Dr. Madalina Toca

Forschungsinteressen

Late antique and early byzantine epistolography
Manuscript cultures across the Mediterranean
Greek letters translated in Syriac Canonical Collections

Prior to taking up the Humboldt Fellowship in Bamberg, I held postdoctoral positions in Vienna as an Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Lise-Meitner Fellow, and in Edinburgh, where I was a Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE) Saltire Early Career Fellow in the School of History, Classics and Archaeology (School of History, Classics & Archaeology), working on authorial self-fashioning in late-antique epistolary corpora.

In 2021 I defended my PhD at KU Leuven with a thesis on the epistolary collection of Isidore of Pelusium, offering a systematic treatment of the manuscript transmission of the corpus (Greek, Latin, Syriac), and an in-depth historical, theological and literary analysis of a sample of letters. My PhD thesis was awarded the J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award 2022 from the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures at the Universit?t Hamburg.

For my Humboldt Fellowship in Bamberg, I will work on a project on the inclusion of letters of Greek late antique authors into Syriac canonical collections. Briefly, I will study how Greek epistles were repurposed and used as canons in West Syriac canonical contexts. This project aims to examine how patristic epistolary works were introduced as normative literature alongside the synodal canons they were meant to enhance and support. To that end, it proposes an in-depth study of a select sample of letters (from Ignatius of Antioch, Athanasius of Alexandria’s Letter to Amun, 6 letters by Basil of Caesarea, Gregory of Nyssa’s Letter to Letoius, etc.), and the way in which they were interposed with the synodal canons in the Syriac canonical collections of the eighth and ninth centuries.

Ausbildung und Werdegang

2009: BA in Classical Philology | Babes-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca
2011: MA in Medieval Studies | Central European University, Budapest | with distinction
2013: MA (Research) in Theology and Religious Studies | KU Leuven | magna cum laude
2021: PhD in Theology (Greek Patristics) | KU Leuven
2022: Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Saltire Early Career Fellow, Classics, The University of Edinburgh (10 months)
2022 – 2024: Austrian Science Fund (FWF) Lise Meitner Postdoctoral Fellow, ETF, University of Vienna

Further training

2014: Summer Course in Greek Palaeography and Codicology, Uppsala (30 June - 11 July)
2016: Syriac (Grammar & Readings), KU Leuven
2016: Lincoln College Summer School in Greek Palaeography, Oxford (1-6 Aug)
2017: Sahidic Coptic (Grammar), KU Leuven
2017 & 2019: Armenian A & B (Translation, palaeography & editing techniques), UCLouvain

Stipendien, Drittmittel und Auszeichnungen

Research Grants

2022: Royal Society of Edinburgh (RSE), Saltire Early Career Fellowship
2022-2024: Austrian Science Fund (FWF), Lise Meitner project grant
2025-2027: Alexander von Humboldt Foundation research fellowship

Other Awards and Scholarships

2009–2011: Central European University | MA scholarship
2011–2017: Porticus Düsseldorf Foundation | MA and PhD scholarships
2015 & 2017: Corpus Christi College Centre for the Study of Greek and Roman Antiquity, Oxford | FWO one-month research grant & visiting student
2017: Vatican Library & Augustinianum | FWO one-month research grant
2018: Belgian Historical Institute in Rome (BHIR) | Two-month research scholarship
2018 & 2019: Hill Museum & Manuscript Library (HMML), Collegeville MN | Two-month & one-month research stay
2021: EPHE Paris | Two-week ReIReS scholarship (17-31 July)
2022: J.P. Gumbert Dissertation Award | Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures, Hamburg University

Publikationen

Edited volume

M. Toca and D. Batovici (eds.). Caught in Translation: Studies on Versions of Late-Antique Christian Literature. Texts and Studies in Eastern Christianity 17. Leiden: Brill, 2020.

Journal articles

M. Toca. “Epistles as Canons: The Letter from Italy to the Bishops of the East (= Basil of Caesarea’s Letter 217) and the Epistles of Ignatius of Antioch in West Syriac Canonical Collections.” Annales Historiae Conciliorum 53.1 (2023[2024]): 87-104.
D. Batovici and M. Toca. “The Syriac Ignatian Canons: A Critical Edition.” Le Muséon 136.1-2 (2023): 1-37.
M. Toca. “The Father-Son Relationship in the Eighth Sibylline Oracle.” Annali di Storia dell'Esegesi 35.1 (2018): 99-107.
M. Toca. “The Greek Manuscript Reception of Isidore of Pelusium’s Epistolary Corpus.” Biblische Notizen 175 (2017): 133-43.

Book chapters

(forthcoming) M. Toca and J. Leemans. “Philo of Alexandria in Isidore of Pelusium.” The Reception of Philo of Alexandria, ed. by Courtney Friesen, David Lincicum, and David Runia (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2025), 194-209.
(forthcoming) M. Toca and J. Leemans. “Isidore of Pelusium’s Letters.” Handbuch Brief. Antike, ed. by E.-M. Becker, U. Egelhaaf-Gaiser, A. Fürst (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2025).
M. Toca. “The Reception of Isidore of Pelusium in Its Ancient Versions: Latin as a Case Study.” In Caught in Translation: Studies on Versions of Late-Antique Christian Literature, ed. by M. Toca and D. Batovici (TSEC 17; Leiden: Brill, 2020), 138-59.
M. Toca and J. Leemans. “The Authority of a ‘Quasi-Bishop:’ Patronage and Networks in the Letters of Isidore of Pelusium.” In Episcopal Networks in Late Antiquity, ed. by P. Gemeinhardt and C. Cvetkovic (AKG 137; Berlin: De Gruyter, 2018), 83-100.
M. Toca. “Isidore of Pelusium’s Letters to Didymus the Blind.” In Studia Patristica 96: Papers presented at the Seventeenth International Conference on Patristic Studies held in Oxford 2015, ed. by Markus Vinzent (Leuven: Peeters, 2017), 325-32..
M. Toca. “The Greek Patristic Reception of the Sibylline Oracles.” In Authoritative Texts and Reception History: Aspects and Approaches, ed. by D. Batovici and K. De Troyer (BINS 151; Leiden: Brill, 2016), 260-77.

Encyclopaedia entry

M. Toca and J. Leemans. “Isidore of Pelusium.” In Brill Encyclopedia of Early Christianity, eds. David G. Hunter, Paul J.J. van Geest, Bert Jan Lietaert Peerbolte, published online 2019.

Book reviews

Stefan Berkmüller, Schriftauslegung und Bildgebrauch bei Isidor von Pelusium (Arbeiten zur Kirchengeschichte 143; Berlin–Boston: Walter de Gruyter, 2020), in the Journal of Ecclesiastical History 73.4 (2022): 858-861.
P. ?vieux and N. Vinel (eds.), Isidore de Péluse. Lettres III. 1701-2000 (Sources chrétiennes 586; Paris: Cerf, 2017), in Reviews in Biblical and Early Christian Studies.
B. Bitton-Ashkelony, T. de Bruyn, C. Harrison (eds.), Patristic Studies in the Twenty-First Century. Proceedings of an International Conference to Mark the 50th Anniversary of the International Association of Patristic Studies (Turnhout: Brepols, 2015), in Augustiniana 1-4 (2016): 247-252.