The course provides a comprehensive overview of the Church's history in the Slavic countries, offering essential geographical, historical, and historiographical elements to situate the processes of religious, social, economic, and political development inherent in Eurasia within a transcultural and transnational perspective, spanning from the medieval to the modern age.

Relations between the Slavs and Byzantium were complex. The Slavs generally took the initiative in establishing contacts, and early links were strengthened with the formation of the Slav States. In the northern regions of Eastern Christendom, matters evolved differently. Here, the population, for the most part Slav, had progressively been drawn into the orbit of Byzantium throughout a thousand years of stable and lasting cultural relations. Only the West Slavs (including the Poles, the Czechs, the Slovaks, the Baltic and Polabian Slavs), the Croats and the Slovenes, remained outside the pale of Eastern Christendom, as a result of political events during the ninth and tenth centuries, coming instead within the sphere of influence of Western Christian civilisation.

For the Slavic Churches, the course provides and overview of Kievan Rus Christianity (988-1240) and its decline; the “Unions” of Florence (1439-1442) and Brest (1596) and their aftermath; the rise of the Church of Moscow, under Patriarch and Synod; the Church in Orthodox Russia and Catholic Austria; and Orthodox and Eastern Catholic Churches under totalitarian and post-totalitarian rule.

Simultaneously with these Slavic developments, the course will look at the East-West Schism, attempts to heal it, and the struggles and eventual collapse of the Byzantine Empire. The rise of Hesychasm and Monasticism in both Greek and Slavic Churches will also be examined, delving into theological and political aspects.