On March 10, 2025, St. Tikhon's Orthodox University for the Humanities hosted the presentation of a new textbook "History of the Church: Ancient Christian and Byzantine Periods", published by the Publishing house of the Church-Wide Postgraduate and Doctoral School named after Saints Cyril and Methodius.
The textbook was prepared with the active participation of the University by a team of 18 authors, most of whom also belong to the university's faculty corporation.
Archpriest Pavel Khondzinsky, Dean of the Faculty of Theology at St. Petersburg State University, and A.S. Golovin, a representative of the OCAD publishing house, addressed the audience with a welcoming speech. It was noted that the preparation and publication of the new textbook were the result of fruitful cooperation between the theological schools of the Russian Orthodox Church, primarily the OCAD and the PSTU, to whose leadership the participants of the presentation expressed deep gratitude.
Scientific editors G.E. Zakharov and E.Y. Kanaeva spoke about the work on the manual and its features. In particular, it was noted that in addition to the classical topics for the course of ancient church history, the textbook paid special attention to the church history of the Latin West before the division of the middle of the 11th century, the history of Orthodox monasticism, as well as the late period of church history up to the fall of Byzantium in 1453.
Other members of the author's team also shared their impressions of the new textbook and the work on it.