Orthpol - Orthodoxies and Politics

On April 28, 2026, the ORTHPOL project organizes the roundtable "Church Slavonic and the Romanian-Speaking Lands", which marks the publication in 2024 of a trilogy by Vladislav Knoll dedicated to the use of Church Slavonic and other Slavic-based language varieties among Romanian-speaking communities in Wallachia, Moldavia, and Transylvania from the late Middle Ages to the Early Modern period. Ovidiu Olar, the PI of ORTHPOL, will moderate the discussions, while Constanța Burlacu, Cristian Gașpar, Mihail-George Hâncu and Joachim Matzinger will take part in the discussions. The meeting will be accessible on Zoom.

Zoom Access:
Meeting ID: 682 2017 9336
Passcode: D81Ber
https://oeaw-ac-at.zoom.us/j/68220179336?pwd=UuPkrLldPNHzB3KDMmnkovQqvcl2it.1

On April 8, 2026, Ovidiu Olar, the PI of the ORTHPOL project, organizes alongside Vera Chentsova, Senior researcher of the project, the workshop: "Autour des réformes ecclésiastiques : Recherches sur quelques cas dans le monde orthodoxe au XVIIe siècle. Church Reforms and Beyond: Orthodox Case Studies from the 17th Century". The workshop is jointly organized in Paris by the ORTHPOL project and the École Pratique des Hautes Études (PSL). During the workshop, Vera Chentsova, Illia Kovalenko, Ovidiu Olar, and Nikolas Pissis, will present their research on the Church reforms and the dynamics of the religious life between Eastern Mediterranean and Russia.

Tuesday, 17 March, 18:00, Accademia d'Ungheria in Rome hosts the presentation of a splendid book: Antal Molnár's Catholic Confessionalization in Early Modern Moldavia. The Synod of Cotnari and the Speculum Ordinis of Bartolomeo Bassetti OFMCONV (1642).
If in Rome, join the author and the speakers at Palazzo Falconieri - Via Giulia 1.

https://culture.hu/it/roma/eventi/presentazione-del-volume-%22catholic-confessionalization-in-early-modern-moldavia%22-di-antal-molnar

Between February 27-28, 2026, Ovidiu Olar, the PI of the ORTHPOL project, participated at the workshop: "Paratextual Elements: Tables, Indexes, Marginal Notes, Diagrams etc.", organized the ERC StG NOTA, at the Babeș-Bolyai University of Cluj-Napoca. He presented the paper: "A Diamond Marchant, a Shipwreck, and a Scribe: Notes on the 'Marginal' Notes of Two Early 18th Century Wallachian Printed Books".

On Friday, February 20, 2026, Ovidiu Olar, the PI of the ORTHPOL project, will participate in the workshop "Working with Monastic Repositories: Navigating Access, Preservation, and Knowledge Production", organized in partnership with Mariya Kiprovska and Grigor Boykov, the PI of OttomanCORE project.

https://www.ottomancore.org/post/worshop-working-with-monastic-repositories?fbclid=IwdGRjcAQAPh9jbGNrBAA-FGV4dG4DYWVtAjExAHNydGMGYXBwX2lkDDM1MDY4NTUzMTcyOAABHidmSmfXy5IpS-cbFAp71GiRNW0qRO0oOFgi1CUdsgGzVzfzwPYE8OC117Q9_aem_kp8ziRgrSbjnlJtHzNV5Tw

Ovidiu Olar, the PI of the ORTHPOL project, has co-edited with Konrad Petrovszky the book "Writing History in Ottoman Europe (Fifteenth-Eighteenth Centuries)", which was recently published by Brill as the 82nd volume of the series "The Ottoman Empire and its Heritage".

https://brill.com/display/title/72167

We are pleased to announce the appearance of the volume "Early Modern Icons from Maramureș / Icoane maramureșene din perioada modernă timpurie". This groundbreaking publication constitutes the sixth installment in the Museikon Studies series and has been issued by Mega Publishing House (Cluj-Napoca) in collaboration with the Publishing House of the National Museum of the Union (Alba Iulia).

https://works.hcommons.org/records/v60gq-hhf22 -heading

We extend our sincere gratitude to the authors - Alexandru Baboș, Roksolana Kosiv, Mihai Covaci, and Ana Dumitran. We also wish to express our appreciation to the translator, Mihail K. Qaramah; the reviewers, Lidia Cotovanu, Volodymyr Moroz, Dan Ioan Mureșan, and Szilveszter Terdik; and the language editors, Andreea Buzaș, Ion-Mihai Felea, and Mykhailo Skop.

On January 23, 2026, the ORTHPOL project organizes, in collaboration with Eötvös Loránd University, Faculty of Humanities, Department of Romanian Philology, the workshop "Unknown and Forgotten Romanian Catechisms (Late 17th Century–Early 18th Century", which will take place in Budapest, convenor: Dr Levente Nagy. Ovidiu Olar, the PI of the ORTHPOL project will deliver a presentation entitled: "Catechisms for the Greek-, Slavic- and Albanian-Speaking Communities in the Ottoman Empire, 16th–17th Centuries".

On January 13, 2026, Ovidiu Olar, the PI of the ORTHPOL project, participated at Podium Discussion "'Byzantinesque': New Considerations at the Crossroads of Byzantine and Modern Greek Studies", alongside Dr Marie-Hélène Blanchet and Dr Norman Russell. The event was organized at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München.

Mihail Khalid Qaramah, associate researcher of the ORTHPOL project, presented a paper (The Transmission of ‘Occasional Prayers’ in Early Printed Romanian Euchologia) at the International Conference "Beyond the Byzantine Euchologion: Priestly Prayers and People's Concerns in the Christian East", that took place between November 27-29, 2025 at the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Mihail Khalid Qaramah, associate researcher of the ORTHPOL project, presented a paper (The Hetoimasia as icon of Eucharistic expectation) at the International Conference "Throne - Hetoimasia - Syntronon" organized in Alba Iulia between November 20-21, 2025.