Talks

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Coming up:

• Rachael Helen Banes, “The Graffiti from the “Great Church” in Sergioupolis-Resafa” at the 25 international Congress of Byzantine Studies, Vienna, Friday 28 August 2026.
• Maria S. Thomas, “Texts on the Wall: Multilingual Inscriptions in the Sacred Space of Deir Mar Musa” at the 25 international Congress of Byzantine Studies, Vienna, 24–29 August 2026.
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• “The Followers of the Apostles in Byzantium” session at the 25 international Congress of Byzantine Studies, Vienna, Wednesday 26 August 2026 5:30-7:00 pm (convenors Dan Batovici and Maria S. Thomas):
  • Madalina Toca, “Secondary Early Christian Figures in Late Antique Historians”
  • Maria S. Thomas, “‘One among the apostles’: A Syriac Mary Magdalene from twelfth-century Jerusalem”
  • Armine Melkonyan, “The Armenian Life of Mary Magdalene”
  • Andy Hilkens, “Apostolic daughter, physician and prophetess: the early Christian martyr Hermione in the Armenian tradition”
  • Dan Batovici, “The Polycarp Hagiographic Dossier Once Again”

2026

• Rachael Helen Banes, “Apostolic Successors in Epigraphic Databases: What Does the Data Show?,” in the GenAut 2026 seminar The Followers of the Apostles in Cultic Contexts, 11 August 2026.
• Maria S. Thomas, “Thresholds of the Visible: Strategies for Figuration and Abstraction in the Buchanan Bible,” at the Symposium Syriacum 2026, Bucharest, 3 August 2026.
• Maria S. Thomas, “Cataloguing Apostles and Disciples,” at the EABS Annual Conference, Leuven, 20-23 July 2026.
• Andy Hilkens, “Late medieval Harklean biblical-exegetical compendia from Tur Abdin,” at the EABS Annual Conference, Leuven, 20-23 July 2026.
• Maria S. Thomas, “Worshipping Bodies in a Medieval Syriac Sacred Space,” at the International Medieval Congress, Leeds, 6-9 July 2026.
• Dan Batovici, “Hermas the Outlier: The Shepherd among the Apocalypses in Late Antiquity,” in the Opening the Doors: From Apocalyptic Genre to Apocalyptic Discourse conference, Regensburg, 8-10 July 2026.
• Dan Batovici, “Outside Looking In, Inside Looking Out: The Literary Dossier of Clement of Rome,” at the annual conference of the Association pour l’Etude de la Littérature Apocryphe Chrétienne (AELAC), Saint-Maurice/Sankt Moritz, Switzerland, 25-27 June 2026.
• Andy Hilkens, “Clement of Rome in the Armenian Tradition,” Pembroke College, Oxford, 20 June 2026.
• Andy Hilkens, “Late medieval Harklean biblical-exegetical compendia from Tur Abdin,” in the conference The Bible in Middle Eastern Manuscript Traditions, Rome, 22-24 April 2026.
• Maria S. Thomas and Christoph Scheerer, “The Hierotheos Dossier in Greek and Syriac,” | Gesprächskreis zum christlichen Diskurs im Mittelmeerraum bis zum Ausklang der Spätantike, Vienna, 26 March 2026.
• Andy Hilkens and Lewis Read, “A Constantinopolitan Synaxarion for Armenians: The Tawanac’uyc’ of Yovsep’,” in the conference Sanctity and Ritual Remembrance: Christian Liturgy and Memory Practices from Medieval Iberia to Central Asia, Vienna, 5-6 March 2026.
• Maria S. Thomas, “Publishing in a Twelfth-Century Syriac Monastery: Manuscript Production, Authority, and Scribal Practice at the Monastery of Mary Magdalene in Jerusalem,” in the TeTra: Text and Transmission Research Seminar (online), Vienna, 26 February 2026. [Recording here]
• Dan Batovici, “The Migration of Violence in the Martyrdoms of Polycarp,” in the Patterns of Violence in the Passion Narratives and Their Ancient Contexts conference, Vienna, 19-21 February 2026.

2025

• Maria S. Thomas, “Dionysius Bar Salibi and the Theology of Images: Insights from a Newly Identified Discourse,” | Gesprächskreis zum christlichen Diskurs im Mittelmeerraum bis zum Ausklang der Spätantike (hybrid), Vienna, 12 November 2025.
• Dan Batovici, “Notes on the Armenian Translation of the Martyrdom of Polycarp,” in the Patristic Heritage in Eastern Christianity workshop, Padova, 27 October, 2025.
• Dan Batovici, “Characters, Authors, and Idealised Early Christianities in Late Antiquity (and Beyond)” | Lecture at the Center for Eastern Mediterranean Studies, CEU Vienna, 2 October 2025.
• Maria S. Thomas, “Mary Magdalene in Twelfth-Century Syriac Fenqitho Manuscripts from Jerusalem,” in the GenAut Project online seminar, Vienna, 24 June 2025. [Recording here]
• Dan Batovici, “Author and Character: Following Hermas across Manuscript Traditions,” in the Books of Faith: Religious Manuscripts Colloquium, Innsbruck, 2-3 May 2025.
• Dan Batovici, “Crossing the Mediterranean: Notes on the Career of Clement of Rome in the Medieval East,” in the Migration and Religion Workshop, Leuven, 24–25 March 2025.
• Dan Batovici, “Followers of the Apostles as Literary Characters around the Eastern Mediterranean Space” | Online talk for the lectures series of the Romanian Society for Byzantine Studies, 28 January 2025.
• Dan Batovici, “The Greek Biblical Pandects of the Fourth and Fifth Century and Their Scriptoria,” in the workshop Spaces of Book Production and Scribal Activity in the Eastern Mediterranean, Austrian Academy of Science, Vienna, 16-17 January 2025.

2024

• Dan Batovici, “The Literary Career of Polycarp of Smyrna as a Character” | Gesprächskreis zum christlichen Diskurs im Mittelmeerraum bis zum Ausklang der Spätantike (hybrid), Vienna, 19 December 2024.
• Dan Batovici, “At One Remove: Building a Literary Network around the Mediterranean” | Guest lecture at the Ludwig Boltzmann Institut – Neulateinische Studien, University of Innsbruck, 5 November 2024.

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