Project Details
Projekt
On the Origins of the Printing Press in the Ottoman Empire: The Role of Printed Books in the Transmission of Byzantine and Post-Byzantine Knowledge
Applicant
Professor Dr. Johannes Pahlitzsch
Subject Area
Early Modern History
Term
since 2017
Project identifier
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 355497408
This research project is dedicated to the role of the printing press in the preservation and transmission of (post-)Byzantine knowledge in the Ottoman Empire, in the Ottoman tributary states of Moldavia and Wallachia and in Poland-Lithuania and Muscovy in the period between the end of the 15th and the first half of the 18th century. Since Greek printing was unable to establish itself in the Ottoman Empire in the Early Modern Period (with the exception of a short-lived press in Constantinople in 1627), Greek hierarchs consciously sought alternatives outside of the empire. While Western European printing centers like Venice are relatively well-researched, “Eastern European” projects of the Greeks, which ran over networks between Orthodox patriarchates, episcopal sees, monasteries and monks as well as the Greek diaspora, have been rather neglected.As far as the context of the printed texts was concerned, the focus in this case is at first on interreligious and interconfessional polemic. Tracts of this sort were printed in Lviv, Vilnius and Ostrog (all in Poland-Lithuania), as well as in Bucharest, Snagov and Iaşi (Wallachia and Moldavia) in Greek, Old Church Slavonic, Ruthenian or Rumanian and influenced the Early Modern process of the formation of an Orthodox confession. The second point of emphasis consists of catechisms and other instructional materials (grammars, primers). The third point of emphasis is dedicated to the transmission of Byzantine canon law via printed books of prayer (euchologia), nomokanons and lawbooks in Eastern Europe. While the Byzantine legacy is often described outside of the Ottoman context, the trans-Ottoman perspective allows by-contrast the analysis of the appropriation and transmission of Byzantine knowledge in Early Modern Eastern Europe in a larger context.
DFG Programme
Priority Programmes
