On Friday, October 7, Deacon Andrei Psarev, Assistant Professor of Russian Church History and Canon Law at Holy Trinity Orthodox Seminary, presented the results of his doctoral research at the 42nd Annual Byzantine Studies Conference, which took place this year at Cornell University in Ithaca, NY.
Deacon Andrei’s paper was entitled “A Study of the Limits of Communion in the Byzantine Church (861- c. 1350): Chasing Canon 15 of the First and Second Council in Constantinople (861).” Based on three case studies of the events from the tenth to fourteenth centuries and on Byzantine commentators, Deacon Andrei concluded that the use of this canon is consistent with the medieval Byzantine legal tradition. This canon is important for the history of the Russian Church Abroad since it was invoked on a number of occurances, especially in the 1960s-1990s as an authority for receiving into the ROCOR clergy of other Orthodox Chruches without canonical releases.
Dr. Vitaly Permiakov, Assistant Professor of Dogmatic and Liturgical Theology at HTOS, also attended the conference.
Organized by the Byzantine Studies Association of North America (BSANA), the Byzantine Studies Conference was founded in 1975, and provides an important opportunity for graduate students to take part in a formal world-class academic event, and to receive advice from senior scholars in the field. For example, this year, in addition to paper sessions, the conference organized two panel discussion on job placement and academic publishing intended to assist young scholars in getting started in the world of academic Byzantine studies.
