The War of the Archons: Greek Deluxe Manuscript Production in Early Modern Wallachia

The Historical and Palaeographical Archives of National Bank Cultural Foundation , the Section of Neohellenic Research of the Institute of Historical Research (IHR / National Hellenic Research Foundation), and the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences co-organize the lecture “The War of the Archons: Greek Deluxe Manuscript Production in Early Modern Wallach”.

The lecture will be delivered in English.

Speaker

Ovidiu Olar (PhD, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Παρίσι)

Abstract

In the last quarter of the 16th century, the Cyprus-born Greek calligrapher Loukas settled in Wallachia. Shortly after, he became bishop of Buzău (1583/4–1603) and later metropolitan of Wallachia (1603–28/9). Despite his high ecclesiastical office, he and his circle revived the production of deluxe Greek liturgical manuscripts, which had ceased after the Ottoman conquest of the Balkans and Constantinople. The phenomenon has long intrigued paleographers, historians, and art historians. Building on previous research, this presentation examines how this revival was intertwined with the reconstruction of Greek-speaking Orthodox elites under Ottoman rule. It argues that the dissemination of lavishly illuminated liturgical manuscripts through trans-regional patronage networks played a crucial role in this reconfiguration—both influencing it and benefiting from it.

Speaker Bio

Dr Ovidiu Olar (PhD, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris) is Researcher at the “N. Iorga” Institute of History of the Romanian Academy (Bucharest) and Principal Investigator of the ERC Starting Grant Orthodoxies and Politics: The Religious Reforms of Mid-17th Century in Eastern and South-Eastern Europe hosted by the Institute for Habsburg and Balkan Studies of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (Vienna). He has authored the book La boutique de Théophile. Les relations du patriarche de Constantinople Kyrillos Loukaris (1570–1638) avec la Réforme (Paris, 2019). His research interests include the religious controversies of the seventeenth century, Early Modern visual rhetoric, and the history of political ideas.