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.
For someone who claims not to be an expert, /u/shlin28 provided a comprehensive and insightful overview of when did the Byzantines stop thinking of Islam as a heresy and start thinking of it as a religion.
Plus the obligatory weekly /u/kieslowskifan highlight, this time on the roles and duties of "political officers" in Soviet military units and ships?
A few of the comments I saved this week have already been listed (/u/shlin28's for one), but there were a few others I enjoyed that haven't been listed:
Thanks, /u/thefourthmaninaboat for answering my question, What happened to the French navy after the battle of France in WWII? in a detailed, but straightforward way. It was exactly the kind of answer I was looking for, thank you.
A big shout out to /u/sunagainstgold who wrote this fantastic discussion of medieval and renaissance humanism, which sadly went largely unnoticed.
A shoutout to /u/kieslowskifan for their reply to this question on Northern Irish political parties. For those who don't know, Northern Ireland stands out in the UK for having its own completely unique party system despite having only 18 of the UK's 650 parliamentary constituencies, and the answer gives a good overview of the basic reasons for that.
Weekly Rundown:
/u/bitparity on "How were the letters written by Apostle Paul delivered?"
/u/400-Rabbits on "[Aztec Warfare] Who were the elite warriors known as The Cuachicqueh ("The Shorn Ones")?"
/u/TheYottleInTheBottle on "How did the ♥, come to be identified with love, and represent a heart?" and also on "Was there a specific point in history where people started trying to shield children from knowledge and discussion of sex and violence? If not, when did we start and why?"
My favorite post of the weekend was /u/400-Rabbits post on the introduction of European diseases to the new world in the generally excellent thread on Was Christopher Columbus really a terrible genocidal person? Is the political hype against him correct?