Reassessing Apocalyptic Literature in the Byzantine Sphere: Texts, Translations, and Transformations (c.500–1500 CE)

Dr. András Kraft, an alumnus of CEU’s Department of Medieval Studies (2018), has been awarded in July 2025 the prestigious ASTRA Award of the Austrian Science Fund (FWF). The award, endowed with one million Euros, supports his project entitled Reassessing apocalyptic literature in the Byzantine Sphere: Texts, Translations, and Transformations (c.500–1500 CE). The project will run for five years and will comprise a team of three postdoctoral researchers, who will work in tandem on the entangled transmission history of apocalypses that originated in Byzantium.

The Eastern Roman Empire nurtured an apocalyptic literary tradition that was diverse, dynamic, and definitive in nature. Drawing on the current state of scholarship and recent advances in digital humanities, the FWF-funded project will conduct the first comprehensive survey, assessment, and analysis of apocalyptic literature from the Byzantine millennium (c. 500–1500 CE) as it survives in Greek, Armenian, and Slavonic textual variants. Dr. András Kraft and his team will examine a corpus of 40 apocalyptic compositions aided with digital tools, providing a reappraisal of Eastern Roman apocalyptic literature in transregional perspective. The Center for Religious Studies (CRS) at CEU will host the project and incorporate it in the wider study of Eastern Christianities.