October Conference to Explore Liturgical Languages and Culture of the Slavs

Liturgical Languages in the Spiritual Culture of the Slavs

Venue of the conference: Bratislava Conference date: October 4 - 6, 2017 Responsible worker: Peter Žeňuch

Main organizers: Slavic Institute of Jan Stanislav SAV, Slovak Committees of Slavists Conference program in PDF

The approval of the Slavic language in the liturgy is generally associated with the Pope's blessing of the translation of the Holy Scripture and the worship of the Old Slavonic books (probably in 868).

However, the process of institutionalizing the Slavic worship language, which began before the arrival of the brothers in Great Moravia in the year 863 and went on for about 40 months until Cyril and Methodius left for Venice and Rome, perhaps considered a historical and cultural phenomenon.

The adoption of the Slavic liturgical language is an important civilization that is important for the Slavs as well as for the entire European cultural environment, as it demonstrates the significant participation of the Slavs in shaping European culture and civilization.

The development of every Slavic nation is related to the institutionalization of the Slavic Bible, liturgical translations and Slavic literature. The translation of the Bible into Old Slavicism represents the completion of an important stage in the building of the Slavic cultural environment. Even the disintegration of the Great Moravian cultural environment, in which the institutionalization of the Slavic spiritual culture took place, did not mean its dissolution.

All the religious traditions of the Slavic East and the West are proclaimed to be heirs of this spiritual and cultural tradition, because they were created in a system of synergy of Christian values ​​with the participation of particular religious traditions. Consequently, confessional diversity is not only related to the Church schism; the Slavic population lived in various areas in which Latin or Byzantine confessionality prevailed, influencing variously the spiritual and written culture of the Slavs.

He testifies to this respect to the founders of Slavic written and spiritual culture not only in the ecclesiastical tradition of the Byzantine ceremony, but also in the Latin Church throughout the Slavic environment. This moment of shared spiritual and cultural identity is a unique proof of persistent cultural communication that has been applied in a diverse Slavic and wider European space.

A comprehensive view of these cultural evolving peripheries is challenging and involves complementary research of all its relevant components. Contemporary research on Slavic linguistic, literary, historiographical and cultural sciences will be presented as part of the conference and publications. The conference will be held in the framework of the project APVV-14-0029 Cyrillic Writing in Slovakia until the end of the 18th century.

From public sources, the conference also supports the Arts Support Fund. The conference will be held in cooperation with the Slovak Slavic Committee, Slavic Institute of Jan Stanislav SAV (within the project APVV-14-0029, solved in SÚJS SAV in cooperation with the Faculty of Theology of Trnava University), Cyrillo-Methodic Research Center of the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Institute of Slavonic Philology of the Jagel University in Krakow and the Institute of Slavic Science of the Russian Academy of Sciences.