Wincenty Myszor

Wincenty Myszor(1941-2017), Doctor of Theology (1973), Habilitation (1983), Professor (1990), Director of Chair of History of Literature and Ancient Church Theology on the Faculty of the Church Historical and Social Sciences at Catholic Theology Academy (CTA) (since 1987), Deputy Dean for Faculty of Theology CTA (1984−1988), later Dean of the Faculty of the Church Historical and Social Sciences CTA (1988−1993), Deputy Rector CTA (1993−1995), Director of Chair of Ancient Church History CTA (1990−2001), Director of Institute of History and Social Sciences CTA (1999−2001). In 1998, at the request of Archbishop Damian Zimoń, he undertook the organization of Faculty of Theology at University of Silesia. Consecutively, in 2001, he was appointed Dean of the Faculty and held the office for two terms.

As the outstanding patrologist and the expert on gnostic texts, he had been a member of Association International d’Etudes Patristiques (since 1984), International Association of Byzantine Studies (since 1996) and Theological Sciences Committee at Polish Academy of Sciences. He established Studia Antiquitatis Christianae in Warsaw and chaired the editorial office in 1977-2001. In 2005, he began editing the series at Faculty of Theology at University of Silesia with the new title - Studia Antiquitatis Christianae. Series Nova. For many years, he had been the member of the editorial board of Silesian Historical and Theological Studies and he was editor-in-chief of the magazine in 1981-1995.

The academic achievements of rev. Wincenty Myszor encompass over 300 publications, including books, scripts, editing of collective work, articles, translations from modern languages, reviews, entries in dictionaries and encyclopedia, bibliographies, and scientific reports. Rev. Wincenty Myszor’s main areas of research concerned the history of Christianity in 2nd and 3rd century AD, particularly social history. He enriched this field of study with the wide selection of sources - he was occupied with gnostic texts from 2nd and 3rd century AD, he analyzed Coptic texts from Nag Hammadi. He published many translations of gnostic works from early Christianity as well as texts from Christian polemical literature. He is the author of numerous translations of Irenaeus (from 2nd century AD) which were collected and published as 11th volume of series Studia Antiquitatis Christianae, Series Nova in 2010. He wrote the first Polish translation of Gospel of Judas. As far as his educational work is concerned, he was teaching Coptic language: he wrote the first Polish course book for studying Coptic language and he was the co-author of Coptic-Polish dictionary. In the last years of his life, he advised Polish archeologists on the codices of Coptic texts found by them in Kurna, Egypt, in 2005. He identified the titles and excerpts and provided the preliminary translations. His work helped to identify the manuscript from 7th/8th century AD which is the part of a very important and unique finding made by Polish Centre of Mediterranean Archaeology University of Warsaw.