The participants had the opportunity to follow the presentation of Dr. Andra Jugănaru ("Aristotle" University of Thessaloniki), entitled "Learning Networks in the Cappadocian Fathers' Letter Collections", which followed the collection of letters of Saints Basil, Gregory of Nazianzus and Gregory of Nyssa, as a source for the social, political and cultural context of the fourth century of the Eastern Roman Empire, as well as for the relationship between Hellenism and Christianity. The speaker highlighted the role of education for both Christianity and the administration of the Empire and reconstructed the cultural landscape of disciples who studied philosophy, rhetoric, and sophistication and often deserted from schools of sophistication to become soldiers or servants in the imperial administration. attests to the letters of Libanius, Vasile's professor, at a time when Emperor Julian had issued an edict against Christian rhetoricians (362).
This was followed by a presentation by Prof. Dr. Anca Dan (CNRS, Paris), who spoke about the importance of geo-archeology and geosciences in Byzantine studies and the comparison of textual sources with information from maps in her lecture "The Transmission of Geographical knowledge in Byzantium ". This answer the questions: what did the Byzantines know about the world in which they lived; what geography represented before modern times; why, starting with the 7th century, do we not have a cartographic tradition in Byzantium (the last Byzantine map belongs to Cosmas Indicopleustes - 6th century), unlike the West and how was geographical knowledge transmitted in Byzantium?
