Mission, Conversion and Martyrdom on the Periphery of Christendom: The Many Worlds of Bruno of Querfurt

• Applicant: Dr. Oleksandr Fylypchuk, Ph.D.
• Subject Area: Medieval History
• Term: since 2025
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 572655540

The project "The Mission, Conversion and Martyrdom on the Periphery of Christendom: Many Worlds of Bruno of Querfurt" will make extensive use of the growing, and diverse, body of material now available to produce the first systematic study of the life, works and sainthood of Bruno of Querfurt (974-1009). It argued that a new and invigorating approach can be taken to the Bruno of Querfurt through the examination of all the relevant Latin narratives, including especially manuscripts of Bruno of Querfurt’s works. This project is the first to systematically examine the evidence and its implications for our understanding of Bruno’s image and afterlife, and to offer an explanation of how these remarkable developments might have occurred. It is organized into the following research areas: research on the manuscripts of Bruno’s texts, research on the metaphor of missions and the creation the Christian landscape, narratives of Bruno’s martyrdom on the Periphery of Christendom, Bruno’s sainthood and memory. The first two parts examine the making of the "archbishop for the pagans", the corpus of Bruno’s works and their authorship controversies, the original coexistence of the idea and practice of mission in the Bruno’s texts and life, the meaning of religious mission in Medieval West and how this concept shifted over time under changing political circumstances. The third part investigates the Bruno’s imaginary worlds, including the metaphor of mission and the making Christian myths on the Periphery of Christendom. It traces the linguistic study of Bruno’s missionary narratives, with particular emphasis on studies the formation of the metaphor of mission in Bruno’s hagiographic texts and the vocabulary that Bruno used to represent mission and conversion. The fourth part analyzes Bruno’s missions and the creation of the Christian Landscape in the Eastern Europe, including Bruno’s role in the heterogeneous nature of the conversion of the early Rus’. It will challenge traditional scholarly’ myths by developing and testing some ideas: Bruno’s missions in Rus’ should be examined as a unit in this period, and that the later Great Schism should not be projected into the past. The fifth part explores Bruno’s last mission, in particular the versions, geography and distribution of knowledge about Bruno’s death in eleventh-century Europe. The last part investigates the early cult of Saint Bruno of Querfurt, his veneration, different tradition of memory and changing images in the medieval Europe.

• DFG Programme: WBP Position