Along the Routes of the Ecumene: The Journey of Sir George Wheler to the Levant (1675–1676)

Alberto Castaldini

doi:10.35765/pk.2020.3003.13

Alberto Castaldini Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2068-5492

DOI: https://doi.org/10.35765/pk.2020.3003.13

Keywords: travel literature, George Wheler, Ecumene, Balkans, Ottoman Empire

Abstract

The article presents the French edition—printed in The Hague in 1723— of a significant example of travel literature from the end of the 17th century: A Journey into Greece (1682) by Sir George Wheler (1651–1724). The book made a profound mark on the studies of archeology, epigraphy, and the numismatics of the Balkans, Greece, and the Byzantine world. The article illustrates the significant data collected by the English traveler, botanist, scholar of classical antiquity, and clergyman, relating to the cultural and confessional mosaic in the space of southeastern Europe. His descriptions should be interpreted as a representative portrait of the remains of the ancient Euro‑Mediterranean ecumene. The traveler-churchman’s spirit of observation and sensitivity made Wheler a model author in the scholarly travel literature of the 17th century.

Author Biography

Alberto Castaldini, Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca, Romania

PhD in Philosophy, is professor of Jewish Studies at the Babeş-Bolyai University in Cluj, in Transylvania, where he is associate member of the Faculty of Greek-Catholic Theology. He is an invited professor at the Pontifical Athenaeum Sant’Anselmo in Rome. From 2006 to 2010 he directed the Italian Cultural Institute in Bucharest and held the position of Cultural Attaché of the Italian Embassy in Romania. He is an ordinary member of the Accademia Nazionale Virgiliana of Mantua, of the Academy of Agriculture, Sciences and Letters of Verona, a corresponding member of the Accademia Roveretana degli Agiati , and an honorary member of the “Nicolae Iorga” Institute of History of the Romanian Academy.

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