From 19 to 21 May 2026, Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” hosted the international academic conference “Agents of Censorship and the Circulation of Printed Material in Central Europe (1500–1800).” The event was organized by the Department of Byzantine and Balkan History at the Faculty of History in coordination with the University Center for Regional Studies and Analyses. It was held within the framework of the European Cooperation in Science and Technology (COST) network as an event of COST Action PCPSce, Working Group 3 “Public-Legal Spheres” (WG3), under the leadership of Associate Professor Maria Baramova, PhD, and Dr. Simon Dagenais.
The conference brought together more than forty scholars and guests from across Europe to examine the actors and mechanisms of censorship in the early modern period, including secular and ecclesiastical institutions, censors, authors, printers, publishers, readers, and intermediaries, as well as the practices of control, restriction, and circumvention that shaped the circulation of printed texts and ideas.
The conference was opened by Associate Professor Maria Baramova, Head of the Department of Byzantine and Balkan History at the Faculty of History. Official welcome addresses were delivered by Professor Mira Markova, Dean of the Faculty of History at Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski”, as well as by Dr. Mona Garloff and Dr. Marion Romberg, coordinators of COST Action PCPSce.
The programme of the first day began with a keynote lecture by Professor Orlin Sabev, DSc, of the Institute of Balkan Studies and Centre of Thracology at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, entitled “Tolerance, Restrictions, and Censorship: Policies Towards the Circulation of Printed Material in the Ottoman Empire (1500–1800).” The lecture was followed by four academic sessions dedicated to the implementation of censorship and self-censorship, their impact, and the interaction between censorship and literary genre.
The second day opened with a keynote lecture by Dr. Ivona Kollárová, Associate Professor at the Institute of History of the Slovak Academy of Sciences (Bratislava, Slovakia), entitled “Staffing, Transgressions, and Conflicts among Supervisory Officials as the Background of the System of Social Discipline in (Upper) Hungary in the Late Eighteenth Century.” In her presentation, she examined the staffing of supervisory institutions and the conflicts among officials in Upper Hungary during the eighteenth century.
Following the academic sessions on 20 May, conference participants were offered the opportunity to visit several major scholarly and cultural institutions associated with manuscript and early printed heritage. At the Prof. Ivan Dujčev Centre for Slavo-Byzantine Studies, participants were welcomed by Professor Vasya Velinova, DSc, Associate Professor Svetozar Angelov, and Dr. Rumyana Decheva, who presented medieval and early modern manuscripts in Church Slavonic and Greek. The programme continued with a visit to the Boyana Church of St. Nicholas and St. Panteleimon, where Dr. Georgi Sengalevich delivered a lecture on the history of the church and its remarkable medieval frescoes (eleventh–seventeenth centuries), which have been included on the UNESCO World Heritage List since 1979.
A visit to the Sts. Cyril and Methodius National Library provided participants with a professional introduction to one of the most important repositories of manuscripts and early printed books in Southeastern Europe. Library specialists presented selected Cyrillic editions dating from the fifteenth to the eighteenth centuries, as well as rare items from the Oriental Collection, including works by İbrahim Müteferrika, the pioneer of Ottoman printing. At the St. Kliment Ohridski University Library, participants visited the Restoration Laboratory—one of the most advanced facilities in Bulgaria for manuscript conservation—as well as the Digitalization Centre. The programme also included a presentation of selected early printed editions from the Balkans and Eastern Europe. The visits to the National Library and the University Library were followed by a guided tour of Sofia.
On the final day of the conference, participants discussed the progress achieved in the preparation of the compendium, one of the principal outcomes of COST Action PCPSce. The discussion was followed by a working meeting of the Action’s Management Committee.
The conference “Agents of Censorship and the Circulation of Printed Material in Central Europe (1500–1800)” further reinforced the role of Sofia University “St. Kliment Ohridski” as an active participant in European scholarly networks and as an important centre for research on book history, censorship, and intellectual exchange in the early modern period.
Conference Programme:
