The session presents and discusses the first results of the research project Repertorium Auctorum Polemicorum (RAP), launched in 2020, and is dedicated in particular to an in-depth study of the nature of those textual forms that are difficult to ascertain and have received relatively little scholarly attention, such as texts with multiple recensions or florilegia. The RAP, being the first online repertory of Greek, Latin and Slavonic texts related to religious polemics between Byzantine and Latin Christianity, includes every literary genre and every topic of discussion that is related to the evolving relationship between the Western and Eastern parts of the Church, while the proposed session is designed to focus on those neglected complex texts that are rarely edited but widely considered by Byzantine authors as a fundamental tool for dealing with religious polemics. The session also discusses needs and solutions for the development of a standard model description of these texts and how to apply it to the three languages of the repertory. Links between texts in different languages will also be investigated, for example in the case of translations or refutations. The contributors are members of the RAP project team.
This paper presents the research project Repertorium Auctorum Polemicorum (RAP), launched in 2020, which aims to provide the first comprehensive and digital repertory of Greek, Latin, and Slavonic texts related to the religious polemics between Byzantine and Latin Churches. Covering the period from Late Antiquity to the sixteenth century, RAP encompasses all literary genres and…
The polemical writings of Patriarch John XI Bekkos provide a compelling example of the complexity of this kind of literary production. The twenty preserved works of this renowned pro-union polemicist – all of which have been integrated into the RAP database – are multifaceted in their content (being not merely dogmatic treatises, but also valuable…
The anonymous Byzantine polemical pamphlet Panagiotae cum azymita disputatio was written shortly after the conclusion of the Union of Lyons (1274), with the aim of mocking and rejecting Emperor Michael VIII Palaiologos’s ecclesiastical policy. The Greek text was soon translated into Slavonic and, from the fourteenth century onwards, circulated widely in Bulgaria, Serbia, and among…