Their topics include al-Sharif al-Idrisi on the plant life of the western Mediterranean, the privilege and predicament of the devotee in the Legiloque manuscript, the poetics of translation in Dante's Comedy, translating Julius Caesar, translation and transformation in John Lydgate's The Fall of Princes, chivalric romance and the marvelous in the Spanish Melusine (1489-1526), Byzantine Chronicles in Church Slavic, and Greek at the papal court during the Middle Ages.

The popularity of Old Church Slavic is waning - only 73 enrollments last year compared to 133 in 2006 - while New Testament Greek rocketed from zero enrollments in 2006 to 95 last year, just like Afghan Pushtu.

He even includes a eulogy (Slovo pokhval'noe) on Makarii in his own Church Slavic. Elsewhere a brief sketch of Metropolitan Makarii's life stresses that he was not just a churchman but a "patriot of Muscovite Rus', a statesman, and a diplomat" (11).