Mission and Christian borderlands – Oleksandr Fylypchuk as a guest researcher at CERES
Medieval mission, Christian narratives and Byzantine history
Fylypchuk completed his studies in medieval history at the Yuriy Fedkovych Chernivtsi National University in Ukraine and specialized in the history of Rus'. He then completed his doctorate at the École pratique des hautes études - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres in the field of Byzantine history.
His research interests range from hagiography, the Christianisation of Eastern Europe and missionary history to manuscript studies. He is the author of two monographs and over twenty scholarly articles, including a new edition of the ‘Legend of Banduri’ (an anonymous Greek text rediscovered by the Benedictine scholar Anselmo Banduri), the Russian-Byzantine treaties and other important source texts. His most important publications include the book "A Forgotten Saint. Prince Volodymyr the Great between East and West" (Kyiv: Laurus, 2020), which deals with the role of the Kiev prince in the disputes between the Eastern and Western churches.
Research on medieval conversion narratives between history and symbolism
At CERES, Fylypchuk is researching in particular the representation of missionary activities in the Middle Ages. He is investigating how the Christianization of Rus' was described in Latin sources and which narratives emerged from this. In doing so, he focuses both on the emergence and transmission of missionary stories and on the underlying structural and ideological concepts. He also analyzes the concrete practices of missionary work and the symbolic significance of missionary sites as metaphorical spaces. In addition, he is developing a prosopographical database that systematically records the first-person documents of missionaries and makes their personal experiences and social networks comprehensible.
His research stay at CERES will enable Fylypchuk to further contribute to interdisciplinary research into missions and religious borderlands and provide new impetus for the historiography of medieval missionary movements. The work provides valuable insights into the religious encounters between East and West and their influence on European history.