that the general secretary of the Ministry of Culture, Lina Mendoni, spoke to the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Economic Affairs of the House, ahead of signing an additional contract to perform archaeological work. "In terms of area stations, there are mainly archaeological investigations in the order of 17,000 sq.m. In essence, speaking of the area of ​​excavation, we speak about 28,000 square meters," explained Ms. Mendoni.

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The First Crusade, by Peter Frankopan

The epic song cycles of the First Crusade, like Led Zeppelin’s debut album, plucked the same brash chord that was heard in Crusades Two, Three, Four and Five. They presented a Western view of the Byzantine Emperor, from which he never recovered, as a treacherous double-dealer, in sympathy with Islam, who knowingly encouraged up to nine-tenths of a Crusader force of 80,000 to their doom. This vitriolic portrait resounded through the centuries and was strummed in the 18th by a misled Edward Gibbon who claimed the Emperor’s widow inscribed on his tomb: “You die as you lived – an HYPOCRITE.”

Not true, says Peter Frankopan, an Oxford historian whose ambition is to restore Alexios I to his bold and rightful position, from which French and Italian chroniclers airbrushed him: as a figure who was crucial in galvanising a moribund 11th-century Europe to expand its horizons. “After more than 900 years in the gloom, Alexios should once again take centre stage in the history of the First Crusade.”

The First Crusade reshaped the medieval world. It restored the authority of a divided papacy set the course for the Reformation and is “one of the most written-about events in history”. And yet its narrative is one-sided, Frankopan argues, dominated by Western voices and by grossly over-promoted characters like the Frankish Prince Bohemond, a charismatic liability who failed three times to capture Ephesus and was not even present at the fall of Jerusalem in 1099.

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Medieval coins found in Cumbrian garden declared as 'treasure'

A hoard of more than 300 medieval silver coins unearthed in a Maryport garden has been declared as treasure.

The find was uncovered in the foundations of an old wall by workers using a digger at the property in Ellenborough.

The bulk of them are silver pennies from England of a type introduced by Edward I in the national recoinage of 1279, a series that runs through to Edward III’s reign.

Most of the English coins are pennies, although there are a number of halfpennies and farthings. There are also coins from Ireland, from the Berwick mint and coins of King Alexander of Scotland.

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Halstead: Future of medieval church secured by restoration

The future of a historic medieval church has been secured after the completion of a long-term project to structurally restore it.

St Barnabas Church, in Alphamstone, was originally built in the 14th century and is a Grade One listed building.

Churchwarden Charles Dinwiddy said: “The main concern was that the church was shifting a little bit and while we were investigating that we discovered the roof needed repair.

“The work done has also managed to stop damp coming in."

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