The Copybook
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Short passages for reading, drawn from history, legend, poetry and fiction.
Following an appalling atrocity in fourth-century Thessalonica, two strong and determined men refused to back down.
Theodosius I ruled the Roman Empire from 379 to 395. He was the first to adopt Christianity as the State religion, and an Orthodox believer who rejected Arianism, a heresy that Bede described as a ‘high-road of pestilence’ for every other. But Theodosius was also an absolute ruler, whose word was law, and to be a Bishop in his Imperial Church demanded a great deal of courage.
Edmond Halley will forever be associated with the comet named after him, but his greatest achievement was getting Sir Isaac Newton to publish ‘Principia Mathematica’.
Halley’s comet is named after Edmond Halley (1656-1742), Britain’s second Astronomer Royal and a friend and colleague of Sir Isaac Newton.
In 6th century France, a faithful kitchen servant sold himself into slavery to rescue a kidnapped boy.
Early in the 6th century, northern Gaul came under the control of the Franks, whose capital was Metz on what is now the border between France and Germany. Their chieftains frequently kidnapped and enslaved or ransomed the sons of noble Roman families.
John Goodricke’s observations of Algol won him the Copley Medal while still in his teens, despite his disability.
John Goodricke lost his hearing when just a child, but a combination of a loving family, a private education system more advanced than some people today would have us a believe, and sheer determination meant that he achieved more in his short life than seems possible.