Lunch Lecture Session with Qianyu Wang & Dr. Divna Manolova

On Friday 21 November 2025 (12.30 - 14.00), the Pirenne Institute welcomes all to its first lunch lecture session of the academic year! At this session, we will have the pleasure of learning first-hand about the exciting research of CSC doctoral candidate Qianyu Wang (History Department) and visiting MSCA Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Divna Manolova (Department of Literary Studies, Greek section). 

The session will start at 12.30 in the Plateau building, lecture room 0.2.

Qianyu Wang, 'Episcopal Authority and Monastic Autonomy in Pre-Gratian Canonical Sources, c. 1000-1140'

Marked by monastic exemption movements and local bishops’ increasing demands for abbatial promise of obedience, the 11th and early 12th centuries saw an urgent need for both bishops and monks to define their relationships by canon law. While recent studies have categorized pre-Gratian canonical collections into episcopal and monastic groups, these sources are often examined textually and separately, without being associated with a broader context. By comprehensively analyzing these canonical texts and comparing them with various contemporary sources, this paper intends to explore how canon law reflected and shaped the monastic-diocesan relationships in this period.

Dr. Divna Manolova  'Teaching and Learning Astral Sciences in Late Byzantine Multiple-Text Manuscripts'

This contribution examines patterns of knowledge organisation in a selection of late Byzantine multiple-text manuscripts (MTMs) that contain introductory cosmological and astronomical works. It addresses the central question of what constitutes a textbook for the teaching of the astral sciences in late Byzantium, and how such a textbook should be defined. My working hypothesis is that teaching books varied as much as the curricula across different schools and scholarly circles in Byzantium. Hence, by studying these MTMs, we can delineate the multiple canons of authority in the astral sciences that coexisted and were taught in Palaiologan educational contexts. This discussion offers a new perspective on interpreting the relationship between the modular nature of the selected MTMs and the distinctive ways in which astral knowledge was organized on folios and within codices. I also explore whether the codicological analysis of the selected scientific MTMs can illuminate the principles guiding the preparation of textbooks for teaching and learning the astral sciences in late Byzantium.