The Slavonic Metaphrasis of Byzantine Orthodoxy

The medieval literature of the Orthodox South and East Slavs consists mainly of translations of religious texts from Greek. The adoption of Byzantine theological thinking by the Slavs thus plays an enormously important role in the intellectual and cultural history of south-eastern and eastern Europe. In our project, this centuries-long transfer of texts and the knowledge contained in them is regarded as a metaphrasis, i.e. as a deliberate reshaping of the originals while retaining the original ideas. The project has three aims. Firstly, an online reference work in the form of a wiki is to be created. It will provide a complete record of the theological literature translated from Greek to Slavonic, starting from the beginning of Slavonic literacy in the 9th century until the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans in the 14th century. The material collected by Francis J. Thomson over the course of a lifetime of research, recorded by hand on index cards, serves as the basis. The cards will be digitised and their contents updated, supplemented, and expanded by experts working around the world. Secondly, as part of a dissertation, selected texts and collections of texts will be used to analyse how this Slavonic metaphrasis of Byzantine Orthodoxy took place in detail. And thirdly, Francis Thomsons cartotheca will be made accessible online. In keeping with the interdisciplinary nature of the project, it is being implemented as a cooperation between the department for Greek Studies at the Catholic University of Leuven (Prof. Dr Reinhart Ceulemans, Dr Lara Sels) and the department for Slavonic Studies at the University of Innsbruck (Prof. Dr Jürgen Fuchsbauer).