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Research on the East Slavs in the medieval period has considerably changed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The emergence of new states forced a rethinking of many aspects of the history and culture of the early East Slavs as the subject became increasingly disentangled from the umbrella of Byzantine studies and fruitful collaboration was fostered between scholars worldwide. This book, which brings together scholars from Russia, Ukraine, western Europe, and North America, of several generations, presents a broad overview of the main results of the last three decades of research and mutual collaboration. This is important work, providing a much-needed counterbalance to studies of western Europe in the period, which has been the main focus of study, with the lands of the East Slavs relatively neglected.
Susana Torres Prieto is an Associate Professor of Humanities at IE University, Madrid/Segovia.
Andrei Franklin is a freelance researcher, proofreader, and translator.
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Medieval Rus’ and Early Modern Russia
Texts and Contexts
Edited by Susana Torres Prieto and Andrei Franklin
For a full list of available titles please visit: https://www.routledge.com/ Routledge-Studies-in-the-History-of-Russia-and-Eastern-Europe/bookseries/SE0329
Medieval Rus’ and Early Modern Russia
Texts and Contexts
Edited by Susana Torres Prieto and Andrei Franklin Essays in Honour of
Simon C. Franklin
First published 2023 by Routledge
4 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge
The right of Susana Torres Prieto and Andrei Franklin to be identified as the author[/s] of the editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Prieto, Torres, editor, writer of foreward. | Franklin, Andrei, editor, writer of foreward.
Title: Medieval Rus’ and early modern Russia : texts and contexts / edited by Torres Prieto and Andrei Franklin.
Description: New York : Routledge, 2023. | Series: History of Russia and Eastern Europe | Includes bibliographical references and index. |
Contents: List of figures -- List of contributors -- Foreword / by Andrei Franklin and Susana Torres Prieto -- List of abbreviations -- List of libraries and archives -- Leo VI and the transformation of Byzantine strategic thinking about the Rus’ / Monica White -- Who was ‘Theodore the Rhos from a family of emperors’, the owner of the stone from the Holy Sepulchre? / Oleksiy Tolochko -- Cosmos, calendars and medical advice in the miscellanies of the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius and their late Byzantine counterparts (14th-early 16th centuries) / Ann-Laurance Caudano -- Holy foolishness and gender transgression in Russian hagiography from the Middle Ages to modernity / Nick Mayhew -- Some unnoticed Greek quotes in old Russian Chronicles / Sergey A. Ivanov -- Retranslating the Rus’ Primary Chronicle: perspectives on Horace Lunt’s new rendering / Michael S. Flier -- Two emperors of the princess Olga’s visit to Constantinople: Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos versus John Tzimiskes in the copies of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle / Tatiana Vilkul -- Patriarch Germanus II of Constantinople and the Slavic world / Maria V. Korogodina -- Thoughtful agglomeration: late Byzantine sources for Muscovite ceremonial / Alexandra Vukovich -- Boris Godunov and his family in the mirror of medieval Russian polyonymy / Anna Litvina and Fjodor B. Uspenskij -- “I must be cruel only to be kind”: towards a literary history of Kyiv graffito No. 108 / Aleksey A. Gippius -- Muscovite acquisition of books from Poland in the late 1640s-Early 1650s / Daniel C. Waugh and Olena Janssen -- The Codex in early Rus’ between the 11th-15th centuries: variations of form and variations of function / Dmitrii Bulanin -- Sofiia Vitovtovna’s dance: the wedding of Vasilii II in Russian cultural memory / Sergei Bogatyrev -- Revolution in the pictosphere: the Ukrainian Baroque and Muscovite reception / Valerie Kivelson -- Index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022039392 (print) | LCCN 2022039393 (ebook) | ISBN 9781032187853 (hardback) | ISBN 9781032187860 (paperback) | ISBN 9781003256236 (ebook)
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039392
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022039393
ISBN: 978-1-032-18785-3 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-18786-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-25623-6 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9781003256236
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5 Some Unnoticed Greek Quotes in Old Russian Chronicles 69
SERGEY A. IVANOV
6 Retranslating The Rus’ Primary Chronicle: Perspectives on Horace Lunt’s New Rendering 77
MICHAEL S. FLIER
7 Two Emperors of the Princess Olga’s Visit to Constantinople: Constantine VII Porphyrogenitos versus John Tzimiskes in the Copies of the Rus’ Primary Chronicle 88
TATIANA VILKUL
8 Patriarch Germanus II of Constantinople and the Slavic World 103
MARIA V. KOROGODINA
9 Thoughtful Agglomeration: Late Byzantine Sources for Muscovite Ceremonial 117
ALEXANDRA VUKOVICH
10 Boris Godunov and His Family in the Mirror of Medieval Russian Polyonymy 134
ANNA F. LITVINA AND FJODOR B. USPENSKIJ
11 “I Must Be Cruel Only to Be Kind”: Towards a Literary History of Kyiv Graffito No. 108
ALEKSEY A. GIPPIUS
12 Muscovite Acquisition of Books from Poland in the Late 1640s to Early 1650s 165
OLENA JANSSON AND DANIEL C. WAUGH
13 The Codex in Early Rus’ between the 11th and 15th Centuries: Variations of Form and Variations of Function 183
DMITRII M. BULANIN
14 Sofiia Vitovtovna’s Dance: The Wedding of Vasilii II in Russian Cultural Memory
SERGEI BOGATYREV
15 Revolution in the Pictosphere: The Ukrainian Baroque and Muscovite Reception
14.1 Negotiations between Vasilii II and I. D. Vsevolozhskii and Vasilii II’s wedding (Illustrated Compilation)
14.2 The wedding banquet of Vasilii II and Maria Iaroslavna (Illustrated Compilation)
14.3 P. K. Dobrynskii recognises Vasilii Kosoi’s belt (Illustrated Compilation)
14.4 Sofiia Vitovtovna removes the golden belt from Vasilii Kosoi (Illustrated Compilation) 213
14.5 B. A. Chorikov, Tsaritsa Sofiia ceremoniously strips Prince Vasilii Kosoi of the golden belt that was stolen from Dmitrii Donskoi, 1433 (A. Prevo, Zhivopisnyi Karamzin) 215
14.6 P. P. Chistiakov, Sofiia Vitovtovna at the Wedding of Great Prince Vasilii the Dark (1861) 217
15.1 S. F. Ushakov, Tree of the Muscovite State, 1668. Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow 236
15.2 S.U. Remezov, Tree of the governors-generals (voevody) of Tobol’sk, Rossiiskaia natsional’naia biblioteka, St. Petersburg, Ermitazhnoe sobranie, no. 237, Sluzhebnaia chertezhnaia kniga Remezova (Sluzhebnaia kniga), l. 9. By permission of RNB 237
15.3 Frontispiece of the Moscow Bible of 1663 241
Contributors
Sergei Bogatyrev (University of London)
Sergei Bogatyrev is Associate Professor, School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. Sergei’s research interests lie in the history of family memory in Kyivan Rus, the history and culture of Muscovite Russia (15th to 17th centuries), book culture, and technology transfer. He is on the editorial boards of several academic journals and a fellow of the Royal Historical Society.
Dmitrii M. Bulanin (Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg)
Dmitrii Bulanin is a senior research fellow at the Institute of Russian Literature (Pushkin House) of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St Petersburg, Russia, at the Department of Old Russian Literature. His research focuses on the literature of Old Russia, Byzantine-Russian, and Slavic-Russian relations in literature and culture.
Anne-Laurence Caudano (University of Winnipeg)
Anne-Laurence Caudano is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Winnipeg and the author of “Let There be Lights in the Firmament of the Heaven”: Cosmological Depictions in Early Rus (2006). Her recent work focuses on Late Byzantine and Slavic cosmographical texts, and on John Chortasmenos’ astronomical miscellanies.
Michael S. Flier (University of Harvard)
Michael Flier is the Oleksandr Potebnja Professor of Ukrainian Philology at Harvard University. He specialises in Slavic linguistics, especially the historical phonology and morphology of East Slavic; and in the semiotics of the culture of medieval Rus’, including art, architecture, ritual, and literature.
Aleksey A. Gippius (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
Aleksey Gippius is a member of the School of Philology at the National Research University Higher School of Economics and principal researcher
Contributors
at the Institute of Slavic Studies of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He received his PhD in 1996 and the degree of Doctor of Science in 2006; since 2011 he has been a corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His research interests include the language and writing of medieval Rus (in particular chronicles, birchbark documents, epigraphy), social and cultural history of medieval Novgorod, and old Russian monetary system. He is the author of about 200 publications, including two volumes of the serial edition Novgorod Birchbark Documents (2004, 2014, co-authored with V. L. Yanin and A. A. Zalizniak).
Sergey A. Ivanov (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
Sergey Ivanov is Professor at the Institute of the Classical Orient and Antiquity of the National Research University-Higher School of Economics in Moscow. His research focuses on the literary and cultural relations between Byzantium and the Slavs. He is a corresponding member of the British Academy.
Olena Jansson (Uppsala University)
Olena Jansson is a PhD Candidate in Slavic Languages at Uppsala University (Sweden). She combines philological and translation studies approaches. She has just completed a philological study on the history of the text with a focus on cultural transfer, choice of language register, translation strategies and the reasons for the multiple translations from Polish to Russian in the 17th century.
Valerie A. Kivelson (University of Michigan)
Valerie Kivelson teaches at the University of Michigan. Her publications include Cartographies of Tsardom: The Land and Its Meanings in Seventeenth-Century Russia (2006), and Witchcraft in Early Modern & Modern Russia and Ukraine: A Sourcebook translated and edited by Christine D. Worobec.
Maria V. Korogodina (Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg)
Maria Korogodina is the Head of the Manuscript Department of the Russian Academy of Sciences Library in St. Petersburg. She is a Doctor in History and the author of four books, published in Russian and dedicated to the Orthodox penitential texts, and the Russian canon law collections (Kormchaja kniga).
Anna F. Litvina (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
Anna Litvina is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia). Her research interests focus on Russian historical linguistics, medieval Russia, history
Contributors xiii of Russian Literature, and historical onomastics. She is the author of numerous studies, among which are: The Choice of Names in Rurikids Dynasty (2006), The Dynastic World of Pre-Mongol Russia (2020).
Nick Mayhew (University of Glasgow)
Nick Mayhew received his PhD in Slavonic Studies at Cambridge in 2018, under the supervision of Simon Franklin. From 2018 to 2021, he was a research fellow and lecturer in Slavic Languages & Literatures at Stanford. Since October 2022, he is Lecturer in Russian at the University of Glasgow.
Oleksiy P. Tolochko (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv)
Oleksiy Tolochko is Director of the Center for Kievan Rus’ studies at the Institute of Ukrainian History (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). His research has addressed various problems of Medieval and Early Modern history of Eastern Europe. His most recent project was leading a team of Ukrainian scholars into textological examination of the 13th-century Galician-Volhynian Chronicle (2021).
Fjodor B. Uspenskij (Higher School of Economics, Moscow)
Fjodor Uspenskij is Full Professor of Medieval Studies at the Faculty of Humanities, National Research University Higher School of Economics (Russia). Since 2021 he is also a Director of the Vinogradov Institute of Russian Language of the Russian Academy of Sciences. His fields of research include Russian historical linguistics, Scandinavian philology, medieval Russia and medieval Scandinavia, Old Norse language and literature, history of Russian literature, and historical onomastics.
Tatiana Vilkul (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Kyiv)
Tatiana Vilkul, Doctor of History, is a leading researcher of the Institute of History of Ukraine of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. She works in the fields of Old Rus’, Old Russian chronicles, textual criticism, Old Slavonic Bible, medieval social history, and medieval Kyiv.
Alexandra Vukovich (King’s College London)
Alexandra Vukovich is Lecturer in late medieval history at King’s College London. Her research and teaching focus on the interactions between northern Eurasia and the Byzantine world through writing, society, political culture, and material culture, spanning the later Middle Ages.
Daniel C. Waugh (University of Washington, Seattle)
Daniel Waugh is an Emeritus Professor at the University of Washington, Seattle (USA). He has published extensively on Muscovite book culture
xiv Contributors
and with Ingrid Maier (Uppsala) is completing a book on foreign news in Muscovy. He also writes about the historic Silk Roads across Afro-Eurasia.
Monica White (University of Nottingham)
Monica White is Associate Professor of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of Nottingham and holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Her research interests include Byzantine-Rus relations and Orthodox sainthood.
Foreword
It is indeed a truism that each epoch produces its own narrative of the past, and the present volume is just another example of it: it is rooted in a gradual change of paradigms that has severely affected, and continues to do so, our study of the first centuries of history of the East Slavs. Both the time frame and the geographic area covered by this book are difficult to define in conventional terms and therefore terminology, and accurate terminology, is of utmost importance, not only because it betrays a conception of the past, but also because it underlines an understanding of the present. If accurate terminology has always been important in academia, it becomes crucial at the time of writing the present introduction.
The range of centuries covered by the chapters of this book, from the 9th to the 21st centuries, overlaps with the traditional categories of medieval and modern historiography that are useful for other colleagues in non-Slavic studies. Most importantly, within the geographic area covered by this book, there are at least five, if not more, modern political entities that were relevant in the same space at different times. Some are extinct, such as the Byzantine Empire or Kyivan Rus’, others, like Russia or Poland, are still a reality. Kyivan Rus’ is indeed not Russia, and it is neither Ukraine, nor Belorussia. It was a polity that included lands that are today within the modern borders of at least three modern nations: Ukraine, Russia, and Belorussia. It was medieval only in the sense that it was premodern, but certainly not in the sense that it followed Antiquity. If one chooses the official date of its Christianisation, 988, as a meaningful date, though there is evidence of an organised society from at least a century before that, the end of Kyivan Rus’ is usually placed by the time the Mongols sacked the capital city in 1240. It would take a few more centuries for Russia to emerge, in the course of which a constant re-shifting of centres of political, religious, and cultural power will take place. Oversimplification is tempting, nuances are paramount, and refraining from the automatic allocation of well-known categories to new unexpected realities takes some effort. The title of this volume tries to reflect the difficulties inherent to this problem. Many formulas have been tried before, and all of them are ultimately problematical: from the conventional Early Rus’ (which would naturally oppose a Late Rus’, whose range of dates would be even more difficult to pinpoint and which would imply a continuity of Rus’ to
Russia that many would deny) to the often used Kyivan Rus’, which would not reflect the decades where political, religious, and cultural prominence were displaced from the old capital, even before the Mongol invasion, to the principalities of Galicia-Vohlynia or Vladimir-Suzdal. Equally problematical is the term Early Modern Russia, because it tends to include the centuries known in Western Europe as the Renaissance and far beyond (Late Modern Russia?) almost to the days of Peter I ‘The Great’ in the 18th century. Many would argue that dates could be found (change of dynasty, change of capital, change of sovereignty) to try to structure and organise these nine long centuries of history into recognisable categories. The problem, of course, is that, in order to recognise those categories we assign to them certain characteristics that we incorporate into their definition and the common use of the terms, either as praises (“this is so modern”) or as insults (“a very medieval society”). The area under study has traditionally challenged all those definitions, and the essays collected herewith are a good example of the complexity of the situation.
Traditionally, the study of the history and culture of this geographic area before the emergence of modern states has been in the hands of two significant groups of scholars: on the one hand, and due to chronological frame and cultural sphere of influence, Byzantinists. The list of Byzantine scholars, of Slavic origin or not, who devoted their professional careers to understanding the transfer of culture from Constantinople to the northern corners of what Dmitri Obolensky, one of its most notable representatives, called ‘The Byzantine Commonwealth’, is long and full of extraordinary titles. On the other, and due to the geopolitical situation imposed after the Second World War, medieval scholars of the USSR, regardless of their nation of origin, were the most prolific in their study and description, if only because they had a direct access to the sources that, for a long time, was limited to foreign specialists. In that situation, medieval East Slavic studies flourished in the West in the second half of the 20th century thanks to the efforts of a few specialists, one of whose most notable representatives is honoured by his colleagues and students in this volume.
Since the demise of the USSR, the study of the Middle Ages in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, what is understood as the East Slavic realm, has benefitted from several important changes. Firstly, the emergence of new states forced a rethinking of the theoretical framework, both spatially and temporally, of the object of study. Secondly, studies on every aspect of the history and culture of the early East Slavs were finally disentangled from the umbrella of Byzantine studies under which they had flourished for decades in Europe and the United States. Lastly, and probably most importantly, for the first time new findings of Russian and Ukrainian colleagues were made widely available to fellow medievalists in Europe and the United States thanks to more intense collaboration and the translation into Western academic languages of the main works of our Eastern colleagues.
This encounter of medieval and early modern scholars from two previously separated academic traditions has rendered mutual benefits for both,
particularly, but not only, in the interpretation of sources. For some decades now, new interpretative paradigms in the West have fostered the reassessment of narratives and sources in order to distance themselves from the teleological ethno-genetic and nation-building endeavours that had encouraged the study of the European Middle Ages in the 19th century and a significant part of the 20th century. As these changes were occurring in the West, our Eastern colleagues, deprived of the possibility of engaging in any theoretical discussion that would undermine the tenets of Soviet historiography, focused on a meticulous study of the sources, both textual and archaeological, with brilliant results. When finally free and fruitful collaboration could take place between both traditions, the results have been quite spectacular. The present volume, which includes chapters from scholars of several generations and half a dozen countries, is a tribute to this encounter. As such, it aims to present a broad outlook on the main achievements of these last three decades of mutual collaboration in the study of the medieval and early modern history and culture of the East Slavs. Whether as historians, philologists, or palaeographers, the authors have focused their often interdisciplinary research of recent decades on either bringing new explanations to formerly existing materials, or on bringing to light previously unknown sources for study. To those previously unfamiliar with the more remote history of the East Slavs, the volume will present curious resonances of similar questions in their own areas of study. For Slavonic and Byzantine scholars, it will present the latest tendencies in research by some of their most widely acknowledged colleagues.
Regardless of their approaches or their particular field of study, all authors are also united in their admiration and friendship to the person honoured by this book. In many respects, the career of Simon C. Franklin, Fellow of Clare College and former Professor of Slavonic Studies at Cambridge, embodies all the above-mentioned changes, from a Byzantine to a Slavonic perspective, from a theoretical inductive to a material deductive methodology, that has illuminated new generations of scholars both in the East and the West. Disciple himself of one of the most notable Byzantinists of the 20th century, Dmitri Obolensky, of whom he was his last PhD. student, Simon Franklin soon showed how a mastery in the command of Byzantine Greek, Old Church Slavonic, and a handful of modern European languages was key in pushing the studies of Medieval Rus’ further in the West. After completion of his PhD at Oxford, he received a post-doctoral fellowship at Dumbarton Oaks and from there to Clare College, from where he has researched, studied, and taught students from all over the world for more than three decades, years of indefatigable work interspersed with trips to the USSR, then to Russia, to foster that collaboration which is herewith attested. Authors in this volume include some of his best friends form the young days at Dumbarton Oaks as well as some of his own latest PhD students.
The volume is, as Simon Franklin’s own production, interdisciplinary, and it is necessarily focused on some, not all, of the honouree’s interests. The reader will often find references to and quotations from some of his most
prominent works. From the volume co-authored with Jonathan Shepard in 1996, The Emergence of Rus 750-1200, which served as inspiration to undertake Rus’ studies to so many of his own future PhD students, to the groundbreaking Writing, Society and Culture in Early Rus, c. 950-1300 (2002), and his latest innovational The Russian Graphosphere, 1450-1850 (2019). And throughout those years, quite a collection of substantial articles, some of them published subsequently in Byzantium-Rus-Russia (2002), in which his theories were being presented in peer-reviewed journals as his work was becoming familiar in specialised circles and his work admired by older and younger colleagues.
The volume is, therefore, grouped in thematic blocs, arranged more or less chronologically, that are, nevertheless, easily permeable and highly disputable. Many of the chapters would be equally well placed in two or more of these. Part I, ‘Use of Byzantine Models and Sources’, is the one that, maybe not surprisingly, encompasses the chapters of many of Simon Franklin’s PhD students. Starting with Monica White’s reassessment of the relations between the Byzantine Empire under Leo VI and the newly-arrived Rus’, in which the author underlines how key those years were in defining a new strategic approach towards Byzantine’s northern neighbours, to the intriguing piece by Oleksiy Tolochko in search of the real identity of a certain Theodore the Rhos’ whose name appeared on an inscription of an enkolpion in Venice. The cultural links between Byzantium and Rus’ and Early Russia were long-standing and fruitful, as is aptly demonstrated by the chapters by AnneLaurance Caudano and Nick Mayhew. Caudano, carrying out a meticulous study of the miscellanies from the Trinity Lavra of St. Sergius containing astrological and medical texts, shows how the transmission process was long and complex, and decisive for a better understanding of Early Russia’s cosmogony. Similarly, the innovative reading by Nick Mayhew of some of the most famous hagiographies transmitted from Byzantium to Rus’ and then popular in Russia provides wonderful new insights into the relation between gender-transgression and the very East Slavic tradition of the holy fools.
In Part II, ‘Historiography and Construction of Historical Narratives’, Sergey Ivanov analyses some previously unnoticed quotations in early Rus’ chronicles, opening new possibilities for a deeper understanding of the extent to which Byzantine literary culture was known and used in Kyivan Rus’. Michael S. Flier analyses in detail the difficulties encountered in translating into English the most famous Early Rus’ chronicle, the Povest’ vremmenykh let, known as The Rus’ Primary Chronicle. Taking as a starting point the project of Horace Lunt, Flier digs into the problems associated with trying to render style, orality, register, or paraphrase in the monument of Early East Slavic letters. The different witnesses of the Primary Chronicle are also discussed by Tatiana Vilkul in her own research into the famous episode of the baptism of Olga in Constantinople and the intriguing question of which emperor did she actually meet, or, rather, which Byzantine Emperor did the sources say she actually met, which are clearly two separate questions. Historical narratives, however, are not only restricted to the works of
Foreword xix historiography. As some authors clearly show in their innovative scholarly approaches, narratives concern not only traditional historiographic sources. Maria Korogodina, for example, discusses in depth the relation of Church elites in the times of Patriarch Germanus II, a key character not so much in the first process of Christianisation of Early Rus’, but more decisively in the key years of consolidation of the Metropolinate of Kyiv as a referent in Rus’. Similarly, Alexandra Vukovich underlines the relevance of rituals of enthronement in order to create a powerful visual narrative, undoubtedly aimed at their contemporaries, but key in our modern understanding of how monarchs understood their social and religious role. For their part, Anna Litvina and Fjodor Uspenskij have looked into the conventions that the family of Boris Godunov used in naming themselves, thus betraying a self-image in their use of polyonymy, and constructing for posterity their own historical narrative.
Part III, ‘Material Supports of Written Texts’, explores the ways in which writing created a new communication environment from its introduction among East Slavs. From the Novgorod graffito analysed by Aleksey Gippius and its linguistic and literary repercussions for our understanding of literary culture in Kyivan Rus’, to the detailed analysis of Daniel Waugh and Olena Jansson about the books that were imported into Early Modern Russia from neighbouring Poland, which provides extraordinary insights into which topics and authors interested the Russian public in the 17th century. In between those two extremes, Dmitrii Bulanin discusses the value of the books as objects and how authority often rested on their material features and not on their content.
The final part, Part IV, also corresponds to Simon Franklin’s latest research. Under the title ‘Social Repercussions of the Graphosphere’, Sergei Bogatyrev and Valerie Kivelson discuss the social and cultural reception of objects and events that are part of the Russian graphosphere created by Franklin in his latest title. Sergei Bogatyrev explores diachronically the visual repercussions of the wedding of Sofia Vitovtovna to Vasilii II in the mid-15th century, particularly as it appears depicted in the Illustrated Compilation. Valerie Kivelson challenges in her chapter the often radical separations made in academia between artistic movements, and proposes a more nuanced scenario in which Early Modern Russia was certainly exposed to, and sometimes imported, aspects of the Western European Baroque. We want to thank all the authors for their work and their wonderful collegiality. It has been a pleasure sharing this project with them.
This project would have not been possible, however, without the decisive support of our editor at Routledge, Peter Sowden. His enthusiasm from the beginning was key in taking us this far.
When we first entertained the idea of preparing and editing this volume in 2019, neither of us could foresee that two dramatic events were going to mark its development. In February 2021, Simon lost his lifelong companion and one of us, his mother. This volume is also a tribute to Natasha, whose generosity and partnership with her husband are undoubtedly behind many of his
Foreword
achievements. Many among the authors were also her students and her friends. Secondly, when we were about to send the final manuscript to the editors, Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, and our Ukrainian colleagues found themselves bombarded and undergoing the horrors of war that nobody should ever have to witness. This is our joint tribute to them.
Under current circumstances, a volume such as this, in which scholars from both countries at war, and friends of many years, were involved from the very beginning, and in which references are present to places now destroyed, becomes dramatically relevant. We started by saying that terminology matters. Under the present circumstances, it is maybe more relevant than ever, and we have made an effort to be scrupulous about it. Today, maybe more poignantly that a few months ago, we think that a less conscious use of terms and labels can result in the falsification of history and, more dramatically, in a justification for war.
The Editors London – Segovia April 2022
Abbreviations
AAE Akty, sobrannye v bibliotekakh i arkhivakh rossiiskoi imperii arkheograficheskoiu ekspeditsieiu imperatorskoi akademii nauk
AIuZR Akty, otnosiashchiesia k istorii iuzhnoi i zapadnoi Rossii, sobrannye i izdannye Arkheograficheskoiu kommissieiu
BLDR Biblioteka literatury Drevnei Rusi
CCAG P. Boudreaux, Catalogus Codicum Astrologorum Graecorum
ChOIDR Chteniia v Imperatorskom Obshchestve istorii i drevnostei rossiiskikh
CPG Clavis Patrum Graecorum
DAI Constantine Porphyrogenitos, De Administrando Imperio, trans. and ed. by G. Moravcsik and R. J. H. Jenkins (Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks, 1967)
PG J.P-P. Migne (ed.), Patrologiae cursus completus. Series Graeca
PSRL Polnoe sobranie russkikh letopisei
RIB Russkaia istoricheskaia biblioteka
TODRL Trudy otdela drevnerusskoi literatury
Archives and Libraries
BAN Biblioteka Rossiiskoi Akademii Nauk (Library of the Russian Academy of Sciences, St. Petersburg)
MGAMID Moskovskii glavnyi arkhiv Ministerstva inostrannykh del (Moscow State Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, RGADA, Moscow)
RGADA Rossiiskii Gosudarstvennyi arkhiv drevnikh aktov (Russian State Archive of Ancient Documents, Moscow)
RGB Rossiiskaia Gosudarstvennaia bilioteka (Russian State Library, Moscow)
RNB Rossiiskaia Natsional’naia biblioteka (Russian National Library, St. Petersburg)
Part I
Use of Byzantine Models and Sources
1 Leo VI and the Transformation of Byzantine Strategic Thinking about the Rus’1
Monica White
In the 9th century, relations between Byzantium and the Rus’ were largely improvised. The fortune-seekers from Scandinavia who were only beginning to establish permanent structures in the eastern Baltic region, and the highly centralised empire with its heartland in the eastern Mediterranean, had little incentive or precedent for dealing with each other. Both had other pressing foreign policy concerns, and their considerable distance from each other hindered the growth of regular ties. Yet both sides had goods (whether material, spiritual, or diplomatic) which the other wanted, and over the course of the 9th century this provided an incentive to grope toward a working relationship, however tentatively. From their earliest dated contact with the empire in 839 and probably before, the Rus’ vacillated between opportunistic violence, regulated trade, and cultural exploration in their dealings with the empire, while the Byzantines sought to draw the Rus’ into mutually beneficial interactions of a spiritual or mercantile nature while shrugging off occasional bad behaviour in the form of raids.2
Between the late 9th and early 10th centuries, the Rus’ power centre migrated from the area near the Gulf of Finland to the mid-Dnieper region, as upheaval in the steppe world forced them to relocate to pursue their traditional enterprise of trading natural resources for silver dirham coins. Archaeological research has shown that, by the turn of the 10th century, significant groups of Rus’ were ensconced in the south, from where they maintained their existing ties with Byzantium. Excavations in Gnezdovo, for example, have revealed fourteen coins from the reigns of Basil I (867–86) and Leo VI (886–912): twice as many as the coins of all previous emperors combined.3 Other Byzantine items from the new southern settlements encompass a broad range of materials and functions, including jewellery, pottery, glassware, silk, seals, and even reliquary and pendant crosses.4 Although the dates associated with them are often imprecise, their variety suggests that trade and, potentially, proselytising remained central to relations, continuing the patterns established in the previous century. Maintaining these contacts was, however, still a difficult undertaking. Even if the move to the mid-Dnieper region had brought significant numbers of Rus’ some 550 miles closer to the empire from their Baltic fastness, it did not turn the two sides into close neighbours, and they remained separated by an arduous river and sea journey.
In their new bases of operations, the Rus’ were still one of the furthest-flung groups with which the Byzantines had dealings, and one of very few which could not be reached by the relative ease of the Mediterranean Sea, the Black Sea, and/or overland routes which had been established since Roman times. For this reason, despite their increased proximity to the empire, the Rus’ remained peripheral to the Byzantine world, both physically and conceptually. They were still highly volatile, poorly understood, and even more remote than the steppe tribes to their south, with which the Byzantines had occasional dealings.
On its own, the move to the south thus appears not to have changed the nature of Byzantine–Rus’ relations which had been established in the 9th century. The increased proximity did, however, contribute to the emergence of a new type of interaction, as groups of Rus’ began serving in the Byzantine armed forces for the first time. To be sure, many, if not most, Rus’ continued to visit Byzantium in a civilian capacity. Military service was, however, disproportionately influential to the development of relations between the empire and its northern neighbour. The Byzantines, who did not employ large numbers of mercenaries at that time, must have had compelling reasons to accommodate this foreign, non-Christian group. The Rus’, meanwhile, found themselves in the novel position of being a foreign minority in the command structures of the Byzantine military – no doubt a larger and more complex force than anything they had experienced before. The arrangement was mutually beneficial, supporting Byzantium’s early efforts to re-conquer territory from the Arabs while providing employment and prospects for adventurous Rus’. It also played an important role in formalising Byzantium’s relationship with the emerging Rus’ state, with mercenaries given basic legal protections along with their more numerous fellow-countrymen who were involved in trade. The Rus’ value as mercenaries was, it will be argued, the main reason they went from diplomatic afterthought to valued partner in the sources associated with Leo VI. The following study will examine the origins of Rus’ mercenary service in Byzantium in order to shed light on this watershed in relations, which was at least as significant as trade in their development in the 10th century and beyond.
Written sources from the early 10th century confirm the continuation of both the forms of interaction established in the 9th century and the uncertainty of southern observers about many aspects of the Rus’. For example, Rus’ trade with Byzantium still attracted the attention of observers from the Muslim world. The Treatise of the Regions by the Persian geographer Ibn al-Faqih, completed in 903, mentions ‘merchants of the Saqaliba’, who bring fox and beaver fur to the ‘Roman Sea’ and pay a tithe to the Byzantine Emperor before proceeding to the Khazars, where they are taxed again.5 Aspects of this passage may well have been borrowed from the observations of the earlier author Ibn Khurradadhbih about the ‘al-Rus’, who followed similar routes, probably because Byzantine–Rus’ trade still followed these patterns.6 The fact that Ibn al-Faqih refers to the merchants in question as ‘Saqaliba’, whereas Ibn Khurradadhbih calls them ‘al-Rus’ does not necessarily
mean that they were describing different groups of people. Although the term ‘Saqaliba’ is often translated as ‘Slav’, its meaning was not precise and it could be used broadly to refer to any foreigners from the north.7 Because the activities of Ibn al-Faqih’s ‘Saqaliba’ – obtaining furs and engaging in long-distance trade – are precisely those which are known from various sources to have been undertaken by the Rus’, there is little reason to doubt that the author is describing that group (whose numbers may, of course, have included Slavs).8 Of interest is the fact that, despite borrowing extensively from Ibn Khurradadhbih, who was from the same cultural milieu and lived only one generation earlier, Ibn al-Faqih did not use the same term as his source to describe the Rus’. This inconsistency in terminology may well reflect the uncertainty of authors from the Arabic-speaking world about these distant and unpredictable people, and it is also found in Byzantine sources.
The writings of Ibn al-Faqih’s contemporary, the Byzantine Emperor Leo VI, likewise paint a picture of the Rus’ as long-distance merchants on the fringes of the known world, and refer to them using inconsistent terminology. Some sense of the Emperor’s understanding of the Rus’ can be gleaned from his writings on foreign affairs: the ‘Northern Dossier’, a digest of information about actual and potential allies and clients of the empire, and a military handbook known as the Taktika. James Howard-Johnston has argued persuasively that the ‘Northern Dossier’ was compiled c. 900 for and possibly by Leo. The Emperor’s son Constantine VII and his collaborators used it and related material as the core of the diplomatic handbook known as De Administrando Imperio, in which the ‘Northern Dossier’ comprises chapters 37–42.9 It focuses primarily on the Pechenegs, Hungarians, Moravians, and a group of uncertain identity called the ‘Kabaroi’, and also includes a geographical description of a vast swathe of eastern Europe from Belgrade to the Khazar city of Sarkel on the lower Don river. The Rus’ (referred to as hoi Rhos) do not merit their own chapter, and the location of their territory (Rhosia) and that of their tributaries is only mentioned as they relate to Pecheneg lands. The proximity of the Rus’ to the Pechenegs is noted again in the geographical description in chapter 42, which also states that they live on the higher reaches of the Dnieper and sail down that river to reach the Byzantines, Black Bulgaria, Khazaria, and Syria.10 Howard-Johnston no doubt correctly argues that the Rus’ were not a primary focus of the ‘Northern Dossier’ “because they were adjudged to be of little diplomatic importance at the time of writing”.11 Leo’s lack of specific attention to the Rus’ broadly reflects the state of affairs in the 9th century, when this remote group was at best peripheral to the empire’s concerns and of interest mainly as it related to other groups, for example, the Pechenegs.
The Taktika, composed c. 904–12, provides further evidence for Leo’s thinking about Byzantium’s northern neighbours.12 Like the ‘Northern Dossier’, the goal of the Taktika was to provide accurate information to support the empire’s strategic goals. Thus, although Leo took much of the material for the Taktika from the 6th-century Strategikon attributed to the Emperor Maurice, he did not simply copy his source but updated many sections to reflect contemporary challenges. Leo’s concern for accuracy is reflected in,
among other areas, the information about foreign peoples which he adapted from the Strategikon. In particular, his use of the term ‘Scythian’ provides clues about his views of the Rus’ and other northern peoples. Leo omits this term on four occasions when paraphrasing or copying Maurice’s remarks about potential enemies and types of formations, presumably because the information was no longer accurate.13 Although the Emperor does refer to ‘Scythians’ in other contexts, he always uses a qualification of some kind. In Constitution 14 he discusses the fighting techniques of “the more northern and Scythian nations”; in Constitution 17 he describes attacks against “some Scythian or some similar nations”; in Constitution 18 he declares that “The Scythian nations are one”; and in Constitution 19 he describes ships used by “those called Northern Scythians”.14 The descriptive phrases attached to the term probably indicate that a universal understanding of ‘Scythian’ could no longer be assumed, and that Leo was taking care to convey his meaning as accurately as possible.
Leo’s usage and omission of this term reveals his awareness of the fact that the people known as ‘Scythians’ in Maurice’s time (according to the Strategikon, primarily the Avars and Turks15) were no longer a priority for the Byzantines, or even in existence, by the early 10th century. Although the term itself was still useful to Leo’s strategic thinking about the empire’s neighbours, his consistent qualification of it indicates his desire to convey some nuance in his discussions of the inhabitants of the steppe and beyond. The identities of all the people known as ‘Scythians’ in Leo’s time are not entirely clear, but there is strong evidence that a subset of them, the ‘Northern Scythians’, can be equated with the Rus’. The remarks in Constitution 19 about the vessels of the ‘Northern Scythians’ likely reflect the journeys of the Rus’ from north-eastern Europe to Constantinople: “the Scythians use ships that are smaller, lighter, and faster [than those of the Saracens]. Because they come into the Euxine Sea from rivers, they cannot use larger vessels”.16 Two later paraphrases of this section of the Taktika, known as the Naumachia, show that this equivalence was clear to later generations of Byzantines. A manuscript of the Naumachia from the mid- to-late 10th century, Ambros. B 119-sup., changes ‘Northern Scythians’ to Rhos, and a paraphrase of the text by the retired officer Nikephoros Ouranos from c. 1000 replaces it with Rhosoi 17
Given that Leo’s ‘Northern Dossier’ uses the terms Rhos and Rhosia, it is not clear why the Taktika subsumes the Rus’ under the broader designation of ‘Northern Scythians’. Rhos had been in use longer than ‘Northern Scythians’, since it is attested in The Life of St. George of Amastris and the sermons of Photios, both from the middle decades of the 9th century.18 Photios, however, also refers to the invaders of 860 as ‘Scythians’ without further qualification, and other sources confirm that both Rhos and variations on ‘Scythians’ continued to be used in diplomatic and other elite contexts through the early 10th century. ‘Scythians’ and related terms were not necessarily flattering: the diplomat Leo Choirosphaktes describes his enemies as “altogether more Scythian than the northern barbarians” in a letter to Leo VI.19 These appellations were, however, in sufficiently wide use that they became known outside Byzantium.
An entry in the Rus’ Primary Chronicle s.a. 907 lists twelve groups from eastern Europe who participated in the leader Oleg’s raid on Constantinople, including Varangians and various Slavonic tribes, noting that “All of them are called Great Scythia by the Greeks”.20 The fact that this observation is found in the same entry as a Byzantine–Rus’ treaty which was drafted in Greek by diplomats working for Leo VI is probably not a coincidence. The term ‘Scythian’ does not appear in this treaty or the related text s.a. 911, in which the Rus’ are referred to exclusively as ‘Rus’’, but it may well have found its way into the chronicle entry because of the Rus’ increased awareness, thanks to negotiations such as those described in the chronicle, of the names that the Byzantines used for them. Whatever the exact circumstances and history of each individual text, it is clear that there was little consensus in Leo’s time, and for many decades after, about how to refer to the Rus’ and their neighbours.21 The proliferation of terms doubtless reflects a combination of context, genre, and literary affectations, but also, and perhaps primarily, the low standing of the Rus’ in Byzantium’s strategic priorities. Relegated to the margins of Leo’s writings, they did not warrant detailed descriptions of their way of life, such as those about the Pechenegs and Hungarians. Consistency in terminology was therefore not important, even in works with a practical focus such as the Taktika and the ‘Northern Dossier’.
Yet despite Leo’s seeming inattention to the Rus’ in his strategic writings, other evidence suggests that the nature of their involvement with the empire was undergoing a significant change during his reign. The Book of Ceremonies, a handbook of imperial ceremonial and other topics compiled during the reign of Constantine VII, mentions the service and payment of 700 Rus’ mercenaries in its detailed description of the personnel and equipment taken on the campaign to re-conquer Crete from the Arabs in 911.22 Described by John Haldon as “one of the most costly military operations ever undertaken in the long history of the medieval eastern Roman state”, it was an enormous investment of money and resources at a time when Byzantium was only beginning to go on the offensive against the Arabs.23 Although the campaign was ultimately unsuccessful, the account of the personnel and expenses associated with it is of considerable interest for the military history of the time, and provides the earliest evidence for the Rus’ serving in the empire’s armed forces.
The Rus’ participation in this campaign marks an important addition to the forms of Byzantine–Rus’ interaction known from earlier sources, which involved trading, raiding, and missionary work. In contrast to these activities, mercenary service required the Rus’ to submit to Byzantine authority, follow Byzantine strategic plans, and serve in the company of Byzantine soldiers and sailors for at least several months at a time. Nothing is known about the exact role of the Rus’ on the campaign, but it is clear that they were vastly outnumbered by other regiments (John Haldon estimates the total number of participants to have been 46,964).24 It is therefore unlikely that the Rus’ were hired simply to make up the numbers, and there must have been a compelling reason to employ this numerically insignificant group. Presumably, as is often the case with mercenaries, they offered some specialist skills and/or equipment
