Modern processes — economic, political, and social, taking place in the world affect the Church as an institution and believers of different confessions. Looking at these problems from the independent points of view of Orthodoxy and Catholicism is interesting and informative, pointing out the similarity in some issues and the important difference in others.

The object of the research is the description of the monasteries of Cyprus, made by Vassiliy Grigorovich-Barskiy in 1735-1736. The outbreak that happened after the earthquake on April 10, 1735 had a significant impact on the choice of the route by the traveler: he went to inspect the remote monasteries of the island. The purpose of the study is to identify the true goals of his expedition, to make an assumption about his patron, to point sources of information that Barskiy used. The tasks of the study are to demonstrate how Barskiy used the epidemic in Cyprus to compile description of the local monasteries. I will try to answer the questions, why is he wandering the island during the epidemic, why is he describing monasteries, ignoring many other objects, and finally where did Barskiy, who had previously visited only the most famous places in Cyprus, take such an accurate information about the number of monasteries and their location, because it is impossible to see and describe so much going at random.

The article deals with the epidemic of plague which happened in London in 1563. It is studied through the lens of sources connected with the Church of England, namely, the documents establishing extraordinary services, special homily written and published in the same year, and the correspondence of ecclesiastical as well as secular authorities. This approach leads to the conclusions of how the plague was understood by theologians, which measures (both, spiritual and practical) were considered to be efficient, and how the epidemic reflected in the administrative practice of the English church. The Early Modern people perceived plague as a supernatural calamity as it was sent by God in order to punish people for their sins and move them towards repentance. The natural mechanisms of plague’s spreading, most commonly explained through the theory of miasma, were nothing more but an instrument of God’s will. Thus, the reaction to the plague became primarily a matter spiritual which belonged to the competence of the church. Practical measures were inextricably entwined with the theological comprehension of the problem as well as the reasons of ecclesiastical policy. The London plague of 1563 was the first “great” epidemic for the reformed Church of England to face. The ecclesiastical administration introduced in cooperation with the secular authorities a special form of service and a homily for ‘this time of God’s visitation’ which determined the whole posterior tradition of reactions towards plague.

This article deals with miniatures of the Gospel from the collection of the Moscow Kremlin Museums, dated 1684. The author analyzes the iconography of the compositions, identifies the sources used as models for the masters who decorated the book, and also examines the circumstances associated with the order of the manuscript. The text touches on the issue of artistic connections between Russia and Western Europe in the field of book illustration of the 17th century and describes in detail the creative work of the court masters on the miniatures of the Gospel. The author discovers a Western European visual source that has never been associated with the range of Kremlin monuments before, which complements our vision of the iconographic lexicon of the court masters of the second half of the 17th century.

The article is devoted to some aspects of the iconographic program (the theme of the pious king, the glorification of the name of Jesus) and artistic features (plasticity of figures, spatiality, coloristic richness) of the Syrian manuscript of the Old and New Testament from the collection of the National Library of France (Paris. syr. 341). The manuscript is long and well known among the researchers because of some of its individual miniatures and iconographic types (the Virgin Nicopeia in the composition of Allegory of Wisdom), stylistic affinity with other manuscripts of Syrian origin (the Gospel of Rabbula, the later inserted miniature of 6th century in the manuscript dated 586). However, the parallels to iconography and style of the miniatures, despite the difference in technology and sizes, can be found in the mosaics of Italy of the same period, from Ravenna to Naples. This similarity allows to assume that patrons and artists of this manuscript were familiar with the capital’s culture and art of the Imperial court, and the time of creation of the manuscript to specify as the middle — the second half of the 6th century.

The article offers a variant of designing the Russian part of the new exposition of the Museum of the Bible of the Joseph Volokolamsk Monastery, which considers the principles of creating an exhibition that allows showing the distribution of the text of Holy Scripture in the Russian land of the XI–XX centuries.