Ecclestical contacts and religious discourses are constituting a basic constant in the relations between Byzantium, the Latin West and the slavic world. These are affected partly by close alliances, exchanges and processes of cultural assimilation, partly by controversal disputes and war. The Leibniz- WissenschaftsCampus Mainz research group "Contact and Discourse within Christianity" aims at investigating these relations by comparing diverse case studies out of different regions and ages: from late antique Rome or Cyprus via Franconia or venetian Crete up to the reception of byzantine history and culture in 19th and 20th centuries Serbia, Russia or Greece. Within the framework of this Workshop concrete forms and media of contact, of the transfer of knowledge about each other, identity-forming processes and dealings with phenomena of post-byzantine reception are to be focussed.
Thematically the workshop will be divided into three sections:
1. Religious practice and cultural knowledge
2. Practicing Christianity in the Byzantine Mediterranean: Modes of interreligious communication
3. The Legacy of Byzantium as research problem
