Today:
Welcome to this week's instalment of /r/AskHistorians' Sunday Digest (formerly the Day of Reflection). Nobody can read all the questions and answers that are posted here, so in this thread we invite you to share anything you'd like to highlight from the last week - an interesting discussion, an informative answer, an insightful question that was overlooked, or anything else.
I enjoyed /u/arivederlestelle's post on Byzantine eunuchs. It is of course an excellent answer in and of itself, but I also liked it for selfish reasons: having another scholar post in here about eunuchs, after about 2 lonely years of being the only platypus at this zoo, was a very lovely high point in an otherwise very unpleasant week around here.
Shlin28 wrote an excellent post contrasting the city of Rome in the mid 300s to that of the 600s. In particular, I liked the comparison between imperial visits to the city, and how their itinerary reflected the changing power dynamics between the two periods.
Here are some of my favourite answers this week:
/u/textandtrowel on What was immigration like in Europe in the middle ages? and on Why did Britons get defeated by Saxons?
/u/historiagrephour on Why was the Ross clan of Scotland not "MacRoss" or "McRoss"?
/u/MrMedievalist on When exactly did knighthood start? What was the reason? When was the last knight knighted?
/u/publiusclodius on What was the role of decadence in the fall of the Roman Empire?
After much delay, this week's roundup!
/u/Elm11 answered "What was the role of Germany (or the Kaiser Wilhelm II) in the outburst and progress of the First World War?"
/u/Domini_canes answered "Hitler's Pope, Catholicism, Nazism, and Fascism."
/u/kieslowskifan on "Why did Napoleon try to seize control of Spain, his ally, in the Peninsular War?"
I very much enjoyed /u/facepoundr and /u/The_Alaskan's answers to my question about Russian colonial engagement with North American indigenous groups. It's wonderful to have more than one person here who can give such a good reply to something this (relatively) obscure -- though maybe it's only obscure to me.
I quite enjoyed /u/Itsalrightwithme's post on Maltese Falcons as well as /u/EsotericR's post on the decolonization of Africa
/u/nottheprinceofwales had an excellent writeup for Are there any parallels to the Gnostic Gospels or the New Testament Apocrypha in other Abrahamic religions?
/u/XenophonTheAthenian gave an excellent, concise answer to How do we know the identity of Catullus' Lesbia?
/u/NMW had an excellent answer to "How did tank warfare evolve through WW1 for the British?"