Tradition, Innovation and Identity in the Byzantine World

The project, multi-disciplinary in its character, with a theoretical and empirical basis, focuses on four inter-connected historical phenomena, which are to be observed in Byzantium, as well as in its world, primarily in Serbia and Bulgaria. 1. The state and society - institutions (including those of the Church), human resources and their interaction; 2. Every-day life - the position of the individual and the family; 3. Sources of special importance - the edition and/or translation of written sources (texts and inscriptions), especially from the 13th century, because of their close connection with the issues of social and every-day life, as well as the research of several relevant monuments of painting and architecture; 4. The ideological, religious, philosophical and historical aspects of the said phenomena - the discovery of long-lasting factors that contributed to the expansion of Byzantine phenomena in the spatial and temporal sense, and thus to the creation of general Balkan substrata. Two kinds of results are expected - individual and general, in keeping with the analytic and synthetic characteristics of the project. The individual results of research should fit into the profiling of general results, which envisage the identification of traditional and developmental factors. With such results, the project will have a broader international impact and a greater reactive effect in defining Byzantine and related identities.