Taisiya Leber (Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany)
My paper focuses on legal books of Byzantine origin that were published in print in early modern South-Eastern and Eastern Europe. It seems that Orthodox Canon law of Byzantine origin experienced a proper revival thanks to the possibilities of printing. The epoch of confessionalization put the Orthodox Church hierarchs under pressure in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and Danubian Principalities and mobilised them to initiate and actively support copying, translating into vernacular, and publishing of Canon law books. Particularly influential became legal editions prepared by Peter Mohyla, Orthodox metropolitan of Kyiv, which were partially copied, re-translated and re-printed e.g. in Moldavia and Wallachia. Particular attention in this paper will be payed to the Wallachian legal code Indreptarea legii (‘Guide of the Law with God’) or Pravila cea Mare that was printed Târgovişte, 1652), an impressive edition containing beautiful illustrations that was issued under the joint patronage of the secular and ecclesiastic leaders of Matei Basarab and Metropolitan Stefan in Romanian vernacular. I am asking, what made Byzantine Canon tradition attractive for early modern publishing houses, who was here the main audience, what the patrons and commissioners of such editions expected to achieve with their magnificent editions.