eugyppius

(Theodora, Justinian's whoar wife, has Monophysite sympathies.)

It sounds perhaps like an arcane theological dispute to you, but it mattered graetly to many ordinary people on the ground. As big, or bigger, than the Roman Catholic vs. Protestant divide in 15th/16th centuries. Of huge political significance.

Again, we will talk more this in the course of the coming week, but you need to keep in mind that the territories that the eastern empire loses, in the Disaster of the 7th Century, are predominantly Monophysite.

This is also a cornerstone of important conspiracy theories we will come to entertain.

Finally, just a broader cultural note about the steady transition from classical antiquity to a more mediaeval world. This is an era in which there is a general movement, away from civic political structure, to more overt apolitical religious expression.

A big part of what lends a 'mediaeval' or post-Roman feel to the era we are discussing, is the vanishing of civil society (no roles beyond clerical & military positions), the movement of artistic production into exclusively religious spheres, etc.

OK. Now to sources. This is the tweet, way down here, where I give away all my secrets and remove all your reasons for my thread, and indeed for reading any other histories of seventh century Byzantium.

Because the major narrative sources for this period exist in excellent English translations and you can read them yourself and develop your own ideas. In my fantasy of how this thread develops, some of you even go to library, look things up, pick a fight with me. Maybe we do that