Convivium

Convivium, like the rising phoenix, brings back to life a defunct periodical, the Seminarium Kondakovianum. Launched in 1928 to perpetuate the interests and scholarship of the recently deceased Nikodim Pavlovich Kondakov, the earlier periodical centered on medieval art history and Byzantine studies, of which Kondakov earned widespread esteem as the patriarch. For a while, the Eastern Orthodox world dominated the content of Seminarium Kondakovianum, but a wider, more westward-looking view came to characterize the journal. Published for only a decade before it was silenced by the Second World War, Seminarium Kondakovianum appeared first in Russian but-along with the intellectual scope of the journal itself -soon broadened to include much of western Europe. Like its predecessor, Convivium has its base in Czech lands, where Kondakov found refuge after fleeing Russia and built his career and reputation. Fittingly, the new journal, begun in 2014 by scholars in six countries, takes a widely expansive view and encompasses scholarship in many disciplines. Starting with art history, it extends into the allied fields of anthropology, archeology, historiography, literature, liturgy, and history. Similarly, the period throughout which it ranges is bounded by the broadest possible definition of the Middle Ages, from the third century to the sixteenth.

Two numbers of the journal will be issued every year, each organized by a member of the editorial committee; all articles will be approved by a blind peer-review process. The first will focus on a theme, and the second will be a miscellany. Each issue will comprise five to ten articles (in French, English, Italian, or German), between 40,000 and 60,000 strokes long and fifteen illustrations (some in color); and it will include five book reviews. Convivium will be published in paper and digital format.