This book offers rare insights into the cultural traditions that have shaped the Balkan region--from pagan times, through folk culture, the medieval Christian churches, the encounter between Christianity and Islam, up to the religious and national mythologies that have proved so destructive in the present day. With the Balkans a central focus of European concern at the beginning of the 21st Century, this volume is a timely reminder of the complex cultural processes that continue to affect the modern world.

This book offers rare insights into the cultural traditions that have shaped the Balkan region - from pagan times, through folk culture, the medieval Christian churches, the encounter between Christianity and Islam, up to the religious and national mythologies that have proved so destructive in the present day. With the Balkans a central focus of European concern at the beginning of the twenty-first century, this volume is a timely reminder of the complex cultural processes that continue to affect the modern world.

This is the fascinating story of Katherine Stewart MacPhail (1887-1974), the third daughter of Dr Donald MacPhail, a Glasgow physician. Following in her father's footsteps, she studied medicine at Glasgow University, qualifying in 1911. During the First World War she worked as a doctor in France, Serbia, Corsica and on the Salonica front. Following the war's end, she returned to Serbia in order to organise medical care for poor children suffering from tuberculosis, which was a serious medical and social problem at the time, and founded a special hospital for this purpose, first in Belgrade, and then in the village of Sremska Kamenica on the banks of the Danube, near the city of Novi Sad. Under her energetic leadership the hospital flourished, but she was obliged to leave it when Yugoslavia was occupied by the Germans during the Second World War. Returning after the war, she was once more forced to leave when the Communist government took over the hospital in 1947, spending the rest of her life in retirement in St Andrews, Scotland. This moving account of her life and work vividly reflects both the heroism and the tragedy of the twentieth century. All proceeds from the sale of the book will be donated to a charity set up to restore the "English Hospital" in Sremska Kamenica, as a memorial to Dr. Katherine MacPhail.

The Kievan Caves Monastery was for centuries the most important Ukrainian monastic establishment. It was the outstanding center of literary production, and its monks served throughout the territory of Rus' as bishops and monastic superiors. The most detailed source for the monastery early history is its "Paterik," a thirteenth-century compilation containing stories reaching back to the monastery's foundation in the mideleventh century. Muriel Heppell now makes available the first complete English translation of the Paterik. With an introduction, map, and several appendices, Muriel Heppell discusses the work's Byzantine background and also sets it in its historical context.

The "Harvard Library of Early Ukrainian Literature" is one portion of the Harvard Project in Commemoration of the Millennium of Christianity in Rus'-Ukraine sponsored by the Ukrainian Research Institute of Harvard University. The "Library" encompasses literary activity in Rus'-Ukraine from its beginning in the mid-eleventh century through the end of the eighteenth century. Included are ecclesiastical and secular works written in a variety of languages, such as Church Slavonic, Old Rus', Ruthenian (Middle Ukrainian), Polish, and Latin. This linguistic diversity reflects the cultural pluralism of Ukrainian intellectual life in the medieval and early-modern periods. The "Library" consists of three parts: "Texts," which publishes original works, in facsimile whenever appropriate; "English Translations"; and "Ukrainian Translations." Each volume begins with an introductory essay by a specialist. The two translation series also include maps, appendices, and indices. A cumulative index to the entire "Library" is planned.