Research Project by Georgi Minczew, University of Lodz (PI)

Overview

An international research project financed by the National Science Centre (Poland), and realized by an interdisciplinary team of scholars from the University of Lodz (Faculty of Philology and Ceraneum Centre: Georgi Minczew, Zofia A. Brzozowska, Agata Kawecka, Anna Maciejewska, Marek Majer, Ivan N. Petrov, Małgorzata Skowronek, Jan M. Wolski), in cooperation with foreign partners from universities and academic institutions in Bulgaria (St. Clement of Ohrid University in Sofia: Anna-Maria Totomanova, Tatiana Slavova, Angel Nikolov, Ivan Hristov), Denmark (Pirinka Penkova-Lyager, Professor emeritus) and Italy (Ca’Foscari University of Venice: Antonio Rigo). 

The aim of this project is to present a significant part of the European cultural and historical heritage: polemical literature of the Orthodox Slavs in its multifaceted complexity. This involves collecting, describing, analyzing, and publishing medieval anti-heretical texts. These are important sources for learning about the history of Eastern Christianity and, at the same time, are extremely diverse in terms of genre: there are, among them, both polemical treatises, liturgical texts, stories, and speeches, as well as anathemas or tips on how to punish those who deserted Orthodoxy. The project’s methodological basis is interdisciplinary due to the fact that studies on heresies are a research area on the borderline of history, Slavic studies, Byzantine studies, medieval studies, and theology. The project team consists of scientists with a diverse research profile.

The implementation of this project will bring tangible results:

- conducting scientific studies whose results will be published in internationally recognized journals and in the form of a monograph;

- preparing critical editions of the medieval polemical literature;

- discovering new works or copies of previously known polemical works;

- identifying Greek originals and sources of inspiration for Slavonic texts;

- preparing Polish and English translations of selected source texts.