On 2 and 3 September 2021 Pawel participated in a workshop on the so-called statue of Saint Hippolytus and its inscriptions, now in the Vatican Library. The workshop was organized by András Handl (Marie Curie fellow at the KU Leuven), and gathered a number of leading experts in statuary studies, epigraphy, chronology, and early Christian religious literature.

Pawel gave an overview of the palaeographical dating of the inscriptions from the seat of the statue – a first in-depth study of the inscriptions’ lettering against contemporary, third-century inscriptions from the city of Rome and book-hand scripts from literary and early Christian papyri.

Pawel took this opportunity to significantly prolong his stay at the KU Leuven and use its rich library resources at the Artes Faculty and at the Theological Library. Their collections of monographs and journals in Oriental studies and archaeology proved extremely useful for gathering new material for our project!