Byzantine Prayer Books as Sources for Social History and Daily Life. Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik|Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 67. Band|

This multi-authored article presents a new project to study Byzantine prayer books (euchologia) by a team of scholars at the Austrian Academy of Sciences. The long-term aim of the project is to create a census of all extant prayer book manuscripts for the use of priests in Greek up to the year 1650, in order to facilitate the study of the ‘occasional prayers’ as sources for daily life and social history. After an extended introduction to the history of scholarship and the methodological challenges encountered in the first three years of the project, the first two individual contributions highlight the importance of manuscript study in situ, by addressing issues of codicology and the history of manuscripts as evidenced in the liturgical commemorations they contain. The following three contributions demonstrate the value of the ‘small prayers’ as a largely untapped historical source through the study of prayers for changing religious affiliation, prayers for female purity in conjunction with childbirth, and prayers in the context of primary education