The project aims to provide a comprehensive analysis of the Orthodox majority's attitude towards religious minorities in Byzantium, Bulgaria and Serbia, including both other believers and non-Christians (e.g. Bogomils, Paulicians, Catholics, Armenians, Muslims and Jews). The research will cover real social, legal and political relations, as well as the ways in which 'others' were imagined and represented in literature, legislation and religious texts.
The project will determine how these relations developed at behavioural, cognitive and affective levels, and how these levels were interrelated. Due to its objectives, the project will require an interdisciplinary approach. A logical and stylistic analysis of the text will be carried out alongside its contextual interpretation, taking into account the place, time and environment of its creation, its purpose, intended audience and subsequent use. These are appropriate instruments for historical source criticism and the insightful historical and literary reading of texts. When working with the collected data, claims from the fields of social psychology and sociology will be referred to. Properly placing the established facts in social reality is only possible in this way.
The project's novelty lies in its comprehensive approach to the issue, based on analysing various sources (such as chronicles, homilies, hagiographies, and theological, legal, and penitential texts), as well as using tools from social psychology and sociology (such as dehumanisation and the sociology of emotions and knowledge).
The research work planned in the proposal will be carried out in two parts. 

I. A study of the Orthodox majority's attitude towards religious minorities (Jews, Muslims, Armenians, Catholics, Bogomils, Paulicians, etc.) in Balkan and Asia Minor countries (Byzantium and its successor states, Serbia and Bulgaria). Behavioural aspect: description of mutual contacts, conflicts and episodes of peaceful coexistence. A typology of interreligious contacts will be developed at this stage, alongside an analysis of the context and identification of the main factors determining whether contact is peaceful or conflictual. The significance of religion, alongside ethnicity, language and political affiliation, as one of the main determinants of identity will also be described. 

II. Research into the acquisition, processing and transmission of knowledge about dissenters and non-Christians. The cognitive and affective aspects of relations between dissenting groups. This stage involves analysing Orthodox sources (Greek and Old Slavonic) concerning non-Orthodox people, identifying and describing derogatory motifs and images. Our focus will be not only on texts produced in a given era, but also on those that were widely used at the time, such as popular narratives (e.g. Malalas and chronicles from up to the 10th century, derived from the Syncellus or Theophanes tradition), liturgical texts (e.g. homilies and biblical commentaries) and anthologies (e.g. Erotapokriseis by Anastasios of Sinai and Pandects of Nikon of Black Mountain or Melissa). 
A comprehensive annotation of the sources will be carried out, marking themes, biblical and non-biblical images and narrative strategies used to symbolically mark non-Orthodox and foreigners. Qualitative and quantitative analyses will also be performed. This will entail determining the function and rhetorical value of depreciative tropes and topoi, identifying dominant figures and quantitative changes, and interpreting data according to chronological and geographical criteria.

A key contribution of the project will be the exploitation of sources that have not previously been used in this context, including unpublished Church Slavonic and Greek penitential nomocanons and a critical analysis of anti-heretical texts produced in Orthodox countries in comparison with Latin sources and those originating from the dissenters themselves. Comparative analysis will reveal the propaganda and narrative mechanisms used to marginalise 'others', providing a better understanding of the social function of religion in medieval Orthodox societies. The project will provide new
insights into research on collective identity, forms of exclusion and the cultural and religious positioning of minorities in medieval Southeastern Europe and Asia Minor.

PI: dr Jan Mikołaj Wolski

Full time team member: dr Kyriaki Giannouli

Contributors: dr hab. Piotr Czarnecki, prof. UJ; dr hab. Zofia Brzozowska, prof. UŁ; dr Andrzej Kompa; dr Anna Maciejewska; dr hab. Kirił Marinow, prof. UŁ; prof. dr hab. Georgi Minczew; dr hab. Małgorzata Skowronek, prof. UŁ

The recruitment process announced on February 22, 2026, has been completed, and participants have been notified of the results by email.
Further institutionalised opportunities for collaboration will be announced on this website at a later date.