John Bagnell Bury

J. B. Bury
John Bagnell Bury
Born	16 October 1861 County Monaghan, Ireland
Died	1 June 1927(1927-06-01) (aged 65) Rome, Italy

John Bagnell Bury, FBA (16 October 1861 – 1 June 1927), known as J. B. Bury, was an Irish historian, classical scholar, Medieval Roman historian and philologist. He objected to the label "Byzantinist" explicitly in the preface to the 1889 edition of his Later Roman Empire. He held the position of Erasmus Smith's Professor of Modern History at Trinity College Dublin.

Bury was born and raised in Clontibret, County Monaghan, where his father was Rector of the Anglican Church of Ireland. He was educated first by his parents and then at Foyle College in Derry and Trinity College in Dublin, where he was elected a scholar in classics in 1879, graduated in 1882, and was made a fellow in 1885 at the age of 24. In 1893 he gained a chair in Modern History at Trinity College, which he held for nine years. In 1898 he was appointed Regius Professor of Greek, also at Trinity, a post he held simultaneously with his history professorship. In 1902 he became Regius Professor of Modern History at Cambridge University.

At Cambridge, Bury became mentor to the medievalist Sir Steven Runciman, who later commented that he had been Bury's "first, and only, student." At first the reclusive Bury tried to brush him off; then, when Runciman mentioned that he could read Russian, Bury gave him a stack of Bulgarian articles to edit, and so their relationship began. Bury was the author of the first truly authoritative biography of Saint Patrick (1905).