Religion

Moses receiving the Ten Commandments, from the Regensburg Pentateuch, c.1300. Israel Museum, Jerusalem/The Ridgefield Foundation, New York, in memory of Henry J. and Erna D. Leir/Bridgeman Images.

‘Who Really Wrote the Bible’ by William M. Schniedewind review

Who Really Wrote the Bible: The Story of the Scribes by William M. Schniedewind asks what authorship meant to the hidden hands behind the Old Testament.

Carthusian monks at the dining table, from an account of rules of the Carthusian Order, the Netherlands, 15th century. British Library/Bridgeman Images.

The Violent Life of the Medieval Monks

Meant to live a life of perfect peacefulness and contemplation, in reality monks were human and fallible. How violent could life in the medieval cloister be?

An auto de fe in Valladolid, 1558. Print attributed to Claes Visscher, 1596-1652. Opposite: an auto de fe in a courtyard, by Sebastián de Herrera-Barnuevo, 1619-71. Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public Domain.

The Ballad of the Inquisition’s Greatest Witch Trial

How a lost ballad detailing the Inquisition’s sentencing of 28 alleged Basque witches spread a witchcraft panic through 17th-century Spain.

Louis XIV, illustration, French, c.1869. New York Public Library. Public Domain.

The Roman Catholic War on Wigs

The Catholic Church’s ban on wigs in the 18th century was as revealing of attitudes towards disability as vanity and sanctity.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers, photograph by James Wallace Black, 1872. National Museum of African American History & Culture, Smithsonian Institution. Public Domain.

The Fisk Jubilee Singers Across the Atlantic

In 1874 a choir of African American singers concluded a successful tour of Britain, singing songs that confronted American racism. Victorian audiences had never heard music like it.

Seeing is believing: a flying saucer, sighted on 4 June 1964. NARA, Records of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Public Domain.

‘After the Flying Saucers Came’, ‘Think to New Worlds’ and ‘How to Think Impossibly’ review

Recent books by Greg Eghigian, Joshua Blu Buhs and Jeffrey J. Kripal demonstrate the challenges that historians face in making sense of Fortean times.

Ikbal Ali (left) and Idries (right) Shah. Secretum Mundi (CC BY-SA 4.0)/From Ikbal Ali Shah, Afghanistan of the Afghans, 1923.

The ‘Experts’ from Afghanistan

Britain’s dearth of Afghan informants provided an opportunity for a disinherited Indian prince and his son to present themselves as an authentic conduit to the Muslim world. Soon they were advising the nation on subjects from geopolitics to the powers of the occult.