Through critical editions of authoritative commentaries and sermons on Old Testament texts as well as comparative studies, the Academy's project “Die alexandrinische und antiochenische Bibelexegese in der Spätantike” opens up a central part of the literature of ancient Christianity - namely the interpretation of that part of the Christian Holy Scripture which Christianity shares with its mother…
The Commission for the Corpus of Greek Documents, established by the founder of Byzantine Studies, Karl Krumbacher, has been collecting and researching Greek documents of the Middle Ages (330 - 1453 AD) since 1900. Initially, the work was focused on the imperial charters as the most important genre of document. The systematic indexing was carried out in five extensive volumes (1924 - 1995, partly…
The Middle Ages were shaped by the separation in a Latin west and a Greek east, which still has an impact today. It also affected the law. The Justinian Corpus luris Civilis, which was almost forgotten over centuries in the west, was repeatedly translated into Greek in the law-courses in the sixth century. It remained present as basis for the rich and diverse legal literature of the Eastern Roman…
Most of the sources that we have on the history of the late antiquity are lost and can at best be recovered in extracts through the reference from subsequent authors, who sometimes lived half a millennium later. The late antiquity is of great importance for the political and cultural development of Europe that cannot be overestimated: within this epoch highly dramatic events occured that one can…
For the critical edition of the Greek prose writings by the Byzantine theologian John of Damascus (700- ca. 750) the authentic works and the works attributed to him are edited, including the Barlaam novel, which is traditionally written under his name and was completed in 2008. The work is coordinated by the Patristic Commission of the German Academies of Sciences, whose aim is to produce critical…
Subject of the research project is the complete critical edition of the two-part treatise on the psychical pneuma written by the Byzantine physician and scholar John Zacharias (about 1275–1328) with a German translation and its contextualization in medical and intellectual history as well as the history of its reception. This work is of central importance especially for the history of psychology,…