The Gospels of Tsar Ivan Alexander is the outstanding treasure of a cultural and spiritual Renaissance in fourteenth-century Bulgaria, and a masterpiece of Byzantine manuscript art. The Gospels' creation was not only the supreme achievement of Bulgarian medieval culture; it also marked its final flourishing, 500 years after the introduction of Christianity and the Cyrillic script into Bulgaria and shortly before the country's collapse under the invasion of the Ottoman Turks. Commissioned, in 1355 for Tsar Ivan Alexander, the Gospels was completed in just one year by a single scribe, Simeon, and by artists of the Turnovo school, the Bulgarian capital, ecclesiastical and cultural centre, of the time. It contains 367 miniatures, among which is an outstanding portrait of the Tsar himself and his family. Following the fall of Turnovo in 1393, the manuscript was moved to safety across the Danube to Moldavia. By the early seventeenth century it was in the monastery of St Paul on Mount Athos and it was here that in 1837 the young Hon. Robert Curzon contrived to acquire it as a souvenir of his visit.

The first comparative, cross-cultural study of medieval illustrated histories that engages in a direct, confrontational dialogue with Byzantine historical memory.

A beautiful and informative exploration of the illuminated manuscripts of the Bible over a millennium and across the globe, shedding new light on some of the most significant, yet rarely seen, paintings of the Middle Ages

Satan comes to Soviet Moscow in this critically acclaimed translation of one of the most important and best-loved modern classics in world literature. The Master and Margarita has been captivating readers around the world ever since its first publication in 1967. Written during Stalin’s time in power but suppressed in the Soviet Union for decades, Bulgakov’s masterpiece is an ironic parable on power and its corruption, on good and evil, and on human frailty and the strength of love. In The Master and Margarita, the Devil himself pays a visit to Soviet Moscow. Accompanied by a retinue that includes the fast-talking, vodka-drinking, giant tomcat Behemoth, he sets about creating a whirlwind of chaos that soon involves the beautiful Margarita and her beloved, a distraught writer known only as the Master, and even Jesus Christ and Pontius Pilate. The Master and Margarita combines fable, fantasy, political satire, and slapstick comedy to create a wildly entertaining and unforgettable tale that is commonly considered the greatest novel to come out of the Soviet Union. It appears in this edition in a translation by Mirra Ginsburg that was judged “brilliant” by Publishers Weekly. Praise for The Master and Margarita “A wild surrealistic romp. . . . Brilliantly flamboyant and outrageous.” —Joyce Carol Oates, The Detroit News “Fine, funny, imaginative. . . . The Master and Margarita stands squarely in the great Gogolesque tradition of satiric narrative.” —Saul Maloff, Newsweek “A rich, funny, moving and bitter novel. . . . Vast and boisterous entertainment.” —The New York Times “The book is by turns hilarious, mysterious, contemplative and poignant. . . . A great work.” —Chicago Tribune “Funny, devilish, brilliant satire. . . . It’s literature of the highest order and . . . it will deliver a full measure of enjoyment and enlightenment.” —Publishers Weekly

Featuring a number of pioneering essays by the internationally known Russian cultural historians Boris Uspenskij and Victor Zhivov, this collection includes a number of essays appearing in English for the fi rst time. Focusing on several of the most interesting and problematic aspects of Russia's cultural development, these essaysexamine the survival and the reconceptualization of the past in later cultural systems and some of the key transformations of Russian cultural consciousness. The essays in this collection contain some important examples of Russian cultural semiotics and remain indispensable contributions to the history of Russian civilization.

Although biblical texts were known in Church Slavonic as early as the ninth century, translation of the Bible into Russian came about only in the nineteenth century. Modern scriptural translation generated major religious and cultural conflict within the Russian Orthodox church. The resulting divisions left church authority particularly vulnerable to political pressures exerted upon it in the twentieth century. Russian Bible Wars illuminates the fundamental issues of authority that have divided modern Russian religious culture. Set within the theoretical debate over secularization, the volume clarifies why the Russian Bible was issued relatively late and amidst great controversy. Stephen Batalden's study traces the development of biblical translation into Russian and of the 'Bible wars' that then occurred in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Russia. The annotated bibliography of the Russian Bible identifies the different editions and their publication history.

First published in English in 2007 under title: The history of terrorism: from antiquity to al Qaeda.

This pioneering work introduces and presents the first full publication of the text of an unusual fourteenth-century Bulgarian gospel manuscript known as the Curzon Gospel. Volume I is an annotated transcription edition of the manuscript. Volume II is a comprehensive introduction and commentary volume analyzing its linguistic, orthographic, and textual features. The Curzon Gospel c. 1354, is important both for the study of the development of the Bulgarian language and for understanding the medieval Slavic tradition of Gospel transmission. Unlike most medieval Slavic manuscripts, it is reliably datable and serves as a chronological reference point for other gospel manuscripts. Professor Vakareliyska's annotated transcription edition includes modern chapter and verse numeration and a line-by-line comparison of the text with a corpus of twelve other Church Slavonic manuscripts. It has an index verborum of all orthographic and morphological forms in the text and their locations. Professor Vakareliyska has written and designed her commentary volume for a general audience of linguists, medievalists, Byzantinists, and Church historians. She examines the Curzon Gospel's close relationship to the thirteenth and fourteenth-century Dobreisho and Banitsa gospels and, by comparing the three manuscripts, offers a broad reconstruction of their common ancestor. She includes a detailed discussion of the Curzon Gospel's calendar of saints, discussing its relation to the tenth-century Constantinople Typikon and Latin martyrologies, and its implications for the understanding of the medieval Slavic calendar tradition. The book is fully indexed. These volumes offer a unique resource for the study of the medieval Church Slavonic language and Gospel tradition, and the veneration of saints in the Slavic Eastern Orthodox tradition. Cynthia Vakareliyska's work will be treasured by generations of scholars.

Rising from nomadic origins as Turkish tribesmen, the powerful and culturally prolific Seljuqs and their successor states dominated vast lands extending from Central Asia to the eastern Mediterranean from the eleventh to the fourteenth century. Supported by colour images, charts, and maps, this volume examines how under Seljuq rule, migrations of people and the exchange and synthesis of diverse traditions-including Turkmen, Perso-Arabo-Islamic, Byzantine, Armenian, Crusader and other Christian cultures-accompanied architectural patronage, advances in science and technology and a great flowering of culture within the realm. It also explores how shifting religious beliefs, ideologies of authority, and lifestyle in Seljuq times influenced cultural and artistic production, urban and rural architecture, monumental inscriptions and royal titulature, and practices of religion and magic. It also presents today's challenges and new approaches to preserving the material heritage of this vastly accomplished and influential civilization.