To mark the 40th death anniversary of František Dvorník, one of the eminent twentieth-century experts in Slavic and Byzantine history and in relations between the churches of Rome and Constantinople, the Institute of Slavonic Studies of the CAS organized the international symposium entitled Francis Dvorník: Scholar and His Work at villa Lanna in Prague. The conference was also included in the events celebrating the 125th anniversary of the foundation of the Czech Academy of Sciences and Arts. On September 10, 2015, the Institute of Slavonic studies of the CAS and the editorial board of Byzantinoslavica organized (also on the occasion of the 40th death anniversary of Francis Dvorník) an international workshop Lives, Roles and Actions of the Byzantine Empresses (4th-15th c.). and Martina Čechová.
The relation between the image and the text in the 15th century is one of the important topical streams of the study of the history of depictions, because the advancement of printing transformed significantly the communicative strategy and way of thinking. The study endeavours to employ these recent approaches for new research and verification of the question of what was on the walls of Bethlehem Chapel. Were they pictures and which pictures? Or were they inscriptions? And what functions could they have had if they had remained unreadable for the absolute majority of the local public? The study also includes research of the nature of the depictions in the Jena Codex, made possible by the issuance of its annotated reproduction (2010). and Milena Bartlová.