Kyrillos Loukaris (†1638) as an author of sermons and a renewer of the genre within the tradition of the Greek Orthodoxy

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Ulrich Moennig
• Subject Area: Greek and Latin Philology ; European and American Literary and Cultural Studies
• Term: since 2024
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 536415181

Based on the previous project, which includes a review of the autographed sermons of Kyrillos Lukaris from the years 1602 to 1626, the proposed project is dedicated to the Greek Orthodox Patriarch as the author. Scholars use to focus on his last writings. These are his Confession of Faith (1629) and the prologue to the translation of the New Testament into Modern Greek (1638). His sermons were produced in parallel to his career und are the core of his work. Part of the research questions arising from the analysis of Loukaris’s work are related to the genre of sermons: a) Did Lukaris inscribe himself into the tradition of the authors of sermon corpora? b) Did he repurpose the traditional genre as a medium of knowledge transfer? And c), did his work become a model for later Greek-Orthodox authors thanks to his mobility and presence, as well as his handwritten legacy, which used to be accessible in Constantinople. The sermons reveal a scholar who primarily reads authors belonging to the Pre- and Post-Tridentine Roman Catholic Church, who as a renewer of the genre within the Greek-Orthodox tradition learned from the methods of Latin European preaching practice and who spread his knowledge through his Sunday sermons. This comes unexpectedly, given that Loukaris in 1629 published a confession of faith, which was and continues to be perceived as influenced by reformed Protestantism. The project work starts with an analysis of the material facts of the extant codices. It will include a formal analysis of the approximately 400 texts, a close study of Byzantine, contemporary and recent Greek Orthodox sermon corpora, and comparative reading with appropriate Latin sermon corpora. Particular attention will be paid to the paratextual self-comments of Loukaris, mostly written in Latin, as well as to explicit references to Latin authors and corresponding excerpts. As a following step it will be examined by way of example whether the organization of the sermons according to the ecclesiastical year serves the purpose and has the result that the rather concise kind of texts, as the sermon is, can also be used for the development of complex trains of thought, carried out over a sequence of sermons or Sundays. In addition, the explicit and implicit indications in the text are to be evaluated as to how Loukaris assessed the audience who were present when his sermons were delivered. Finally, the project will make a statement as to how Loukaris, who has been adequately researched as a patriarch who is politically active and corresponds in letters, behaves as an author of sermons, an aspect that has only been researched selectively up to now. Loukaris pays attention to the extrovert medium of the sermon and chooses this almost exclusively as the type of text in which he puts on paper the results of his intensive examination of Latin European ideas. This fits to the profile of Loukaris as a political thinker and politically acting cleric.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants