From the translator: A few years ago I came across the text of S.S.’s speech. Averintsev before the Italian Senate “La spiritualità dell’Europa orientale e il suo contributo alla formazione della nuova identità europea” [1], read in the Zuccari Hall of the Palazzo Giustiniani on March 25, 2003 (this is one of the last speeches of Sergei Sergeevich). As far as I know, there was no Russian text among his papers. The opportunity to translate Averintsev into Russian really irritated me both from a linguistic point of view and from a “plot” point of view: the circumstances are completely Ciceronian. Translating Averintsev into Russian, thereby claiming to reproduce his unique style and language, is a rather arrogant undertaking. However, the specificity of the situation is that this translation, so to speak, is partly authorized. In the texts of the “late Averintsev” the same thoughts wander from speech to speech. A number of passages in later speeches and drafts (not many, but still) correspond exactly to the Italian text - of course, I made patches in these places. Among the published texts where I came across parallels, the article ““Brother Francis’ Dear Flowers” - Italian Catholicism through Russian Eyes” (PO 7’92) and the report “Byzantine Cultural Type and Orthodox Spirituality” (in the collection “Poetics of Early Byzantine Literature.” M ., 2004).The translation is published in the collection “Human Integrity and the Meeting of Cultures.” Kyiv: Spirit i Litera, 2007. For help with translation, I sincerely thank Floriana Conte and Olga Karpova.