Scholar Sergei Averintsev turns 65

Tuesday, December 10 is the 65th birthday of prominent scholar Sergei Averintsev.

A corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and a D.Sc. /Philology/, Averintsev is known as an author of books on the history of the spiritual culture of the ancient world and the early period of Christianity and as a researcher into the problems of Byzantine culture and literature.

Averintsev's critically acclaimed translations from ancient and modern languages have won his numerous prizes and account for his membership in various academies and associations of a world level, including the Papal Academy of Public Sciences.

Sergei Averintsev was born in Moscow of professorial parents. His first acknowledged article, "Greek Literature and Mideastern Lore," was published in 1971. He was the first to develop the idea of post-Byzantine identity of the whole Eastern European space.

The scholar has a very wide range of interests, but no matter who he is writing about, the Armenian Gregor Narekatsi or the German Hermann Hesse, he always retains the features of a Byzantine moralist. Up to this day, Averintsev remains a "connoisseur of the Mediterranean soil," as he calls himself.