Gregory of Nyssa's De hominis opificio, a treatise on Genesis 1,26, is a key text for the understanding of Eastern Christian anthropology. In the 14th century a Serb translated the 31 chapters of this opus from Greek. The earliest dissemination of the text seems to have been restricted to Athos and the region of Montenegro, Macedonia and Western Bulgaria. The present volume contains a critical edition of the Slavonic text together with the Greek original, an extensive commentary in which text-critical, linguistic and translation-related issues are examined and a glossary with a considerable number of athesaurista.

A stimulating and provocative collection, these essays challenge received notions about the culture and history of medieval Russia and offer fresh approaches to problems of textual interpretation, the theory of the medieval text, and the analysis of alternative, nonverbal texts. The contributors, international specialists from many disciplines, investigate issues ranging over history, cultural anthropology, art history, and ritual. They have produced a worthy companion to the first volume of Medieval Russian Culture, published in 1984.

Constantine XI’s last moments in life, as he stood before the walls of Constantinople in 1453, have bestowed a heroic status on him. This book produces a more balanced portrait of an intriguing individual: the last emperor of Constantinople. To be sure, the last of the Greek Caesars was a fascinating figure, not so much because he was a great statesman, as he was not, and not because of his military prowess, as he was neither a notable tactician nor a soldier of exceptional merit. This monarch may have formulated grandiose plans but his hopes and ambitions were ultimately doomed, because he failed to inspire his own subjects, who did not rally to his cause. Constantine lacked the skills to create, restore, or maintain harmony in his troubled realm. In addition, he was ineffective on the diplomatic front, as he proved unable to stimulate Latin Christendom to mount an expedition and come to the aid of south-eastern Orthodox Europe. Yet in sharp contrast to his numerous shortcomings, his military defeats, and the various disappointments during his reign, posterity still fondly remembers the last Constantine.