Hosios Loukas
Twelve students of Medieval Greek spent the month of July at the Gennadius Library where they perfected their language skills in Byzantine Greek.
Hailing from a variety of U.S. and European graduate programs in Byzantine studies the participants had daily instruction by professors Alexandros Alexakis of the University of Ioannina and Stratis Papaioannou of Brown University. Individual tutorials in the evenings were geared to the specific needs of every student. Special sessions focused on paleography with an emphasis on late antique and Byzantine scripts and book cultures. Additional sessions were devoted to textual criticism and editorial techniques for Byzantine texts as well as to a brief introduction to the history of Medieval Greek Language and Literature (written as well as spoken).
The program concluded with a five-day trip to Byzantine monuments of Greece in Thessaloniki, Meteora, Hosios Loukas, Corinth and Mystra. The successful completion of the rigorous program offered the students a sense of pride and accomplishment.
