Ihor Ševčenko

Ihor Ševčenko (born 1922) a philologist and historian, was born in Poland of Ukrainian parents and was educated at the Adam Mickiewicz Gymnasium and Lycaeum in Warsaw, the Deutsche Karlsuniversität in Prague, the Université Catholique de Louvain, and the Fondation Byzantine of Professor Henri Grégoire (as member of the Seminar) in Brussels. He has taught at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Michigan, Columbia University, and Harvard University, where he is currently Dumbarton Oaks Professor of Byzantine History and Literature emeritus. As a result, the variegated body of his scholarly work has benefited from contact with multiple scholarly traditions: the Gymnasium in Warsaw imparted a solid knowledge of Greek and Latin, paired with native fluency in three Slavic languages (Ukrainian, Russian, and Polish); Prague and Belgium acquainted him with the German, Czech and francophone approaches to scholarship. During his early years in the United States, Ševčenko benefited from getting to know Ernst Kantorowicz, an eminent medievalist who worked on political and intellectual history. [Peter Schreiner, “Das Janusportrait eines Gelehrten: Ihor Sevcenko als Byzantinist und Slavist” "Palaeoslavica" 10: 1 (2002), v-ix. ISSN 1070-5465]

Ševčenko’s contribution to scholarship pertains to two connected yet distinct disciplines, Byzantine and Slavic studies. His work offers an in-depth understanding of Byzantine written culture and society from the Late Antique period to the 15th century; in addition, it explores the interface of the Slavic world with Byzantium and its legacy from the medieval to the early modern period. His expertise ranges from philology and literature to epigraphy, paleography and codicology and his scholarly prose can sometimes read like a detective novel. A case in point is a (now famous) article titled “The Date and Author of the So-Called Fragments of Toparcha Gothicus” ["Dumbarton Oaks Papers" 25 (1971), 117-188.] , where the text considered as the earliest surviving narrative source on the history of the Kievan Rus’ is revealed to be a 19th century forgery crafted by its “discoverer” and editor Karl Benedikt Hase. Ševčenko’s approach to scholarly problems privileges an intimate acquaintance with the primary source material, beginning not simply with edited texts, but with the very manuscripts in which these texts survive. However, the exploration of manuscripts and texts is never an end in itself but is used to shed light on several key issues in Byzantine and Slavic studies, such as the evangelizing mission of Cyril and Methodios among the Slavs, Byzantine political ideology and its reception in the Slavic world, the Zealot uprising in 14th-century Thessaloniki, etc. His most recent publication is the edition and English translation of the only extant secular biography in Byzantine literature, the Life of the 9th century emperor Basil I, composed in a circle of scholars around Basil’s grandson, emperor Constantine VII; Basil’s biography is a major source for the political and cultural history of Byzantium and its neighbors in the 9th and 10th centuries.

Publications

Ihor Ševčenko, "Études sur la polémique entre Théodore Métochite et Nicéphore Choumnos" (1962). ASIN: B000KJ9U8O

Ihor Ševčenko, "Society and Intellectual Life in Late Byzantium" (1981) ISBN-10: 086078083X, ISBN-13: 978-0860780830

Ihor Ševčenko, "Ideology, Letters and Culture in the Byzantine World" (1982)

Ihor Ševčenko, "Byzantium and the Slavs in Letters and Culture" (1991) ISBN-10: 0916458121, ISBN-13: 978-0916458126

Ihor Ševčenko, "Ukraine between East and West" (1996) ISBN-10: 1895571154, ISBN-13: 978-1895571158

Ihor Ševčenko, ed. and trans., "Chronographiae Quae Theophanis Continuati Nomine Fertur Liber V Quo Vita Basilii Imperatoris Amplectitur" (Corpus Fontium Historiae Byzantinae) (forthcoming in December 2008) ISBN 978-3-11-018477

References