Volumul XXX (2025), nr. 1

The article argues that two manuscripts of Nicolaus de Lyra’s Postilla, kept in Alba Iulia and in Cluj, are possibly the product of the same Viennese scriptorium, and were both used in Cluj in the last decades of the fifteenth century or in the early sixteenth century. The Cluj manuscript, kept at the archives of the Roman-Catholic Archdiocese of Transylvania in Cluj (inventory number MS 52), has only recently become available to the scholarly community. It contains commentaries to the four Gospels, and is dated in 1470. The Alba Iulia manuscript (Batthyaneum Library, MS I.12) contains the postilla to the remaining books of the New Testament, and is dated in 1471. Furthermore, the two manuscripts have the same size and layout, and were demonstrably bound in the same workshop. A colophon formula in German in the Cluj manuscript shows that the manuscript was copied in a German-speaking area; moreover, the watermarks in the Alba Iulia manuscript suggest that it was copied in the area of Vienna.

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St. Irenaeus of Lyons (130-202 AD) emerged on the theological scene during a time marked by upheaval, conflict, and profound searching. Considered “the most important theologian of the second century” and called “the father of Orthodox dogmatics,” he dedicated his entire life and efforts to the service of the Church. St. Irenaeus conveys with absolute certainty, born from his unshakeable conviction, that the truth received from his predecessors “is the one and only truth.” For this reason, he devoted himself to preaching, defending, and demonstrating this truth with extraordinary determination, firmly resisting all attacks, as is evident from his written work.

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Despite the prevailing legislation's stipulations, which rendered them ineligible due to the lack of two mandatory conditions - free exercise of civil and political rights and compliance with conscription laws – women began to be hired in the Romanian civil service in the latter decades of the 19^th century. Apart from teaching and medical staff in Romania, the Directorate of Telegraph and Post Office became the first institution to pay women in public service. However, until 1923, the authorities did not explicitly define their status as civil servants. As the state became more bureaucratized, pressure grew on women to secure employment. Meanwhile, the state benefited from better-trained female candidates, who accepted lower pay and were more compliant than their male counterparts. This article explores the current state of research on the topic, highlights key milestones in women’s employment as clerks in the Romanian state, traces the evolution of their numbers, and analyzes the discourse surrounding their roles, engagement, and visibility within the civil service.

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Modernity is sometimes characterised as a dialectic between inherited dualisms – macro-microcosm, cosmos-mind, schema-trope, maximalism-minimalism, etc. – reinscribed, in the computer-age, within the emerging discourses of complexity-simplicity & given a broadly “cybernetic” inflection, corresponding to the operations of dynamic systems. The autopoetic character of such systems is the subject of a large body of literature. That semantics in general can be understood in these terms is a fundamental prerequisite for the recent advent of language-based AI, which in a very short period has become ubiquitous. While a statistical model of communication, refined into a calculus of “intelligence,” may seem to resolve the old antagonism of the sensible-intelligible, in crucial respects it remains at the level of a mimēsis – a descriptive-approximative system – so long as it retains a dualistic (& not recursive-differential) structure. Signification's capacity to arise in the first place is no more mysterious than the existence of the Higgs field. The question remains: what – under arbitrarily assumed conditions – constitutes a semantic minimum? i.e., a difference that “means”? This minimum can be conceived as a Planck limit (or some other universal bound), necessitating a convergence of the semantic field. Yet while the opacity of AI is unsuited to a general theory of semantic emergence, re-examination of certain paradigmatic modernist texts – whose linguistic economies are often held to be diametrically opposed, but which reveal “intrapsychic identifications” (Kristeva) – may be more fruitful.

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This paper explores Tsitsi Dangarembga’s novel Nervous Conditions through the lenses of postcolonialism and decolonial feminism, focusing on the intersection of colonialism, missionarization, and gender oppression. It examines how African women face dual subjugation under colonial rule and indigenous patriarchy, a concept often termed “double colonization”. Drawing on Frantz Fanon, Sylvia Tamale, and Homi Bhabha, the analysis situates the novel in debates on hybrid identities, liminality, and resistance. Through characters like Tambu and Nyasha, Dangarembga critiques colonial and traditional systems while imagining alternative modernities rooted in education and agency, particularly for Zimbabwean women navigating oppressive structures.

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The article aims to reveal de-heroicising patterns of World War II in recent Russian films about a previously forbidden topic in the Soviet period – Soviet penal battalions (shtrafbats). Still a controversial topic, the recent films and TV series on this topic disclose new heroic approaches and ways of constructing World War II's (unsung) heroes. On the one hand, these filmic productions represent tributes to the heroes of penal battalions; on the other, they bring forward the anti-hero as the new positive hero of the post-Soviet period. Therefore, these filmic productions may be seen as Postmodernist recycling attempts of Socialist Realism, as proposed by M. Lipovetsky. Additionally, they are attempts to re-ascertain Russian cultural relevance and revisionist efforts before the Russo-Ukrainian war. We focus on V. Novak’s film Gu-ga (1989) which opened the path of discussing the penal battalion topic and N. Dostal’s TV series The Penal Battalion (Shtrafbat, 2004). Our paper explores the public and critical response to these film productions and their role within Russian recent cultural history and the character construction of Boris Tiraspolsky (Gu-ga) and Vasily Tverdokhlebov (Shtrafbat) as reflections of the social, political and cultural changes.

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The aim of this paper is to offer a different understanding of the way Radu Cosașu writes, emphasizing the cultural background and the passion that the author has in relation to cinematography. A summarized look at Radu Cosașu’s career as a writer provides a sufficiently fertile foundation to understand the importance he gives to the art of cinema, as well as the influence this art exerts on his writing. Having as a focal point the volume A Living With Laurel and Hardy, which was included by the writer in his series of Works, the present approach is focused on identifying the methods through which Radu Cosașu links his writing to cinema.

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This article examines foreign language acquisition (FLA) as a process of identity repositioning within social and cultural contexts. Using ecolinguistics and Bourdieu’s theory of symbolic power, it argues that FLA extends beyond cognition to social adaptation, providing access to new cultural and economic opportunities. It explores language as symbolic capital, shaping power relations and mobility. Through an ecolinguistic lens, it highlights how learners renegotiate identity within diverse settings and how institutions influence agency. By framing FLA as self-repositioning, the paper emphasizes its transformative role in identity and social participation, calling for further research on learners’ experiences.

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