Blog about the Eastern Roman Empire or the Christian Byzantine Empire. Also about the archaeologist and historian Dr. Bernard Mulholland. Bernard is author of the novel Nazareth Quest, which is an intense thriller set in Israel. He has also published Ratio Analysis of Financial KPI in the Higher Education Sector, The Early Byzantine Christian Church, Early Byzantine Ireland, and Navan Fort Ireland. He is also author of The Man From MENSA, which is a history of this iconic high-IQ society.
The observation that domestic artefacts are often recovered during church excavations led to an archaeological re-assessment of forty-seven Early Byzantine basilical church excavations and their historical, gender and liturgical context. The excavations were restricted to the three most common basilical church plans to allow for like-for-like analysis between sites that share the same plan: monoapsidal, inscribed and triapsidal. These sites were later found to have two distinct sanctuary configurations, namely a Π-shaped sanctuary in front of the apse, or else a sanctuary that extended across both side aisles that often formed a characteristic T-shaped layout. Further analysis indicated that Π-shaped sanctuaries are found in two church plans: firstly a protruding monoapsidal plan that characteristically has a major entrance located to either side of the apse, which is also referred to as a ‘Constantinopolitan’ church plan; and secondly in the inscribed plan, which is also referred to as a ‘Syrian’ church plan. The T-shaped layout is characteristic of the triapsidal plan, but can also occur in a monoapsidal plan, and this is referred to as a ‘Roman’ church plan. Detailed analysis of inscriptions and patterns of artefactual deposition also revealed the probable location of the ‘diakonikon ’where the rite of ‘prothesis ’took place.
Dr. Bernard Mulholland is a Byzantinist, archaeologist, historian and Patristics scholar with a Ph.D. in history (QUB, 2012).
Bernard's publications include:
Fiction:
Bernard Mulholland, Nazareth Quest (2022).
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=NfWkEAAAQBAJ&pli=1
https://books.apple.com/us/book/id6445327630
https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0B92V9VYF
Non-fiction:
Bernard Mulholland, The man from MENSA - 1 of 600: Mensa research (2016).
https://books.apple.com/us/book/id6445329346
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=gfWkEAAAQBAJ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1535307269
---, The man from MENSA - 1 of the 600: Politics 1990-1995 (2016).
https://books.apple.com/us/book/id6445329553
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=j_WkEAAAQBAJ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/1535324376
---, Ratio analysis of financial KPI in the Higher Education sector: a case study (2018).
https://books.apple.com/us/book/id6445320705
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=YfWkEAAAQBAJ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MB99NWP
---, Early Byzantine Ireland: a survey of the archaeological evidence (2021).
https://books.apple.com/us/book/id6445354716
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=ChilEAAAQBAJ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MG1YZ8W
---, Navan Fort, Ireland: archaeological and palaeoecological analysis (2021).
https://books.apple.com/us/book/id6445397300
https://play.google.com/store/books/details?id=PhilEAAAQBAJ
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09MYXX9GM
---, The Early Byzantine Christian Church (Oxford, 2014).
https://books.apple.com/us/book/the-early-byzantine-christian-church/id1023114473
---, 'Identification of Early Byzantine Constantinopolitan, Syrian, and Roman church plans in the Levant and some possible consequences', Patristic Studies in the twenty-first century: proceedings of an international conference to mark the 50th anniversary of the International Association of Patristic Studies, ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony, Theodore de Bruyn and Carol Harrison (Turnhout, 2015), 597-633.
https://www.brepolsonline.net/doi/10.1484/J.BAIEP.5.107536
Mulholland, B. (2021). 'Can archaeology inform the climate change debate?' Academia Letters, Article4385. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL4385
View all posts by Dr. Bernard Mulholland
The Man From MENSA 